The world must laugh at Barack Obama’s attitude towards goings on in Iraq

When the frivolous and loathed French queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded in October 1793, Europe woke up to the reality that no nation could live in peaceful isolation. In the build up to the killing of the queen and her husband earlier in the year, Europe had taken no notice of the goings on.

Marie, King Louis XVI’s queen, was the living symbol of all that had gone wrong in France. She was a figure of hate at home and indifference abroad. Married off to Louis when she was only 15, she never outgrew royal childishness. Her lofty imaginings lived on even after she became the queen. It would cost her head.

But as Marie engaged the royal court with puerile extravagance amidst massive famine and human suffering, Europe seemed unfazed by events in France. Even as it seemed imminent that her head would roll, not even her mother, the formidable Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, seemed to take notice. The double rolling of royal French heads eventually woke up a slumbering European royalty to the myth of independence of disaster. The wars that Napoleon Bonaparte waged against Europe in the aftermath of the revolution cemented their wakefulness.

At the subsequent Congress of Vienna (1814), European notables – assembled to repair the damage France had done – admitted that happenings in any one country would invariably affect others. That is why the world must laugh at American President Barack Obama and his Government’s limping attitude towards the goings on in Iraq and Syria.

It has often been said that those with little knowledge of history will repeat the mistakes of history. We could say the same of those who scornfully speak of the discipline that is history – such as Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto – but I leave that for some other day. Suffice it to say that they will pay the price. Now President Obama has been downplaying the fundamentalist terrorist activities in Syria and Iraq, at the behest of the Islamic State (IS).

These merchants of terror have veritably overrun the two Arab states. They leave murder and mayhem in their wake. They pillage settlements and displace people. They capture and behead those who cannot escape. This week the militants captured the Unesco World Heritage of Palmyra. They descended on historical artefacts with unrestrained anger, crushing them into rubble and powder. Earlier, they did the same in Iraq, destroying ancient sites and monuments that are older than Islam. They say that these monuments symbolise idol worship.

At times such as these, the world looks up to leading military and moral powers to intervene, on behalf of humankind. Let me put some perspective to this. The movement that has blossomed into the Islamic State began about 2002, as a strand of the dreaded Al Qaeda. The world watched. When not watching, it slept. The IS mission is to establish an Islamic State – a global caliphate – ruled by a single political and religious leader. The legal compass for the caliphate is Islamic Law, the Sharia, stretched to the extremes of fundamentalism.

While the springboard is Iraq and Syria, the aim is to eventually overrun Jordan and Lebanon. IS has vowed “to free Palestine” and “to free the world from the nation of the Cross.” The nation of the Cross is of course Christianity. Christians allover the world are legitimate targets for IS. In recent times, they have abducted and beheaded Copts in Egypt and Libya.

This is how territorially close the militants are to Sub-Sahara Africa. Put together with terrorist franchises like Al Shabaab in East Africa and Boko Haram in Nigeria, you don’t need to think too hard to see where their world is going.

Amidst this horrific unfolding scenario, President Obama has this to say, “If Iraqis are not willing to fight for the freedom of their country, we cannot do it for them.” President Obama sounds like a blast from a European past. He sounds like a latter day European monarch, watching a sinking France, imagining that this is an otherworldly happening. To be fair to the United States, Washington is providing some form of military leadership against IS in Syria. The leadership, however, has the mark of the reluctant and wishy-washy.

In military terrain where IS does not hesitate to behead and post on social media video recordings of killing orgies, it is easy to understand the American attitude of the war being primarily an Iraqi-Syrian headache. The US, therefore, intervenes only to the extent of air strikes and other logistical support. When strategic places like Palmyra and Ramadi are captured, Obama can quickly distance his country from the ignominy of defeat with a shrug of shoulders as he has done this week.

The tragedy is that this thing is not about to stop. It will not stop of its own accord, if it stops at all. As you sip at your beer, eat assorted meats and shunt TV channels between your favourite English Premier League and lowly showbiz, the bad news is that you are sitting on a time bomb.

Indeed, the world is sitting on explosives. A specter is spreading from the Persian Gulf and the Middle East at large. It is only a matter of time before it engulfs the whole of Northern Africa and discovers its way across the Sahara, all the way to the African Cape. But that is not all; Turkey straddles the Arab and European worlds. After IS overruns the Arab world, it will not only run through Africa like a hot knife in butter, it will accost Europe through Turkey.

The stances of key Arab states on the Islamic State are worrying. Apart from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Bahrain, the attitude elsewhere is one of ambivalent caution. Jordan stepped back from engagement against IS after the killing of a Jordanian pilot in December. The United Arab Emirates also suspended involvement against IS after this beheading.

Qatar is suspected to be supporting IS. Lebanon is divided about supporting the effort against IS. The rest are simply unsure of what to do.

Make no mistake; these fundamentalists in the Persian Gulf are to this generation what the Fascists were to the generation of 1900–1945. Without firm and focused engagement against them, they will overrun the civilized world, as we know it.

This is no time for Obama to be saying, “If the Iraqis cannot fight for their freedom... we cannot do it for them”. This is not an Iraqi affair. It is a global headache, for everyone is a legitimate target.