“What ISIS really wants,” from The Atlantic, is a pretty in-depth profile of ISIS and its supporters, which says pretty clearly that the Islamic State is, indeed, Islamic, and simply takes the teachings of mainstream Islam to their logical conclusion, that Muslims are compelled to support a theocracy such as they have declared, and wage war to expand its borders.
At the same time, the author is pretty fatalistic about what the West can do about it, other than, basically, wait it out.
Which is a reaction that we haven’t seen in a while. Beheadings? Enslavement? “It’s not our battle.” “We’d probably make it worse.” “It’s not worth American lives.” Really?
Yes, of course, we have a long tradition of not-our-problem-ism, beginning with the Holocaust. And in the case of Rwanda, the West again sat on our collective hands. “Isn’t that terrible what’s happening there?” “Can’t be helped.”
In how many times, in how many places, have we in the West shrugged off genocide and mass murder? I suppose if I thought a bit harder I could come up with counter-examples, when we truly could do nothing, and, of course, there are the cases when intervening may have made things worse, such as our bombing in Libya that toppled the regime but left a void for Islamic extremists to fill.
But sometimes it seems like there’s a calculus: what’s the value of an American soldier’s life? Is there a trade-off: military intervention is acceptable if each such death can save the lives of 100 or 1,000, or 100,000 innocent civilians elsewhere to would otherwise be put to death or enslaved? No guarantees? Then it’s a non-starter.
Mind you, the White House goes a step further, and, as quoted by Breitbart, even denies the reality of what happened this weekend, with the murder of 21 Coptic Christians by ISIS in Libya, deliberately targeted for their faith. The press statement refers to these martyrs as only “Egyptian citizens,” as if it was merely a coincidence that they all shared a Christian faith. (More details in this Reuters article.)
And while the statement calls on the international community to “unite against ISIL” — but at the same time, the President’s request for military authorization is so watered down as to raise the question of whether Obama is particularly interested in winning. As the Chicago Tribune’s editorial today said,
The president wants permission to engage, but he also wants Congress to tie his hands. He’s asking Congress to sign off on a plan to fight a limited war that excludes “enduring offensive ground combat operations.” He would tie the hands of the next president by setting a three-year expiration on the resolution. . .
Few people anticipate a substantial deployment of U.S. ground troops, “enduring” or not. But no one can predict how the war to defeat Islamic State will go. It’s a chaotic situation, involving an unpredictable foe against a coalition that includes a feeble Iraqi force and a motley collection of militias in one of the most unstable regions of the globe.
Congress should give the president broader authority. Taking away options and setting a timetable constrains our ability, complicates later decision-making and helps the enemy.
Give the president the authority he needs, not the authority he seeks.
Last link: The Anchoress offers us a prayer, recognizing that, in the Catholic tradition, these victims are martyrs, killed for their faith.
And last observation: I suppose you can tell when a cause is of great concern to those on the right, but not so much those on the left, because there doesn’t even appear to be a hashtag with when one can tweet one’s outrage.
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