The dawn of the 21st century hearlded great progress and change. The ability to connect with others at lightspeed sent the tech industry into a bubble of innovation and invention that has yet to burst. Handheld devices one hundred times more powerful then the computers used to send a rocketship to the moon are more popular around the world then ever. Globalism is on the rise and with it more and more diversity of thought and action in every sphere of political power.

Of course the line between diversification of cultures and the smothering of them can be a fine one. One only has to look at what happened in indie game development to see how one culture overtakes another, in this case liberal arts people driving out the hardcore nerds. See Gamergate for more examples of cultural subversion.

Some would call this a natural process, an evolution of one subsection of society into another. Personally I believe it is part of a systamatic degeneration of society at large perpetrated by russian intel agents in order to weaken and ultimatly control western civilization. There has been evidence of them making use of the hippie movment in the 1960s and 1970s and I see no reason why they would stop. Russia had an excellent intelligence operation set up.

I doubt they would relinquish such a grip on the west despite massive budget cuts. Sure, their operations may have slowed down due to the fall of the USSR but there is very little proof they ever stopped completly. Now with Russia once again on the rise it is safe to say that their covert operations are most likly on the rise as well.

Russia is not alone in its threat however. China is an economic powerhouse that dwarvs most of the world in terms of raw industrial output. I would not understimate their military and intel capabilities.

My point in naming these two great powers as cultural opponents is that both have a history in subversion by cultural means. Russia when they held strong influence in the soviet block of eastern europe and ancient china when they simply made the conquering huns into chinese. America to sells its culture through its entertainment industry and massive economic influence around the world.

These great powers and more, they each of them, want the common mans mind, body and soul to use as fodder for their powerbase. And I don't think thats good or just or right. In fact I think it downright sucks.

My proposal is simple but first I will define what I mean by strong moral leadership.

Strong moral leadership is the ability to organize and direct a group of people along a code of behavior that benefits the whole of said group while retaining humanitarian idealism as well as taking responsibility for the ones being led.

Jesus Christ would be an example of a strong moral leader as would King Solomon, Hamarabi, Joan De Ark, Pope John, Napolean, all the founding fathers of the United States of America and these only name what I could come up with off the top of my head. Im certain there are many others that would easily fall under the label of strong moral leader. The one who drafted the manga carta, his name escapes me at the moment.

An example of one that I would consider a weak moral leader would be hitler due to his persecution of his own german people and overall dividing them up leaving his country vulnerable.

It is time for a change in the west. For too long we have let the idea that all cultures are created equal poison our reasoning. Christianity is better than islam in almost every respect. Religious people live happier and fuller lives than athiests.

I propose that we each author our own bible and let the holy spirit talk directly through each of us. These books can be collected and made into a new doctrine, one based on reason and the light instead of the shadows of superstition and the past. A new book for a new age.

Thanks for listening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijrYNTaTnC8

The heroic soul in man has long been degraded and neglected. The decline of heroism in our present, Western culture is something that has been observed and commented on by some of the most brilliant minds in our human race. These include the likes of Nietzsche, Carlyle and Spengler. And then there is the controversial Italian philosopher, Julius Evola, whose book, "The Metaphysics of War", is quoted in the above, 10-minute-long video in an excerpt on this very topic. Evola too remarked upon the decline of heroism in our present culture. The decline of the old, aristocratic warrior values has culminated in the triumph of the ghastly bourgeois, liberal, democratic, materialist mass society that has forgotten the way of the upright, far-seeing and heroic men of old, who strove for spiritual perfection and the affirmation of human existence in suffering, struggle and risk.

The men of old knew struggle. They would have been much less materially comfortable than we, much less intellectually developed, and much less secure. They would have known great poverty, great ignorance, great danger. The only way to give meaning to their petty existence would have been to transcend their mere humanity and become determined warriors inured to hardship and the privations of a life that was primitive relative to ours.

In a world of material abundance, over-intellectualism and near-perfect security, the modern man of the Western world knows nothing like struggle or suffering, at least not the struggle and suffering of old. He is protected from almost everything which might threaten his comfortable and contented existence, free to take part in a never-ending pursuit after "happiness", which so often finds itself transformed into nothing more than a contemptible lust after meaningless possessions.

It follows that in a comfortable and contented state of utilitarian bliss, man does not need see the need for heroes to guide his path and make him great anymore. The bourgeois lie of equality extends and entrenches its ideological stranglehold over society in every institution of learning and art culture and civil society in general.

Yet there are heroes among us!

The hero lives within only a few human beings, many of whom may not yet be aware of the might they carry within their soul. They have a power that can shape societies and bring down empires, if only they knew how to activate it, and how to use it for their glory, and therefrom, mankind's.

All powers that have decreed the equality of men are to be regarded as false, deceitful and traitors to mankind. There are the great men, the supreme beings, the higher individuals, those whom Nietzsche calls "free spirits". And then there are the rest, to whom the hero owes nothing but contempt. It is the duty of the inferior persons to subject themselves to the domination of he who is so much greater than they, and to strive for unity with his soul so that they will imitate at least a tinge of his greatness.

The concept of the hero and heroism is not something that can be subjected to scientific scrutiny or made open to rational explanation. It is an irrational force of nature, demanding power and prostration from all sentient beings. It is a world-view that is accessible to those that will open their eyes, ears and hearts to the sagas of our highest men, and to the heartfelt songs sung in praise of these mighty men of valour.

The hero emerged very early on in human history, in primitive societies without learning or culture or much of an artistic sense. These societies were dominated, in general, by men. They were in constant danger - from the elements, from microorganisms, from wild animals and from other tribes. It was as if nature itself wanted to wipe the nascent human species out of existence. The survival of early man depended to a great extent on heroes. So often a human society, feeling demoralised from all the pressures of existence, would have a great man from among them step out to inspire them with the will to live once more, and not merely to subsist but to exist for higher things - in effect, to transcend mere existence. Such a man would have been the most eloquent of his community, at a time when language was only just being formed. He would have a way with words, this fellow, and he would stir the imaginations of his audience. In effect, he was a good story-teller. The charisma which emanated from his soul presented his listeners with a sense of awe at the bold and joyous way in which he showed them the way to a life of struggle, and the embrace of such a life. "Surely, this man must be our leader! Our king, even!" In such a fashion were born the very first leaders. The very word "king", if one studies its Germanic origins, gives us the concept of a "leader of the people", one of noble, if not divine, birth, one who is worthy to rule over his fellow men.

But let us not stop our imaginings there. Let us picture a tribe of old living in communal harmony in some parts somewhere on this primitive planet of ours. This tribe is constantly assailed by rival tribes who seize all of their harvest during the time when their flourishing is to occur. We are in fact provided with an example of this in none other than the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, in Judges, where we are presented with the character of Gideon, described as a "mighty man of valour":

6 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. 2 Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. 3 Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. 4 They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. 5 They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. 6 Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.

7 When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”

In response to the pleas of the Israelites, God sends his angel to Gideon, a humble farmer, who transforms himself into a warrior overnight, sent by a divinity to deliver his people from a hateful oppression. He becomes a leader of men, defeating thousands of Israel's enemies with only a handful of men in a daring night raid. However mythical and implausible this event as recounted to us by those ancient Hebrew scribes may be, the literal truth is not the point. There is a strong element of truth at the core of this tale. How many peoples in ancient times were on the brink of destruction, only to have a hero from among them rush to their defence and secure the preservation of the whole community? Was Cincinnatus not raised to the supreme power, the office of dictator, his people recognising his courage, his worth, his superiority, his right to lead? Was it not the same with Coriolanus, or Hammurabi, or Pericles? (Albeit the latter was subjected to the constraints of a wretched and contemptible democratic system.) How many countless other cultures and civilisations have stood before the abyss, on the precipice of utter ruin and destruction, before a worthy man from among their number took it upon himself to lead them, to teach them how to fight, how to face death like true warriors, how to comport themselves in the mighty struggle for survival that is our human existence? In the 1970 film Waterloo starring Rod Steiger, Napoleon Bonaparte says, "He who saves a nation violates no law." How can we, in our bourgeois arrogance, judge them in accordance with our pacifistic liberal morality, they being higher men than we are?

Heroism is not something that can be measured by any scientific standard. It is an inner, spiritual concept, inaccessible to human reason. When one is confronted with a truly great and heroic being, then one who is attuned to things of that nature feels it instantly, and is drawn to the sheer charismatic presence of greatness in his midst. "No man is a hero to his valet." as Thomas Carlyle approvingly quotes Hegel. One does not get this profound feeling of awestruck admiration from going to hear the vapid, vacuous speeches of idiotic bourgeois politicians in a liberal democracy, whose words are attuned to the desires of the unthinking masses, whose horizons are so constrained, whose visions are so lacking and whose lives are so devoid of purpose as to be completely unworthy of the attention of anyone who truly seeks out great men. Truly original, heroic individuals are not those who go whoring after the praises of the mob or the joyous shouts and applause of mediocre individuals, but they seek out a few, loyal, devoted and purposeful individuals, and mould them, as a potter does clay, into their own image. One reads the story of the Hebrew hero Gideon in Judges 7, and how he sent back those men whom he divined were not up to the task of heroic struggle, weeding out the wheat from the chaff by means of tests. First, he told those who were too afraid to fight to return to their homes. Those of a bourgeois spirit, who wanted a comfortable and pacifistic existence, were represented by this group, who were removed from the battle so that they did not poison the fighting spirit of the Hebrews. Then he decided to see whether the remaining men lapped up or knelt down to drink up the water with which they were provided. Those who knelt down to drink were sent away, whilst those of a fighting spirit, determined to seize what they wanted with both hands, were kept. Three hundred men were left. With them, Gideon won a glorious victory.

It is impossible to be faced with a great man, or to read of his worthy and heroic deeds, without feeling the compulsion to worship him as a god, and to totally subject oneself to him. It is the god-like quality of heroes that is behind the world's major religions. Great men came, shook the foundations of established society, created new values, died and passed into eternity. Their tales were often retold by posterity centuries after they had passed on, handed down by word of mouth, and later, with the invention of written language, recorded on paper. These men were often posthumously deified - so it was with Julius Caesar, whom the Senate proclaimed the Divine Julius. All Roman emperors thereafter bore his name, and it was adopted by various rulers as a title. Such is the origin of the titles Kaiser and Tsar. One should quote the angel that appeared to Gideon to proclaim him leader of the Hebrews, "The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valour." These were not ordinary men, though they may have had ordinary beginnings like Gideon. Their destinies became intertwined with the fates of entire nations and changed the course of world history in a way that has to be seen as one of the surest justifications for the existence of a divinity - the semi-divine manner in which extraordinary things are done through mere men. But assuming, like Nietzsche, that God does not exist, it must follow that man himself is a type of god, and that the higher men of mankind are its chief gods.

Such is heroism. Heroes perform glorious deeds so that they might justify their own existence, and even transcend it, and so become what Nietzsche referred to as the Overman, or the Superman. Heroes do not seek comfort and bourgeois "happiness", but struggle, danger and the creative destruction of war. They are not perfect men, but they are men who seek perfection, true, spiritual perfection, and the overcoming of the weaknesses and follies of man. Their heroic actions are an inspiration to others, raising the human race to yet higher standards of vibrant spirituality and civilisation. The key to restoring civilisation will be to restoring a heroic sense of life and a sense of purpose and heroic destiny.

Liberalism was an ideology of great promise and with revolutionary implications. Yet here, today, liberalism stands instead as a stultifying rather than a truly progressive force. Today, politicians and intellectuals prate about "progress" and "human rights" and "equality", yet the elite stands helpless before a great populist rebellion against a project that was flawed from the very outset, and the success of which is undesirable.

Liberalism emerged in the early modern period and its growth in popularity and power culminated in the nineteenth-century, the liberal century, the century of free trade and relative peace on the continent of Europe. Its bourgeois values displaced the heroic, aristocratic values that had dominated Europe in the Dark Ages and were slowly eroded over the centuries by Christianity and slave morality. Now, instead of warlike heroism, struggle and conquest, the main themes became commerce, material gain, peace and security. The decline of aristocratic values thanks to liberalism has been a sorry development in the course of Western history. Now, instead of the exultation of violent struggle and transcendence of self, the easy, soulless and consumerist life is glorified and everything subordinated to the needs of the mediocre masses. We have left behind a time when a heroic elite was free to plunder and rule over the inferior peoples, to now, when comfort and security is promised to each and every individual, and the self-important, virtue-signalling, mediocre entity given the misnomer of "liberal elite" has dedicated itself to making it happen through an exercise of soft and debilitating global authoritarianism.

Liberalism made several cardinal errors. Firstly, it presumed, falsely, that all men were endowed with equal political and spiritual rights. Secondly, it asserted the freedom to do what one wanted (libertinism) over true freedom, the freedom to live a good and fulfilling life. In effect, it prioritised the right over the good, encouraging a sense of entitlement on the part of individuals rather than a compulsion or a feeling of duty to transcend oneself and achieve perfection. This marked a degeneration in philosophy from the admirable and heroic values of Classical Greece to the hollow and despicable values that are celebrated today. Thirdly, it ignored the fact that human beings are animated by non-rational drives and that the facts of life transcend reason, creating a mindless cult of reason and justice far removed from the reality of the human experience.

The first error - the false presumption of equality between men. All of recorded human history is testament to the fact that men are not equal. The relationships between men are invariably that of master and slave, conqueror and conquered, victor and victim. To deny this it to deny the reality that is plain before every thinking being. To assume that all men are endowed with a certain set of arbitrarily-defined rights is the height of folly and absurdity. The concept of a set of abstractions being entitlements which every human being should have fulfilled by virtue of the fact that he or she is living and breathing is nonsensical on its face. Let us look, for example, at the right to vote. The idea that every single human being has the right to choose his or her government is a false and idiotic one. Certain individuals are endowed with superior intelligence, foresight and vision and deserve to have their votes weighted more heavily than that of the unthinking plebeian, whose thoughts rarely, if ever, transcend fixation on mere creature comforts, like eating and sleeping and shelter. This is assuming that the masses should be allowed to vote at all, and that voting should not be restricted to an elite that is worthy of the privilege and that is self-selecting. If America had a political system which allows for truly heroic individuals to seize power and re-order society according to their will, the world would not now be treated to the spectacle of a clownish, bourgeois demagogue in the White House. But it is not voting only that should form our topic of concern. There is also the presumption that human beings have other rights such as freedom of movement or freedom of speech or freedom of expression, and not only that they have them but that they should be untrammelled. The first contradicts the fact that any society of quality must be selective about the type of individuals it permits to live alongside them. Failure to do this results in what I call the Curse of the Gibeonites. (Read the story of Joshua and the Gibeonites in the Bible to see what I mean.) Freedom of speech, by giving every unlearned idiot the right to proclaim whatever nonsense finds its way into their tiny, inconceivable grey matter, causes the beauty of language to disappear and renders words that were once graceful and pure and signs of elevation and cultivation common and vulgar, and allows for the eruption of ideas that have their origins in slave morality and hatred for the heroic and hierarchy. Language should be used to glorify man and the best of men, not to stir up a spirit of democratic revolt against the good and noble. In the best cultures and civilisations, the elite spoke in a language inaccessible to the masses, who were kept illiterate and unlearned, the better so as to prevent dissension and violent revolution. "Freedom" of expression has given birth to degenerate art, the likes of which are promoted shamelessly in mass culture and downgrade the artistic sense of an entire society. Furthermore, the concept of freedom of expression ignores the fact that some of the best and highest art has developed out of persecution, great hardship and suffering. Dante wrote his Divine Comedy during a harsh and miserable time in his life, exiled from his birthplace and all he loved, and he poured his wounded soul into a work of art that has since become famous. What would Dostoyevsky have become had he not suffered the hardships and privations of being a political prisoner in Siberia? Would Shakespeare's plays be as effective pieces of art or as intellectually stimulating as they are if the great bard had not had to constantly deploy obfuscation and hidden, esoteric meanings in his work to avoid persecution and disgrace in society? The doctrine of freedom of expression ignores quality and encourages quantity at quality's expense. Indeed, it encourages a society in which anyone can become famous overnight through genuflection and subjection to the tastes of the depraved masses. Censorship and aristocratic pressure and patronage have generally given birth to the greatest works of art. Freedom of expression is not something that should be wasted on the masses, but should be reserved for the very best human beings, so as not to encourage the growth of lower culture.

Secondly, liberalism encouraged libertinism and the right over the good. In Classical Greece and other ancient societies, freedom was defined not as freedom to do as one pleased, but as self-mastery and creative discipline. In a relativistic liberal society, hedonism is a doctrine that has found willing adherents. With drugs, porn, clubbing and other such degenerate aspects of modern life so readily available, people are diverted from pouring their energy into doing things that are more fulfilling. Liberalism has therefore encouraged a world revolving around material gain, comfort and ease. Businessmen strive to make as much profit as possible by appealing to the vanity, stupidity and ignorance of the masses, and as they are partly dependent on the appeal of their products to the masses, they do not often have the strength of will to stand apart from the masses and in opposition to mass culture. Whatever Ayn Rand with her ridiculous stereotypes of "aristocratic", "heroic" businessmen thought, the truth is that the most high-profile bourgeois capitalists of our day and age like Mike Zuckerberg and Bill Gates can be seen promoting trendy, "progressive" policies that give them popularity with the masses and rarely, if ever, encouraging truly heroic and aristocratic values which are not dependent on the masses for their value and worth. Now, businessmen are honoured in society whilst warriors and soldiers are scorned and excoriated. War is denounced, masculinity undermined and pacifism upheld as a virtue, so that those that would once have formed a heroic, aristocratic warrior elite ruling over society are now in the service of commerce and cowardly bourgeois men who are loath to fight in their own defence.

Thirdly, liberalism ignorantly proposed that all human beings were rational or capable of using reason to decide their affairs. Liberalism ignores the fact that human beings are tied by non-rational bonds of friendship, love, hatred and kinship which transcend the power of "reason" to moderate and tame. Pursuing negotiations with lunatic states like North Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran is futile, as their existence is predicated upon extreme religious, non-rational drives of antagonism which will always and forever influence their behaviour in seeking domination over, not merely parity with, the West. We see, in the example of these two states, wills to power conflicting with our own, something the liberals, with their faith in the power of reason to settle human disputes, refuse to see. Human beings are not able to decide intelligently for themselves in a great many cases, but make choices which are seemingly inexplicable and counter-productive. Liberal states like in the West are thus naive in their expectations of how human beings should behave, and are neutered in their response to aggression. The loss of the old warrior ethos has made the West weak, docile and unwilling to face the threats with which it is now confronted. The lazy, comfortable bourgeoisie fear war, as it threatens their profit margins. The democratic politicians do not wish to steel themselves for conflict, knowing that this will be unpopular among the masses, who no longer care to fight great and mighty battles, but only for comfort, ease and material gain, and that their happy existence will be disturbed. Yet human beings that actually seek meaning from life seek more than immediate gratification or to maximise their utility in the marketplace, but seek to overcome the limitations placed upon man.

The old liberal order is collapsing before our eyes, the democratic politicians no longer able to keep up the facade. Great and terrible conflicts will emerge, in which thousands, even millions, will be killed, and it will be disastrous for the many, but wonderful for those of us who crave the revival of heroic values and the exercise of power and domination, so that the aristocratic warrior elite will return to preeminence.

The spectre of the Iraq War and the fallout from it haunts politicians to this very day. On that fateful spring of 2003, the United States under President George W. Bush, backed by its allies, especially Britain, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, made the decision to invade Baathist Iraq, which was under the iron rule of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had ruled the country since 1979. The blowback from the war and the carnage that has resulted in that wretched country for the past twelve years continues to traumatise the Western body politic and warn it against any further meddling in Middle Eastern politics. Support for an isolationist foreign policy is at an all-time high, and understandably so. Even now, the exact reasons for why the war was a complete and utter failure are about as complex as the nation of Iraq itself, with its multi-confessional, sclerotic, pluralistic political scene confounding and confusing Westerners and Iraqis alike.

Those on the left generally make light of what they claim was the self-serving nature of the invasion, and believe that the justifications given for said invasion were little more than a smokescreen for sordid and exploitative ends, namely, that the Iraq War was an imperialistic misadventure, a murky and decidedly immoral and opportunistic experiment and aiming at aggrandisement of Western interests. (In other words, we did it for the oil.) Those on the right generally decry what they say was a lack of ruthlessness, or the shockingly reckless decision by President Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, abandoning the country to the predations of hidebound Islamist gangsters clad in black and working for the sinister and murderous Al-Qaeda, whose head, Osama bin Laden, did not live to see how efficiently his acolytes would wantonly spill the blood of the benighted people of that unfortunate country in the years to come.

In this article I do not aim to argue for whether or not we should have invaded in the first place, but simply to explore ways in which the war might have been won once we were there, with the help of the famous work of Italian political philosopher and man of letters, Niccolo Machiavelli, in his book, The Prince, a treatise on the timeless relationship between man and the body politic, political power and how to keep it. Machiavelli was an unabashed realist who revelled in describing and detailing exactly how power worked; not how it should work in some brighter, better world, but how things worked in the real world.

The U.S. strategy in Iraq in particular rested upon hidebound abstractions and idealistic poppycock about the nature of the country we were invading and occupying. There was the misguided notion that we could transform what had effectively been a traumatised, terror-stricken population which had lived under a virtual police state for over two decades into a peaceful, freedom-loving, Western-style society. Then there was the false belief that all of Iraq’s multifarious sects and interest groups (Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia) could somehow get along and not feel the need to kill each other every five minutes. I am arguing that only in learning how power actually works, and applying it accordingly, will we know where we went wrong in Iraq. I will underline several suggestions made by Machiavelli on the keeping and attaining of power, and suggest how these could have been applied to Iraq.

Before we delve into this rigorous philosophical discourse, it is important to understand the importance in Machiavelli’s thought of the opposing concepts of virtu and fortuna. Virtu is an Italian word derived from Latin, and encompasses many different aspects that cannot be translated into a single English word, but it could be stated to mean one thing: efficacy. Namely, the ability of an individual to control events, predict events and gauge what he must do in every situation, i.e. prepare for the unexpected. This is as opposed to fortuna, or fortune as we would recognise it in English, which is fickle and can easily change, and can knock those without virtu, in other words, without the foresight and the sagacity to see what’s coming, off their temporary pedestal of authority and power.

In Machiavelli’s The Prince, three main methods are provided for holding conquered enemy states (such as Iraq). These include: 1. The prince going to live there in person. 2. Installing colonies. 3. Allying with the weaker powers in the area whilst putting down the stronger powers, which could be a threat to one’s own hegemony. Now option 1 was clearly implausible if taken literally, as the U.S. President could not simply have abandoned his country to live in Iraq. However, it would not have been so implausible for the generals and their troops to be stationed there in lieu of the President. Unfortunately in the initial stages of the war they were placed outside the capital city of Baghdad whilst control of the capital was handed over to Iraqi government forces, whose shameful incompetence gave Al-Qaeda forces free rein over the capital for a good few years before the U.S. corrected its mistakes and stationed troops within the city itself in bunkers, to apprehend and kill Al-Qaeda forces before they could do much damage. Option 2 was even more implausible as no American would sacrifice the comforts of his life at home to start a new life in a dangerous and unstable country like Iraq as a colonist. Option 3 was the most implausible as no Middle Eastern power came out in support of the invasion of Iraq, which was seen as illegitimate and unprovoked. However, this does not mean that the U.S. could not have made a greater attempt at stopping powerful rival nations like Iran from gaining a foothold in Iraq, which they failed to do. Iran encouraged ♥♥♥♥♥♥ militias in Iraq under the control of the radical cleric al-Sadr to butcher hundreds of American soldiers, and with the election of an Iranian-backed ♥♥♥♥♥♥ government, Iraq fell into the Islamic Republic’s clutches. It would have been wise for the U.S.A. to take Machiavelli’s advice, not hold an election for fear that hostile powers like Iran could influence the results and aggressively combat Iranian influence and its covert support for the insurgency boldly and publicly. Machiavelli noted that in a state accustomed to being free, a good method of keeping it under one’s thumb would be to put in place a puppet regime loyal to your state. However, a country like Iraq, accustomed to decades of tyranny, was not the country in which this should have been implemented.

Machiavelli makes light of the concept of “criminal virtue”, outlining examples of princes who rose to power through murderous and immoral deeds such as massacring their political opponents in cold blood. In Iraq, we were under the false pretence that the Iraqi people were overjoyed to have us there - but once the cheering crowds had subsided and the garland-throwing girls had returned to their homes, we saw the reality - that our presence there was resented, that we had been glorified and adulated insofar as we were the destroyers of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, but we were not wanted there on a permanent basis, as civilisers, policemen, as occupiers. A large swathe of the Iraqi population gave free rein to terrorist activity, and served as the sea in which Al-Qaeda’s minions swam - no sooner had they conducted murderous operations against U.S. soldiers than they would melt back into the bland and undifferentiated mass of the Iraqi population, making it close to impossible to catch up with them. Our own self-defeating way of fighting war, ensuring that it complied with the abomination known as “Just War Theory”, ensured that we put the lives of people that wanted to kill our troops above our own. It is clear what the solution to this should have been - an exercise in criminal virtue. There was no need, in the aftermath of the invasion, to waste time with criminal trials, with “due” process, in a time of war - it would have saved a lot more time, and a lot more effort, if a list had been drawn up of all the major thugs in Iraq that needed catching, and we had simply caught and killed them all by firing squad as soon as humanly possible, including Saddam Hussein. When the pro-Saddamist city of Fallujah rebelled against U.S. troops and terrorists within the city, operating with the support of much of the population, had the audacity to ambush and kill Americans, the only logical thing to do after such an atrocious act would have been to tear the city of Fallujah apart, brick by brick, house by house, road by road, and wipe it off the face of the earth, as a lesson to all those within the Sunni community who still had some sympathy for the fallen Baathist regime. A similar thing might have been done to the city of Najaf after al-Sadr thought it would be a good idea to hide there, and conduct death squad missions against U.S. soldiers from it. It would also have been wise to burn down Camp Bucca with all the jihadists inside, thereby ridding ourselves of many of the future leaders of ISIS, who were indoctrinated within said camp and formed the next generation of battle-hardened chieftains of terror. With the Shia community similarly cowed into submission, the sensible thing to do afterwards would have been to take people’s minds off the carnage by building playgrounds, schools and grand mosques in order to keep them occupied and content. Terror is to be used sparingly, for when excessive it can be counter-productive, as the jihadists would find to their cost in 2006.

Which reminds one - Saddam Hussein’s execution was one poor show. It was so underwhelming and lacking in propaganda value as to have not been worth it at all. It should have been a grand and momentous affair, conducted in the centre of Baghdad for all of the citizens to see, in Firdous Square, with songs, cheers and even a short film documenting Saddam Hussein’s life and crimes shown to the audience. Saddam should have had his mouth gagged in order to stop him making any hysterical proclamations in interruption of the event and been executed towards the very end of the event, in full view of the Iraqi people - with no trapdoor - so that the whole, grisly scene of strangulation and death could be shown to the Iraqi people. Instead it was carried out in a dark, dingy room and was carried out by agents of Moqtada al-Sadr, himself a terrorist and mass murderer, who chanted the first name of their leader hysterically as Saddam Hussein muttered in disbelief just minutes before his death - which was otherwise much more dignified than he deserved.

You all might remember an announcement I made last year like this:

"I went to a 31st night church service last night, and the "Prophet" there made a number of astonishing revelations. He claimed that:

-There will be an earthquake in Jamaica
-There will be an epidemic in South America stretching into Asia
-Two strong African Presidents will die
-There will be 36 plane crashes
-There will be 79 red alerts of terrorism in the UK and six planned bomb attacks (but none of the bombs will go off)
-There will be three bomb blasts in the nation of Germany and the German people will suffer a great disaster.
-A well-known Pastor will come out to say that he is gay, and many will lose faith in Christianity as a result
-Tesco will collapse
-Santander will collapse
-People who invest in bonds will be safe

Just noting these down for future reference in case they come true :)"

Well none of those came true.

LOL.