If America Refuses To End The Syrian Civil War, Then Russia Will Have To Win It.

Aleppo's Agony: More than anything else, global opinion is demanding an end to the siege of Aleppo. Surely, who rules Syria matters less than bringing this seemingly interminable and indiscriminate destruction to an end? Why can’t those doing the fighting see that? Why won’t they stop?

 

THE IMAGES EMERGING FROM ALEPPO are gut-wrenching. Tiny babies, dust-covered and ominously silent, are pulled from the rubble of their homes. The cries of anguished parents mingle with the wailing of ambulance sirens as their broken children are carried away. A young man on Skype warns the world of Aleppo’s “annihilation”. A water-treatment plant is bombed, and in retaliation the only other functioning plant is shut down. Two million people are left without safe drinking water. This is the Syrian Civil War up-close and personal. Unbelievably horrible.

 

More than anything else, the global audience confronted with these horrors wants the war to stop. Surely, who rules Syria matters less than bringing such indiscriminate death and destruction to an end? Why can’t those doing the fighting see that? Why won’t they stop?

 

The warring parties won’t stop because they can’t stop. Not until the government of Bashar Al-Assad either triumphs over, or is decisively defeated by, its enemies.

 

If he chose to, the American Secretary of State, John Kerry, whose lugubrious features are so well suited to his repeated expressions of sympathy for the Syrian people, could end the war in a moment. All he has to do is halt the supply of weapons to Assad’s enemies. Yes, that would involve placing a restraining hand on the shoulders of America’s Saudi and Turkish allies. But if his government was genuinely committed  to ending the fighting, that is what it would do.

 

Because Assad’s regime is still recognised as the legitimate government of Syria. Its representatives continue to take their seats in the General Assembly of the United Nations, and its ambassadors continue to be recognised in the world’s capital cities – including Washington DC.

 

That’s because there was a time when the West was only too happy to have Syria’s friendship. It was 2003, and US forces were busy overthrowing Assad’s fellow Baathist, Saddam Hussein. No one had too much to say back then about the brutally authoritarian character of the “murderous Syrian regime”.

 

On the contrary, in the decade following the Iraq invasion, the Western powers were at pains to point out how very different Bashar was from his hard-line Baathist father, Hafez Al-Assad. Bashar’s western education was played up, as were the charitable works of his glamorous wife, Asma. The general diplomatic consensus up until 2011 was that a gradual liberalisation of the regime was underway. Elections had been held. Political prisoners had been freed. All Assad needed, said the Middle East-watchers, was time.

 

He didn’t get it. The Arab Spring of 2011 unleashed a wave of popular uprisings across the Middle East. Assad watched with growing alarm as first Tunisia, then Egypt and finally Libya succumbed to politico-military putsches that saw heads-of-state roll – sometimes literally.

 

This was the point at which an intelligent American administration would have made it clear to the world that it was committed to preserving the reforming government of Bashar al-Assad. Unfortunately, the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, fresh from her “triumph” in Libya, prevailed upon President Barack Obama to figuratively hold the cloaks of the Syrian rebels while they stoned the Assad regime to death.

 

Tragically, the Obama Administration had reckoned without the Assad family’s grim reputation for holding on to power at any cost. Like his father before him, Bashar looked not to Syrian civil society for salvation, but to the Syrian military. Civil war, with all of its attendant fratricidal slaughter, was unleashed. Syria was ripped apart.

 

Wrong-footed by Assad’s bloodthirsty response, Obama dithered. As he cast about for a solution that did not involve putting American boots on the ground, Saudi Arabia did all it could to ensure that it would be an Islamic, and not a secular, state that grew out of the rubble of Baathism.

 

Meanwhile, in eastern Syria, something even more deadly was rising. Remnants of Saddam’s disbanded army had crossed the Iraqi border; ruthlessly eliminated the student groups responsible for the democratic rebellion; and allowed their fanatical Salafist understudies to announce the return of the long-dead Caliphate – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

 

Enter Vladimir Putin. As long-time allies of the Syrians, and with radical Islamic terrorists of its own to worry about, Putin’s Russian Federation was willing to embrace what the Americans consistently refused to endorse – foreign military intervention.

 

Whatever else they may be criticised for, the Russians cannot be faulted for their grasp of war’s greatest priority: securing victory as swiftly as possible. Were the Americans only willing to immediately staunch the flow of arms to Assad’s enemies, then the slow torture of Aleppo could cease, and its interminable siege be lifted.

 

In the absence of decisive American action, however, the Russian and Syrian bombers will continue their deadly sorties.

 

And the awful images of war will continue to assault our eyes.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 27 September 2016.

Serbia/Syria - The Parallels Are Frightening.

Two Shots Heard Round The World: Gavrilo Princip's assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, was the necessary provocation that allowed the Entente powers to set in motion the General European War that they - and Serbia - had been planning for more than a decade. In Syria, today, there are frighteningly strong parallels with the Great Power intrigues and transformative territorial ambitions that led to the outbreak of war in 1914.

 

SYRIA HAS BECOME the Serbia of the early Twenty-First Century. In the early years of the Twentieth Century, Serbia was Europe’s tinder-box. All the major powers understood the risk Serbia posed, but each of them had too much at stake in the Balkans to hazard bringing the criminal Belgrade regime to heel. The same can be said of Syria. The major powers all have a great deal to lose by ending the Syrian civil war and restoring peace to the Middle East.

 

What this means, however, is that the seething rivalries fuelling the Syrian civil war could, at any moment, draw the major powers into a military confrontation – with profound consequences for the whole world. Just as Britain, France and Russia knew that Serbia could very easily be made the pretext for a war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, the United States and its key Middle Eastern allies know that Syria could very easily be turned into a shooting war against the Russian Federation and Iran.

 

The fatal flaw in the great powers’ relationship with Serbia in the early Twentieth Century was that Serbia had geopolitical aspirations that could only be satisfied by a general European War. The Serbian dream was to become the leader of a new South Slav (Yugoslav) kingdom carved out of the Balkan provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That was never going to happen while Austria-Hungary endured. Serbia wanted – Serbia needed – a general European war.

 

In Syria, the raging fratricidal battles are being driven by two, mutually exclusive, geopolitical and religious visions of the region’s future.

 

For Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s beleaguered President, the best outcome of the civil war would be the creation of a Shia Islam alliance extending all the way from Syria’s Mediterranean coast, through Iraq, to Iran’s borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

For Syria’s Sunni majority, the ultimate goal is the creation of a Sunni Islam alliance embracing Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

 

The success of either of these arrangements would fundamentally derange the geopolitics of the Middle East. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the two leading nuclear powers, the USA and the Russian Federation, both have planes in the air and (some) boots on the ground in Syria.

 

Tipping The Scales: The intrusion of Russian air power in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government has dramatically upset military calculations across the Middle East.

 

President Vladimir Putin would dearly love to have a friendly Shia confederation stretching protectively along the Russian Federation’s southern flank. That the increasingly erratic regime of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would find itself squeezed between the two (and, quite possibly, a newly created independent Kurdish state) only adds to the attractiveness of this outcome.

 

For President Barack Obama, the situation is a great deal murkier. Washington’s unshakeable alliance with the State of Israel leaves it in something of a quandary. Jerusalem already lives in existential fear of an assertive (i.e. nuclear-capable) Iran. It’s reaction to an Iran-dominated Shia confederation stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean can only be imagined! But a vertical alliance of Takfiri-driven Sunni states, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea, would, if anything, be worse! How long could it be before nuclear-armed Pakistan applied to join this incipient Caliphate?

 

Russia’s much clearer set of objectives is reflected in its much clearer foreign and military policies in the Middle East. It’s straightforward goal is to keep Bashar al-Assad in power and destroy the Turks’ and the Saudis’ Takfiri proxies – which include the Al Qaeda aligned al-Nusra Front as well as the murderous Islamic State. [The Takfiris are Muslims who claim the right to brand as apostate, and make war upon, every Muslim who, according to the Takfiris’ radically literal interpretation of the Quran, is guilty of deviating from the “true” path of the Prophet.]

 

So far, the Russians and their Syrian Government allies are doing pretty well. Thanks largely to Russia’s fighter-bombers, the strategic rebel stronghold of Aleppo is on the point of falling to Assad’s army.

 

To the Turks and the Saudis, the fall of Aleppo would be a disaster. Not only would the rebels’ crucial supply lines to Turkey be severed, but the road to the Islamic State’s Syrian “capital”, Raqqa, would lie open. But, as Ankara and Riyadh both know, the moment the “moderate” rebels and the Islamic State are defeated, the Syrian civil war is over. And if that happens, there will be nothing to prevent the extension of Iranian power all the way to the Syrian coast.

 

Hence the Saudi-Arabian Crown Prince’s excited talk about sending tens-of-thousands of ground troops to Syria via Turkey, ostensibly to destroy Islamic State, but actually to establish a “buffer zone” along Turkey’s southern border with Syria. Russia has warned that any such breach of international law will be answered with military force.

 

On Sunday, Turkish artillery began shelling Kurdish positions across the Syrian border.

 

The parallels with Serbia in 1914 are frightening.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 16 February 2016.

Punishing The Barbarians

Imperialism To The Rescue? United States infantry storm the walls of Beijing as part of the Eight Nation Alliance's successful attempt to put down the "rebellion" of Boxer terrorists and restore "civilised values" to the benighted people of China. But, the actions of the imperialist powers in 1900 are regarded very differently with the hindsight of 115 years. How shall the West's imminent actions in the Middle East be judged in 2130?

 

IT WAS CALLED “The Eight Nation Alliance” and it had but one purpose: to punish the Chinese people. In 1899, the Shandong peasantry had resolved to drive all “foreign devils” out of their country, rising in their thousands under the leadership of a secret society known as the Brotherhood of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The British, with characteristic disdain, referred to these patriots as “Boxers”, and dubbed their uprising the “Boxer Rebellion”.

 

By 1900 the Boxers were close to achieving their goal. They had shamed the Empress Dowager, Cixi, into supporting their movement and with the assistance of the Chinese army had the “foreign devils” bottled up in Beijing’s diplomatic quarter.

 

It was the unthinkable prospect of these legations being over-run, and their terrified inhabitants slaughtered, that persuaded the world’s leading imperialists: Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, the USA, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Japan; to announce the formation of a joint force to lift the siege and restore the status quo ante.

 

The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, felt obliged to mark the departure of his own nation’s contingent with a speech. If you ever wondered why, in both world wars, the German’s were referred to as “The Hun” – wonder no more:

 

“Should you encounter the enemy,” said the Kaiser, “he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.”

 

Confronting the Yellow Peril: The Christian West is enjoined by the archangel Michael to strike down the Asiatic threat from the East.

 

Needless to say, the Eight Nation Alliance – whose forces numbered in excess of 45,000 soldiers and marines – made short work of the poorly armed and inadequately led Chinese forces. Beijing was sacked and the Forbidden City ransacked of its treasures.

 

Never again would the imperial powers of Europe and Japan go to war alongside – as opposed to against – one another. Just 15 years after the subjugation of China, the members of the Eight Nation Alliance were tearing themselves to pieces in the First World War.

 

Of course, had you been reading the newspapers of the period, the foreign intervention in China would have seemed entirely reasonable. In an era when the Christian churches of the West were filled-to-bursting every Sunday, the stories of Christian missionary families being beheaded, burned alive, raped and even crucified by the brutal Boxer mobs, left Europeans feeling stunned and sickened.

 

These were not civilised people to be reasoned with. Indeed, the suicidal tactics of the Boxer “rebels” – many of them armed only with swords and spears – charging headlong into the murderous fire of the allies’ Maxim guns (an early type of machine-gun) struck the “reasonable men” of 1900 as the very antithesis of civilisation. In their ears, the bombastic racism of Kaiser Wilhelm did not sound nearly so shocking as it does in our own.

 

Perhaps the leaders of the world’s great powers should pause to contemplate the difference 115 years can make to way people interpret the behaviour of their forebears. In the minds of Presidents Hollande and Putin, the case for bringing together another Eight Nation Alliance to crush the barbaric Islamic State no doubt seems as strong as the arguments for punishing the murderous Boxers and their treacherous Empress Dowager, Cixi.

 

That the egregious behaviour of the imperial powers made such an uprising inevitable would have been dismissed by the political leaders of 1900 as an outrageous slur. The British Government’s open support for the 19^th Century opium trade, and its callous indifference to the enormous suffering it inflicted on the Chinese people, went largely unremarked. With the benefit of 115 years hindsight, however, Britain’s culpability is as obvious as it is detestable.

 

How shall our own generation of political and military leaders appear from the perspective of 115 years in the future? Given the West’s numerous interventions in Middle Eastern affairs since World War II, will the atrocities committed by Islamic State strike our great grandchildren as any more worthy of historical condemnation than the atrocities of the Boxers?

 

As China is today, so may the Islamic world be in 2130. What will its judgement be?

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 November 2015.

Responding To Paris: The Left Must Never Abandon Love For Hate; Justice For Revenge.

Hold Fast To Your Beliefs: We are leftists because, at the very core of our values, lies an unshakeable belief in the worth of every human-being, and in the right of every human-being to live his or her life free from exploitation and violence. That the world is so full of these evils must never daunt us, nor persuade us to abandon love for hate; justice for revenge.

 

TERRORIST ATTACKS – like the one that left 129 Parisians dead on 13 November 2015 – leave many leftists in a quandary. Most of us are only too aware that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom-fighter. We hesitate to join in the outpourings of outrage and sympathy because we are appalled by, and want no part of, the extraordinary hypocrisy in which these events are shrouded.

 

Scores of men, women and children are killed and maimed by terrorist attacks almost every day in the countries of the Middle East and Africa, and yet they merit only a few words in our news bulletins and newspapers. Certainly, nobody thinks them worthy of front-page treatment. Nor do we see significant public buildings lit up in the colours of their nation’s flag.

 

This is because there is an unacknowledged hierarchy of significance at work in the newsrooms of the West. People of colour; followers of non-Christian faiths; citizens of nations with which our governments are not on friendly terms: the violent deaths of such people are almost never accorded the same degree of significance as the deaths of Westerners.

 

If I belonged to one of these “less significant” groups, I would find it extremely difficult not to brand the actions of Western editors racist.

 

Because even the term “terrorist attack” carries blatantly racist overtones. In Western ears, it conjures up images of bloodthirsty organisations with outlandish names like Boko Haram, Janjaweed, Hezbollah and ISIS. It is much less common to hear the term linked to the actions of the armed forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the other Western powers. Terrorists wear turbans and carry Kalashnikovs – not smart uniforms and M-16s.

 

And yet, since the end of the Second World War, the armed forces of the United States, advised and assisted by its intelligence and security agencies, has been responsible for the deaths of millions. The unrelenting air assault on North Korea (over 700,000 sorties between 1950-53) is credited (conservatively) with at least a million civilian deaths. Twice that number of civilians are estimated to have been killed by the American armed forces in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia between 1965-75. US inflicted civilian deaths in Iraq 2003-2014 are put at well over 600,000.

 

In 1996, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madelaine Albright, was questioned by Lesley Stahl, of CBS’s 60 Minutes, about the human consequences of the sanctions imposed by the US on the regime of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

 

“We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

 

To which Albright responded,

 

“I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

 

Those who wonder how a group of young men can fire their automatic weapons into a crowded theatre should, perhaps, contemplate the effect of Ambassador Albright’s words on the parents and siblings of those 500,000 children.

 

The temptation which confronts so many on the Left is to advance these bleak statistics as some form of justification for the actions of non-state terrorists around the world. It is a temptation we must resist. That we learn the fundamental moral precept “two wrongs don’t make a right” at our parents’ knees, does not make it any the less true.

 

The appropriate moral response to the deliberate killing of innocent human-beings can never be the deliberate killing of innocent human-beings. If we are outraged by the callous indifference of Madelaine Albright, we must also be outraged by the pitiless brutality of the Islamic State’s jihadis in the Bataclan Theatre.

 

Nor is it appropriate to downplay the horror and heartache of Parisians who have lost loved ones simply because our news media has failed to highlight the horror and heartache of those who have suffered similar loss in other parts of the world.

 

We are leftists because, at the very core of our values, lies an unshakeable belief in the worth of every human-being, and in the right of every human-being to live his or her life free from exploitation and violence. That the world is so full of these evils must never daunt us, nor persuade us to abandon love for hate; justice for revenge.

 

Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 17 November 2015.

Such Reckless Hate

Dark Lord? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-styled Caliph of the Islamic State, preaches an apocalyptic version of Islam in which the allies and the enemies of God engage in a final, climactic battle, which, his followers believe, will signal the beginning of the end of this world. Through its terrifying use of wanton violence, the Islamic State hopes to draw the armies of the West into its very own version of Armageddon, at Dabiq, on the border of Syria and Turkey.

 

“THE WORLD CHANGES, and all that once was secure now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?” The sonorous language of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings seems sadly suited to this time of tragedy. When Paris, the City of Light, grows dark with suspicion. And the French people, prime movers and inheritors of the Enlightenment, stand mute with shock before the “reckless hate” of Islamic State.

 

What is it that these killers want? Merely to sow fear and uncertainty among ordinary Frenchmen? To demonstrate their disdain for the fighter-bombers of the French Air Force? To spit in the face of President François Hollande and all the other Nato leaders? Are these haters really as reckless as they seem? Are they truly heedless of the reckoning that must surely follow their bloody assault on the commonplace and innocent pleasures of civilised existence: eating at a restaurant; watching a football match; listening to music?

 

Of course not! There’s a ruthless method to Islamic State’s madness. A chilling logic that informs all their deadly deeds. Violence, cruel and obscene, is the Islamic State’s “Ring of Power”. (If I may be forgiven for drawing, yet again, upon the works of Tolkien.)

 

It is the savage allure of violence – religious and political – that locates the Caliphate’s recruits. Terrible images of beheadings, crucifixions, stonings and mass executions, delivered to impressionable young minds via the Internet. Violence as pitiless and unflinching as that allegedly visited upon Muslims by the accursed “Crusaders”. Violence which exerts a malignant magnetism upon the rootless and alienated children of Muslim immigrant communities scattered across the West.

 

Such is the dark magic that enthrals the terror-masters’ recruits and brings them, across thousands of kilometres, to the blood-soaked lands of the Islamic State. It is there that they learn the “rules” of jihad – holy war – and are bound forever to the dark purposes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s self-proclaimed Caliphate.

 

And what purpose might that be? In his article “What does ISIS really want?”, published in the March 2015 issue of Atlantic magazine, journalist Graeme Wood observes that there is a temptation, in the West, to conceptualise jihadists as “modern secular people, with modern secular concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise – and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilisation to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.”

 

The apocalypse! Yes. Islam, like Christianity, contains within its ranks a growing number of devout, even fanatical, believers in the “End Times”. According to the Islamic State recruiters interviewed by Wood, these end times will begin when the West launches what proves to be a disastrous intervention in Iraq and Syria. In Woods own words: “The Islamic State awaits the army of ‘Rome,’ whose defeat at Dabiq, Syria, will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse.”

 

If Wood is correct (and there have been many challenges to his characterisation of the Islamic State) luring the “Crusaders” to this little town on the border of Syria and Turkey is critical to the unfolding of Allah’s plan for his people. Dabiq may be 300 miles north of Israel’s “Mountain of Megiddo” (Har Meghiddohn in Hebrew) but its theological location is identical. It is held to be the place of the last, decisive, battle between the allies and the enemies of God – Armageddon.

 

But, surely, no rational person could believe that such a battle is anything other than metaphorical? No rational person, certainly. But, in the Islamic State we are not dealing with rational people.

 

Which is not to say that we are dealing with fools.

 

If one’s ultimate objective is to provoke the armies of “Rome” – i.e. the Western powers – into sending an expeditionary force to Syria and Iraq, then what better way than by launching a carefully planned and ruthlessly executed attack which left 132 Parisians dead and more than 350 wounded? President Hollande, anxious to play the role of France’s avenging angel, has already declared “a state of war” to exist between his country and Islamic State. He’s telling the French people that his response to its murderous attack will be “merciless”.

 

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, whose reputation for ruthlessness and aggression is well-established, is already calling for a combined, Russian-Nato military assault upon the Islamic State. He is determined to avenge not only France’s 132 dead, but also the 224, mostly Russian, individuals who lost their lives when an Islamic State affiliate blasted their airliner to pieces over the Sinai Peninsula.

 

The effectiveness of Islamic State’s strategy of violence is eerily apparent in the current turn of events. As if the “reckless hate” of a real-life Sauron has, indeed, given him the power to rule us all.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 17 November 2015.

Making A Desert And Calling It Peace: Why I Agree With Winston Peters.

Syria In Agony: It is such a mess. And all the horrors that fill our screens are the progeny of the West’s intervention. Every hostage beheaded. Every gay man hurled to his death from a high place. Every 9-year-old girl traded in the slave-markets of Raqqa and Mosul. Every screaming reproach and accusation wrenched from the victims of IS and Assad, alike, is ours to answer. Only the West possessed the power to break this world, and only the West can fix it.

WINSTON PETERS wants the men of Syria to fight for their homeland. By all means, he says, let us give succour and safe haven to the women and children of that bloody dystopia. But, let us not offer a permanent residence to Syria’s misery. Not unless the world is ready to swallow every last Syrian. To leave their home a desert – and call it peace.

 

The Left finds it easy to dismiss Winston and his gnomic pronouncements. They look at him the way they’ve always looked at people who wear suits to protest planning meetings – with a mixture of disbelief and suspicion. That prominent leftists are now willing to vouch for him only pushes the comrades’ eyebrows higher. “Don’t let the flash suits put you off,” say Matt and Andrew, “Winston’s okay. A little old fashioned, yes, but don’t worry, we all hate the same people.”

 

Okay, but, really! How are we supposed to take Peters seriously when he comes out with stuff like this? Send the Syrian men back to fight? FFS - the guy’s an idiot!

 

But when our tears for little Aylan have dried. When the global news cycle has rolled over enough times for the images of the Middle East’s wretched human refuse to have lost their power to shock and shift public opinion. What then? When the razor-wire fences have all been made people-proof. When the sleeping dogs of European racism have all been kicked awake and are howling down the bleeding-hearts and do-gooders. What will we do then?

 

Because the great engine of all this grief; the motor of all this misery, will not have stopped. Not for a moment will the death machine that is the Syrian civil war have ceased to pump out its torrents of innocent blood. Four million human-beings have already been driven beyond Syria’s borders by the combined efforts of Bashar al-Assad’s Baathists, the Islamic State, and whatever loose assortment of Saudi-funded and US-trained jihadis are currently passing themselves off as the Free Syrian Army. That just leaves another 20 million souls to decant into the already overflowing vessels of Syria’s immediate neighbours.

 

Who cannot possibly take so many, and so will drive these new waves of refugees northward and westward, following the trail of tears to the European Union. Which, in spite of its name, will offer only increasingly divided counsels – and higher walls.

 

Yes, the injustice of all this rises to heaven on a reeking cloud of Western mendacity. Having broken the Middle East and North Africa into a thousand pieces, the United States and its Nato allies now refuse to own the desolation their own hands have wrought. They smashed Afghanistan for no better reason than to sate the Great Hegemon’s thirst for vengeance after 9/11. Then they invaded Iraq – this time in pursuit of some delusional NeoCons’ dream of inculcating capitalist democracy in a made-up country with virtually no history of either capitalism or responsible government.

 

It is such a mess. And all the horrors that fill our screens are the progeny of the West’s intervention. Every hostage beheaded. Every gay man hurled to his death from a high place. Every 9-year-old girl traded in the slave-markets of Raqqa and Mosul. Every screaming reproach and accusation wrenched from the victims of IS and Assad, alike, is ours to answer. Only the West possessed the power to break this world, and only the West can fix it.

 

But not just the West. The Russian Federation and the Peoples Republic of China must also be part of the solution. A truly global force, assembled under the banner of the United Nations. Hundreds-of-thousands of soldiers: men and women of all colours and creeds, drawn from every continent, to cauterise the bleeding wound that is Syria. And in their wake the agents of international justice – for the sake of ruined Palmyra and its martyred guardian; for the sake of tiny, helpless, innocent Aylan.

 

And in the vanguard of that mighty host, the young men of Syria: leading the attack; hewing down the flags of tyranny; setting their nation free.

 

It’s all Winston Peters is trying to say: that Syria cannot be saved by emptying it of Syrians.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 9 September 2015.

Time To Stop "Dribbling" And Start "Clouting"?

Boots On The Ground: The former head of the UK armed forces, General David Richards, suspects in his “bones”, that if the Islamic State is to be defeated, then the armed forces of the West will have to stop "dribbling" and start "clouting". In the General’s words: “tanks would have to roll and there’s going to have to be boots on the ground”.

 

ARE WE AT WAR with the Islamic State – or not? The Prime Minister says “Not”. Our role in the conflict between the Islamic State and its enemies is merely to assist the government of Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Sixteen NZ Defence Force personnel are stationed less than an hour’s drive north of Baghdad at Camp Taji – a former US military base. Their mission: to help train Iraq’s army. A further 100 Kiwi troops have been sent to provide them with protection while they get on with it. That’s all.

 

This is what General David Richards, former head of the UK’s armed forces, and current member of the House of Lords, calls “dribbling” – the sort of one-handed military activity soldiers are required to engage in when their political masters would rather not have them wage war with both hands.

 

Lord Richards has warned UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, that, when it comes to defeating the Islamic State, “dribbling” will not be enough. What’s needed against the highly motivated and exceptionally well-led soldiers of the self-proclaimed Caliphate is “clouting”.

 

“Properly brought together with proper leadership and proper command and control it is a very doable proposition”, Lord Richards told the BBC’s Andrew Marr. “But I worry that […] if we dribble, which is really rather what we are doing at the moment, it is simply firing up the problem rather than dealing with it.”

 

The former head of the UK armed forces told Marr that he suspected, in his “bones”, that if IS to be defeated, then its army will have to “clouted” by his country’s soldiers – on the front lines. In the general’s words: “tanks would have to roll and there’s going to have to be boots on the ground”.

 

But the UK could not possibly do this alone. After 14 years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the UK’s defence force is bruised, battered and in urgent need of repair and replenishment. Lord Richards knows full-well that what he is really calling for is the assembly of another great Western invasion force; comparable in strength to Operation Desert Storm, and guided by similar, strictly limited, objectives.

 

The mission of Operation Desert Storm was to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. The core mission of this new Western force would be the utter destruction of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To render the defeat of IS permanent, however, it would, almost certainly, be necessary to accomplish the complete pacification of Syria and the disarmament of the Iranian-backed Shite militias operating in Iraq.

 

The elimination of the murderous regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and the disarmament of his many enemies, would lift a huge burden from the shoulders of Syria’s neighbours. Millions of refugees, driven across borders by civil war and religious extremism, would be free to return, and the arduous task of reconstructing their ancient homeland could, finally, begin.

 

An effort of such magnitude on the part of the West – especially the USA and the UK – is the only truly effective means of bringing the multiple tragedies of the last quarter-century in the Middle East to an honourable resolution.

 

The barbarity of IS is an affront, not just to the peoples of the Islamic world but to all humanity. And, in their heart of hearts, the USA and the UK both know its poisonous creed could only have been distilled from the seething cauldron of hatred and resentment which their 2003 invasion of Iraq created. “You break it, you own it”, quipped US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, back in 2003. Well, between them, the USA and the UK smashed Iraq into a thousand pieces, and now they must make her whole again.

 

Do the peoples of the West have the stomach for another great military effort in the Middle East. Many would say “No.” But they should fix their eyes on the tens-of-thousands, desperate and despairing, who daily make their way toward Europe’s borders. If the West does not bring peace to the Middle East, then the Middle East will bring chaos to the West. Lord Richards knows the efficacy of forward defence, that is why he is urging his prime minister to stop dribbling and start clouting.

 

Would it be asking too much of our own defence force, and prime minister, to do the same?

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 24 July 2015.

Loving Your Enemies: New Zealand's Catholic Bishops Come Out In Support Of The Iraq Deployment.

Cry Havoc! For the first time in many years a major New Zealand Christian denomination has come out in support of military action. But have the Catholic Bishops interpreted their Church's "Just War Doctrine" correctly? (Graphic: Warmonger by John Carroll.)

“WE CAN NO LONGER watch from the sidelines as the Islamic State continues to inflict immense suffering and brutality.” John Key? Mike Hosking? Fran O’Sullivan? John Roughan? No. These are the words of the Catholic Bishops of New Zealand. Alone among the other major Christian denominations, the Catholic Church has come out in support of the National-led Government’s troop deployment to Iraq.

 

“If by providing training to the Iraqi Army we can assist them to stop the aggressor in their land,” write the Bishops, “then as a matter of promoting the common good we should provide that assistance.”

 

Released on 24 February, in the form of a letter to their congregations, the Bishops’ message argues strongly that the people of Iraq “must not be left to face such unjust aggression on their own.”

 

Pope Francis, himself, write the Bishops, has said that it is “licit to stop an unjust aggressor”.

 

The Catholic Church’s senior cleric in New Zealand, Cardinal John Dew, softened the bishops’ position (if only slightly) by adding that: “Substantial humanitarian support should also be part of New Zealand’s involvement in Iraq.”

 

It has been a long time since any of New Zealand’s major Christian denominations spoke out publicly in favour of a military engagement. Indeed, the reconciliation of Jesus’s injunction to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you”, with support for any kind of warfare requires some very fancy philosophical and theological footwork.

 

Before attempting such a challenging ethical tap-dance the Catholic Bishops would have checked out Paragraph 2,309 of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, which lists four strict conditions for “legitimate defence by military force:”

 

1.      The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain;

2.      All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3.      There must be serious prospects of success;

4.      The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

 

Few would argue that the First and Second Conditions have not been met in full. For the unfortunate souls who find themselves living in Islamic State, the likelihood of suffering “lasting, grave and certain” damage at the hands of its fanatical soldiers and clerics is all-too-real. Moreover, almost all of the numerous attempts to prevent or mitigate that damage, whether by negotiation or exhortation, have failed. If these were the only preconditions for the use of military force, then the Bishops would have their episcopal slippers on some pretty solid ground.

 

Where their position becomes decidedly unsteady, however, is when the Third and Fourth Conditions are applied to the Iraq Deployment.

 

Very few experts foresee the Western intervention against Islamic State having any serious prospects of success. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate could not have been born, nor could it have survived, had the armies of the Christian West not attacked and occupied Iraq, and the Shi’a regime, installed on the points of those armies' bayonets, not unleashed a murderous campaign of terror, murder and theft against the Sunni population.

 

The current Iraqi government, characterised by its American sponsors as more moderate and inclusive than its vicious predecessor, is in fact beholden to precisely the same constellation of religious, military and economic forces. For the Sunni Muslims of Iraq and Syria, the present evils of al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate are, sadly, preferable to the much worse evils that await them should the Shi’a militias prove victorious.

 

International relief and refugee agencies are already preparing for the flight of up to a million Sunni citizens from the city of Mosul should it be in imminent danger of falling to the Shi’a dominated (and soon to be Kiwi trained!) Iraqi army. Few Sunni Iraqis doubt the intensity of the Shi’a desire to be avenged upon the “butchers” of Islamic State. The mutilated bodies of Sunni citizens dumped on Baghdad’s rubbish heaps by Iranian-backed Shi’a militiamen have been every bit as effective, as brutal, flesh-and-blood propaganda, as any of Islamic State’s gruesome videos.

 

The better our Kiwi soldiers train these Shi’a extremists, the graver the evils and disorders they are bound to produce. In attempting to eliminate the evil of Islamic State, the New Zealand Defence Force could very easily become an accessory to the bloody sacking of Iraq’s second-largest city.

 

Are the Catholic Bishops really content to be associated with the slaughter and rape of innocent women and children? The torture and summary execution of thousands of Islamic State fighters? And the burning and looting of a great and ancient city?

 

St Thomas Aquinas wrote that: “Three things are necessary for the salvation of Man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.”

 

With St Thomas’s words ringing in their ears, New Zealand’s Catholic Bishops should think again.

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road of Tuesday, 3 March 2015.

Sharpening The Stick At Both Ends: "Lord Of The Flies" Comes To Parliament

"I've Got The Conch!" Democracy is a brittle construct and easily shattered. The Prime Minister's behaviour in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 plumbed new depths of intemperance and aggression. Like Jack in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, John Key evinces scant regard for the traditions of free speech and honest disagreement.

 

THE PRIME MINISTER’s conduct in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon was disgraceful. It is doubtful if any of John Key’s predecessors have ever displayed such contempt for the dignity of their office. Shouting across the chamber in a manner which has been described, with considerable justification, as unhinged, Mr Key looked and sounded like someone on the verge of unleashing physical violence.

 

The Prime Minister, John Key: Unhinged?

 

“Get some guts! Join the right side!”, the Prime Minister screamed at the Opposition benches – as if it was an argument.

 

What happened then was, if anything, even more unnerving that John Key’s out-of-control demagoguery. As he dropped, exhausted, into his seat, the Prime Minister’s colleagues leapt to their feet, roaring and clapping.

 

Watching them on television, it was difficult not to mentally superimpose upon the screen the 1930s black-and-white footage of thousands of ecstatic Germans hoisted to their feet by the frenzied ravings of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. If those National Party MPs had stretched out their right arms and begun chanting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”, it would not have been any more outlandish than the Prime Minister’s own conduct.

 

It is to be hoped that, having had 24 hours to reflect upon their conduct during yesterday’s debate on the Cabinet’s decision to deploy close to 150 troops to Iraq, Mr Key’s parliamentary colleagues are feeling appropriately shamefaced.  Because, in the course of delivering his response to the other party leaders’ near-unanimous opposition to the Government’s announced troop deployment, Mr Key crossed a vital constitutional line.

 

Parliament’s rules, its “Standing Orders” insist that all members are “Honourable Members” – and must be treated as such. Without this rule, the conduct of the legislature’s business would rapidly descend into rancorous disorder. Rational debate would become impossible – raising the spectre of MPs coming to blows on the Floor of the House. It has happened many times in other jurisdictions, it would be tragic if it happened here.

 

Parliamentary democracy is a brittle thing and very easily broken. All it takes is for those who have agreed to abide by its rules to suddenly renege on their agreement. This democratic vulnerability and fragility is captured brilliantly in William Golding's famous novel, Lord of the Flies.

 

In the story, a group of English school-boys, stranded on a desert island, create a democratic assembly in which all important decisions are debated. Anyone wishing to speak at these gatherings asks for and is given a beautiful conch shell which, while held, guarantees the holder a fair hearing. The boys’ final descent into barbarity occurs when Jack, driven by his lust for power and control, kills the cleverest boy on the island, Piggy, as, conch in hand, he attempts to persuade the boys to keep working together. The murder weapon is a giant boulder which Jack dislodges from above. Piggy is crushed, and the conch shatters into a thousand pieces on the rocks below.

 

Yesterday, in the House of Representatives, John Key became Jack. His intemperate outburst, bristling with insults and barely concealed threats against everyone who'd dared to speak out against his government’s decision to commit New Zealand to another war in the Middle East, was as unprecedented as it was chilling. If not shattered, the delicate conch shell of parliamentary democracy was very roughly handled.

 

Tellingly, instead of reacting to their leader’s extraordinary display with the same stunned expression of horrified disbelief as the Opposition, the faces of the Government members registered only the most delirious approbation.

 

In Lord of the Flies, Jack’s followers whisper darkly that their leader has “sharpened a stick at both ends”. It is a metaphor well suited to this Government’s announced intention to not only deploy troops to the Middle East, but to pass legislation further strengthening the powers of the security and intelligence services. The same Parliament which the Executive refused to entrust with a vote on the Iraq Deployment, will soon be asked to invest that same Executive with even more powers to keep the New Zealand people under surveillance.

 

After catching a glimpse of the Jack that lurks beneath the mask of genial John, the House of Representatives would be most unwise to oblige the Prime Minister in this regard. Or, at least, not before he gives proof that he accepts and understands that the Labour, Green and NZ First parties (and, in the case of the Iraq Deployment, the Maori and United Future parties as well) constitute Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

 

That these parties have rejected the Government’s decision to re-join the Middle East conflict is both their right and their duty. In saying “No.” they are representing the very substantial number of New Zealanders who do not want their soldiers in Iraq. These people are not gutless. Nor are they on the wrong side of the argument merely because the Prime Minister believes himself and his government to be on the right side.

 

The aggression and intolerance which the Prime Minister displayed in the House yesterday afternoon should fill all New Zealanders with a deep sense of foreboding. If the Iraq Deployment gives rise to deadly reprisals by Islamic State, it is by no means clear that this government’s response will be either rational or restrained. Those who hold the conch of free speech in their hands will need to keep their eyes open and their backs against the wall.

 

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road of Wednesday, 25 February 2015.

Iraq: The Unasked And Unanswered Questions.

Invasion Force: Western troops return from an exercise in the Saudi Arabian desert in the run-up to Operation Desert Storm (1990-91). St Thomas Aquinas enjoined his fellow Christians to avoid all wars in which the cost of their participation was, by any rational calculation, likely to be higher, in human terms, than their abstention. Is the Middle East a better or worse place after 25 years of Western intervention?

 

BY THE TIME you read these words, the dispatch of New Zealand troops to Iraq will, almost certainly, have been announced. For the fourth time in less than quarter-of-a-century, Kiwi boots will be kicking up sand in the Middle East. Unasked, presumably, by those seated around the Cabinet Table yesterday morning, were the questions:

 

“Has the Middle East become a better, or a worse, place since the West’s first, massive, post-war incursion, back in 1991?”

 

And: “Will it be a better, or worse, place for the Western “Club’s” intervention in 2015?”

 

It is worth reminding ourselves that Osama Bin Laden’s decision to shift Al Qaida’s focus to the “far-away enemy” was triggered by the arrival of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the Arabian Peninsula – home of the holy Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. Imagine how Catholic Christians would react to the sight of several Arab divisions setting up camp in the Vatican City, and you’ll have some inkling of how profoundly affected Bin Laden and his followers were by the Americans’ arrival.

 

The past has much less purchase on the sensibilities of the average Westerner than it does on the hearts and minds of those belonging to the Islamic faith. Even today, both Al Qaida and Islamic State denounce the military contingents of the West as “Crusaders” – referencing the Frankish knights who invaded the Muslim world early in the Twelfth Century. Nor is this mere rhetoric on their part. Through all the intervening centuries, street-singers from Beirut to Baghdad have kept alive the horrors perpetrated by the Christian invaders, and recounted proudly how Islam’s great captain, Saladin, recaptured the holy city of Jerusalem. The Crusades are as real to the people of the Middle East as the much more recent tragedy of Gallipoli is to us.

 

Every grain of sand kicked-up by Kiwi soldiers’ boots in Iraq will be weighted down with centuries of history. It is, moreover, a living past, inextricably intertwined with the present, and its effects can be deadly. The terrible punishments meted out to those who have fallen into the clutches of Islamic State are not the random choices of sadistic criminals, but the fate prescribed by Islam’s 1,383-year-old holy book, the Quran:

 

“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter”.

 

This is the world into which our government has decided to send one hundred or more young New Zealanders. Our soldiers will now be numbered among “those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger”. From the moment New Zealand’s participation in the war against Islamic State is announced, the fate of any Kiwi soldier, or citizen, falling into the hands of Islamic State, is sealed.

 

New Zealand is very far from Iraq and Syria; so far that it is possible the self-proclaimed Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has forgotten we exist. The news that 100 New Zealand troops are on their way to join the ranks of the “Crusaders” will, therefore, come as a forceful reminder of our role in Middle Eastern history. It is to be hoped that Prime Minister Key has not forgotten how far the influence of al-Baghdadi’s regime now reaches. If he needs instruction, he has only to ask the citizens of Copenhagen, Paris, Sydney and Ottawa. The “Caliphate’s” arm has grown very long indeed.

 

If our Government has deliberately invited the religious fervour of the Middle East into these peaceful and hitherto tolerant islands, then we, ourselves, will have to answer the questions they refused to consider: “Has intervention worked in the past?”, “Will it work now?” And, “Is it justified?”

 

The first two answers are, obviously, “No.” But what about the third? What possible justification can we offer for dispatching troops to a country where millions of the people they’ve been sent to help will curse them as enemies of God?

 

Is it possible that we, like the gullible inhabitants of Medieval Europe, have allowed ourselves to be goaded into action by sermons filled with the details of hideous atrocities? Are our soldiers about to depart these shores with the red cross of the crusader knights emblazoned – if only metaphorically – on their uniforms? If so, then we are embarked upon a fool’s errand that can only end in horror and despair.

 

St Thomas Aquinas enjoined his fellow Christians to avoid all wars in which the cost of their participation was, by any rational calculation, likely to be higher, in human terms, than their abstention.

 

Our presence in Iraq cannot be justified. It will end badly.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 24 February 2015.

Debating America's Wars

The Price Of Principle: Labour's new leader, Norman Kirk, follows his party's defeat on Election Night 1966. Labour's opposition to New Zealand's military involvement in the Vietnam War was an important factor in the National Government's re-election. Polls taken in 1965 indicated that upwards of 70 percent of voters favoured Keith Holyoake's decision to send New Zealand troops. By 1972, however, public opinion had shifted decisively in favour of withdrawal.

A PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE on whether or not New Zealand should participate in America’s latest war is long overdue. That New Zealanders will soon be going to the polls makes it even timelier. The deployment of New Zealand troops overseas is much too important to be left to National Party Cabinet Ministers alone.

 

The Leader of the Opposition, who will argue against participating in America’s war, has not been leader of the Labour Party for very long. Nor is he especially popular. The man he replaced as leader may not have been well-liked by the public, but he was beloved by the more forward-looking and liberal elements of his party. They resent the way in which the newcomer’s been foisted upon them with the near unanimous support of Labour’s powerful trade union affiliates. Many fear that, as the unions protégée, he will drag Labour back to the attitudes of the 1930s and 40s. They worry that the much-needed “modernisation” of the party, which his predecessor promoted, is destined for the dustbin.

 

If you’re thinking that the Leader of the Opposition described above is Andrew Little, then you’re wrong. Nor is the American war referred to the one threatening to flare up again in the Middle East. The set-piece parliamentary debate described above took place not in 2015, but during the penultimate week of the 34^th New Zealand Parliament, in October of 1966. The war in question was raging across South Vietnam. The new Leader of the Labour Party was Norman Kirk.

 

Rather than go on escalating New Zealand’s military involvement in Indo-China, Kirk argued strongly for a humanitarian, aid-based response to the conflict. He remained unconvinced that a just peace in Vietnam could ever be secured simply by administering ever-increasing doses of military force.

 

Little’s current assessment of the most effective contribution New Zealand can offer to the struggle against Islamic State is remarkably similar to Kirk’s 1966 position on Vietnam. He, too, favours a humanitarian, aid-based response; arguing that only an economically strong, socially cohesive and religiously tolerant Iraq can hope to lure away Islamic State’s aggrieved Sunni supporters.

 

The parallels do not end there. If Andrew Little’s foreign policy and defence assessments mirror those of Norman Kirk’s, then the Prime Minister’s, John Key’s, position is remarkably similar to that of Keith Holyoake’s.

 

As New Zealand’s National Party Prime Minister from 1960-1972, Holyoake distinguished himself as an astute “consensus” politician. Pressured by President Lyndon Johnson to add New Zealand footwear to the steadily increasing number of US “boots on the ground” in Vietnam, Holyoake did his best to limit this country’s involvement. He rightly suspected that even his minimal offer of a single artillery battery would generate vociferous opposition from a sizeable minority of the electorate.

 

Token Force: New Zealand troops load an L5 howitzer on to an armoured personnel carrier in Vietnam circa 1965.

 

That the trade unions would oppose military involvement was a given, but Holyoake and his colleagues were genuinely surprised and dismayed when Labour opted to follow the unions’ lead. Up until the 1965 decision to send troops to Vietnam, National and Labour had maintained a solid bi-partisan consensus on foreign-policy and defence matters. Holyoake’s decision to hold a set-piece parliamentary debate on the issue, just a few weeks prior to the 1966 General Election, was not made in the hope that consensus would be restored, but that it would remain broken. He was betting that Labour, by holding fast to its principles, would cause the 70 percent of Kiwis who backed the Vietnam intervention, to also back his government. He won the bet.

 

With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is clear that Holyoake and National lost more than they won. The shattering of the bi-partisan consensus on foreign policy and defence presaged the even greater fissuring of New Zealand society. It was Labour, not National, which rode the radical changes of the late-1960s and early-70s to victory.

 

Nowhere was this radicalism more apparent than in Labour’s changing view of New Zealand’s place in the world: “Circumstances dictate that, while we preserve the warmest ties and closest sentimental attachments between our country and the United Kingdom,” said Kirk, in 1972, “we recognise that we have come of age and must now stand on our own feet to reject the role of the dependant and at every opportunity seize the initiative.”

 

“Big Norm’s” declaration of independence is reaffirmed in Andrew Little’s principled position on Iraq.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 February 2015.

Responsibility To Protect: But Who? And From What?

Cry, Havoc!, And Let Slip The Dogs Of War: If Islamic State has citizens, it is the West that made them.
 

DOES THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY’S “Responsibility To Protect” apply to Islamic State? (IS) Has the violence unleashed by IS against civilians living in Syria and Iraq reached a level of intensity comparable to the genocidal slaughter unleashed against Rwanda’s Tutsi population in 1994? If the present level of military intervention is not maintained, or stepped-up, are hundreds-of-thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent non-combatants in imminent danger of losing their lives?
 

The answer to this question is, clearly, “No.” The IS regime, while indisputably brutal in its treatment of non-Islamic religious minorities, prisoners of war, civilian aid workers, journalists, and persons found guilty of committing homosexual acts, has not (to date) engaged in the indiscriminate mass slaughter of entire populations.
 

The international community’s responsibility to the victims of IS violence is, therefore, to make every attempt to bring those responsible for what are clearly war crimes and crimes against humanity before an appropriately constituted international criminal tribunal (ICT). This would be modelled on of the bodies set up to deal with the massive human-rights breaches in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
 

The prospect of being arraigned before such a tribunal may or may not be acting as a deterrent to the IS leadership, but it is, demonstrably, influencing the personal political calculus of those IS operatives responsible for carrying out its many atrocities. The very fact that these individuals wear masks indicates that they know they are committing heinous crimes and are anxious to escape legal retribution.
 

The contrast between these masked perpetrators and the unmasked American military personnel who allowed themselves to be photographed tormenting Iraqi detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison is instructive. Had the latter known that their actions would one day be made public, most of them would never have participated, or, becoming involved, would’ve made absolutely certain they could not be identified.
 

Like the long-since destroyed videos of CIA waterboarding sessions, the images of Abu Ghraib were never intended to see the light of day. IS propaganda videos, on the other hand, are intended to both terrify the infidels and inspire the faithful. They are, therefore, made with guilty intent, and their creators are well aware of what will happen to them if they are identified and arrested by the agents of international justice.
 

It is as well to remember, however, that IS is by no means the first belligerent power to release video images demonstrating the strength of their will and the power of their weapons. The First Gulf War (1990-1991) is often referred to as “The Nintendo War” on account of the computer-game-like images of United States precision-guided munitions striking their targets.
 

Of course the US armed forces’ public relations team did not allow the audience back home to witness what was happening to the human-beings sheltering inside the buildings that were exploding in such dramatic fashion on their television screens. The carnage wrought upon human flesh by high explosives puts the gruesome efforts of IS executioners to shame.
 

Nor was it the practice of either the American or the international news media to give the military commanders who authorised these precision-guided missile attacks colourful monikers like “Jihadi John”. Soldiers following the lawful orders of their superior officers are generally not regarded as criminals – not even when those orders are publicly acknowledged to have been deliberately formulated to generate “shock and awe” in the civilian population.
 

Those who find themselves outraged and repulsed by IS propaganda videos showing prisoners being beheaded or burned alive should, perhaps, ask themselves if they experienced similar emotions back in March 2003 when the US media was gleefully beaming-out images of Baghdad aflame. The American message back then was as unequivocal as the IS message  is now: “This is what becomes of evil-doers.”
 

The crucial difference being that, in the case of the Americans, the message wasn’t personalised. Innocent people’s bodies were certainly ripped apart and/or burned beyond recognition in the manufacture of America’s message to the peoples of the Middle East, but we only got to see such “collateral damage” occasionally – as when a Cruise missile somehow went astray and incinerated scores of women and children taking refuge in a concrete shelter.
 

Repeat such exercises often enough and it is hardly surprising if the effect upon those in receipt of such explosive communications is brutalisation beyond the reach of pity or remorse.
 

Closer to home, those advocating for the deployment of 100 Kiwi soldiers to Iraq are arguing that the international community has a responsibility to protect the unfortunate inhabitants of Islamic State. But, didn’t that same international community have a responsibility to protect the people of Iraq when the world’s most powerful military machine was rumbling towards its borders in 2003? And wasn’t it that same terrible machine, raining down white phosphorous on the city of Fallujah, that nurtured, with every bomb dropped and bullet fired, the fell creatures who now hold sway across broad swathes of Iraq and Syria?
 

If Islamic State has citizens, it is the West that made them.
 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 16 February 2015.