Fulfilling our own prophecy on ISIL

According to Lyle Boggs, Post-Crescent Community Columnist, the recent headlines in the national papers and media outlets have been taking me back in time lately. I’m talking way back, like to the Old Testament and the book of Revelation.

Hardly a day goes by without another dire warning about how we find ourselves at the mercy of war, pestilence and a third election in six years for Gov. Scott Walker. These can all be interpreted as sure signs of the coming apocalypse by doomsday preppers everywhere.

Or maybe not? Maybe they aren’t signs of an impending judgment by a universal God? Maybe they’re just another sign that the American empire continues to lose its influence abroad and its common sense at home? It’s impossible for anybody to know with certainty.

It is possible to know other things. We know that the latest war, this time against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, is another of our own choosing. Like all of our wars, it’s marketed as a humanitarian effort. Our reaction to the primeval images of beheadings by murderers posing as a legitimate government was immediate and predictable. Just as our enemies wanted, we decided to give war another chance.

When we go to war these days, our government takes great pride in building coalitions of like-minded countries as a show of support for our noble efforts. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are two of the nations that have signed up again as brothers in arms with the United States.

This seems odd when placed under any scrutiny. Saudi Arabia has a documented record of providing material support to ISIL in Syria. Vice President Joe Biden may have recently apologized to the Saudis for talking about it, but it’s no secret that the Saudi government poured hundreds of millions of dollars to any extremist it could find in Syria that was willing to attack the Assad regime.

It turns out the Saudis also love to behead people. Human Rights Watch reported that the government of Saudi Arabia beheaded 19 people during a 17-day stretch in August. Some of the executed were non-violent offenders accused of sorcery and drug-dealing. Amnesty International reported that there was evidence that confessions used to condemn some of the accused were obtained through torture.

Our NATO “ally” Turkey also has a record of assisting the radical Islamists in Syria. For months, it provided an open border for new recruits coming to sign up from across the world. As long as they were attacking the Assad regime or the Kurds, our Turkish “allies” seemed content to let ISIL loose upon its other perceived enemies. Even now, the Turkish government is reluctant to assist the Syrian Kurds under siege directly across its border.

At almost the same time that the fear of ISIL was reaching a tipping point, the news from West Africa became even more menacing. The Ebola virus doesn’t have a political ideology or a religion. It doesn’t need any excuses to engage in a killing spree. All it needs is time, opportunity and apathy. The Washington Post recently had a story that detailed how the initial reaction to this threat contained all three of those elements.

As if these two ominous signs weren’t enough to push you to despair, we face the very real possibility that Walker will win another election. He’s probably laughing it up with a radio personality pretending to be a billionaire right now as they discuss planting agitators in a public protest somewhere. I’m not a religious man but even I can’t help but thinking, “God help us all,” in these circumstances.

In times like these, I comfort myself with the thought that it could always be worse. Besides, I don’t have the ambition to start digging bunkers or the faith in a glorious rapture that will make it all go away. I’d just like to live long enough to find out if the prophecy is Biblical or self-fulfilling.

M.W