My title comes with an apology to the late Louis Jordan who co-wrote the original song back in the '40s. The 'IS' in my version, of course, refers to the bunch of murderous eye-swivellers currently running amok in the Middle East and, naturally, the answer to my rhetorical question is that they are my enemy because they hate everyone who isn't one of them! In fact, such is their hatred that I suspect they hate each other quite a lot as well. However, the question arises as to exactly how much of a threat are they to my country, or, me, as I like to think of it? Not much at the moment, is my answer but in matters of geo-politics it is necessary always to try and peer into the future and anticipate as best as one can.
On the whole, by and large and taken in the round, I prefer the current crop of crooks/tyrants/murderers/fanatics (delete to taste) who run the various nations of Araby. I wouldn't want any of them to marry my sister but the one advantage they have over this new rabble is that they are fairly predictable and, when forced to it, fairly amenable, by which I mean that when push comes to shove most of them will take a bribe, and all of them know what they will lose if a drone missile comes through the top of their tent or palace!
In a very learn-ed post I wrote a few weeks ago entitled "Right, pay attention, here is my analysis of what's going on in the Middle East" - er, you did read and commit it to memory, didn't you? - I admitted that the sum total of my knowledge was in or around nil! It seems to me that my ignorance of what is really going on in those ever-shifting, deceptive, desert sands is shared by everyone, even, or perhaps mostly, by the so-called experts. So the question arises, should we be bombing those IS loonies? I suspect not. Given the amorphous nature of their organisation which simply melts from one place to re-arise in another it is probably a waste of ammo. Needless to say, it will not be long before they take the lesson from the Palestinians and quarter their troops in schools and hospitals and proudly display the resulting body parts in the rubble as examples of western cruelty.
For once I am in support of Barack Obama who can at least smell a shit sandwich from twenty paces and who would dearly love to avoid it altogether. One benefit from his obvious reluctance to be involved is that the afore-mentioned crooks/tyrants, etc, etc, have begun to realize the truth that America is no longer very interested in the Middle East. Apart from the fact that the USA is now awash in its own oil and gas, it has a much more important threat to contain in the Far East. The result is amazing, suddenly the crooks/tyrants, etc, etc, are committing their own forces to the fight - and about time, too!
What we, the nearly-United Kingdom, are doing there is a secret known only unto 'Dave' and his Old Etonian twits plus, of course, the usual suspects in the Air Ministry eager to try and prove what they, and 'Bomber' Harris, failed to do since WWII, that air-power is a battle winner. Yeeeeeeeeees, quite!
