Oceania has always been at war with ISIS

by Citizen Sane

Criticising the Stop The War Coalition is like shooting fish in a barrel. That said, it’s also a requirement for those of us on the sensible left/centre to do so, lest their risible nonsense gain any currency. So come, join me as we go in search of piscine creatures trapped in wooden cylindrical containers and blast them with our trusty blunderbusses.

Yesterday our Stalinist friends posted a comment piece about the US air strikes against the monstrous ISIS in northern Iraq, where up to 50,000 Yazidis are stranded in the mountains without food, water or shelter with certain execution awaiting them should they come down. The US have launched strikes against ISIS holdings and dropped emergency supplies to the stranded people.

Given the appalling atrocities committed by ISIS and the desperate plight of the Yazidis, it’s difficult to see how the action taken by the USA could be seen as anything other than A Very Good Thing (and long overdue). But the STWC, unsurprisingly, do not see it that way.

“US intervention is not humanitarian and will not protect the people of of Iraq” says the headline. “Defeating ISIS and the other terrorist groups is vital, but it is also vital that we oppose US intervention in Iraq, which will make matters worse.”

I see, well then let’s look further down the List Of Countries Ready To Help. Oh, this is a short list. Where’s Russia? They don’t seem to be on here…. must be an administrative oversight. Putin is a bit busy elsewhere right now. China? Is China on the list? What? Robustly isolationist you say? Hmmm. This is getting tricky. Well who, exactly, is going to act then? Norway? An army of puffins? Alan Rickman?

Oh wait, there is a recommendation in the STWC article to organise aid through genuine humanitarian organisations and the UN. There you go then, problem solved. It stands to reason that ISIS will have no problem allowing western aid organisations to have free access to the area – they are very reasonable people, after all – and aid charities, as we all know, have huge resources at their disposal and can set themselves up en masse in Iraq within a couple of hours. I’m sure they can have everything sorted out by Monday morning. And the UN has a strong track record of quickly reacting to international emergencies and genocide, unhampered as it is by internal political squabbles over the issue of intervention.

Anyone of a sensible disposition can see that there is only one option available to avert the mass slaughter of unarmed men, women and children and that is military action by the USA. Military action that should have been deployed earlier. Indeed, would ISIS even exist at all if a different approach had been taken to Syria in the last few years? STWC, existing as it does in its own topsy-turvy universe, considers the intervention of the US to be an act of imperialism as opposed to the reluctant action of a president who has shown himself to be highly averse to engaging militarily. It has taken the imminent slaughter of 50,000 people for Obama to finally take action. And why did he do it? Because nobody else can and nobody else will. STWC and their contemptible ilk would be happier to see beheadings, executions and crucifixions on a mass scale by the most savage people on the planet than see the USA intervene.