The Playing Field: The Game

"How the U.S. can play this role will be absolutely crucial. It has to act as a keen leader for its friends and allies, but also act as a referee between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran, particularly when it comes to the issues of Iraq and the issue of Syria."
Salmon Shaikh, director, Brookings Doha Center in Qatar

The Islamic State organisation (IS), a jihadist group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq, is infamous for releasing gory images of the atrocities its fighters commit. But now, a newly-formed Shiite militia fighting IS in Iraq has committed a similar act by recording a video where its combatants pose with severed heads.
Unsaid by Mr. Shaikh, however, is the position of Qatar in the squalid quagmire of the Middle East. Qatar, which has pledged itself to aiding the terrorist group Hamas, just as it supports the goals of Hamas's parent group, The Muslim Brotherhood. And not to mention that oil wealth has constantly leaked out of the pockets of wealthy Sunni supporters of al-Qaeda and its current most-effectively successful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham posing as the Islamic State, to their collective delight.

Even while American President Barack Obama carefully and studiously declares his curious position that Islam is itself not the fount of Islamist jihad and violence, he ignores the fact that polls elicit the data informing that a majority of Muslims living in Western countries support Islamist terror if it advances the cause of Islam. And nor does he indulge in any introspection that might remind him how the Muslim masses in the Middle East found it a matter of great celebration when 9/11 took place.

Although he might take comfort in the conspiracy theories that have had great impact there, where Muslims themselves don't subscribe to the reality of the 9/11 attacks having been carried out by al-Qaeda operatives. Some believing that Islam doesn't condone such terroristic violence, many more believing that the technical expertise and precise plans undertaken to make such a victory possible is simply beyond the capacity of Muslim jihadis, attributing the cause instead to an agreement worked out between Washington and Zionist Israel.

But now, President Obama has re-discovered resolute determination to take action on the part of America, resuming its rightful dominance as the sole world power with the influence, strength and financial wherewithal to launch a ... yes, another 'coalition of the willing ... response to the nihilistic Islamist-ferocious tradition of jihad launched against non-Muslims who refuse surrender to the One True Faith.

And to that end, the announcement that the world has been waiting with collective bated breath, baited by the latest atrocities committed by the Islamic State -- not, admittedly, the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and Syrians, but those of two American journalists who were butchered, their heads laboriously and agonizingly sawed off with a knife to exact maximum pain and outrage by viewers of the deliberately U.S.-provocation video -- that the U.S. military is back in business.

Kind of. Where airstrikes are concerned. Including over Syria, and excluding Syria. But with the active engagement of America's friends and allies. Including those Islamic states that themselves practise capital punishment for malefactors by beheading, but with some humanity, by sharpened scimitar as befits humane administrations. Where, incidentally, it is heresy to leave Islam, a crime whose punishment is ... beheading.

One must not question the honour and resolute courage of Arab Muslim nations. They have withheld from responding to the threat against them by ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State only because they are peace-loving countries. But if America leads the way ... then they will allow their airspace to be used for the U.S. to mount attacks against Islamic State militias. So in a united stand against terrorism, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon made their pledge.

Turkey, a member of NATO, an ally of the United States, and one incidentally of Iran and Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas as well, will not take part. It did attend the meeting of the just and courageous, but although Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister stated, they agreed to "destroy" IS "wherever it is", including in both Iraq and Syria, Turkey was unmoved. And to "be serious and continuous in our action to eliminate and wipe out all these terrorist organizations."

Replace the qualifier "all these terrorist organizations", with "the Zionist entity" and Turkey would have agreed to join with alacrity. And the Arab League would find itself willing to boot up their military. Meanwhile, the U.S. is not the least bit pleased with its ally Turkey having given haven and material support to the Islamic State militias with its open borders and its engaging understanding of their position viz-a-viz the need to support fundamentalist Islamism. Nor its helpfulness to the Islamic State in distributing and selling of its oil products.

It comes with the territory, when the territory is that of diabolically complex and barbaric Middle East politics.