GOOD NEWS FROM SYRIA? – AT 11:58 A.M. ET:  Unlikely, I know, but Britain's first-class defense reporter, Con Coughlin, has found a strange kind of good news from that horror show.  From Britain's Telegraph: 

Following the collapse of the Geneva peace talks on Syria, where the rival factions could not even agree on a ceasefire to allow humanitarian assistance to trapped civilians, there is one small scrap of good news from the battlefield: civil war has broken out between al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremists.

Speaking from his hideout somewhere on the Afghan-Pakistan border, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has disavowed one of the leading jihadist groups in Syria, the Islamic State of Syria and al-Sham (ISIS), claiming its wanton campaign of violence threatens to damage the al-Qaeda brand.
This accusation might seem a bit rich coming from the leader of an organisation who himself regularly authorises suicide bomb attacks against innocent civilians, quite apart from his role in masterminding the September 11 attacks.

But the barbarous campaign waged by ISIS jihadists in Syria, which has included mass executions of captured fighters and the imposition of Sharia law on captured villages, has proved too much for even a bloodthirsty terrorist like Zawahiri. In a statement posted on an al-Qaeda website at the weekend, the al-Qaeda frontman condemned ISIS as a renegade band that was responsible for waging war against fellow Muslims through its campaign of car bombings, mass killings and the widespread torture of its own citizens.

The tactics employed by ISIS to fulfil its goal of establishing an Islamic state in Sunni areas of northern Syria and western Iraq have already caused outrage among other jihadi fighters, and prompted fierce fighting between rival factions.

COMMENT:  Let them be divided.  I guess there are serious questions among terror groups as to how many murders are respectable. 

But let's not strain to find good news.  In the last few days we've learned of a substantial number of European Islamists fighting in Syria.  They can easily return to their own countries and create chaos.   And if they can do it in Europe, they can do it in America.  We've also had reports of Hezbollah operatives in the U.S. making use of combat-trained jihadists just back from Syria.

Indeed, the answer to those neo-isolationists who say these overseas conflicts aren't our business is that these conflicts breed embittered, fanatical veterans, sworn to glorify Islam.  And making nice with Islam has never seemed to make a difference.

February 4, 2014