Islamic State Comes To Britain

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By Kurt Rellians

Sun, 14 Jun 2015
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10 comments
 

Islamic State Comes To Britain

We closed our military down largely, pensioned off soldiers who wanted to remain in the army, cut down the regiments. We decided not to bother keeping up our nuclear deterrent, even when Russia was showing a desire, and the will, to ignore the wishes of people in the neighbouring states which had once been part of them. When terrible events in the middle east occurred, such as the fleeing of large sections of populations from cities or towns conquered by Islamic State, and the marauding and execution of groups which were not Sunni Muslim, we could not do much to help any more, except to send a few bombers.

They were not our countries, they were nothing to do with us. Migrants might be flooding unstoppably from certain African and Middle Eastern countries, trying desperately to find peace on our shores, but it was not our fault, or our responsibility. If peace or economics or society had broken down in any of those places it was the fault of those governments, or the inability of their peoples to work together for the good of all, or adherence to intolerant religions. Why should we help, why should we get involved. Whenever Britain did any military actions we always got criticized and told we only made things worse, just like the Americans. Why should we bother if those countries could not get their act together.

Western nations surely brought some peace to Bosnia by threatening the Serbs in the end, and the same in Kosova. Law and Order and proper government was returned to Sierra Leone. We thought we were doing the right thing, facing up to the Dictator in Iraq, because we did not trust him any more, and we knew he was ruthless and power hungry, and we knew he was not giving the UN weapons inspectors free access. Bush and Blair drew that line in the sand and the Dictator just ambled across it, thinking he could get away with anything from the soft western powers. They stuck to their principles and removed him from power to allow the true will of the Iraqi people to surface.

Then the true chaos of the Arab psyche was revealed, the inability of even politicians to understand compromise and democracy. Groups on all sides wanting to take over the state or to govern their own sectional area, inexplicable groups that just seemed to want to bomb civilians, kill as many Shiites as possible, destroy society, destroy any attempt at an Iraqi State. I suppose those people were basically what became Islamic State. In those days they were Al Qaeda In Iraq, and they waged war against imagined western colonialism, while killing as many Shiites as possible. Awful, inexplicable, negative, barbaric, cruel, pointless, even then! Now a few years later they had taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq, and were attempting to govern. As far as I could see, wherever they tried to govern a lot of people tried to flee from them, but they were keen fighters and that was their ‘success’.

Anyway Islamic State said they were going to come to our shores one day and convert Britain to their warped form of Islam, because to Allah there are no borders and the whole world is his.

While we debated whether to stay in or out of Europe, or whether to continue giving authority to the European Court of Human Rights, Islamic State were working out how to bring their Jihad War to us. Recruiting disaffected muslim youths from our inner cities, and sending disguised fighters out as supposed refugees into our midst, sleeper cells, and even female suicide bombers.

Soon Scotland had its next referendum on Independence, and decided it would go all the way into breaking up the UK and making us even smaller powers than we were before, with virtually no militaries that could ever again be sent anywhere to do anything useful or helpful, or even defend our own islands!

A whole generation of Islamic State supporters must have blown themselves up or run amok on our streets with machine guns, or clandestinely beheaded and stabbed people who they considered enemies in our backstreets, until they were finally plugged by our anti terror units. Death seemed to be the only way to stop them. They did not see reason, and seemed unable to listen to anyone else’s point of view.

And we worried about whether the first past the post system was sufficient to express the opinions of the population or whether some form of proportional representation might be necessary. What we really needed was protection from a generation and a culture of the brainwashed, who refused to listen to reason, and had no interest in democracy at all, in any form.

True to form the Jihadis did not really bother trying to encourage us to vote for them or to create a party in parliament. They bypassed it completely with the use of terror and fear. Britons who had never before even touched a gun began to wish they had some weapons. They turned up unexpectedly whenever and wherever they were not expected – at football matches, shopping malls, high streets, London parks. They loved to cause chaos in transport networks, and had a particular interest in targeting tourists, and Jews, and Christian Churches. They waged war on us for many years.

Nobody attacked them in their ‘homelands’ (???) sufficiently or effectively enough, so they were able to export their war all over the world. But Britain took the exported war the worst, apart from the ruined societies of their so called ‘homelands’. Many thousands, probably even millions were killed before that generation of Jihadis began to grow up and realize the cause they had fought for was taking them nowhere. Many of them had perished in their cause, and miraculously the next generation had no desire to repeat the blunders of the Jihadi generation. Few were left to fight their eternal war with everyone else in the world.

Finally the world won and the Islamic State petered out, leaving much dust, emptied cities, and corpses piled high. Peace returned , silence in the ruins of the places they had ruled, as the diaspora of the people to other lands had changed those lands for ever.

Certificate 12
Story
Islamic State
Philosophy
Other Non-fiction
Erotica
Fantasy
Historical Fiction
Drama
Crime
Biography

Comments

Submitted by White Dwarf on

Interesting

But some of it got my blood boiling…

Armies and wars are far too profitable. The military industrial complex combined with energy giants would never allow a country like Britain to cut its spending on defence.

As for your second paragraph I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not. I would like to assume you are and that you know British imperialism and aggression in foreign nations has played a large role in much of the turmoil in the Middle East and Africa.

Your third paragraph – that war had nothing to do with freeing the people of Iraq.

The rest… I just can’t even…   

 

Submitted by Terrence Oblong on

Only Scotland can save us. 

 

Submitted by Kurt Rellians on

Thanks for commenting White Dwarf. I wrote this piece, like a couple of others about Islamic State, in a state of anger and emotion, because they seem to inspire that in me. Other movements or political groups might get a nice rational response, but everything we hear about them seems to make my blood boil. So the piece is really from the point of view of Mr or Mrs average UK citizen resenting the pull of foreign 'responsibilities', the unwanted waves of migrants, the criticisms of our soldiers or politicians for participating in peace keeping attempts or world policing actions. It follows my gut reactions, but does not mean that I can't see inconsistancies or mistakes in what Britain has been involved in.

I will say a bit more on this later, but have to go out right now.

Submitted by Kurt Rellians on

I can see your fair point that industrial military interest groups find government spending on the military very profitable, and it does need to be controlled by politicians. But at a time of rising tension and uncertainty with Russia and the chaos of many middle Eastern countries in particular it doesn't seem too sensible to reduce our capabilities. I am not advocating that the UK sends our forces to fight Islamic State alone, but a coalition of legitimate states could well be needed to bring proper order back to the region so people can once again start to live without fear.
Britain gave up all its colonies by the early 1960's, knowing it could no longer keep an Empire together against the wishes of all those people.
The use of British forces in the late 1990's and the 2000's was for tactical political and humanitarian stabilising purposes, usually as part of international coalitions to try to prevent the spread of warfare.

In the case of removing Saddam Hussain from power the intention was not to be staying for years to become targets for Sunni and Shiite groups. It became apparant that it would have been more sensible to preserve the Iraqi army rather than disband it so a military leadership might have been able to preserve a functioning state and keep the men employed. Yes that seems to have been a big mistake made by the Americans, leading to the nasty wars by Al Qaeda and now Islamic State.

Anyway White Dwarf do you think Britain and other nations should steer completely clear of dealing with Islamic State? Or should we just hope they burn themselves out? Will the middle east eventually sort its own problems out? Perhaps military solutions are never appropriate and all nations should just accept that waves of fleeing refugees are a fact of life and seek to find them new homes wherever they can get away from the warlike domineering groups.

And Terrence Oblong thanks for your suggestion about Scotland. They have saved the British Empire many times in the past, and I hope they will continue to do so now we no longer have an Empire!

Submitted by White Dwarf on

In the light that it is from the perspective of the average citizen who doesn’t think past the headline in the Mirror and Sun newspapers I can actually appreciate this piece. It does reflect those views promoted by those standing to gain.

As the current situation: it is a complete mess. And that is exactly how they wanted it to be. Media, energy, Military, and many other powerful entities (who really run the Government of the coalition) knew exactly what they were doing, and ISIS is just another part of that desirable situation. Perpetual war was the goal, and that is what we have.

They have set that part of the world on fire and they will let it burn unchecked for a while, then once the peoples fear and hatred has peaked they will start stamping it out. They will use their biggest boots, knowing the fire will only spread. Because the more you bomb and kill and torture the worse the situation gets. More and more people will be radicalised.

But I do agree something has to be done, but drones and missile strike and occupying forces are not going to solve anything, as I have said. The way to solve this is with compassion. Protect the refugees we have created. Provide aide and security forces (perhaps) to those who request them. Take action against the people funding ISIS and those supplying them with weapons. Stop selling weapons to nations with strong terrorist ties, and terrible human rights abuse records. Stop supporting land and resource grabs like the Israeli occupied Syrian land/oil fields. And if you really insist on military interaction, use surgical strike teams to assassinate ISIS leaders. And much more.

Where is this money for aide going to come from? It could come from unnecessary military spending, such as trident. Or perhaps we could take back the billions we gave to banks for their bailout. Or sue those corporations who have dodged billions dollars every year by sending their profits off shore to tax havens, sucking the blood out of our countries and hording our wealth.  

But that’s not going to happen, we are going back in there and we will blow some more shit up, kill a couple hundred thousand more children, and spread out the big fires so they look small again. The money spent on the missiles drones, private security, uniforms, troop’s food, laundry, transport, and every other damn thing that they have sold off to contractors will keep the big rolling in money until the public start to get pissy about it again.

I don’t like living with refugees either, we have tones of them in my city. I don’t want more weirdo Muslims and Africans suffering from PTSD with their feral kids in my town, but I have to put aside that feeling and remember they are people like me, and have the same right I enjoy, human rights.

Submitted by Kurt Rellians on

I think you may be being overly cynical when you say that the military/ high finance/ power establishments that you say really run Britain and other western/capitalist nations have intentionally created instability and civil wars and socio economic and political collapse in the middle east to create a good environment for profitmaking. I daresay there probably is an element of this greed in the arms industry and among stock exchange investors, because after all everyone wants to make a living or make profits. But control over military activity and foreign policy does come from elected governments and MPs, who are members of parties who have to be seen to govern and try to follow policies which try to solve international problems.

I would say that Tony Blair's Labour government was very driven by a desire to settle disputes in the world, with the intention of countering dictators who might overreach themselves, or nationalisms which might be tempted to turn towards genocidal methods, or extremist Islamic tendencies which might stop 'progress' in societies (eg Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan).

As we said before it has not always worked smoothly. Iraq was plunged into chaos and civil war which was an unexpected consequence to the western allies. Peace seemed to return for a while by 2009 or thereabouts, but sectional differences and politicians who don't seem to be able to understand the basic fact that Iraq has to be governed in the basic interests of all its sectional groups if it is to remain unified as a functioning state, have led to the Islamic State takeover of sunni regions and the awful mistreatment of non Sunni occupied populations.

I don't think that perpetual war was any desire of western politicians, but events have moved in that direction now. Many would have predicted that Assad might have been toppled in Syria, but that has not happened and the country has become a divided basket case with no sign of a sensible solution. Western powers did not engineer the Syrian civil war or the Iraqi one. The West has to recognise belatedly that democracy cannot be successful in these nations and even sectional representative government is very difficult to achieve. Once order has broken down it is very difficult to restore it. It is up to the people and leaders of these countries to put things right again. The West certainly is not in a position to do all that for them. All we could potentialy do is participate in coalitions to help defeat Islamic State militarily.

Submitted by White Dwarf on

Gday again

I guess I am cynical when it comes to Government, I think I have seen too many examples of corruption to have any faith in the current system.

I’ll just clarify a little. When I say the corporate world rule the country I don’t mean overtly. The government still controls the basic functions. But the Government is made up of fallible and often greedy individuals who are mostly there to serve their own interests. These politicians’ votes are up for sale, and they barely even try to hide this fact. Have you ever looked at what a politician usually does once out of office? They go work for those big companies as consultants, with lavish retainers and benefits for little or no work, and why do they get these jobs? Because while in office these politicians voted favourably toward that company, or handed over massive government contracts. It’s a legal form of bribery. And let’s not start on campaign contributions.

 I’m at work now so I have to go. But I can post up some prime examples later on if you like. 

Submitted by Kurt Rellians on

I can of course see what you mean about government or MP's being influenced by profitmaking companies and investors. There is influence over politicians, and elements of corruption in the system. Capitalism is like a massive machine of profit devourers which is difficult to control or stop. Look at the way the banking sector was allowed to self regulate itself for so long, and look at the mess they made of western economies and government finances by their greed. Years later every taxpayer and every public servant is still paying for their unregulated blunders. That is disgusting!
But despite all of that the capitalist system remains a lot more humane and functions better for people than the kind of sectional wars and religious extremism which is pushing parts of the middle east back into the stone age.

Submitted by jeand on

Hi Kurt

I read your piece agreeing with a lot of what you were saying. Then I read all your comments back and forth between you and white dwarf. It certainly made for an interesting debate.

Jean

Jean Day

Submitted by Kurt Rellians on

Thanks jeand for your comment. I agree that White Dwarf and I had a very interesting debate there, and I am pleased you enjoyed reading it. I suppose it was just the kind of discussion I hoped to inspire when I wrote that piece.
You may be interested to read the other main piece I wrote about Islamic State, which was 'Islamic State Comes To Malaga', in March 2015, and another one 'Islamic State Comes To Turkey', in April or May 2015.