That was Henry Kissinger’s famous sally about the war between Iran and Iraq, back in the 80s. Now, the big rivals in that part of the world are not actually nations, in the conventional sense. They are, rather, movements with aspirations to more than just physical territory. They are out to conquer the the Muslim world. As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Bridget Moreng write at Politico, both al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) are on the offensive and
What we are likely to see now is a titanic war of ideology and tactics between two vicious, radical groups that together probably command more prestige among Arab peoples than the weak, often delegitimized governments they have outsmarted and outfought. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that, in an era when the threat of terrorist violence is arguably worse than it was on the eve of 9/11, it is Al Qaeda—a decade ago, the scourge of Sunni governments—that may come to be seen as the more acceptable of the two by these same governments.
And entirely unacceptable to the non-Muslim world, especially the United States.
May they fight to death … of both.
