Kill, kill, kill never
works!
Perceptions by
Gerry Warner
So what
is the proper response to the ISIS savagery in Paris last week?
Should Western countries in the words of French
President Francois Hollande wage “pitiless war” on the Jihadi terrorists, an
understandable response in terms of the immense tragedy. But isn’t France and
the NATO coalition already at war with ISIS ever since the brutal militants
burst on the scene two years ago and quickly conquered a large swath of Syria
and Iraq?
And what has that accomplished? Apparently very little
judging by the impunity that deadly evening with which the fanatical terrorists
slaughtered 129 innocents in the “City of Light.”
So don’t you think it’s time to consider a new
strategy to deal with what US President Barack Obama called “an attack on all
of humanity.”
Remember President Bush’s response to 9/11? “Those who
aren’t with us are against us” and promptly declared war on Iraq, which had
nothing to do with the horrific attack, which was master-minded by Osama bin
Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that spawned ISIS
more than a decade later. However, Bush blundered on to wage war against
Afghanistan where American troops are fighting to this day. Can anyone say the
world is any safer for this endless warfare?
Of course not. If anything we’re less secure thanks to
the failed strategy of Western leaders who naively think they can bomb
terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda into submission while killing thousands
of innocent Muslim civilians which only causes them to become radicalized and
throw in their lot with the terrorists. That’s exactly what ISIS wants – a
world-wide religious war between Islam and Christianity – and we’re being duped
by their strategy. Don’t you think it’s time we stopped playing their game?
What’s happening now is not “war” in the traditional sense
of tanks and troops at the front lines and nation states trying to conquer each
other. ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is a religious Muslim
caliphate, actually a theocracy, that has seized a large cross-border section
of Iraq and Syria and is trying to establish a Sunni caliphate there as part of
the struggle between Sunni and Shia Muslims that has been raging for more than
a thousand years. And whoever wins this struggle wants to go on to conquer the
infidels and rule the world and all we’re doing is fanning the flames of this
fanatical and ridiculous fantasy.
Why are we doing it?
Could it be because we’ve never really understood the
Islamic world and didn’t care in our eagerness to exploit the region for its
oil and as a buffer between us and Asian powers like Russia and China?
After World War I, France and England dominated that
part of the world and ruthlessly carved it up to suit their imperial ambitions
completely ignoring the traditional boundaries and ethno-religious groupings that had existed for thousands of
years. Such arrogance breeds hatred and now it’s payback time and the jihadists
are making their old Imperial masters pay grievously, killing hundreds of innocent
people in the process. So, as was asked at the beginning, what should our
response be to the latest atrocity in France?
The answer may be difficult, but it’s not rocket
science.
We must swallow our pride and arrogant belief that we
always know what’s best for the Middle East and cease our military interference
in that deeply, troubled part of the world. We should pull our troops out and
bring home our planes, drones and missiles and let them fight it out
themselves. They’ll resolve it. Religious fanatics always do – eventually – and
they won’t be killing us in the process. If any of them are stupid enough to
attack us on our own territory, we’ll deal with them with deadly force as we’re
entitled to do. In other words, we’ve got to start waging peace instead of war.
War doesn’t work.
Gerry Warner is a
retired journalist
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