309. Niccolò Handles the Islamic State

It's as plain as the nose on your face.  You can't do the dirty ground work against the Islamic State yourself, you can't find an ally inside Syria to do it, you can't find an ally outside Syria to do it, you can't find any potential ally organized enough and motivated enough to do it.  Don't you see?  Vladimir Putin is just what you're looking for.

"But Putin is an ally of Bashar al-Assad."

Giving you more organization and motivation.  Syrian government, Russian government.  We're talking about taking over territory, aren't we?

"Yes, and some of us are very happy to find terrorists concentrating themselves in a territory." 

Well, Putin and Assad know how to take over territories.  The U. S. knows how to help: from the air.  The right proportion of clean work and dirty work.  Success is just around the corner.  Rejoice.

"Niccolò, I know you have a reputation for realism, but here you are so far out of it.  We simply cannot ally ourselves with Bashar al-Assad.  That's backing him."

And who, may I ask, are you now backing?  Which of those 29 varieties of wonderful Muslims now in Syria?  It is manifestly in your interest to ally yourself with Putin and Assad.  It gives your people, your Prince, what they want most, victory over the Islamic State.  I would recommend it to my Prince in an instant.

"But your Prince has not had Assad (not even to mention Putin) held up to him for such a long time as an impossibly bad person.  And justifiably so.  He killed, even before the rebellion against him, as many as 20,000 of his own people, some by poison gas."

First let me tell you something about my Prince.  If I had said to him, "Accept Assad as an ally, my Lord, or lose your principality," he'd have done it in a heartbeat.  Even if he had had Assad held up to him as a bad person since birth.  He trusted my advice.

"All very well, but my Prince will not elect anybody who changes like that.  Flip-floppers lose elections."

And your Prince will lose his ass — your equivalent of a principality — if he goes into Syria.  To keep your ass in this part of the world you've got to have good allies.  And all your allies are bad, easily chased off, no matter how much you train them.  (How can you still be so nuts about training after you've learned that the  guys chasing your guys have had only three weeks of it?)  Assad's soldiers, with Russian and U. S. support, are not going to get chased off.  Oh, I've kept up with things.

"Oh, Niccolò, can't you see that an ass is not the worst thing you can lose.  You can lose your conscience, your honor, your humanity, your soul."

Oh, terrible.  And worse, you'll lose your commitment to democracy.  Imagine, losing your commitment to an ideology.  I know the line, and I take democracy to be an ideology.  A little better than the others, maybe, but still an ideology.  Certainly not anything to lose your ass over.

"All right, but still there's this thing I'm sure is more understandable to you.  We can lose our reputation — as a rescuer, a defender of the defenseless, a life saver."

Of course I understand reputation.  It often translates into power, and is very useful.  And yes I understand life-saving.  Arithmetically.  The more lives you save the better.  How often have I found that the number of lives lost after you have stepped in to save lives — or  your reputation for humanity, or your conscience — is greater than the number you stepped in to save.  The vile killer, Bashar al-Assad, had taken about 20,000 lives.  The number lost after the Arab Spring rebellion —which you cheered on — got going is up to 220,000.  The number of lives lost after you went after Saddam Hussein is at least as great as the lives lost under him. Measured quantitatively your kind of life-saving doesn't compute.

"Well, Niccolò, we here can't just count where you're counting; we have to count at the ballot box.  And the total our executive (of our Prince's orders, called The President) needs there is counted at the moment, not when all the long-term totals, the ones you're counting, are in."

I see, and one becomes the executive by measuring the moment better than the other candidates.

"Right."

Thank you.  I now understand what makes your job different from, and probably more difficult than, mine.  Your Prince has a shorter attention span.

"Yes, one of the many faults our teachers — you know what bears they are on paying attention — are working on.  He's learning."

Well if he's learned anything why does he keep losing his ass?

"Because part of him (he's deeply divided) keeps wanting to risk it.  To save lives, you know.  And that part won't let the other part win at the ballot box.  If it does win, this part keeps hounding the executive (that life-indifferent ass-protector) who won."

 Hounding him for possibly saving 200,000 lives?

"By your way of counting, and those lives would be lost later."

Well, lots of luck doing it your way.

"And lots of luck doing it your way.  I think you'll need more of it."