Don’t Menshn Boots On The Ground

Whether or not people across the EU and USA want their countries to go off on another Middle East adventure – and right now, despite the best efforts of ISIS, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, they mostly don’t – there are still those in the punditerati urging more military involvement, especially if someone else has to go and put their own boots on the ground.

(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

And, as those unwise enough to shell out good money for the Murdoch Sun today now know, that means (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch, who has penned a furious, yet so ill-informed that it is ineffectual, rant titled “Squaddies Versus ISIS Scumbags”. She wants to see ground troops sent to Iraq, because, well, only then will ISIS see the light and run off in the other direction.

To soften readers up, she tells “We’re jaded to the many faces of Islamist terror – the plane bombs of al-Qaeda, the rockets of Hamas, Boko Haram’s kidnapped schoolgirls and the latest, worst example, the Taliban’s slaughter of the children at school”. Sadly, sending ground troops to Iraq would have zero effect on any of those, as none of them originated in that area.

But she’s got an excuse: “Isis trumps them all in the World Series of evil [we don’t have a World Series in the UK, Ms M] and we’re doing precious little”. Do go on: “Obama’s initial air strikes have crumbled into nothing because we fear putting boots on the ground, yet women and children are openly sold as sex slaves in front of our eyes”. And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here.

One, if women and children being sold as sex slaves had been splashed across the news bulletins, I’d have seen it by now, and I haven’t, which suggests a teensy bit of Mensch exaggeration. And two, there are antediluvian attitudes taken to women and children all over the planet, but that is not generally something over which the West is prepared to engage in a ground war.

Yet on Ms Mensch rambles, chiding Barack Obama as a “pacifist President” and asserting “Obama has a duty to rescue this [captured Jordanian] pilot or avenge him in such a way that it wipes al-Baghdadi and his baby-raping buddies off the face of the earth. And when that longed-for day comes, I hope Britain joins in”.

Note that anything has to be done unilaterally by the Prez, and that it is therefore down to him what happens, whatever the nationality of those involved. Conveniently, this allows her to avoid criticising Young Dave, a most fortunate outcome so close to a General Election. What is also fortunate is that Ms Mensch has nothing to do with the UK or US involvement in the Middle East.

It should not be forgotten that her political soulmates are the ones who messed up Iraq in the first place. If Obama ignores her, he is probably doing something right.