A friend (let’s call him Bob) recently sent me a video he admires and completely supports; this one, in fact:
I especially like the “…lovely British name…” and “when you left to join the enemy” bits. Why I like the first is that “Bob” is a non-white immigrant himself, so I’m sure Ms. Hoity-Toity would refer to his name as being sarcastically “lovely British” as well. As a fellow brown-skinned child of colonialism, you’d think Bob would have developed more insight by now, but he seems happy enough consuming all that the mainstream media funnel feeds him.
The second bit, “when you left to join the enemy” (and Bob’s state of mind), is the point of this post.
(It’s difficult to discuss serious topics with Bob because he’s rather emotional about everything, and the moment he sees that he’s losing an argument, he throws me a “let’s forget about it”. So, knowing that I have to watch his videos while he disregards my counter-arguments, I decided to put my rebuttal here, in public, just to give myself some personal satisfaction.)
Bob links to a BBC article, following it with the statement: “You would let this one back in???”. And yes I would, because–I’m sorry to say– stupidity isn’t a crime. Want to criminalise it? Fine, go ahead. But for the here and now, it’s not punishable by law to be stupid in and of itself.
Let’s look at Ms Begum’s story in a little more detail for a moment. The internet mob that’s after her resembles nothing more than a bunch of bullies, for a number of reasons:
- She was 15 when she left the UK. Didn’t you ever do anything stupid when you were 15?
- Education in England is compulsory until the age of 18, so Ms Begum wasn’t working full-time at her moment of travel.
- As she is a minor, Ms Begum cannot apply for a passport without the written approval of at least one guardian and details of both.
So while Bob and his ilk are slavering to deny this stupid young woman with two dead children back into the country, surely bigger questions must occur. Like, who talked Ms Begum and her friends into travelling to Syria in the first place? Why did her parents allow a fifteen year-old child to travel overseas and marry a Salafist? And who fronted the airfare money as she didn’t have a job?
Because of the Begum Affair, dear Bob now considers himself an expert on ISIS and thinks he’s stemming the tide of Teh Ebil from reaching hallowed Anglo shores but I’m still not sure whether he really is that naive or is being paid to be an agent provocateur. In fact, I asked him exactly that question, but he hasn’t responded yet. So, to all the people who think that it’s Ms Begum that’s the problem, here’s my answer.
You have been fed the easy-to-digest notion that “ISIS=Evil”. The very fact that it’s so digestible should give you pause because anything associated with countries is rarely so cut and dried. Ready? Here we go.
A report in 2017 from the Financial Express, founded on a BBC investigation, came to the conclusion that:
The US and British-led coalition forces enabled hundreds of IS jihadists escape from Raqqa after the headquarters of their self-declared Caliphate was bombarded out of recognition.
…
“The US refused to bomb a military convoy retreating from Abu Kamal (in Raqqa). The coalition’s aircraft also attempted to prevent Russian Aerospace Forces from carrying out air strikes against militants.” There is considerable evidence of “direct cooperation and support for ISIS terrorists by the US-led International Coalition”, the [Russian] Defence Ministry said.
In a separate incident “Americans peremptorily refused to conduct airstrikes on ISIS terrorists”. The reason given was that the militants were agreeing to surrender as prisoners of war and were “therefore subject to the provisions of the Geneva convention”. US aircraft obstructed “Russian aerospace from taking action”.
But hold on a sec! Didn’t that consummate humanitarian, Vice-President Dick Cheney, say that:
“…But remember, the terrorists were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment you would accord to those.”
So the terrorists can be categorised within and without the Geneva Convention as circumstances dictate? Hmmmm. The takeaway point from this is that both the United States and Great Britain have gone out of their way to protect IS forces in Syria while loudly declaiming that they’re there to stop them. Strange how the Russians seem to be sceptical. But what do you expect from those conniving bastards who put their country so close to our freedom-loving NATO bases?
The American Conservative (and Bob considers himself a conservative) is even blunter:
The exaggeration of the ISIS threat in Syria and Iraq today is little more than a smokescreen to justify continued military deployment there.
Oops. So the “threat” of ISIS continues to be a help rather than a hindrance to those bastions of Western democracy? Say it ain’t so!
But I just led with one report from one minor player called the BBC, right? Who’s heard of them? Surely if we—Yet another video shows U.S.-funded white helmets assisting public-held executions in rebel-held Syria. What?! Oh noes!
But, but, the White Helmets are our friends!! They even won an Academy Award!! How can they possibly be associated with ISIS? Even George Clooney loves them and you know how smart and hawt he is! Americans must be confused because they’re so far away from the Middle East. I bet that if you had someone closer, someone who really understood what it meant to confront those murderous Salafists… Wounded ISIS fighters being treated in Israeli hospitals. US training them.
Oh.
Even I weighed in on the whole ISIS issue ever so briefly back in 2017.
But, last week, Bob read about some moronic teenager trying to get back into England, and now thinks he knows everything there is about The ISIS Situation.
Bob, if you’ve reached this far, congratulations. I didn’t think you had it in you. Here’s the thing, though. Just like Ms Begum, you’re being brainwashed, and I have the sneaking feeling that you (a) know you’re being brainwashed and, even more alarmingly, are (b) quite happy about it because it means you don’t have to think for yourself.
Do you know what that means, Bob? It means you’re as stupid as Shamima Begum, which is a tragedy as you’re not a stupid man. But intellectual laziness has a strange way of translating into stupidity, and you’re on that slippery slope, my friend.
My real fear is that you’re also a voting citizen, a thought that should send shivers dancing along the spine of anyone reading this who has even a couple of neurons to rub together. The fate of the world lies in the hands of people like you, who consume without discrimination. And if that isn’t scarier than ISIS, I don’t know what is.
BONUS:
For those who would like to be even minimally educated: from the blog of Colonel Pat Lang (retired): SST [Abbreviation for Col Lang’s blog] was right—there was no Douma sarin attack (BBC):
The fact that it took almost a year for one intrepid BBC producer to come out publicly with what readers of SST knew from the outset is shameful. MSM is the purveyor of fake news, which includes suppression of real news when it contradicts the meme of the hour. And by the way, SST has also been reporting for years that White Helmets are, indeed, a front for British Intelligence—founded by a retired British Army Colonel, financed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence.
But Colonel Lang is only a US military and military intelligence veteran, so what does he know, right?