Safeguarding the Western Public

"When I go home to West Virginia, my people say, 'What do you expect to be done that will be different from what we have done in that region of the world for thirteen years?"
"If money or military might hasn't changed it what makes you think you can change it now?"
"[America spent $20-billion to build up a 250,000-man army in Iraq] and the first time they were tested they turned tail and ran, turned over the arsenal that we equipped them with and now it is being used against us."
"The only thing that I know we're sure of is that the training [of 'moderate' rebels in Syria] and those weapons will probably be used against us in the future given everything that's happened in the past."
"How can I go home to West Virginia and make sense out of this at all?"
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat

Fighters from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant pictured marching in Syria [AP]

"Define the enemy for me."
Ted Poe, Texas Republican

"I call them the Enemy of Islam because that's what they are."
Secretary of State John Kerry

"Are they the enemy of the United States?"
Ted Poe

"They are the enemy of humanity. [The war will last] however long it takes [to defeat them]."
John Kerry

U.S. President Barack Obama said that support from both Republicans and Democrats "shows the world that Americans are united" in combating the Islamic State group. Evan Vucci/Associated Press

"The regrettable reality is that to mount the kind of attacks which ISIL in Syria and in Iraq has in mind for Australia, all you need is a determined individual who will kill without compunction, a knife, an iPhone and a victim."
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott

The reliably trenchant Islamist jihadists most certainly do represent themselves as the 'enemy of humanity', and they do so as as passionately engaged Islamist psychopaths. They do so, responding to the dictates of the Koran that it is fundamentally incumbent upon Muslims to surrender to the faith by embarking on a number of imperatives; one is the hajj, in memory of the hegira undertaken by the Prophet Mohammad, the second is jihad, and the two are inextricably intertwined.

Present-day jihadis are merely replicating in modern history what the Prophet Mohammad embarked upon in ancient history, by the sword persuading reluctant tribes to surrender - to Islam, the religion he constructed through an intimate conversation with Allah. To claim, as Barack Obama and his secretary of state are so delicately fond of doing -- lest they insult the Muslim ummah, much less the American Muslim demographic that Islam as a religion of peace has spawned violent jihad -- that terrorist jihadis do not express Islamic tenets, is to be deliberately obtuse.

American lawmakers in a majority-approving vote (78-22 Senate, 319-108 House) gave the president the power to train and equip what is described as 'moderate' Syrian rebels whom the administration appears to hope to be able to persuade to turn their conflict from that of attempting to destroy the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, to that of a response to what they hold to be a far more dangerous regime threatening Syria and Iraq and the entire Middle East.

The recruitment, according to General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US. Joint Chiefs of Staff, should take about five months, the training an additional eight months. What further atrocities might the Islamic State wreak in that period of time, given their lightning-swift and successful march on Mosul? On the other hand, it is indeed Muslims who should meet Muslims in the battle for control of Muslim territory, allegiance and power.

The minute that Western military engages directly in ground conflict as opposed to helping to train national troops, is the minute that the entire Muslim community choruses the brutalities imposed upon Muslims by the West. The response, rather to face the intractable brutality of organized psychopathy threatening "humanity" and its most dearly held values of the sanctity of human life, is that of encouraging, aiding, training, arming and standing back.

Those who oppose the deadly carnage of fanatical Islam must be as determined to bring them to heel as the Islamists are to revel in Islamist-approved slaughter.

Once again France has dispatched its fighter jets as it did on its own in Mali, to destroy Islamic State logistics depots. France has stated it will restrict its air forays to Iraq and not venture into Syria. Leaving Syrian air strikes to the United States which has vowed it will launch them there, bypassing the authority of the Syrian president who had felt confident that he would finally gain recognition of legitimacy in his own war against Syrian Sunni citizens and rebels alike.

And managing to courageously withstand the verbal assault of Moscow insisting that the territorial integrity of Syria must be respected, for to do otherwise would represent a violent assault on all the international norms of legitimate state behaviour. That accusation should have been the clue for a bit of riotous hilarity on the part of the Western alliance.

Taking the experience of Australia as a template for the near future, where armed police have been authorized to take over security at Parliament House in Canberra in reflection of Australian Islamic State terrorists having instructed supporters in Australia to attack the building and members of the government, the United States will certainly exercise a need to react similarly.

And through that process perhaps create a more suitable arms-length relationship with their favoured Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.