It was good to see Chris Matthews put on someone with common sense today to counter his rant yesterday about “moral humiliation” and why we should wage war to keep ourselves from suffering from it. Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State, patiently explained to Chris that war will not solve the problem, nor will it eliminate ISIS. She pointed out that in places like Libya where there is no governance and no opportunity, groups like this grow in fertile soil. In response to Matthews’ incredibly banal question about whether “we’re killing enough of them,” Harf said, “We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians.”…. She continued, “But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…”
No one likes extremism (excepting, I suppose, extremists), so the question becomes how best to combat the threat? How do the west and moderate Muslim countries stop groups like ISIS/ISIL from recruiting and radicalizing young Muslims to the point where they’d sacrifice their humanity (and quite possibly their lives) for a bastardized version of Islam?
The knee-jerk (and somewhat understandable) reaction would be to resolve to kill as many of the extremists as possible…so, yes, we’re going to war against ISIS/ISIL and many of them are being killed. There’s a question that no ones seems able or willing to answer, though: What does victory look like…and how will we know when it’s been achieved?
Beagle Wins best in Show, beats out #MarieHarf for the title in the IQ test #JobsForISIS pic.twitter.com/liIevqHSw8
— rusty james (@Rightway4USA) February 18, 2015
The Far Right ridicules Harf because they have no workable alternative. They tear her down because that’s all they can offer…and then they wonder why it’s so difficult to take them seriously.
The truth is that war may be a component of the answer, but it’s not the only component of the solution. There’s simply no way to kill our way out of this problem…so what do we do? How do we help those countries producing ISIS/ISIL fighters to provide alternatives to violent jihad having little to do with Islam? We could lay waste to the entire Middle East, turn everything from Morocco to Iran into a parking lot, and kill millions upon millions…and it’s highly unlikely the problem could be considered resolved. What then? Do we simply resolve to kill, kill, and keep killing? Or can we work to identify the roots causes of the problem? What drives young men to join groups like ISIS/ISIL? If we can identify the reasons behind their disaffection and willingness to become part of an organization known primarily for its stunning brutality, it at least gives us a chance to mitigate the problem.
Conservatives have ridiculed Marie Harf for stating her (accurate, well-researched, authoritative) opinion that we cannot kill our way out from under ISIS/ISIL. They’ve accosted her for being weak on terror and believing that the solution to violent Islamofascist extremism is to “give people jobs.” In so doing, they’ve chosen to ignore the substance of her argument, which is well thought-out and frankly spot on. I suppose it’s just easier to believe that superior firepower and the resolve to kill every last extremist will be sufficient for America to be able to eventually declare victory.
Yeah, about that…how’d that work in Iraq and Afghanistan? If you’re honest, you’ll admit that the reason we’re even having this discussion is because of those wars, particularly our illegal and immoral war in Iraq. An sound argument could be made that George W. Bush is the founding father of ISIS/ISIL. Though I suspect that claim will earn me loud, loud, and vehement condemnation from the Far Right, it’s true. All one need do is look at our destruction of Iraq and the anger it generated throughout the Muslim world. Afghanistan at least had the veneer of justification in the hunt for Osama bin-Laden, but that war has also contributed to the radicalization of young Muslim males and their willingness to take up arms against America and the West.
If readers who disagree with me have a solution (that doesn’t involve laying waste to the Middle East, killing most everyone there, and turning it into a parking lot), I’m more than willing to consider it. If the best you can come up with is “kill them all,” there’s absolutely no reason to take you seriously, because you’re not. We cannot kill our way out of this problem, and if you interpret that as weakness, I’d submit that you really need to study some history and get a grip.
Genocide is not the answer- unless we want to become the monsters we profess to despise.
