Some observers are too quick to simplify it into a battle of "traditionalists versus modernizers." In the U.S. mainstream media that usually translates into a desire for us to intervene on behalf of the modernizers. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is probably the best-known advocate of this view. Others simplify it into a battle between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Since Iran is the leading Shi'ite power, those in the media tend to favor the Sunnis.
All these simple pictures are painted to build support for one side or another. The only kind of peace they aim at is one that leaves their favored side victorious.
In fact, no simple dichotomy can capture the tangled maze of struggles in dar al-Islam. Sunni traditionalists battle other Sunni traditionalists (for example, al-Qaeda versus IS). Modernizers join traditionalists to fight other traditionalists (for example, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in an uneasy alliance to weaken IS). Sunnis and Shi'ites become allies too (for example, Kurdish Sunnis and Iraqi Shi'ite militias allied against IS). The U.S. supports both Shi'ites (like the government of Iraq) and Sunnis (like the oil-rich Gulf States), while it resists the growing power of both Shi'ites (like Iran) and Sunnis (like IS).
By emphasizing the true complexity of the Muslim civil war, a peace movement narrative can cast that war in a different light. Precisely because there are not two clearly demarcated sides, it makes no sense to cast one side as the good guys and launch our planes and drones to obliterate the bad guys. It's bound to lead to incoherence and disaster, especially in this situation, where the Islamic State, however repugnant to most Americans, is arguably no worse than our staunch allies, the royal family of Saudi Arabia.
Given the confusing, some might say chaotic, maze of intra-Muslim conflict, it is equally senseless to go on promoting the American fantasy of imposing order. ("Without order," Friedman has written, "nothing good can happen.") Taking this road so far has, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, actually meant unleashing chaos in significant parts of the Greater Middle East. There's no reason to think the same road will lead anywhere else in the future.
Bring the Boys, Girls, and Drones Home
The Muslim civil war story leads directly to a radical change in policy: stop trying to impose a made-in-America order on dar al-Islam. Give up the dubious gratification of yet another war against "the evildoers." Instead, offer genuinely humanitarian aid, with no hidden political agenda, to the victims of the civil war, especially those fleeing a stunning level of violence in Syria that the U.S. has helped to sustain. But cease all military action, all economic pressures, and all diplomatic maneuvering against any one side in the Muslim civil war. Become, as we have in other civil wars, a genuine neutral.
To call this change of narrative and policy a tall order is an understatement. There would be massive forces arrayed against it, given the steady stream of verbal assaults the Islamic State levels against Washington, which have already inspired one terrible mass killing on American soil. We don't know when, or if, other attacks will succeed in the future, whether organized by IS or carried out by "lone wolves" energized by that outfit.
The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that none of this is evidence of a war directed against America. It's mainly tactical maneuvering in a Muslim civil war. For the Islamic State, American lives and fears are merely pawns in the game. And yet this reality in the Middle East runs against something lodged deep in our history. For centuries, most Americans have believed that our nation is the center of world history, that whatever happens anywhere must somehow be aimed directly at us -- and we continue to see ourselves as the star of the global show.
Most Americans have also been conditioned for decades to believe that what's at stake is a life-or-death drama in which some enemy, somewhere, is always intent on destroying our nation. IS is at present the only candidate in sight for that role and it's hard to imagine the public giving up the firmly entrenched story that it is out to destroy us. But half a century ago, it was difficult to imagine that the story of Vietnam would be just as radically transformed within a few years. So it's a stretch, but not an inconceivable one, to picture America, a few years from now, ringing with cries that echo those of the Vietnam era: "U.S. out of dar al-Islam." "Bring the boys -- and girls and bombers and drones -- home."
And if anyone says the analogy between Vietnam and the current conflict is debatable, that's just the point. Rather than a rush to yet more war, it's time to have a real national debate on the subject. It's time to give the American people a chance to choose between two fundamentally different narratives. The task of the peace movement, now as always, is to provide a genuine alternative.
Ira Chernus, a TomDispatch regular, is professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of the online "MythicAmerica: Essays." He blogs at MythicAmerica.us.
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Copyright 2016 Ira Chernus
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