War and Peace -- revisited

But we haven't been hurled to the unreachable levels of the Supremely Pathetic yet. That happens when Qatar starts to mull a "direct military intervention" in Syria. Qatar's Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah told CNN, "Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is."

At this level of demented geopolitics, all that's left is quoting another demented player, jihad-enabler Bandar Bush (he threatened Putin face to face, no less), who -- correctly -- depicted Qatar as "300 people and a TV station." Leave it to GCC "thinkers" to conceptualize Saudi and Qatari F-16s bombing Iranian forces next to Russia's air base at Latakia, a couple of Sukhois turning them to ashes and then, what, the Pentagon declares WWIII?

And for the requisite post-Monty Python sketch, let's have the -- demented -- King Salman of Saudi Arabia plus the mini-emir of Qatar deliberating at a whisky/cognac/lap-dancing party how to go to war against both Russia and Iran just so al-Qaeda in Syria may engineer regime change in Damascus.

It's always enlightening to keep in mind Tunisian writer Hamadi Redissi; "The theses of millenarian, misanthrope, bellicose, anti-Christian, anti-Semite, misogynous Islam are all found in raw in Wahhabism." Or Algerian writer Bualem Sansal; "Papa's Arab world will be finished once this absurd thing will be smashed, this club of arrogant and cruel fake princes, which pose as guardians of the mythic Arab race and true Islam."

Well, things are not much better in the realm of that Salafist Grand Turk in a blue suit, Sultan Erdogan.

Assuming there will be real Moscow-Washington coordination (and that's a major "if") to seal the Syrian-Turkish border -- where a de facto no-fly zone is already in effect, controlled by Russia -- this will cut not only ISIS/ISIL/Daesh but also al-CIAda "moderate rebels" from their supply lines.

Three consequences are immediate. 1) no Turkish-controlled "safe haven" in northern Syria implemented by Turkmen brigades (that's already the case). 2) No possibility of Ankara annexing Aleppo. 3) the end of all elaborate plans for that nefarious gas pipeline from Qatar through Syria all the way to Turkey to supply European customers, one of the absolute key reasons fomenting the Syrian tragedy.

Vainglorious Sultan Erdogan will never be able to live with that.

Is peace still war?

As Baghdad advances on its own fight against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh -- to the thunderous silence of embarrassed-to-oblivion Western corporate media -- Moscow keeps pressing for the voice of reason.

Bashar al-Assad's spectacular Moscow appearance -- which enraged neocons/neoliberalcons to Kingdom Come -- came complete with an ultra-high level dinner with Putin, Medvedev, Lavrov and Shoygu. It does not get more graphic than that; the order of priorities is to fight the "Caliphate" goons to death, and in parallel conduct a political process. Forget about regime change.

Putin briefed both Sultan Erdogan and King Salman on the phone. Then Russia, US, Turkey and Saudi foreign ministers met in Vienna on Friday to discuss the political road map. Moscow has to convince Riyadh that Tehran also must be at the table; that's starkly obvious, but try reasoning with those Saudi "thinkers." Even John Kerry has been uncharacteristically reasonable, stressing all countries with an interest in Syria, including Russia and Iran, agree on the need for a unified, secular and pluralistic Syria governed with the consent of its people.

So, extrapolating from Putin's speech, this is where war and peace stand at the moment. But as this is a mad, mad world where peace is war, it's as if we are all left in suspension by what a bunch of deranged Wahhabis are up to next.