Scurrying along on the road to Damascus

Whose side are we on in Syria?

America, as befits the nation that Obama described as one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, is in the Sunni axis, ensconced somewhere between the fattest child-molesting members of the Saudi and Qatari royals, the Turkish Islamists, and the Eurocrats looking to score arms deals and win over their domestic Sunni Muslims populations who have the unfortunate habit of blowing things up.

The sooner we give them weapons, the less likely they are to use them against us. Or so the reasoning of the people who brought you September 11 and September 11 II: The Mohammed Video Diaries goes. And with a track record like that, how could they possibly be wrong?

No serious thinkers seriously think that not siding with either side is an option. When confronted with Muslim terrorists, they begin searching for moderates in the rubbish bin, and with a working definition of a moderate that includes anyone less extreme than the most extreme of the extreme, they never have a problem finding moderates. And they keep finding moderate Syrian rebels who will be our friends tomorrow for a few RPGs today.

Today we have to support the Muslim Brotherhood for fear that Al Qaeda will take over. Tomorrow we will have to support Al Qaeda for fear that Al-Takfir Wa Al-Hijra will take over. And then we'll have to support the Takfiris for fear that Itbach Al-Kul Ulum will take over. And the day after our leaders will have no choice but to nuke the entire planet for fear that an asteroid will hit it instead. The radiation will be bad, they tell us, but at least nuclear weapons are moderate. Asteroids are extreme. And no one, except skateboarders, wants to be extreme.

The rebels are making their gains, or so the New York Times claims, while Pravda claims that the Syrian government is beating back the rebels. It's hard to know whose pravda to believe when all we have to choose from are propaganda outlets that parrot the talking points of governments. In a Pravda world, you don't read the news to find out what's going, you read the news to find out what the government thinks about what is going and then you try to derive from that what is truly taking place.

There are Sunni and Shiite militia members from neighboring Lebanon and Syria. There are Salafi Pakistanis fresh from Waziristan and Libyans looking for a good brawl. There are Scud missiles and chemical weapons and broken buildings, torn corpses and roads full of refugees fleeing for their lives. There are tanks and jets and fleets. There are armies and militias, truckloads of weapons and bodies, fire behind them and death ahead of them. And they're all hurrying, running and racing to Damascus.

Where the real killing will begin.

Read the whole thing here.