{"id":27839,"date":"2014-09-15T09:46:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27839"},"modified":"2014-09-15T09:46:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:46:35","slug":"the-semi-war-against-isis-watch-their-actions-dont-listen-to-their-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/09\/15\/the-semi-war-against-isis-watch-their-actions-dont-listen-to-their-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The “semi-war” against ISIS – watch their actions, don’t listen to their words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> notes the huge gap between what western politicians say about ISIS and what actually happens:<\/p>\n

Has anyone else noticed the colossal disconnect between Western leaders\u2019 rhetoric on the Islamic State and their proposed action against it?<\/p>\n

With their words they tell us IS poses the greatest threat to Western civilisation. This bloody cowboy statelet is an \u2018imminent threat to every interest we have\u2019, says US defence secretary Chuck Hagel. This \u2018death cult\u2019 is a threat not only to the people of Iraq and Syria but to \u2018the whole world\u2019, says Australian PM Tony Abbott. Fighting IS is the \u2018greatest struggle of our generation\u2019, says Canada\u2019s foreign affairs minister, adding: \u2018[The IS] worldview is a direct challenge to the values of Western civilisation.\u2019 IS is \u2018the most serious threat\u2019 the Western world faces right now, says British PM David Cameron.<\/p>\n

And how do these leaders of the West, these fretters over the future of Western civilisation, plan to tackle this barbaric pseudo-state that is apparently a challenge to every interest we have?<\/em> With some airstrikes. And by arming the Kurds. That\u2019s it. There will not, as President Obama emphasised with gusto during his address to the American people last week, be boots on the ground. This great struggle to defend the vales of the West \u2018will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n

In short, this is a generational struggle that will involve very little struggle, a fight to defend civilisation that will involve next to no fighting. Our leaders ramp up the rhetoric – talking about the need to galvanise the West and its allies against what the Canadian minister calls \u2018one of the most barbaric terrorist groups the world has ever known\u2019 — while making clear that no Westerner, not even our soldiers, will be expected to put themselves in harm\u2019s way to guard the gates of civilisation from these \u2018barbarians\u2019. We won\u2019t fight them on the beaches (or rather, deserts); we\u2019ll just bomb them from the air and leave the messy business of hand-to-hand combat to the ill-trained, already stretched Kurds. Let the Kurds defend the \u2018values of Western civilisation\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill notes the huge gap between what western politicians say about ISIS and what actually happens: Has anyone else noticed the colossal disconnect between Western leaders\u2019 rhetoric on the Islamic State and their proposed action against it? With their words they tell us IS poses the greatest threat to Western civilisation. This bloody cowboy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[370,5],"tags":[333,982],"class_list":["post-27839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east","category-military","tag-iraq","tag-isis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7f1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27840,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27839\/revisions\/27840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}