The Undocumented Mark Steyn

by Mark Steyn

  Oh, well. As the President would say, obviously our hearts are with you.

  Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the local doctor who fingered bin Laden to the Americans sits in jail. So, while America’s clod vice president staggers around pimping limply that only Obama had the guts to take the toughest decision anyone’s ever had to take, the poor schlub who actually did have the guts, who actually took the tough decision in a part of the world where taking tough decisions can get you killed, languishes in a cell because Washington would not lift a finger to help him.

  Like I said, no novelist would contrast Chris Stevens on the streets of Benghazi and Barack Obama on stage in Vegas. Too crude, too telling, too devastating.

  THE MAN AT THE BORDER

  SteynOnline, June 23, 2014

  ELEVEN YEARS AGO, a few weeks after the fall of Saddam, on little more than a whim, I rented a beat-up Nissan and, without telling the car-hire bloke, drove from Amman through the eastern Jordanian desert, across the Iraqi border, and into the Sunni Triangle. I could not easily make the same journey today, but for a brief period in the spring of 2003 we were the “strong horse” and even a dainty little media gelding such as myself was accorded a measure of respect by the natives. The frontier is a line in the sand drawn by a British colonial civil servant, and on either side it’s empty country. From the Trebil border post, you have to drive through ninety miles of nothing to get to Iraq’s westernmost town, Rutba—in saner times an old refueling stop for Imperial Airways flights from Britain to India. Fewer of Her Majesty’s subjects swing by these days. I had a bite to eat at a café whose patron had a trilby pushed back on his head Sinatra-style and was very pleased to see me. (Rutba was the first stop on a motoring tour that took me through Ramadi and Fallujah and up to Tikrit and various other towns.)

  In those days, the Iraqi side of the Trebil border was manned by U.S. troops. So an “immigration official” from the Third Armored Cavalry glanced at my Canadian passport, and said, “Welcome to Free Iraq.” We exchanged a few pleasantries, and he waved me through. A lot less cumbersome than landing at JFK. I remember there was a banner with a big oval hole in it, where I assumed Saddam’s face had once been. And as I drove away I remember wondering what that hole would be filled with.

  Well, now we know. That same border post today is manned by head-hacking jihadists from the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” Bloomberg News reports:

  Fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaeda breakaway group, took all the border crossings with Jordan and Syria, Hameed Ahmed Hashim, a member of the Anbar provincial council, said by telephone yesterday. Militants took Rutba, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) east of the Jordanian border, Faleh al-Issawi, the deputy chief of the council, said by phone. Anbar province in western Iraq borders both countries. The Jordanian army didn’t immediately respond to a request for information about the situation on the border.

  I should think not. The Jordanian official I met was charming if somewhat bureaucratically obstructive, and wound up asking me about how difficult it was to emigrate to Canada. More difficult than emigrating from Syria to Iraq. From the German news service Deutsche Welle:

  Rutba gives ISIS control over a stretch of highway to Jordan that has fallen into infrequent use over the past several months because of the deteriorating security situation. The town has a population of 40,000, but it has recently absorbed 20,000 people displaced from Fallujah and Ramadi.

  ISIS now controls much of the Iraq-Syria border. Taking crossings such as the one in Qaim allows them to more easily move weapons and heavy equipment. Rebels also control the Syrian side of the crossing.

  The Iraq/Syria border no longer exists: ISIS has simply erased the Anglo-French settlement of 1922. Jordan has just one frontier post with Iraq—the one I crossed all those years ago—and it’s asking an awful lot of these lads to be more respectful of Jordan’s sovereignty than they’ve been of Iraq’s or Syria’s. This thought has apparently just occurred to Barack Obama, who thinks that sounding presidential is largely a matter of stating the obvious: “Obama told CBS in an interview that will be aired in full today that the fighting could spread to ‘allies like Jordan.’”

  Gee, thanks for that insight.

  In her interrogation of Dick Cheney, Fox’s Megyn Kelly mocked that line from eleven years ago about how we’d be “greeted as liberators.” In May 2003, I wasn’t a liberator, but I was pretty much greeted as one by the majority of the fellows I encountered in the Sunni Triangle. The towns were dusty and rundown but intact, with only two signs that anything dramatic had happened: As at the Trebil border post, the giant portraits of Saddam mounted on plinths at every rinky-dink roundabout had been removed—but very neatly, almost surgically: it was an act not of vandalism, but of political hygiene. A few weeks earlier, the dictator would have been omnipresent; now his absence was omnipresent. That’s what you were supposed to notice. In Rutba and Ramadi and the other western towns, you’d also see the occasional fancy house with decorative stonework, and gates and doors hanging off the hinges with the odd goat or donkey wandering through the compound defecating hither and yon. These were the pads of the local Baathist big shots, who’d taken off in a hurry, and, other than the drained gas stations, they were the only scenes of looting I saw.

  If you had asked me, in that café in Rutba eleven years ago, as I was enjoying what passed for the “mixed grill” with mein host, what utter defeat would look like in a single image, it would be hard to beat the scene that now greets you in the western desert: An Iraqi border post staffed by hardcore jihadists from an al-Qaeda spin-off. The details are choice—the black flag of al-Qaeda flies from buildings built by American taxpayers, they drive vehicles paid for by American taxpayers, they shoot aircraft out of the sky with Stinger missiles donated by American taxpayers—and thousands of their foot soldiers are nominally Britons, Frenchmen, Aussies, Canucks, Americans, and other western citizens for whom the open road in Iraq, decapitating as they go, is the greatest adventure of their lives. Until they return “home.”

  But, as I said, these are details. The central image—the al-Qaeda man at the border post—is in itself an image of complete and total defeat.

  Where next? With Syrian refugees expanding the population of his country by 25 percent, I wonder how Jordan’s King Abdullah feels about being an “ally” of Obama’s. Perhaps he nodded his head at the reported comments of the Polish Foreign Minister—that being a U.S. ally “isn’t worth anything” and is “even harmful because it creates a false sense of security.” No matter how secure that false sense is, waking up to find yourself sharing a border crossing with ISIS is apt to shatter it.

  I had a grand time in liberated Iraq in 2003, but one exchange stuck with me, and nagged at me over the years. At a rest area on the highway between Rutba and Ramadi, I fell into conversation with one of the locals. Having had to veer onto the median every few miles to dodge bomb craters, I asked him whether he was irked by his liberators. “Americans only in the sky,” he told me, grinning a big toothless grin as, bang on cue, a U.S. chopper rumbled up from over the horizon and passed high above our heads. “No problem.”

  “Americans only in the sky” is an even better slogan in the Obama era of drone-alone warfare. In Iraq, there were a lot of boots on the ground, but when it came to non-military leverage (cultural, economic), the non-imperial hyperpower was content to remain “only in the sky.” And down on the ground other players filled the vacuum, some reasonably benign (the Chinese in the oil fields), others less so (the Iranians in everything else).

  Still, the roots of ISIS do not lie in the actions America took in 2003. Bush made mistakes in Iraq, and left a ramshackle state that functioned less badly than any of its neighbors. Obama walked away, pulled out a cigarette, tossed the match over his shoulder, and ignited a fuse that, from Damascus to Baghdad to Amman and beyond, will blow up the entire Middle East.

  Back in America, the coastal sophisticates joke at those knuckle-dragging
rubes who believe Obama is some kind of “secret Muslim.” But really Occam’s razor would favor such an explanation, wouldn’t it? That a post-American Middle East divided between bad-cop nuclear Shia and worse-cop head-hacking Sunni was the plan all along. Because there are only two alternatives to that simplest of simple explanations:

  The first is that Obama and the Z-graders who fill out his administration are just blundering buffoons. And we all know from Michael Beschloss that he’s the smartest president ever, so it couldn’t possibly be colossal stupidity on a scale unknown to American history, could it?

  The second is that his contempt for American power—a basic class signifier in the circles in which he’s moved all his life—is so deeply ingrained that he doesn’t care what replaces it.

  And so the border post of “Free Iraq” is now the western frontier of the new Caliphate.

  IX

  THE WAR ON WOMEN

  MY SHARIA AMOUR

  In 2002, hundreds of people died in rioting over. . . well, take a wild guess. Here’s how The Daily Telegraph reported the news:

  “After escaping the riots in Nigeria, which claimed more than 200 lives, Miss World contestants were safely installed in their ever-decreasing numbers inside a Heathrow hotel yesterday. . . . Last week, a reporter for This Day, a Nigerian newspaper, wrote an article suggesting that Prophet Mohammed would ‘probably’ have chosen a wife from one of the contestants, a comment which sparked the unrest. . . .

  “A number of alternative venues, such as Alexandra Palace, Wembley Arena and the Grosvenor House hotel on Park Lane, are being considered.

  “Glenda Jackson, the Labour MP for Hampstead, said: ‘They should call the whole thing off. . . .’”

  Which set me thinking. . . .

  The Daily Telegraph, November 30, 2002

  “RUN THIS BY ME AGAIN,” I said as we circled Lagos Airport. “We’re doing a new ‘culturally sensitive’ Miss World?”

  “That’s right,” said Julia Morley. “I got the idea from all those stringy London feminists droning on about how we’re only promoting a narrow exploitative western image of women. And to be honest, after a week in England listening to their bitching and whining, I’m glad to be back in Nigeria. The locals’ll go crazy for this.”

  “I hope not,” I said. But I was pleasantly surprised as we landed smoothly and taxied down the runway. “Look, Julia, a gun salute!”

  “Duck, girls!” she yelled, as a SAM missile pierced the window, shot through the first class curtain, and took out the economy toilet.

  “Now don’t you worry, Mark,” she said once we were safely in the limo. “Your material’s hardly been changed at all. Just remember, when you and Tony Orlando do ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls,’ there’s a Sudanese warlord in a third-row aisle seat who’s got a new twelve-year-old bride you don’t want to be caught looking at.”

  “Got it,” I said. The house band, made up entirely of Hausa band members, played the opening strains of Stevie Wonder’s classic love song, and Julia pushed the revised culturally-sensitive lyrics into my hand. It was then that the first nagging doubts began to gnaw at the back of my mind. But what the hell, I was in my tux and they were playing my song.

  I bounced out on stage, grabbed the mike, and punched the air:

  My Sharia Amour

  Hot enough for Gulf emirs

  My Sharia Amour

  But I’m the guy she really fears. . . .

  The audience seemed wary, and an alarming number appeared to be reaching into their robes. But I ploughed on:

  My Sharia Amour

  Pretty little thing in her chador

  One of only four that I beat raw

  How I wish that I had five.

  There was a momentary silence, just long enough for me to start backing upstage nervously.

  And then the crowd went wild! The guys in the balcony cheered deliriously and hurled their machetes across the orchestra pit, shredding my pants. An Afghan wedding party grabbed their semi-automatics and blew out the chandeliers, sending them hurtling to the aisle, where they killed a Japanese camera crew. Tough luck, fellers, but that’s what happens when you get between me and my audience.

  I took my usual seat with the celebrity judges, in between Baywatch hunk David Hasselhoff and Princess Michael of Kent. Lorraine Kelly said: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our panel a really big hand!” A really big hand landed on the table with a dull thud, courtesy of a Saudi prince in the royal box.

  “How’d they like you?” I asked Princess Michael.

  “Well, by the end of ‘Man, I Feel Like a Woman,’ I had the crowd with me all the way. But I shook ’em off at Kaduna.”

  “Who’s the bloke next to you?”

  “Oh, he’s a judge.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, duh!”

  “No, I mean, he’s a real judge. He’s some Fulani big shot who’s here to decide who gets stoned.”

  “And which mother of a Mick Jagger love-child is on the panel this year?”

  “That’s Marsha Hunt. Had an affair with him in the late Sixties.”

  The small talk was somewhat stilted. “Have you ever been stoned?” asked the judge. Marsha tittered.

  Princess Michael explained that the fellow on Marsha’s left was Alhaji Abdutayo Ogunbati, the country’s leading female genital mutilator, there to ensure every contestant was in full compliance, and next to him was Hans Blix, there to ensure every involuntary clitorectomy was in accordance with UN clitorectomy inspections-team regulations.

  I glanced at my watch. “For crying out loud, when are they going to raise the curtain?”

  “They have raised the curtain,” said David. “Those are the girls.”

  I peered closer at the shapeless line of black cloth, and he was right: there they all were, from Miss Afghanistan to Miss Zionist Entity.

  I sighed. “How long till the swimsuit round?”

  “This is the swimsuit round,” said David.

  Years after writing that column, I’d be on stage somewhere or other talking about honor killings or some other cheery aspect of women’s “rights” in the Muslim world, and afterwards somebody would always come up and say, “Oh, I thought you were going to break into ‘My Sharia Amour.’” So, eventually, I thought, hey, why not? And so I did. The arrangement’s varied over the years, and I’m usually kept company these days by a largely silent burqa-sheathed female purporting to be my third wife. The lyrics have evolved from show to show, too. But this is the version performed at Steynamite! in Toronto on April 24, 2012, as the instrumental intro begins:

  Yeah, like to get a little mellow romance going here at the Metro Centre.

  This one goes out to all the lovers here tonight. C’mon, Toronto, smooch along with me . . .

  My Sharia Amour

  She’s hot enough for Gulf emirs (yeah!)

  My Sharia Amour

  But I’m the cat she really fears

  My Sharia Amour

  Got her from an imam in Lahore

  One of only four wives I beat raw

  How I wish that I had five

  Dig that burqa

  This chick’ll take away your breath

  But don’t even glance

  Or I’ll have to have her stoned to death

  My Sharia Amour

  I won her like the Jews won the Six-Day War

  Back when I was only thirty-four

  And she was entering Grade Five

  A-la-la-la-la-la

  A-la-la-la-la-la-la

  Take it, baby . . .

  CHILD BRIDE [muffled, from within burqa]:

  A-la-la-la-la-la

  A-la-la-la-la-la-la

  Beautiful!

  And tomorrow

  For our wedding anniversary

  We’ll renew our vows

  With a second clitorectomy

  (Hey, what can I tell you? She wanted somethin’ special.)

  My Sharia Amour

  She’s not a bit like you, y
ou filthy infidel whore

  We honor-killed her cousin on the second floor

  I hope this one can stay alive

  A-la-la-la-la-la

  A-la-la-la-la-la-la

  A-la-la-la-la-la

  A-la-la-la-la-la-la

  She’s my cutie, for sure

  My Sharia Amour!

  Who loves you, baby?

  [Child bride throws up her hands, shrieks, and runs off stage left]

  BARBIE IN A BURQA

  Maclean’s, December 14, 2009

  THE OTHER DAY, George Jonas passed on to his readers a characteristically shrewd observation gleaned from the late poet George Faludy: “No one likes to think of himself as a coward,” wrote Jonas. “People prefer to think they end up yielding to what the terrorists demand, not because it’s safer or more convenient, but because it’s the right thing. . . . Successful terrorism persuades the terrorized that if they do terror’s bidding, it’s not because they’re terrified but because they’re socially concerned.”

  This is true. Resisting terror is exhausting. It’s easier to appease it, but, for the sake of your self-esteem, you have to tell yourself you’re appeasing it in the cause of some or other variant of “social justice.” Obviously, it’s unfortunate if “Canadians” and “Americans” and “Irishmen” get arrested for plotting to murder the artists and publishers of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, but that’s all the more reason to be even more accommodating of the various “sensitivities” arising from the pervasive Islamophobia throughout western society. Etc.

  Yet this psychology also applies to broader challenges. By way of example, take a fluffy feature from a recent edition of Britain’s Daily Mail: “It’s Barbie in a Burqa,” read the headline. Yes, as part of her fiftieth-anniversary celebrations, “one of the world’s most famous children’s toys, Barbie, has been given a makeover.” And, in an attractive photo shoot, there was Barbie in “traditional Islamic dress,” wearing full head-to-toe lime-green and red burqas. At least, I’m assuming it was Barbie. It could have been GI Joe back there for all one can tell from the letterbox slot of eyeball meshing.