jeb bush this morning: "this is a war for western civilization." then he said that we have to be extremely cautious letting in syrian refugees, except that we should immediately take all christians. this might be going extremely wrong. i don't think the kerry-technocrat frame that we face a war of now or the future against the medieval era is any better, and indeed it turns out to mean the same thing, more or less.
alright, meanwhile obama is meeting with putin. possibly the best-case scenario is everyone-against-isis: russia, the us, iran, assad, egypt, the kurds. and israel? but now notice the wildly different agendas of these groups, and the wildly different domestic political pressures they are under. whatever we yap, we have to have come off our insistence that assad be deposed in this process; everyone's priority has to be isis now.
but, however, notice the many wild cards; israel, turkey, and the saudis all have reasons to oppose a shia victory throughout the middle east, to say nothing of massive simultaneous invasion by nato and russia. isis has potentially regime-threatening insurgencies/civil wars going in afghanistan, egypt, libya, while a number of satellite battlefields could merge fully, such as yemen, where the saudis confront the iranians right now. all of north africa is in play, and across to pakistan.
if you do have nato or the us and the russians fighting on the ground, many things can go wrong, and if we are de facto allied there, i predict that russia will simultaneously put more military pressure on eastern europe; putin has his expansionist agenda that we cannot afford to feed too far. and yet we can't not, cause what are we or the eu going to do? they'll be dependent on russia in syria.
meanwhile, lord knows what happens now in the european 'refugee crisis.' that itself could turn violent, as hundreds of thousands wash up on borders as they close, and right-wing sentiment runs wild in europe. maybe you get some national front-type parties rising dramatically. three more paris-type actions and the roundups/camps begin. president rubio and defense secretary graham think it's going to take 500,000 troops and all the money in the world; the gao is already taking bids for the memorial on the mall.
once the thing is framed as a war for western civilization and of christians against muslims by both sides, and once the christian powers invade and start occupying, whole populations will endorse extremely violent resistance and the projection of terrorism into the west. then both sides will crank up the apocalyptic rhetoric more, and so on.
anyway, i'm not nostradamus, and i would take almost any way out, and there might be some. but man today this thing looks like an unfolding world-historical crisis a la the world wars.
