How to Talk About ISIS
I've been reluctant to jump into a conversation addressing ISIS and terrorism around the world. This weekend, however, I met someone who expressed that she just wanted to have some ideas about how to think and talk about it. So, in the spirit of creating a new conversation (see my introductory post), I will offer up a new way to talk about this situation.
The world has faced Islamic extremism several times throughout the last decades. The U.S. (and others) has regularly led a military response using overwhelming firepower and high-tech weapons, mixed with ad hoc justice systems to remove leaders and groups from power with force. As they claim "mission accomplished," they leave a trail of destruction and broken families in their wake. This creates the conditions for extremists to easily recruit the afflicted people around them to bring the fight back to the West and locally and avenge the deaths from before. As these retaliatory movements gain steam, the U.S. rallies the war machine again, continuing the cycle.
This article by Andrew Bacevich does an excellent job explaining why an ongoing war strategy will not work. "For a rich and powerful nation to conclude that it has no choice but to engage in quasi-permanent armed conflict in the far reaches of the planet represents the height of folly." He says there must be a choice, so what is it?
Here is the new conversation that I propose: If we want to see a different outcome, we need to respond in a new way. This is a generational issue, and we need to begin to see it that way. We need to start to be a healing influence in the world.
Yes, there are often serious immediate problems that we need to address. I won't ignore that sometimes military intervention is necessary to confront and suppress the most aggressive acts of violence. Still, we need to frame these military interventions in a new context. The use of force needs to be seen only as a small step before the real work begins. The real work needs to be long-term, with broad-based support for rebuilding the countries destroyed by these wars.
The message needs to be that the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Afghanis, et al. are our friends. Their dreams of peace for their families are the same as ours. The U.S. needs to use its influence to rally the world to support their health, education, and infrastructure. This support must come from a diverse community, be culturally relevant and respectful, and take a long-term perspective, addressing the already existing multi-generational trauma. This will be hard work for us because it will require humility. We will have to face the fact that we don't have all the answers. We can't install our values, culture, political systems, etc. We will need to elicit the arc of progress from the actual communities that have been affected.
In other words, the U.S. needs to stop being the primary recruiting agent for Islamist extremism. We need to figure out how to stop being the enemy everyone loves to hate and start leveraging our influence to be an undeniable force for good in the world. When Al Qaeda, ISIS, or a future terrorist group tries to rally people to join them in a new terrorist attack against the U.S. or elsewhere, the response should be "Wait, but why? Look at all the good they've done for me, my family. and my country," not "Of course, all they have brought is destruction and death."
If this feels outlandish or utopian, remember that we've been in this cycle before. World War I created the conditions for World War II by leaving the Germans disgraced and destroyed. We broke that cycle with the Marshall Plan, where the U.S. took on the costs of supporting the rebuilding of the European countries broken by war. We need a new way of responding.