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The British Labour Party is suffering a crisis of leadership. It’s present front man, Jeremy Corbyn, has lost a vote of confidence by his members of parliament and a new man, Owen Smith, is garnering support to oust him.

The convoluted shenanigans of British politics are likely lost on anyone not familiar with the U.K.’s system of government – and that includes most Brits – but the intricacies of the system are not the subject of this article.

On Wednesday August 17th, a debate took place between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith, each giving their views on how they would steer the Labour Party forward, if elected to (or in the case of Corbyn, if he retained) the leadership in September.

We’ve all become used to our latest generation of politicians, or would-be’s – uttering the most inane remarks. America’s Donald Trump is a fine example of a possible leader of his country continually announcing to the world his unsuitability for the task.

But even Donald Trump has to move over and surrender his top position on the dais to Owen Smith, given the asinine response he made to a question from the BBC’s debate audience in Britain.

Smith was asked, “What would you do about ISIS?”

His answer was that eventually ISIS would have to come to the negotiating table if there was ever to be peace in Syria.^[1]

Take a moment to digest that comment from a man seeking leadership of the only other political party in the U.K. capable of forming a majority government; a man hopeful of one day becoming Britain’s next prime minister.

Smith is basing his views on his minor role in the peace talks over Northern Ireland – an entirely political issue bearing no relationship to the situation presently playing out in the Middle East. ISIS is intent on conquering the Middle East and imposing a Caliphate on the region, with the eventual objective of subjugating the whole planet under their brutal interpretation of Sharia law.

In September 2014 a Sparrow Chat post compared the threat of ISIS to that of Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s;

ISIS is no minor Arab skirmish between tribes vying for power. It poses a threat to the world comparable with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The world shilly-shallied then. It’s behaving in a similar manner today. ISIS must be stopped while it’s still possible to do so. It’s forces grow stronger with each day that passes.

Yesterday, it was ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Today, it’s IS (Islamic State). Tomorrow, it will be ICME (Islamic Caliphate of the Middle East).

Make no mistake, its leaders intend world domination. They’ll not be content with reclaiming the lands of the Ottoman. Their quest is total Islam, just as the Nazi intention was world Aryanism.^[2]

ISIS cannot be compared to the Irish Republican Army, though Owen Smith appears to think differently. Its rise to power must be seen in the light of Germany 1938. While ISIS may not have the naval fleet, the vast quantities of tanks and munitions, and the air power of the Third Reich, it has something equally deadly, the ability to radicalize thousands of individuals prepared to infiltrate western societies and cause devastation and death to hundreds of innocent people. The war it wages is a guerrilla war against unarmed citizens unable to defend themselves.

To suggest that criminality and cruelty enacted on such a vast scale by ISIS can be appeased by negotiation is to relive the mistakes of Neville Chamberlain.

The Sparrow Chat post of September 2014 continued:

There’s a simple solution to the ISIS problem, but it’s not a politically acceptable one in the West. NATO needs to join forces with the Assad regime in Syria and destroy the ISIS strongholds, put an end to the Syrian civil war, then use its diplomatic muscle to work peaceably with Assad towards an, eventually, democratic Syria.^[2]

Joining forces with Assad means joining forces with Putin’s Russia. Donald Trump has suggested doing exactly that. Even madmen occasionally display moments of sanity. The only way to destroy a monster is to cut out its heart, not feed it tit-bits and expect it to become your household pet.

Owen Smith may well be one of those political aspirants who genuinely believe they’re inspired to serve the people. If this is his way of solving the greatest threat to Western civilisation since WW2, then he might serve them better from behind a counter in Walmart, or an Asda supermarket.

^{[1] “Labour leadership debate: Owen Smith suggests IS talks” BBC, August 17th 2016}

^{[2] “ISIS, IS, Or ICME?” Sparrow Chat, September 12th 2014}

One of the problems with ‘social media’ is it gives the deadheads opportunities to spout their nonsense all over the internet. To call this tweet racist is to admit to being a racist. If the fastest guy in the Olympics was a white man and Degeneres had Photoshopped herself on his back no-one would have turned a hair.

Political correctness is out of control thanks to ‘social media’.

^{“Why do some people think this meme is racist?” BBC, August 17th 2016}

The actions of the United States of America in the Middle East over the last four decades have revealed the effects of its ‘nation-building’ policies for just what they truly are. Ideals of ‘exporting freedom’, and, ‘bringing democracy to dictatorships’ (when it suits) are no more than propaganda slogans to cover the truth of global empire-building. America’s Middle Eastern foreign policies since Carter can best be described as fine examples of how things should NOT be done.

It’s hard to imagine that any wannabe U.S. president could conceive of a foreign policy even more inauspicious than those in play over the last forty years. Donald Trump has achieved it.

Trump’s supporters no doubt avidly anticipated his foreign policy speech in Ohio on Monday, hopeful of hearing a new way forward for America and the world, after the catastrophes of the last four decades.

From the first word, it was a speech designed to rouse the great unwashed and uneducated of America, and judging from the whoops of enthusiasm growing ever louder as the speaker progressed, it was an overwhelming success – at least in that one regard.

Sadly, for someone attempting to become ‘leader of the free world’, it turned out to be fifty minutes bereft of substance. The subject matter was clumsy: long tirades against Obama and Clinton, interspersed with bombastic notions of how he would send ISIS packing with it’s tail between it’s legs.

The audience loved to hear how, under Trump’s leadership, America would rapidly vanquish its enemies, end the curse of radical Islam, and bring peace and harmony flooding back into the nation, along with economic prosperity and the occasional Garden of Eden thrown in for good measure.

Unfortunately, though aspiring to mend ties with Russia and side with Assad until Syria was once more restored to order (both, incidentally, absolutely necessary for any chance of Middle Eastern stability), he then accused Iran of being the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, a farcical notion that blew apart his whole Middle East policy, which was then compounded by the statement that it would all be achieved in partnership with America’s greatest friend and ally, Israel.

Obviously, Donald Trump doesn’t know his ‘Shia’ from his ‘Sunni’ if he believes it’s a plan that’ll work. He talked of help from “our friends and allies in the Middle East” by which one can only assume he meant Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia (presently negotiating a $1.5 billion arms purchase from the U.S.), probably a far greater sponsor of world terrorism than Shia Iran had ever been. Saudi Wahhabism is radical Islam that’s simply been honed a little to become the ideology of ISIS.

It’s unlikely Trump’s ever heard of Wahhabism. If he had he mightn’t be so keen to kiss the lips of the Saudi King Salman, as his Republican predecessor, George W Bush, was happy to do on camera with the late and unlamented, Abdullah…

…and that only shortly after the atrocity of 9/11, committed by a group of nineteen terrorists that included fifteen Saudi nationals.

Trump also spoke at length of al Qaeda being decimated in Iraq after the invasion of 2003, and only allowed to recoup by failures of the Obama/Clinton administration, post 2008. To those with no knowledge of recent history, it may have sounded plausible, but there was no al Qaeda in Iraq pre-2003. The Bush administration’s failure to secure Iraq’s borders, coupled with its cruel treatment of Sunnis already under attack by a Shia majority long suppressed by the Hussein regime, created the perfect opening for al Qaeda, and other radical Sunni groups, to infiltrate Iraq. It was from these factions, coupled with the brutal treatment by the U.S. military of thousands of Iraqi Sunnis housed in U.S. internment camps, that ISIS was born.

U.S. policy makers have long neglected to take account of Islamic history and its divisions. Most had never heard of ‘Sunni’ or ‘Shia’ until after the Iraq débâcle. Such gross lack of knowledge of the region and its people is the primary reason for the instability in the Middle East today.

Listening to Trump’s foreign policy speech one could only cringe at both the arrogance and ignorance of the man. Like so many powerful politicians and policy makers before him he believes that, as the only world superpower, America can dictate terms to all and sundry throughout the globe, and expect instant compliance. The last four decades of U.S. foreign policy blundering is surely proof of how wrong that attitude can be.

Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama…all six presidents have adopted similar policies, with disastrous consequences for the peace of the world and the safety of innocent people. Clinton ‘2’ will undoubtedly pursue a similar course if she’s elected to the White House. To date, the only alternative is Donald Trump, which doesn’t even bear consideration.

Trump’s speech was a fine example of skillful marketing practices. Had he been selling vacuum cleaners it’s likely everyone in the arena would have rushed to stump up the money and left clutching the “Trump Mk 2 SuperVac” under their arms.

Unfortunately, once they got home, they’d soon discover that it had no motor.

^{“Donald Trump Foreign Policy Speech” YouTube, August 15th 2016 (For those who can bear to watch it!)}