One of the great knee-slappers, however perverse, of the so-called War on Terror is the fact that fundamentalist Islamic forces are stronger than ever as a result.  It is like going on a crash diet for a month and putting on 20 pounds.  In the 12 years since George W. first uttered those three little words, the jihadists have multiplied exponentially and are now the major force in the Middle East.  Like the palooka who got knocked out and asks, once awake, what happened, Uncle Sam seems to have got his private parts in a hell of a jam.  I was among the first to have cheered when Libyans rose against Qaddafi, and cheered even more when someone shot him up the rear, but I am a young man—only 77—and tend to get carried away.  Unlike the rest of the fools—the Camerons, the Sarkozys, and, yes, even the Obamas—I am the first to say sorry and admit I was a clown.  Libya’s chaos is spilling across the region, and 15 million rifles and other weapons are fueling chaos and insurrection all over Africa.  This includes Somalia, Nigeria, Niger, and the Central African Republic.  What is not surprising is the silence from those who should have known better and are now playing dumb: the media, our political leaders, and the pundits of the Beltway—pompous blow-dried asses whose total knowledge is less than any eight-year-old with a bit of common sense.

Make no mistake about it, the Muslim Brotherhood takes no prisoners and is here to stay.  Libya is another Somalia, a failed state that gives weapons and safety to terrorists and jihadists the world over, paid for by Qatar, a piece of real estate that Uncle Sam protects and one owned by a crude nouveau riche family by the name of Thani.  It is as simple as that, my dear Watsons, and Qatari money is flowing into Washington’s lobbies not unlike the Nile into the Egyptian Delta.  If that’s not a knee-slapper, I don’t know what is.  (It’s almost as funny as the world’s ugliest man, Asher Adelman, having become the Republican pinup boy, with his 38 billion bucks earned by screwing people in his casinos, proudly announcing that his children will fight for Israel and never wear an American uniform.  Now that’s what I call patriotism in 2014.)

If you thought comedy was dead, it gets worse.  Take the case of Ukraine, recently in the news for having lost a part of herself that never really belonged to her.  The mess began with Uncle Sam and those faceless and unelected bureaucrooks of the European Union approaching anti-Russian elements in Ukraine and encouraging them to get into bed with Brussels—a bit like shoving Ava Gardner out and inviting Hil­lary Clinton under the sheets.  There are suckers and fools born every minute, as they say, but it looks like these types are born every second in Ukraine.  The European Union pursues policies that drive down living standards and destroy employment, businesses, and entire economies, as in the cases of Greece, Spain, and Portugal, and even Italy.  Yet some Ukrainians chose that siren song over very cheap oil and gas offered by neighboring Russia.  Once the elected president decided to stick with Russia, the gangs came out, and Western media cheered.  Democracy was yet again evoked by the pompous know-nothings, ignoring the fact that the European Union has taken away decisionmaking from national parliaments and is in fact a dictatorship of overpaid bureaucrats.  On virtually everything that matters, from the economy to immigration, the 28 countries that belong to the European Union have absolutely no say, but try to tell that to the mobs that the media cheered for in Kiev.

In the meantime, Uncle Sam huffs and puffs and makes threats he cannot possibly carry out: The $200-$300 billion in natural-gas subsidies since 1991 that Russia has provided to Ukraine can hardly be matched by the good uncle.  And Russia is not Iraq, and Putin is not Saddam to be pushed around by Georgie Porgie.  There are those who believe that the final straw was Obama’s refusal to attend the Winter Olympics, and the fact that we made such a fuss over gay rights in Russia and went as far as sending as head of mission a professional lesbian who used to be a tennis player.  I’m not so sure.  Putin is a strong man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  The Winter Olympics were a great triumph for Russia, and the fuss we made was childish.  We cannot punish Russia because Russia is strong, unlike Panama and Grenada.  And why should we wish to?  We have the Monroe Doctrine; they have the Putin Doctrine.  Take it like a man, dear Uncle Sam, and tell the Israeli and gay lobbies to go and reproduce themselves.