FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Axis of Evil‏

Rant Number 553           3 September 2013

Iran, Iraq and North Korea formed an ‘axis of evil’, declared President Bush in 2002. A piece of crude, droll propaganda, churned out in prelude to the infamous invasion and destruction of Iraq. As Western war on Syria looms, the priest wonders: what if the true axis of evil was elsewhere? What if America, France and Britain were it? Three malignant, diabolical and basically stupid powers, whose leaders are hell-bent on causing worldwide mischief and harm? Just possible? Or probable? Maybe even true?

Objection: the illustrious British Parliament has just voted against the bombing of Syria and PM Cameron has taken notice. Imperfect axis, surely? A bit (dare I say it?) like Italy dropping out of the axis with Germany and Japan in 1943, after Mussolini was voted out of power by the Grand Council of Fascism.

I answer that the British vote, though desirable, was only a hitch. A fleeting, passing, spasmodic jerk in a diseased body politic. Already dark hints are dropped of forcing another vote, should ‘circumstances’ change. (Huh! Don’t they, usually?) Already Labour leader Ed Milliband is attacked by his own for his rare fit of sanity. Already our media ‘telecracy’ keep raving about Britain forsaking her historical role...and so on. So, I keep my fingers crossed. Moreover, a swallow doesn’t make a summer. Britain’s involvement in unjust causes, external and internal, is deep and structural. Short of an inconceivable revolution, she cannot alter her fundamentally warped nature. The evil axis lives merrily on.

France. To laugh or to cry? Once headed by a ‘most Christian king’, the oldest Christian nation in Europe, France is now misruled by an undersized ‘saligaud’, the non-Socialist creep Hollande. This half a man, this caricature of a statesman itches to back the deadly enemies of Syrian Christians. The murderous salafis and jihadi and al-qaeda terrorists who are burning down churches and slaughtering the people of the Cross. US Senator Rand Paul admitted Assad, though an unsavoury dictator, at least cared for his minorities, shielded them from fanatics. France, formerly the protector of the Christians of Lebanon, now actively supports Islamist assassins. Axis of evil indeed!

America. Look, I like Yanks. And the country. Got friends there. Especially my beloved Mormons, the most American of all.  I always felt happy in the land of the free – discovered by an Italian, named after another, how could I not like America? Alas, US politics, at home and abroad, contradict Christianity. Particularly in the Middle East, Obama is either a fool or a knave. Because how cannot the most powerful man in the world force puny Netanyahu to render the Palestinians justice? A viable state? And stop the illegal settlements? And make Jerusalem a corpus separatum, for all three religions, as the UN originally intended? What meaning have Obumble’s declarations of democracy when he allows the Egyptian military junta to shut down an elected government?

Now this bumbling President seeks to bomb Syria. Why? The key distinction in world politics is the friend-enemy dichotomy. War thus proceeds from enmity. How is Syria an enemy of America? Has it sought to attack the US? Or its allies? (Even Israel felt safer with Assad than with the Islamist gang.) Syria simply defends itself from deadly foes. It is an ontological struggle – Syria’s enemies call its existence into question, as Islamists don’t believe in nation states and fight to replace them with a khilafa. Obama fails to comprehend that. Is this axis evil or just stupid?

Objection: but the use of chemical weapons affronts the moral conscience of mankind. Isn’t intervention then justified? Assad denies the charge and challenges the West to prove it. The evidence is thus far inconclusive – cui bono? The rebels stood more to gain from their use, in order to trigger Western intervention. Anyway, after Afro-American Secretary of State Colin Powell blatantly lied to the UN about WMD in Iraq, I won’t believe Afro-American Obama or ‘Aryan’ Cameron or freak, degenerate Celt Hollande. Liars, impostors and God’s enemies all. My money is on UN investigator Carla Dal Ponte’s promised report. Worthy, lovely, noble lady! I will trust her, not anybody of the evil brigade.

Objection: the children, the refugees, the displaced people of Syria. Isn’t a humanitarian intervention in order? Shouldn’t the Christian conscience approve of relieving their pain?

The doctrine of military force used to spread democracy, rights and so on was the notorious Bush doctrine. Invoked to sanctify the war on Iraq, with its train of crimes and horrors. (Phosphorous bombs employed in Fallujah by US troops – why does that come to mind, by the way?) Dodgy and discredited dogma, to put it mildly. Significantly, neo-con Charles Krauthammer back in 2005 already suggested Syria too may become the victim of deadly, warlike visitations. Humanitarian help by way of a rain of cruise missiles appears highly dubious.

Let us turn from these scoundrels, fools and pigmies to a real thinker, a supreme Christian mind. St Augustine did indeed consider whether love of neighbour may come even into that wicked, unchristian art, warfare. When it comes to me as an individual Christian, the Saint taught that I should prefer being killed to killing an assailant, citing the awesome example of Christ’s passion. When it comes to ‘the neighbour’, by contrast, Augustine argues that I show my love best to an unjust person by stopping him from harming others. Tough love, in other words. An unsentimental affair, guided by intelligence, wisdom and prudence. The same virtue of prudence that should tell humbugs like Obumble, Cameron and Hollande that to intervene in Syria will only make the plight of the Syrian people worse, much worse.

Finally, I just read in the useful LikudJerusalem Newsletter that the rebels too have perpetrated ‘war crimes and crimes against humanity amounting to genocide’. The US bombing ‘may only shift the balance of power from one despot to another’. Well said.

Axis of evil or axis of stupidity then?

Both, I fear.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli