You Can Have My Spiritual Allegiance When You Pry My Sternocleidomastoid Muscle From My Cold, Dead Hyoid Bone

"Someday, this war's gonna end."  - Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore

Dateline, The Levant  -  Who says there's no good news coming out of the Middle East?  Lockheed Martin and the gang are getting excellent field testing data on whether or not well heeled GCC states can deploy those expensive weapons systems without blowing a few fingers off.  If this all works out right, who knows? The next round of hardware variants shipped to Egypt will have some of the really nasty features enabled; maybe not all the neat stuff the Israelis get, but enough to make a difference. What a remarkable piece of luck for the US/UK arms merchants that the experiments are being performed in a convenient "Arab on Arab" format.  I think they've always been a little uneasy that the remote kill switches might not work and these demonstrations might take place over Haifa.

Following closely on the heels of an outraged King Abdullah's recent swift ass-kicking of ISIS after a rookie Jordanian pilot was roasted like a chunk of prime Halal beef, Egypt sent a squadron of F-15s screaming through the Euphrates valley the other afternoon aiming at ISIL necks near the Ar-Raaqah stronghold.  Those mad-cap Caliphate builders are finally getting the full measure of attention they crave and, very soon now, literally every country in the world with a standing army (well, air force) will be crowding the air-space over Syria, gunning for revenge. Forward thinking Middle Easterners should begin formulating snappy answers for when, years from now, little Tariq asks: "What did you do in the Great War for The Caliphate, Seedo?"

This midway of horrors is set to get worse before it gets better.  When every nation-state on the planet is pissed off at you - including the very ones you're running the flying monkeys out of - anything that looks like progress to them, is probably going to look like just another shit storm to ISIL.  Something's gonna give at some point.  Best guess:  it won't be the Jordanian monarchy or the Egyptian military.

Though many mock the studied and seemingly ineffectual ballet of diplomacy, there are some acknowledged advantages in unarmed people sitting down and talking over a bottle of mineral water and a few nervous translators. But eventually, when the ski-masked shot-callers are ready to roll up the black flags and take a meet at some 5-star in Paris (well, maybe not Paris...) no one is going to be in the mood for talk.  Even the most willing foreign ministers may have a tough time scoring the keys to the 757 for a quick trip to the desert to make nice.  Governments are left with few options when someone is chopping off the heads of their citizens and then holding them aloft, smiling into the camera.  Those options mostly involve fighter and attack aircraft.  

Are these just a bunch of boring psychopaths or is there an actual political end game at least theoretically wafting about under the Keffiyehs? Understandably eggs must be broken in the service getting a shot at the big-time.  But leaving the impression that you aren't up to much other than murdering teen-age girls and counting the resulting Facebook likes leaves a little to be desired in the geopolitical shell game.  

Let's stipulate that there's no qualitative difference (physiologically at least) between lobbing a Hellfire missile into the middle of a wedding party and sawing a 25 year old journalist's head off with a Ginsu.  A legit spot on the world stage with all the other murdering, self interested governments demands understanding the finer PR dimensions of offing innocent civilians.  Dispatching bystanders in the course of furthering your aims is is acceptable;  waving around severed heads - not so much. US political operators call this playing to the base and blowing it in the general.  "Butchering", it should be understood, is mostly just a euphemism these days.

ISIL's adversaries are only a few chess moves away from posting a few Instagrams of their own. They've looted a lot more oil and killed a lot more kids.  Then there's the aircraft carriers, frog-men, ballistic missiles and so forth. These big players generally chicken out. But there's something in those YouTube extravaganzas that's interfering with their Zen. Even Godless cowards, driving themselves headlong into the brick wall of apostasy eventually arrive at moments of clarity. Check with the Japanese.  With God, all things are possible. And the folks being annoyed have their very own big man in the sky every bit as bat-shit crazy as ISIL's. The old Boy is perfectly capable of granting permission to crack open the launch codes. 

Skim the Old Testament.

When you decide to kill everyone in a neighborhood, your next move is to immediately send a grim-faced spokesman in front of a phalanx of television cameras expressing "regret at the unfortunate loss of life." Ridiculous as it seems, fake public apologies for calculated atrocities are effective in ways than giggle-howling like Vincent Price while standing over a still twitching body are not.  It is necessary to act like you feel bad about the murders.

Appearing on Al Jezzerah waving a butcher knife in "slickly-produced Hollywood-style"* videos does scare people.  But with no follow up you begin to look like just another band of goofy-ass terrorists. Where's the religious piety?  Where's the righteous yearning to be free from the chains of the Imperialists?   You don't torch your 15 minutes without getting the message out. There's a window of opportunity; if you miss it, well, they just release the parking brakes on the B-2s and... 

The courage and cunning of guerrilla warfare and smartly played insurgency tactics lose a lot of luster in the bright sunlight of 38kgs of fissioning plutonium. Think of the slick videos the boys back at network control in Manhattan can edit from that footage!  Think it can't happen? I wouldn't bet my own neck on it. 

Just as most Muslims are not terrorists, most Americans are not altruistic aid workers.  

In any event - good luck gentlemen.  Clearly we're all going to need some.  Starting a country is not for the faint of heart.  Make sure this is something you want to do with your life.  Religious crazies in the US have a saying: "What would Jesus do?"  I assume this was all cleared with Prophet; did he happen to mentioned a plan B?  How about a nice slice of the Levant and a 10 figure aid package? There's precedent.  Work with that; unless you're admitting the Jews really are smarter than you?   

*Note to reporters and commentators: are you guys watching the same feed I am?