Well Said Mungo

Mungo MacCallum 

"if the Jihadists refuse to play by Queensberry rules, why should we? Bomb them back to the stone age. Tear the place apart brick by brick, raze it and sow salt in the earth.

Invade in vast numbers - Americans, Russians, Iranians, French, Australians, New Zealanders, Heard Islanders - anyone we can find. Shoot first and ask questions later - in fact, don't ask questions at all. Degrade, destroy, demolish. Let's finish the bastards forever.

Of course, there will be a few unfortunate consequences, such as massive collateral damage, but hey, them's the breaks. If IS doesn't worry about civilian deaths, why should we? Fair's fair. It's just a kind of moral equivalence."

With tongue firmly planted in cheek Mungo unleashes the acid wit and implements the black humour in the interests of rhetoric.

Unfortunately these are the sorts of simplistic solutions that are actually, really and truly - let's go over there and do this right now - being suggested on the right. I've heard people say things like: 'they're all so miserable fighting amongst themselves for all eternity let's just nuke them all, start from scratch again, and hopefully do a better job this time.'

I prefer carpet-bombing myself as it will leave a godawful mess, but at least the mess won't be radioactive and uninhabitable. In fact, the soil will be intensely fertilized by all that mashed up human blood and bone, and could build a new bread basket for the rest of us.

But seriously:

'boots on the ground' is what got us into this mess in the first place; the unjust and unjustifiable invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan directly caused one tine of the terrorists' rationalisation for their actions (the anti-west-christian-colonialial argument) - the roots of this going back almost a century to Sykes-Picot and Balfour, followed by the more recent invasions in support of those terrible mistakes of history. If you go back a bit further you come to the Ottoman empire where the ungovernable people of the middle East could only be controlled for the common good by extreme repression. Further still and you come to what I think would be a non-carpet-bombing solution to the present conundrum - a final reformation of Islam, that is, a reconciliation between Shia and Sunni. 

Various comments and notes of the commentariat and intelligentsia (even Mr. Silvertail himself) suggest this final root cause and therefore solution to this problem. The Sunnis outnumber the Shia, though not by a lot, but are, none-the-less dominated and oppressed by ruling elites dominated by Shia. Historically each sect is opposed to the death to one another and condones revenge in a blood for blood manner. As has been shone in the development of democracy in Iraq, they practice blood feud and revenge as state policy.

You can not undo the mistakes of the past if these mistakes are taught to succeeding generations as deliberate actions which must be avenged in a violent manner. The hatred then spans the generations and the blood feud becomes self fulfilling till the end of time.

If you then don't have the time or the patience to achieve a peaceful outcome then wiping the slate clean can be an attractive solution.

We can understand the fascist side but never agree with it.