If Syria’s civil war were only about defeating Bashar al-Assad, the free world would call it a good war.

Primary source: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-news/the-rise-of-british-jihadists-in-syria-454 – 6/26/2014.

If we’re not looking at ISIS or related al-Qaeda-type company, what are we seeing?

And if we are seeing a fighter following the script to replace all else with Islam, what then?

The west may not begrudge an Islamic motive for regime changing Bashar al-Assad, but it’s not about to swap out the Queen of England for anything remotely resembling a caliph.

Perhaps the youth are too youthful in their investment in faith in the inevitability of their own glorious future, which may be interpreted as a facet of Mobarak Haider’s term for the Taliban’s problem: “civilizational narcissism”.

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Even confined x choice x fate to the “second row seat to history”, I’m not particularly thrilled with recycling Facebook and Twitter posts, i.e., other people’s news, and it’s with some apology to VICE that I note that.

However — wow! — what a decent piece of reporting and much needed in the Syrian theater that has been played by Putin-Assad-Khamenei to pit the malignantly narcissistic Great Leader against, albeit in some part, an equally malignant rebel force marching beneath the banner of Islam.

Perhaps what is needed is an overview of the “moderate” revolutionary forces today laying claim to cohesion in the field and legitimacy as the basis for the governance of a New Syria.

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