A PIED-PIPER’S PLOY FOR THAT CALIPHATE
(…to lead them into a world of rabid theocratic purity)

The recent military successes of ISIS militants with their capture of Ramadi in Iraq, and Palmyra, in Syria, is providing further attraction for more recruits from around the world to try and join it to achieve its –Caliphate – goal.

To that end, its furtive erstwhile leader, Al Baghdadi, much like one of those prairie dog rodents which pop up from their burrows now and then, to survey the surrounding world above, has recently sent out a selfie video clip via the social media universe, to come join with him to create a new society in that so-called Caliphate his armed followers are in the process of carving out of Iraq and Syria. This time however, he is not calling on them just to come to fight, but, to come and settle, get married, raise families, and contribute to that effort to establish a new pure and god-fearing society, in an otherwise indecently impure world…or words to that effect.

As with all such ideologically driven leaders, he is using a pied-piper’s ploy…to lead them into a world of rabid theocratic purity, where dissent is neither allowed nor tolerated. Hitler and his NAZI thugs enforced it with gas chambers and crematoria, Stalin and his commissars used Gulags and forced labor, MaoTseTung and his mob, applied cultural revolution and re-education camps, the Khmer Rouge just used blunt force trauma. For its part ISIS combines all such barbarities with murder, rape, and pillage…to achieve the same ends. It is instructive to note that most people at the approach of any ISIS militants simply vote with their feet…to get away as far and as fast as they can from them.

Yet, frankly, this latest pitch by Al Baghdadi, offers a possible resolution for this problem of virulent extremism. First of all, by drawing all those who might be sympathetic to his purpose to create such a Caliphate, these would then no longer be among the rest of the world to worry about. So rather than trying to prevent or obstruct their attempts to join, encouraging them to do so could be a better way of getting rid of them…permanently. Secondly, if that herded them all, sheep-like, into such a territorial entity, as long as they made no attempt to extend its area by force, they would then be effectively contained, quarantined, into their own created ghetto… and left there to live as they pleased….while the rest of the world community went on with its own affairs.

In effect, the Caliphate would become a “Jurassic Park” where, so long as its inhabitants remained within it, made no attempt to return home, or interact with anyone outside of it, they could be left to their own devices, to survive as best they can. If this is Al Baghdadi’s vision for that Caliphate…the world could live with that.

CENTURION