In the face of jihadist provocations, the impotent posturings of the West advertise the weakness and naïveté of the spin-driven invertebrates we call our political leaders.
A considerable amount of blame for the desperate personal tragedy which engulfed James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and threatens soon to engulf a British hostage, should be directed at the starry-eyed idealists. People like Tony Blair and self-styled "heir to Blair" David Cameron, who have contributed so much the instability in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other benighted countries.
Their undermining of secular dictatorships in the Near East has given the jihadi lunatics their opportunity. The blood of innocent hostages like Foley and Sotloff lies on the hands of idealistic Western politicians too.
It is a time-honoured truism that "The path to Hell is paved with good intentions". Unfortunately, we are cursed with mere boys in high political office, with no understanding of the real world. We need some real men to do a man's job.
The current US President is a vacuous inadequate, who follows in the tradition of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Carter unlocked the Pandora's Box of Islamic fundamentalism by pulling the rug out from under the Shah of Iran in 1979 and handing power to Ayatollah Khomeini.
But subsequent Western policy blunders in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and Syria have made things 10 times worse. You know things must be bad when Al Qaeda denounces Islamic State for being too extreme.
Britain's great 19th Century Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, observed: "Britain has no eternal friends or eternal enemies; only eternal interests". Such hard-headed realism in foreign policy is way out of fashion.
Blair and Cameron's foolish meddling has opened the door to fanatics just as brutal as Saddam Hussein and far worse than Syria's Assad. More to the point, the Islamic fundamentalists are much more dangerous to our own national interests than secular Arab strong-men could ever be.
The West is now in an existential struggle with merciless apocalyptic forces determined to destroy us. Islamic State's latest propaganda publication, "Dabiq," defends the execution of Sunni tribesmen in eastern Syria this year because, having accepted the IS caliphate, they later "betrayed their covenant by rebelling."
It justifies their brutal execution by recounting how Mohammed, when faced with treachery, ordered the perpetrators' hands and feet be cut off, their eyes gouged out with hot irons and that they be left to die. "This shows the severity of the prophetic punishment against the treacherous, false claimants of Islam."
Patrick Sookhdeo, an expert on radical Islam, notes that Dabiq is mentioned in a hadith (i.e. contemporary report of Muhammed's teachings and deeds) prophesying an end-time battle in which Muslims will conquer Christians, en route to conquering the entire world.
"'Victory' means destroying every cross, killing every Jew and pagan, and either converting every Christian to Islam or killing them. This apocalyptic dimension is now shaping ISIS as it sees itself fighting an End Time battle."
Where are the Reagans and Thatchers of today to plunge us into the ice cold bath of realism and national interest?Whilst Obama and Cameron flounder in confusion and weakness, IS knows where it is going and holds Western civilisation in contempt.
Neil Hamilton
The West, meanwhile, is bent on a political and cultural suicide mission. US foreign policy, as so often, has been a disaster for Britain. From the 1930s the US was determined to destroy the British Empire and then enmesh us in the EU, seeing Atlanticist Britain as the agent of US foreign policy and free market economics.
After Saddam's failed invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the West could have toppled Saddam with no question about the legitimacy of the operation. George Bush Senior wimped out. By invading Iraq a decade later, on a transparently false excuse, George Bush junior and his faithful poodle, Tony Blair, poured fuel on the flames of Islamist revolt, a big factor in today's disorder.
What a contrast to the partnership of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s. That alliance of political realists with an existential world-view ended the Cold War, brought down the Berlin Wall and hastened the end of the Soviet Union. Since then, US and British foreign policy has been dominated again by windy notions of idealism, human rights and democracy.
Today's Western leaders have not only de-stabilised the Middle East, but also fomented disorder in Ukraine. Inciting Ukraine's ambitions towards the EU and NATO has, predictably, fuelled Russian paranoia about its diminished status, loss of territory and threats to national security.
Putin is no idealist and more than a match for the Western wimps, whose bellicose words contrast with their impotent inactivity. Cameron is so weak, he won't even take away the passports of British Islamist extremists like Jihadi John, to stop them returning to Britain from their murderous work in Syria.
Where are the Reagans and Thatchers of today to plunge us into the ice cold bath of realism and national interest?
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