well, it's predictable. i'm not a christian, and i don't like public displays of religious symbols, but to have your country ransacked by a bunch of barbarians and then watch them burn down your symbols would be pretty difficult.

biden is likely unaware of the ethnic tapestry in syria, he just has a vague concept that they "believe in islam over there". there are no substantive religious minorities in afghanistan because everybody got killed by the mongols, leaving the majority muslim groups to build in a vacuum. as per my song, afghanistan has a history of buddhism, hinduism and other religions associated with persian and indian language groups, but they've all been wiped out for centuries.

syria, on the other hand, is very complicated, and to go in there and try and tell everybody they have to abide by sharia law now because we say so is really being a bull in a china shop. 

however.

it's noticeable that there are christmas trees in syria. there probably were not christmas trees in syria before the end of the first world war, because it's a celtic-germanic-slavic pagan ritual. the slavs more so than the germans of central-eastern europe used to literally worship the trees before they were converted to christianity in a crusade. some indigenous american groups also treat trees as sacred objects. indigenous peoples seemed to have an awareness that trees are alive and saw them as occupying a different realm of existence, as though they represent a portal to the spirit world. sometimes, gods are said to live in trees, but that seems overly crude; the forests are sacred spaces because they're the transit points. it's a central part of slavic pagan religious history, but it has no analogue in ancient syrian christianity.

(https://www.slavorum.org/the-cult-of-the-trees-in-slavic-mythology/)

the french must have brought the christmas trees to syria.

either way, the syrian christians are pissed and i don't blame them. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/24/protest-syrian-capital-christmas-tree-burned

under ghadaffi, libya was a secular society.

look how far they've fallen into dark age barbarism.

allowing large parts of the world to collapse into barbarism like this has effects for the rest of the world. it's not trivial.

"Libya is not a place for personal freedoms," Emad Al-Trabelsi, the interior minister of Libya's Tripoli-based, UN-backed Government of National Unity saidearlier this month, adding that "those seeking freedom should go to Europe."

https://www.dw.com/en/libyas-new-morality-police-to-crack-down-on-womens-rights/a-70796537

when obama left office, this war was more or less over. some skirmishes had to be mopped up, but the jihadists had been thoroughly defeated. the west was triumphant.

when biden leaves office, the jihadists will be in control of three countries (afghanistan, syria, libya), which puts them in a stronger position than they've ever been in, and while i'm sure they made pinky swears to biden personally that they love america and will fight the russians for perpetuity, the shifting nature of barbarian alliances generates tremendous levels of instability and makes this outcome extremely dangerous. there is a new axis of evil developing out of those three terror states that's going to need to be eradicated.

that is biden's foreign policy legacy in the medium term: the return of islam not just as america's single greatest threat, but as a clear and present danger, and i hope the new administration realizes it and takes steps to neutralize it.