This story strikes us as painfully funny.

With the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) advancing rapidly through Iraq and posting images of their brutal mass executions, plans have begun to evacuate America’s embassy in Baghdad. In Washington, however, Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a conference on the world’s real “vital security issue”: climate change.

We quote from Breitbart:

Kerry, who has remarked intermittently in interviews on the current crisis in Iraq, spent the morning hosting the State Department’s “Our Ocean” conference– a summit of 80 countries and academic experts designed to engage global leaders in a discussion on how to save the world’s oceans from the effects of climate change. There, Secretary Kerry announced that the world had a “shared responsibility” to keep the seas clean, and encouraged global leaders to see climate change and the protection of the seas as a national security issue, not an environmental one. …

[He] opened the conference with warnings that climate change poses an immediate threat to the world, one that requires addressing before he works to remedy the situation in Iraq.

Currently, ISIS jihadists are believed to be within 300 miles of Baghdad, and American military have been sent to protest the embassy in the capital. Partial evacuations have begun, and Kerry has said in an interview previously that the United States will not discount the possibility of working with Iran on the issue. …

It’s not enough for Obama and Kerry to lift sanctions on Iran and allow that rogue regime to continue acquiring a nuclear arsenal; they are considering strengthening it still further by making it an American ally.

So when Iran fires its nuclear bombs at Israel, would Obama’s America still be partnering it? We confidently reply to our own question: quite possibly!

Iran has already … sent in 2,000 troops to reinforce the Iraqi military, which, while grossly outnumbering ISIS fighters, have been unable to quell their invasion of towns and imposition of Sharia law.

And the US has sent in the clown, John Kerry.

Deutsche Welle reports:

Washington’s top diplomat, John Kerry, flew in to Baghdad on Monday for a face-to-face meetingwith Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki.  …

[Kerry] told journalists afterward that Iraq’s leaders faced a “moment of decision”.

“Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq’s leaders have to meet that threat,” Kerry said …

That must have come as a surprise to Iraq’s leaders. If Kerry had not drawn their attention to it, would they have even noticed the threat, let alone prepared to meet it?

While Kerry was in Baghdad, the ISIS militants and those aligned to them tightened their grip on the north and west of Iraq.

Neighboring Jordan has boosted security along its frontier after Sunni tribes took the Turaibil desert border crossing between the two countries from Iraqi government forces.

The tribal leaders were reportedly in negotiations to hand the crossing over to ISIS, which already controls several main crossings with Syria. With ethnic Kurdish forces in control of a third border area with Syria to the north, it leaves an 800-kilometer (500 miles) stretch of Iraq’s western frontier outside the control of government troops.

Chances are, the Iraqi government was aware of all that.

But maybe Kerry meant that Iraq’s leaders “have to meet the threat” of “climate change”?

Breitbart concludes its report with this information:

While the situation continued to worsen over the weekend, President Obama too delivered a speech on climate change at the University of California, promoting an extreme weather fund to help states allegedly hurt by the advancement of climate change. After the speech, President Obama traveled to Palm Springs for Father’s Day, where he spent the day playing golf.

Obama can claim an historical precedent. Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Yes. It would be greatly good if the savage fight now underway between two Muslim armies in Iraq, Sunni and Shia, could end in the destruction of both.

We quote from an article at American Thinker, by Mike Konrad, who argues the desirability of leaving the two sides to fight it out:

I know, I know, the recent ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) gains have everyone scared. No doubt, the Islamophilic administration will want to step in, and save Islam from itself once again.  Let me advocate a course of action that will make sense to all sides in America; the left and right; from militarists to pacifists: Let the Muslims kill each other. …

ISIS is presently a large group of thugs with guns. They have no navy, no air force, except for a few captured helicopters, which they will soon break.  The only ones they can threaten are their fellow Muslims. If they take over Iraq, who cares? They will soon reduce the Levant to the seventh century.

And this is a problem to us? OK, oil prices may spike for a while, but they are going to need to sell their oil because they’ve got nothing else to produce for export and can’t produce any of the fruits of modern industry. Meanwhile, the high prices will encourage domestic drilling and production of our nearly boundless reserves held in shale deposits, to the point where we will become a major oil exporter ourselves.

These mujahadeen are incapable of maintaining the weapons they already have. Weapons need upkeep. Weapons have to be oiled, cleaned, and upgraded.  Upkeep interferes with raping, pillaging, and chopping off heads. Within two years, they will be slaughtering each other with scimitars and rusty AK-47s.

Iraq’s president, Maliki has asked for US assistance. Oh really?

Iraq insisted on setting up its country with an Islamic constitution; against our advice, and now he wants American help. For what? So Iraq’s Shia can continue to run arms to Syria and Hezb’allah in Lebanon?

We’d rather President Maliki wasn’t helped at all, but we like the idea of putting these conditions on any help he gets from the US:

If our State Department had men and women with intelligence instead of a love of the Qur’an, they would tell Maliki that our help would be predicated on four conditions:

1) Get rid of the Islamic constitution, and set up a secular state

2) Recognize Israel

3) Naturalize the Palestinians in your state

4) Break off ties with Iran

If Maliki says no, we say “Fine, have your Islamic state. We are not going to decide which flavor.”

Whether Maliki agrees or not, he loses:

He has no choice. No matter what he decides, the West wins. Should ISIS take over, Iran will be cut off from land routes to Syria’s Assad, and Lebanon’s Hezb’allah. How does this hurt the West?

Sure! Iraq may go down. The Sunni officers in the Iraqi army will not fight for a Shia majority Iraqi state. In fact, many Sunni officers are already joining ISIS. The Shia, who are mere foot soldiers, are not prepared to fight the better trained Sunni. So what?

When thieves fall out, honest men prosper. When Muslims fall out, civilization prospers. …

Now, Iran is scared. …

Iran sent two battalions of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to help the Iraqi government in its battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is hugely important, if not totally surprising given Iran’s intervention in Syria. Iran has the power to crush ISIS in open combat. But Iranian intervention could also make the conflict inside Iraq much worse …

Iran is hurting. Iran may have to decide between arming Hezb’allah or the Shia in Iraq. And this hurts the West how?

Other sources are reporting that Iran has called for international assistance to crush ISIS. Iran needs our help!  The nation which has thumbed its nose at the West for 35 years, now wants our help?

Iran officials call for international response to ISIS violence …

Let them ask for Russian help, or Chinese assistance. I am sure the Russians and Chinese will be more than happy to make their nations targets for Islamic revenge. Nothing makes Muslim group A angrier than knowing that you have helped Muslim group B. And if the Russians or Chinese do intervene, good for them. Maybe international terrorism will re-direct their wrath eastward. Tell them it will be like the Chechnyans on steroids.

If Iran is really desperate to save its supply lines across Shia Iraq to save Assad, we could strike a deal.

You want our help. We want the Israelis to inspect your nuclear power plants; or you can go fight your fellow Muslims yourselves. Tell them, “Remember the first Iraq-Iran war.” Make the offer public. No help until the first Israeli technician comes out of the Isfahan plant and says, “All clean.”

Tell them up front they have to stop aiding Hezb’allah. Tell them that we are enjoying this.

At the same time, we should encourage all Euro-Muslim males to join the fight, and when they are gone, revoke their right of return to the West. Tell them, Allah Wants You; and send them off with halal meat and enough weapons to keep the Mideast in turmoil for another hundred years.

Why is this a problem? Even if ISIS wins the Caliphate, it will revert to seventh century technology soon enough.

Jordan is scared, now. She might be overrun. Supposedly, she is a Western-oriented state, which has the rudimentary forms of a democracy. Of course, honor killing and wife beating are still not prohibited; and Jordan refuses to take in more Palestinians.

If they want our help:

1) Saudis and Jordanians have to start naturalizing Palestinians

2) Set up truly secular states

3) protect their women

Be upfront about it. Of course, they won’t agree. So let them shoot it out. When the Mideast is a flaming wreck, the administration should encourage Putin or China to intervene.  Nothing sinks empires faster than trying to tame the Muslims. We will get out, and avoid our own collapse.

If our administration intervenes in any way, it would be foolish. Over the past two years our administration has made blunder after blunder in the Mideast, regarding Libya, Morsi, Sisi, Arab Spring, etc.

This time it is so easy.

All the administration has to do is …  NOTHING!

It is that simple. … If it does intervene, it will be clearly seen as an attempt to prop up Islam, once again.

Let the Shia and Sunni kill each other.  In the words of the late Mayor Ed Koch, “root for whoever is losing.”

We like Mike Konrad’s suggestions. (And we understand that he is not being wholly serious.) But more needs to be considered.

There is the strong possibility, astonishing though it may seem at first, that fanatically Shia Iran has been giving aid to the Sunni insurrectionists – as well as the Shia government – in Iraq. Why ? In order to bring about upheaval and chaos, so the mullahs will be called upon to restore order.

Another surprise: it is the Obama administration itself which has made this information public – that Iran has assisted the Sunni insurrectionists.

Paul Mirengoff writes at PowerLine:

A mere six weeks ago, the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism concluded that Iran is actively working to undermine Iraqi stability through terror groups. Significantly, for present purposes, the report assessed that Iran was facilitating both Shiite and Sunni terror activities.

With respect to Sunni terrorism, the State Department said this:

Iran allowed al Qaeda (AQ) facilitators Muhsin al-Fadhli and Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and also to Syria. Al-Fadhli is a veteran AQ operative who has been active for years. Al-Fadhli began working with the Iran-based AQ facilitation network in 2009 and was later arrested by Iranian authorities. He was released in 2011 and assumed leadership of the Iran-based AQ facilitation network.

In addition, of course, Iran has “trained, funded, and provided guidance to Iraqi Shia militant groups” both inside and outside of Iraq. The training has included instruction in “the construction and use of sophisticated improvised explosive device technology and other advanced weaponry.”

The terrorist activities of the Iran-supported Shia militants have undermined stability in Iraq and undermined support for the government among Sunnis. But, again, Iran is destabilizing Iraq from both ends by also facilitating Sunni terrorism.

If anything, Obama should be punishing the Iranians by continuing, and indeed escalating, a sanctions regime. Instead, he seems determined to cozy up to the mullahs. In all likelihood, this means granting them additional concessions when it comes to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Why else would Iran help the U.S?

The mullahs have always understood that an unstable Iraq not only can’t threaten or complete with Iran, but may well be forced to become a virtual client, as might now happen. But the mullahs could only have dreamed that an unstable Iraq would cause an American president to come before them as a supplicant.

Yet this too may now be about to happen.

And still another surprise. Amazingly, for once we find points to agree with in an opinion from the Left:

Among many assertions in the same column which we do not agree with, Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post, writes some that we find ourselves nodding at:

Whose fault is the current debacle in Iraq?

It could be Nouri al-Maliki’s since he is the country’s strongman and has alienated the minority Sunnis.

It could be George W. Bush’s because he started the whole thing off …

The one person who is not at fault, we are told over and over again, is the current president of the United States. …

But with that he does not agree. He takes Obama to task for his failure to do anything effective against the gassing of Syrians by Bashar Assad:

Foreign policy [is] the area where a president’s power is substantially unchecked. … Other than avoiding war, it’s hard to know what Obama wants. I know what he says, but actions always speak louder than words.

For instance, he wanted Bashar Assad to cease using chemical weapons. His language was strong, nearly warlike.

“Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.”

What happened next? Virtually nothing.

All those poisoned kids were soon forgotten and so, too, were all those people killed in the war, perhaps as many as 200,000. Those of us who advocated more forceful action were denigrated as war lovers who wanted to send in the infantry. (Better boots on the ground than head in the clouds — but I prefer neither.)

He disagrees with Mike Konrad’s idea that nothing at all should be done about the war in Iraq:

Airstrikes and such might not have worked, but doing nothing never does.

This is a serious, depressing discussion. Countless lives have been lost. A civil war that might have been stopped in its tracks was allowed to fester. The Syrian dictatorship survived and the war has spilled into Iraq. It has the potential to engage the whole Middle East — Jordan, for sure, and then that tiny nation west of the Jordan River: Israel. The madmen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria don’t only kill Muslims; they would gladly drop a bomb on Tel Aviv.

Right. But he doesn’t say that the bomb could be nuclear. And that two, or twenty, could be dropped on Israel.

Or that there could be targets in Europe, or even in America, since the mullahs have long-range missiles.

He rightly finds the idea of the US and Iran being in alliance “preposterous”:

The U.S. may now find itself on the side of Iran — a majority Shiite nation much like Iraq. What could be more preposterous? What could be more ironic?

Worse, we could find ourselves engaged in a religious war — Sunni vs. Shiite. …

He fears non-intervention more than involvement:

Or maybe we should just wash our hands of the whole thing and turn over a hunk of the Middle East with its oil to a terrorist organization — one that boasts of committing massacres. …

You thought you can’t get more evil than al-Qaida? Look at who’s pillaging Iraq, a terrorist group that even al-Qaida can’t stomach. …

The one thing we do know is that things can get worse. They did in the Middle East, where Obama settled for a victory jog around the political infield after getting Assad to give up most of his chemical weapons. He now must deal with a region that is so much worse than anyone imagined.

Where does the fault lie? Where it always has — where the buck stops.

By which presumably he means Obama. He means that the fault lies with Obama!

How many members of Obama’s enormous media fan club, or of the Democratic Party, find him at fault over the carnage in Syria and Iraq, we wonder.

And will their disapproval induce Obama to act?

If so, how? Richard Cohen expresses his disgust, or frustration, or irritation – but he doesn’t say what Obama should do.

We say Iran should be stopped by all possible means, late though it is to take action, from becoming a nuclear power. And that is obviously not what Obama intends or wishes to do.

Because it expresses our own fearful anticipations, we quote from an editorial at Investor’s Business Daily:

From Syria to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan, the jihadist dream of a caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Himalayas is taking shape. It’s aided by a feckless foreign policy not seen since Neville Chamberlain.

As President Obama learns about it in the newspapers, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is dismembering Iraq, adding Saddam Hussein’s birthplace of Tikrit to the list of cities once liberated by the U.S. that are now flying jihadist flags. The war on terrorism is over all right, and Obama lost it. …

An American official [says] that the U.S. Embassy, United Nations and other foreign organizations with a presence in Iraq are “preparing contingency plans to evacuate employees”.  We might soon see helicopters on the roof of our embassy in Baghdad in a scene reminiscent of the last days of Saigon as Iraq becomes Obama’s Vietnam.

Unlike Vietnam, ISIS is not interested in liberating the homeland from colonial oppressors. ISIS and other radical Islamists have long proclaimed a goal of restoring a pan-Islamic state, a caliphate that extends from the Mediterranean coast to the Iranian border. One such Islamic empire, in the seventh century, spanned the Middle East, spread to Southwest Asia, North Africa and Spain, ending with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258.

The largest and most powerful rebel force in Syria is Jabhat al-Nusra, with 7,000 fighters. It’s a branch of al-Qaida in Iraq, from which it has received regular payments.

“It’s now time to declare in front of the people of the Levant and (the) world that the al-Nusra Front is but an extension of the Islamic State in Iraq and part of it,” Iraqi al-Qaida leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is quoted as saying recently …

“This (ISIS’s rise in Iraq) is of great significance”, according to an assessment released Wednesday by the Soufan Group, a private security company. A restored caliphate will attract “many more disaffected young people … from all over the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, lured by nostalgia for al-Khulafa al-Islamiya (the Islamic caliphate), which remains a potent motivator for Sunni extremists”. 

Restoring the caliphate was the stated goal of Osama bin Laden in creating al-Qaida, but the terrorist group was never designed to take and hold territory as is ISIS, now flush with captured cash and weaponry.

“It’s ISIS that will build the caliphate, not al-Qaida,” says Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, who monitors jihadist activity for the Middle East Forum.

The president’s endless apologies to the Muslim world, starting with his Cairo speech in 2009; his abandonment of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi while blaming the terrorist attack on a video; his precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan as Iraq implodes; and his trading of Taliban commanders for an alleged deserter have sent powerful signals of weakness. Obama’s actions are reminiscent of how President Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia inspired bin Laden.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned in a speech in 2005 that, without U.S intervention, “Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.”

The White House’s failure — or was it a refusal? — to sign a status-of-forces agreement to retain a presence in Iraq — a deal which Obama now claims is necessary in Afghanistan — created a vacuum that ISIS is quite willing to fill.

As the Taliban bides its time in Afghanistan, its leadership replenished by Obama, it has the strength to attack the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, in a country that has nuclear weapons. Obama has made possible the specter of not only an Islamic caliphate, but also a nuclear one.

At present, the battle raging in Syria and Iraq is another outbreak of the centuries-old war between Sunni Islam and Shiite Islam. There is one Sunni nuclear power: Pakistan. And there is about to be one Shiite nuclear power (aided by Barack Obama, president of the United States!): Iran. It will not be long before they will fight each other with nukes.

And when nuclear war breaks out, how long could the West – which, despite Obama’s transformative efforts, still includes the US – stay out of it?

Doing nothing at all; propitiating Muslim colonizers by conceding their every demand; bowing to Muslim potentates; holding talks in Geneva; praying to Nobodaddy in the Sky – none of these cunning stratagems will keep the West safe.

Obama’s pacifism has brought the world closer to intercontinental nuclear war than ever it was in the last century.

Barack Obama is a great leader of Islam.

A report that he told an Egyptian Foreign Minister on January 19, 2010, “You will see what I will do for Islam” and “I am a Muslim” is very likely true.

Here are just some of the great things he has done for Islam:

He has made it easy for Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal.

He has brought the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization, into the government of the United States to help formulate its policies.

He supports and sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

He has made Israel’s beleaguered existence far more difficult (see for instance here and here), and when Iran has its nuclear bombs, vulnerable to extinction.

He supports Hamas with funding and diplomacy, thus legitimizing a terrorist organization.

He has done the same for Hizbollah, except (as far as we know) for the funding.

He is helping the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan.

He restrained the government of Nigeria from cracking down on Boko Haram, the murderous Muslim organization whose mission is to kill as many Nigerian Christians as it can.

He continues to provide massive aid to Pakistan, one of the most repressive states among repressive Islamic states.

He is allowing Muslim terrorists to enter the US, in some cases more easily than other, law-abiding, applicants.

He is encouraging the issue of student visas to Muslims in ever greater numbers, while refusing them to most Israeli applicants.

He refuses to admit that the mass-killing of US servicemen and women by a Muslim at Fort Hood was an act of Islamic terrorism, although it was carried out in the name of Islam, insisting that it be dealt with by the law as “workplace violence”.

He’s had army instruction materials on the subject of terrorism purged of all reference to Islam.

He is allowing the Muslim murderers of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, to go unpunished.

He will not allow the condign punishment of a Muslim who deserted from the US army.

He instructed NASA to make “reaching out to the Muslim world” one of the space agency’s top priorities.

He has set five Taliban leaders free, described as “the worst of the worst“, in exchange for a US army deserter.

He celebrates the bringing home of an American soldier who converted to Islam and embraced the Taliban cause.

Can there be any doubt that Islam has become an ever increasing menace to the non-Muslim world, and an ever increasing cause of death even within the Muslim world, since and because Obama became president of the US?

We register in our margin the daily toll of lethal Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11/2001 as recorded by The Religion of Peace.

The  number has reached 23,121 today.

*

The Washington Times reported and commented on August 12, 2012:

Mr. Obama has used the occasion of Ramadan to rewrite US history and give Islam a prominence in American annals that it has not earned.

In this year’s greeting, Mr. Obama said –

The rituals of Ramadan remind us of the principles that we hold in common and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.

That Islam has had a major role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings may come as a surprise to Muslim women. Young Afghan girls who are having acid thrown in their faces on the way to school might want to offer their perspectives. That Islam is “known” for diversity and racial equality is also a bit of a reach. This certainly does not refer to religious diversity, which is nonexistent in many Muslim-majority states. This is a plaudit better reserved for a speech at the opening of a synagogue in Mecca.

Most puzzling is the president’s claim that “Islam has always been part of America”. Islam had no influence on the origins and development of the United States. It contributed nothing to early American political culture, art, literature, music or any other aspect of the early nation.

Throughout most of American history, the Muslim world was perceived as remote, alien and belligerent. Perhaps the president was thinking about the Barbary Pirates and their role in the founding of the US Navy, or Andrew Jackson’s dispatch of frigates against Muslim pirates in Sumatra in the 1830s. Maybe he was recalling Rutherford B. Hayes’ 1880 statement regarding Morocco on “the necessity, in accordance with the humane and enlightened spirit of the age, of putting an end to the persecutions, which have been so prevalent in that country, of persons of a faith other than the Moslem, and especially of the Hebrew residents of Morocco”. Or Grover Cleveland’s 1896 comment on the continuing massacre of Armenian Christians: “We have been afflicted by continued and not infrequent reports of the wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women and children … “

Peter Wehner, at Commentary, discusses the administration’s “red lines”. His article is titled The Obama Presidency Descends Into Farce.

He starts by quoting a Washington Post report:

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Thursday that he has seen “raw data” indicating that the Syrian government
has used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in a “number of ­instances” in recent months.

“There will be consequences” if evidence of new chemical use is confirmed, Kerry said, but “we’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise date, time, manner of action”. …

“I’m not going to discuss what specific weapons or what country may . . . be providing or not providing” the arms, he said. “I will say that out of today’s meeting, every facet of what can be done is going to be ramped up. Every facet.”

Poor John Kerry cannot use language to express the vague ideas that float in his skull. He grabs at words like a drowning man grabbing at flotsam.

Exactly how do you “ratchet up a facet”? 

We have now reached the farcical stage in the Obama presidency.

Does Secretary Kerry understand how much of a joke it is for him to threaten “consequences” if evidence of new chemical weapons by the Assad regime turns out to be true? Given the Obama administration’s track record on Syria – with “red lines” drawn and erased, with its refusal to arm opposition groups early on, with agreeing to negotiations that have empowered the Syrian regime – it is better that Mr. Kerry keep his mouth shut than to speak and provoke ridicule.

The president and his secretary of state’s words long ago were emptied of meaning. So please, for your sake and ours, give up on the bluster. It only makes a shameful situation worse.

And here is Daniel Greenfield writing about the same subject:

Kerry was then questioned by a reporter about the possible responses if the evidence eventually proves that chemical weapons were indeed used again:

QUESTION: Thank you. Secretary Kerry, to follow up on your last point, if it is proven that chlorine was used as a chemical in war, which is prohibited, what will the Syrian Government face? What steps can be taken?

SECRETARY KERRY: …With respect to the CW and what the consequences are, it has been made clear by President Obama and others that use would result in consequences. We’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise time, date, manner of action, but there will be consequences if it were to be proven, including, I might say, things that are way beyond our control and have nothing to do with us. But the International Criminal Court and others are free to hold him accountable. And as you know, we have a resolution that will be in front of the United Nations with respect to culpability for crimes against humanity, atrocities in the course of this conflict. So one way or the other, there will be accountability.

Let’s translate that from Diplomatese into English. There will be no consequences whatsoever except for a meaningless resolution somewhere.

Putin and Iran won. Obama lost.

After having set a red line, Kerry is withdrawing the red line while still insisting that there will be consequences … including consequences “beyond our control”.

He doesn’t mention the use of force, which is smart since he has no intention of using it, and instead babbles about the UN and the ICC which are threats to make any dictator laugh himself to death.

To summarize

1. Obama set a red line for Syria

2. His bluff was called

3. There is now no more red line

This is the pathetic foreign policy of Obama Inc. This is what they’ve done to American power and credibility.

Meanwhile, down in Foggy Bottom, servants of the state are trying to find out how to ratchet up those facets. When they know how, and do it, Assad will be taught a tremendous lesson. Just wait and see. And while we’re waiting, good old John Kerry will mix us some more metaphors.

The Arabs and Islam in general are insulted and humiliated by modernity. The modern world created by the West is a conspiracy against the eternal truths of Muhammad’s perfect revelation. Night and day, year in year out, diligent researchers probe deep into Western culture to dig out the evidence. They found this 2001 episode of The Simpsons, and showed it triumphantly on Egyptian TV, with an explanation that blows wide open the American plot to force the uprising in Syria which evolved into the ongoing civil war.

Why haven’t Obama and Hillary Clinton had the makers of The Simpsons arrested and jailed? And shouldn’t they apologize to Assad?

Remember Tony Blair? He was Prime Minister of Great Britain in President G.W. Bush’s era.

Well, he’s found out that Islam is a threat.

Muslim immigrants poured into Britain under his watch. But suddenly he’s discovered that it was a bad idea.

The Clarion Project reports:

Tony Blair, the Former British Prime Minister, delivered a keynote speech at Bloomberg HQ in London entitled Why the Middle East Still Matters. In it he described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today.

He specifies “radical Islam”, and speaks of “Islamism”, so evading the stark fact that there is only one Islam, and that it is Islam per se that is the greatest threat facing the world today. Its armies are actively waging the jihad by terrorist tactics.

Islam is not a race or a nation. It is an ideology. But like a nation, when it goes to war, its armed forces do the fighting, not everyone born into it or adopting it.

Blair is not a clear – let alone a deep – thinker. But he has at last come to an understanding that the non-Islamic world is under attack by Islam:

Wherever you look – from Iraq to Libya to Egypt to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria and then further afield to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan – this is the essential battle.

Addressing those who regard these conflicts as distinct he said:

There is something frankly odd about the reluctance to accept what is so utterly plain: that they have in common a struggle around the issue of the rightful place of religion, and in particular Islam, in politics.

Not a good way of putting it. No Reagan-like plain speaking, let alone any felicitous Churchillian phrasing.

Yes, in all those countries Muslims fighting the Islamic jihad are engaged in the same “struggle”. But it would be hard to find a jihadi who would say that his “strugge” is “around the issue of the rightful place of religion, in particular Islam, in politics”.

Blair means that they are fighting a religious war, and he doesn’t think that religion should be a political issue. Religion has a “rightful place”, and it is not on a battlefield. He seems to have the thought swimming round in the shallows of his mind that religious wars are not the thing nowadays; that wars are fought in modern times over up-to-date political differences. (And that implies that he doesn’t see Nazism and Communism as the religions they most certainly are.)

He does see that the war is global.

He argued that this struggle does not end at the borders of the region. Rather, “The reason this matters so much is that this ideology is exported around the world.”

He asked listeners to “Take a step back and analyze the world today: with the possible exception of Latin America (leaving aside Hezbollah in the tri-border area in South America), there is not a region of the world not adversely affected by Islamism and the ideology is growing.”

Bravo, Blair! You have seen that the battle is also being fought by immigration, propaganda, and intense proselytizing:

He notes that:

The Muslim population in Europe is now over 40million and growing. The Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations are increasingly active and they operate without much investigation or constraint. Recent controversy over schools in Birmingham (and similar allegations in France) show heightened levels of concern about Islamist penetration of our own societies.

He gets better still:

The main thrust of the speech focused on “two fascinating things.”

The first is the absolutely rooted desire on the part of Western commentators to analyze these issues as disparate rather than united by common elements. They go to extraordinary lengths to say why, in every individual case, there are multiple reasons for understanding that this is not really about Islam, it is not really about religion; there are local or historic reasons which explain what is happening. There is a wish to eliminate the obvious common factor in a way that is almost wilful. …

The second thing is that there is a deep desire to separate the political ideology represented by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood from the actions of extremists including acts of terrorism.

He acknowledged the motivation behind these fears, saying “We feel almost that if we identify it in these terms, we’re being anti-Muslim, a sentiment on which the Islamists cleverly play.”

And then he gets almost very good:

Blair swept these distinctions aside, acknowledging the laudable motives behind such interpretations, but ultimately pinpointing the profound danger posed by the Islamist ideology, and that it is fundamentally incompatible with the modern world.

He urged the West and indeed the entire world, to unite against the ideology Islamic extremism.

It’s a speech that may help to wake up European leaders. Though it has its weakness, and the columnist Douglas Murray, clear-sighted as always, put his finger on it:  

Douglas Murray argued in the Spectator that Blair went too far in his efforts to brand Islamism as disconnected from Islam and called on moderate Muslims to help combat radicalism by driving extremists from their communities.

Blair came on to suggesting what might be done about the profound danger he’d identified:

Blair outlined potential foreign policy options for the West vis-a-vis various Middle Eastern countries in order to combat Islamists and to support religiously open and tolerant elements.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any – there cannot be any – “open and tolerant elements” among Muslims. Unless they are Muslims-in-name-only. (MINOs?)

In particular he focused on Egypt saying:

On the fate of Egypt hangs the future of the region. Here we have to understand plainly what happened. The Muslim Brotherhood government was not simply a bad government. It was systematically taking over the traditions and institutions of the country. The revolt of 30 June 2013 was not an ordinary protest. It was the absolutely necessary rescue of a nation.

All of these different policies are facets of the same policy:

Across the region we should be standing steadfast by our friends and allies as they try to change their own countries in the direction of reform. Whether in Jordan or the Gulf where they’re promoting the values of religious tolerance and open, rule based economies, or taking on the forces of reaction in the shape of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, we should be supporting and assisting them.

Hmm. Right about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt having to be overthrown. Wrong about the West having friends and allies among Arab and other Muslim countries. None want reform of a kind that would turn them into reliable friends and allies.

Perhaps this statement by Blair sums up the message of his keynote speech best: “When we consider the defining challenges of our time, surely this one should be up there along with the challenge of the environment or economic instability.”

It’s his saying “up there with the challenge of the environment” that shows how his mind is still murky with leftist pollution. But for a leftist to put Islam “up there” with climate change is an admirable advance. He deserves loud and quite long applause. Even more so if his speech encourages other European politicians to start facing the truth: that war is being waged on their countries by the barbarous hordes of Islam.

The Clarion Project does not report the last paragraph of the speech. Blair ended with this:

Consider for a moment since 9/11 how our world has changed, how in a myriad of different ways from the security measures we now take for granted to the arenas of conflict that have now continued over a span of years, there is a price being paid in money, life and opportunity for millions. This is not a conventional war. It isn’t a struggle between super powers or over territory. But it is real. It is fearsome in its impact. It is growing in its reach. It is a battle about belief and about modernity. It is important because the world through technology and globalisation is pushing us together across boundaries of faith and culture. Unaddressed, the likelihood of conflict increases.

Applause, applause. But then:

Engagement does not always mean military involvement. Commitment does not mean going it alone. But it does mean stirring ourselves. It does mean seeing the struggle for what it is. It does mean taking a side and sticking with it.

While it is true that military engagement alone won’t stop Islam’s subjugation of the West, and that the West needs to stir itself, and that every European country should side against Islam, if there is going to be reluctance to use military force at all, the war will be much harder to win. Perhaps he knows this, but feels it necessary to acknowledge – as he does – that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken away the West’s appetite for war.

The full text of the speech can be found here. Those who read it will find that Blair erroneously believes – or at least says – that Islam has a “true message” which “Islamists” distort. And that he praises Secretary of State John Kerry for his (absurd) attempt at yet another Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” and thinks his “commitment has not been in vain”. (It has been, and could not have been anything else.)

So – two cheers for Mr Blair. And let’s hope his speech stirs up the dhimmis of Europe to start resisting the onslaught of Islam.

The important website that ironically names itself The Religion of Peace, today records 22793 deadly terrorist attacks by Muslims since 9/11/2001.

Here is today’s list of recent attacks:

Islam’s Latest Contributions to Peace: “Mohammed is God’s apostle. Those who follow him are harsh

to the unbelievers but merciful to one another” Quran 48:29

2014.04.16 (Ramadi, Iraq) – Eight people are ripped apart when two Shahid suicide bombers plow into a crowd.

2014.04.16 (Wala, Nigeria) – Eighteen people are slaughtered by militants fighting for Islamic law.

2014.04.15 (Nwokyo, Nigeria) – Women and children are among at least nine who die when Muslim militants torch a Christian worship center and hospital.

2014.04.15 (Baiji, Iraq) – Two brothers bleed to death following a Mujahideen bombing.

2014.04.14 (Abuja, Nigeria) – Activists for an Islamic state slaughter over eighty innocents at a bus stop with a massive bomb blast.

2014.04.14 (Maaloula, Syria) – Three Shia journalists are picked off by Sunni gunmen.

Note that in just three days, in one country alone – Nigeria – at least 97 people, including children, were murdered by Muslims. 

While Prince Charles enjoyed himself  in Saudi Arabia dressed up and posing as a Sunni Arab, real Sunni Arabs were carrying out  human sacrifice in Syria.

If you have the stomach for it, you can see two highly graphic videos of the ritual killings  here at Halal Pork Shop.

In one, bound victims are shot, each getting a bullet in the back of the head, after a prayer is intoned which makes it clear that it is religious human sacrifice.

In the other, the victim has his throat deeply cut, and lives on for a while squirming and gurgling.

The perpetrators proudly recorded their deeds.

(The picture is from The Religion of Peace. Technical difficulties prevent us from reproducing the videos.)

As so often we are in agreement over an important issue with Daniel Greenfield, who writes at Front Page on the international order – or disorder:

The international community looked into Putin’s eyes and blinked. Multilateralism has failed as badly as it did in the days of the League of Nations, but then again it never actually worked.

The international order that everyone pretends is a real force in world affairs is really the United States and a few partners doing all the work and letting the diplomats and bureaucrats of the world pretend that they matter.

Without America, the United Nations would be just as useless as the League of Nations. With America, the United Nations is only a deterrent when the United States puts its foot down and the rest of the world doesn’t get in the way.

It has become fashionable to denounce the United States as a rogue state. A military intervention, even with the backing of its Western allies, but outside the framework of the organizations of the international order, was deemed unilateralism and cowboy diplomacy. …

The multilateral system is helpless in the face of aggression. That is as true today as it was eighty years ago. International agreements are worthless without steel and lead behind them. The United Nations is incapable of acting when one of its more powerful members is the aggressor, the foreign policy experts of the left crank out editorials explaining why we can’t do anything and the Secretary of State explains that our weakness is really a strength.

Truth is, there is no such thing as “international law”  in the sense that there are laws within nations;  because no “international law”  can be enforced  – unless it is in the interest of the mightiest power to enforce it.

International law couldn’t stop Hitler. It couldn’t stop Japan. It took the United States to do that. The foreign policy experts will deny it, the editorials will decry it and the Common Core textbooks will refuse to print it; but it takes a rogue nation to stop a rogue state. …

The issue isn’t whether the United States should intervene in Ukraine, but whether it should have the option to do something more meaningful than draw faint red lines and threaten worthless sanctions. Every mob throwing things at soldiers and police isn’t necessarily composed of the good guys just because they have photogenic protesters and colorful flags.

Our instinct to automatically support the underdog is just another dangerous figment of the multilateral mindset.

The United States has unselectively adopted the human rights agenda of the internationalists and allowed our foreign affairs priorities to be curated by the diplomats of the left who know exactly whom to denounce and what not to do about it.

UN Ambassador Samantha Power, wearing a bitter frown, agonizing over the woes of the world, is the face of our senseless and useless diplomacy that forces us to play the moral scold without being able to back it up.

American foreign policy has become indistinguishable from the United Nations agenda and just as impotent, fixated on the recommendations of human rights committees instead of national interests, incapable of addressing historical alliances, and unable to build its responses around anything except the same Powerian empty shriek of self-righteous human rights outrage.

Obama’s America has turned a cold impartial face to its allies, aspiring instead to become the vessel of international organizations while assigning its morality to an international committee. American foreign policy is under international management and that transfers its decision process from D.C. to an international network of committees incapable of doing anything except generating worthless reports and denouncing Israel.

The United States was the ghost in the machine of the United Nations, but now that the United States is the United Nations, the United States has become the puppet of a puppet. …

The United States should have a strong military, not so that it can use it, but so that it won’t need to use it. Military budget cuts send the message that we won’t intervene in international conflicts which makes it more likely that our enemies will start conflicts and that some of those conflicts will drag us in anyway …

The United States should have clear commitments and agreements that it keeps, rather than randomly butting into every single conflict and human rights violation on the planet. Its leaders should decide whether they really are serious about Syria or Ukraine or any other place on earth that they issue press releases about and keep quiet about them if they are not. …

History isn’t made by nations defending international law, but acting on their own imperatives. Only a rogue nation that isn’t bound by the chains of multilateralism can take the unilateral action necessary to stop a rogue state.

American cowboy diplomacy is the only defense the world has against commissar diplomacy, cossack diplomacy and caliphate diplomacy.