A Ringside Seat to Our Own Destruction
12th August 2014
Headlines have focused on the atrocities committed by ISIS on the northern Iraqi front. The leading stories seem almost expressly written by the Onion to make fun of political correctness. Crucified by the Caliphate monsters: Iraq descends into apocalypse as Islamic State fanatics seize towns and tell terrified Yazidi ‘Become Muslims by noon today… or we kill all of you’. Then there’s Islamic militants ‘buried alive Yazidi women and children in attack that killed 500?. Try topping: Anglican Vicar of Baghdad: ‘Child I baptized cut in half by ISIS’.
How about this lead paragraph? “BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants with “vicious plans,” an Iraqi official said Friday, further underscoring the dire plight of Iraq’s minorities at the hands of the Islamic State group.” Vicious plans is the 21st century journalistic equivalent of the Victorian phrase, “a fate worse than death”.
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The Middle Eastern crisis is no longer a regional crisis. It has now become part of a global crisis, a link in a great chain of blunders engineered by the Great Golfer, whose most profound utterance is now, ‘who me?’ That explosive sequence includes but is not limited to the tensions in Eastern Europe, the continuing crisis in Southwest Asia and the ever-growing danger in the East as the Chinese dragon stirs. That clamor can now be heard even in Western streets, yet it beats like noiseless rain upon the glazed glass panes of the White House. The most amazing sight is not the catastrophe itself but the seeming paralysis of the Western institutions. Prominent newspapers may issue warnings, former high military officers might wring their hands, congressmen even threaten impeachment, yet but only momentary awareness flits across the dull countenances of the bovine LIVs as they await their next dose of spectacle and reality TV.