Every leader of Al Qaeda was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but since the Muslim Brotherhood, like the New Left, is willing to non-violently take us over through front groups and immigration, rather than flying planes into buildings, they’re our idea of the good guys, even if they have the same objectives as Al Qaeda, just a different way of getting there. But then again you could probably say the same thing about the people who were running the USSR in 1932 and the people who are running the United States and the European Union in 2012.
The Muslim Brotherhood isn’t satisfied with Egypt. Al Qaeda isn’t satisfied with Mali. Iran isn’t satisfied with the hypocrisy of agitating for the rights of the Shiite majority in Iraq and Bahrain and the rights of the Shiite majority in Syria.
Obama isn’t satisfied with wrecking just Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. Russia isn’t satisfied with financing 50 years of war in the region even though it’s on the verge of bankruptcy. Prime Minister Cameron of the UK and President Hollande of France aren’t satisfied with being on the verge of bankruptcy and only wrecking Libya. And like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, they’re all on the road to Damascus. Or the road to hell.
And so on we go, all together, rebels and diplomats, throat-slashers and powdered-hair personalities, embedded into a conflict, racing to Damascus, eager to raise the flag, report on the historic moment, negotiate deals and deliver speeches. Obama probably already has his written and it will probably be the same exact speech he delivered when Mubarak fell and Gaddafi got sodomized to death after his convoy came under fire from an American drone. There will be lots of moving sentiments about hope and change, peace and freedom, the choice of the people and the transition to democracy.
This road picture has the usual participants. The Western diplomats who fell in love with the region, its culture and its people. The Western politicians still dreaming that the region is just one more revolution away from peace and stability. There’s the fourth son of some upper middle class family who grew his scraggly beard long and now dreams of dying as a martyr for the Caliphate surrounded by white doves and even whiter virgins.
There’s the Qatari weapons trainer teaching 13-year-olds how to plant IEDs and the Russian colonel, underpaid and hating the locals more than ever, trying to get the ragtag locals to fight. There’s the embedded citizen journalist with fourteen differently colored keffiyahs in his luggage blogging his experiences on Tumblr and the gang of local thugs who alternate between taking potshots at Syrian army positions on behalf of the Free Syrian Army and its Qatari and Turkish paymasters and kidnapping some of the wealthier residents for ransom, which pays even better.
There are Sunni and Shiite militia members from neighboring Lebanon and Syria. There are Pakistanis fresh from Waziristan and Libyans looking for a good brawl. There are Scud missiles and chemical weapons and broken buildings, torn corpses and roads full of refugees fleeing for their lives. There are tanks and jets and fleets. There are armies and militias, truckloads of weapons and bodies, fire behind them and death ahead of them. And they’re all hurrying, running and racing to Damascus.
And then the real killing will begin.
Originally published at Sultan Knish.