Turning The Tide

At least when George W. Bush, as president of the United States of America and Commander in Chief, boasted that by strength of purpose, let alone superior might and technical purchase, his administration was fully invested in gifting the Middle East and any other recalcitrant tyrannies with democracy, he was being honest.  He lacked the guile that appears to exemplify more contemporary U.S. administration policy. 

That it sets the example simply by being itself, and its social justice will naturally flow to those nations who respond to President Barack Obama's generous outreach.

Some of those tyrannies have imploded, and that they have done so owes nothing whatever to the waning influence of the United States, despite its generosity to countries that revile it. Its people have reached for an elusive freedom.  In its stead, so far, they have exchanged an orderly dictatorship for a threatening Islamist tyranny.

 Egypt is no longer committed to aligning itself with an American agenda, but it still can count on American generosity to the tune of billions annually.  Iraq, the country that caused great rejoicing when it was overrun and its tyrant overthrown is now in the throes of becoming a far more dangerous society as sectarian radicals take charge.  Libya and Syria are following a like trajectory, as Tunisia has done, and as North African countries like Mali and Somalia have demonstrated.

Since they know, just as does Afghanistan and Pakistan and any other country in receipt of U.S. largesse that despite their benefactor's expectations they as recipients do not actually have to earn that financial support that aids their corrupt administrations, they defy those expectations with impunity and have the grand impudence to keep their hands outstretched.  And the United States and European benefactors, respond with anticipated fear and guilt.

Seems to work, though.  The more the United States' administration of Barack Obama genuflects before the cranky rage of of the Arab street, aided and abetted by skillful propaganda prods mounted by government agencies and the Islamist scholars at well-positioned institutes of higher learning, and the radical-engaged clerics issuing their quite transparent recommendations for retaliation against any presumed slights, the greater the certainty that contempt solidifies and violent reactions increase.

Gentle aspirations to appeal to the better natures of those who have lived their lives in hateful scrutiny of other cultures that invariably appear flabbily decadent in comparison to their own verities in surrender to Islam hasn't resulted in any discernible measure of agreement between diametrically opposed values.  Those who do assent to listen and find comfort in the value of equality and trust become instant heretics, scorned and threatened by their own.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their retinue bow and scrape, mea culpas issuing right and left their pained regrets at the poor behaviour of those whom the First Amendment protects - whose effect is to validate in the minds of those whose religious-political passions have been aroused that there is much to apologize for, and yet no apologies can ever suffice to expunge the rage of the Muslim mob, responding to the incessant hatred they believe the West directs toward them.

What happens when the one most significant issue in birth-to-grave mind-controlled peoples' lives that they value above all else is held in ridicule and contempt by outsiders?  The scorn and diminution of all that is meaningful to them, utter rejection deserving of a response commensurate to the psychic pain.  Islam and its sacred tenets may not be assaulted by the unclean, the impious, the kuffar.  Islam describes life itself for pious Muslims.

And those who will not worship Islam, holding it and its faithful in the highest esteem represent an idle society whose priorities and values have long defaulted from the sacred.  The excited passions of a fanatically devout mob are not the sole issues.  They are augmented by the clear antipathies emanating from the nature of human nature, to hold in suspicion, dread and anger other human groups entirely dissimilar to their own.

Human intelligence should logically accurately inform the West inconclusively that the social-religious-political gulf that separates East and West - historically recognized but never fully accepted as a human-social reality - is best met with firm and determined protocols.  If indifference to a mass pathology of enraged reaction does not work to defuse the mob, then demonstrations of clearly committed defence should.

That would be a defence equal to the offence being offered.  The current attitude of see no evil, hear no evil hasn't worked.  For in not 'seeing' the clear evidence of malevolent will directed toward the West, the West has not been adequately prepared to shield itself.  Appeasement did not halt the trajectory that led to 9/11, and it has never been a serviceable project to stem the tide of barbaric, violent rage.

If disengagement, leaving the ranting-ravers and violent jihadists to their own devices, attempting to scale the walls of self-defence doesn't work, then full-on scale assaults matching those of the assailants should turn the tide.  It takes courage and it takes resolve, and it takes full commitment to delivering an undeniable message that violent chaos will be met with firm order.

Nations that cannot be contained should be barricaded from further harm to others.  It can be done through complete social, commercial, trade, political isolation.  Until such time as countries like Myanmar and North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and others of their ilk fully understand that it is to their complete advantage to enter the world of civil order and abandon their preoccupation with international disorder.