G'Day Damascus

For John, BLUF:  Syria is turning into the Spain of the current decade, people coming from far and wide to fight Assad, the new Fascist—or is al Qaeda the new Fascism?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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This is a report at the Blog Fortuna's Corner, "G’Day Damascus:  Australians Are Joining Syria's Rebels in Surprising Numbers"?  The original source is, apparently, Time Magazine.

The lead-in is that more Aussies than any other "developed nation" nationals are fighting in Syria.  The key point is that Sunni v Shia differences are being acted out in Australia.  On top of that there is the question of trained jihadists returning home.

In February, Norwegian terrorism expert Thomas Hegghammer released a paper showing that 1 in 9 Westerners who fight in foreign jihadist insurgencies ends up becoming involved in terrorist plots back home.

I do not see either of those sorts of adverse outcomes here in these United States.  Perhaps that is because we are fairly big and diversified.  There are 316,252,000 people in the US, give or take.  I was surprised that Wikipedia says that 0.8 percent of those people are Muslim.  I thought it was larger.  In Australia, per Wikipedia, 2.2% are Muslim.  Maybe it is America's Second Amendment.  Maybe it is NSA, although the Boston Marathon Bombing would suggest that isn't the case.

The thing is, it hasn't been called "The Long War" for nothing.  We need to have long term perspectives and long term solutions.  What we don't need are short term solutions with long term adverse consequences.  You want an example?  Interning all those Japanese on the West Coast during World War II (and also interning Germans and Italians).

Regards  —  Cliff