November 09, 2016
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
Source: Wikimedia Commons
This is the pattern of American interventionism. Our leaders get it into their heads that an industrialized and secular but repressive country in the Middle East doesn”t sufficiently resemble Burlington, Vermont. They seek out the nearest AK-toting, kaffiyeh-clad street tough who speaks enough English to say, “The Islamic republic will be like the French republic.” Elated to have found an enlightened (not to mention hunky!) young upstart amid all these drab handlebar mustaches, they chuck fistfuls of cash and munitions at him until he deposes the old regime, ideally with bayonets. And when, in a cruel and truly inexplicable twist of fate, our friend Muhammad al-Guevara turns out to be a bloodthirsty terrorist, we just scratch our heads and go home. When he starts massacring Christians, Jews, and gays, we do our best not to think about it. When his sympathizers kill our Christians, Jews, and gays, we quietly remind ourselves that anyone who reads too much into it is an Islamophobe.
Islamophobia is a myth, and the “backlash” against moderate Muslims after terrorist attacks has never come to pass. But that doesn”t mean the West doesn”t treat moderates poorly. It does. It kills them whenever they gain power in the Middle East and replaces them with genocidal fanatics. We make life unbearable for any Arab or Persian whose idea of a hot date night doesn”t include sipping lemon water at the beheading of a woman who exposed her eyebrows in public. Much as our elites might feel for moderate Muslims in the West, they”ve done everything in their power to make them unwelcome in their homeland.
Syria is now going the way of Iran and Iraq. If ISIS ousts Assad, their reprisals will be unthinkable. Al-Baghdadi’s brutality will make Ayatollah Khomeini look like Lord Licorice. Moderates”murtaddin, or “apostates””will bear the brunt of their genocidal fury.
And we”ll be culpable in their fate. Again.
