The US has so badly damaged its image in the region that the one thing that's clear is we need to keep our military out of it and let those directly affected by ISIS engage with the phenomenon in a struggle between civilization and barbarism. The New York Times reported on an Afghan released from years in Guantanamo who said he was falsely named in 2002 as a "terrorist" by a man who wanted to steal his store; this man's photo was recently mis-identified as a drone-killed terrorist, publicity that made his life miserable all over again. He put his frustration this way: "The Americans do not care about people's lives. They are careless people. They are the bane of my existence."
The solution is to follow up on the president's rhetoric and actually do concrete things "to address the political grievances terrorists exploit." That is, in this case, put our money where the president's mouth is -- not into another misguided military campaign.
The other good news on the life cult front is reports that France has plans to seriously address those bubbling suburban rings of disaffected former colonial subject peoples surrounding its major cities. Economic improvement, educational improvement, judicial reform; the whole gamut of life cult issues must be seriously addressed to better unify the nation. Religion is a distraction from real human problems. The fact is, one can't address something like ISIS and its influence in places like Europe without engaging the legacies of colonial and imperial history. The Times has an interesting profile of France's current reform-minded education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, an ambitious Muslim woman born and raised in Morocco.
ISIS isn't going to go away any time soon, especially as long as it causes our war advocates to run around like Chicken Little calling for Islamic heads on pikes. It may sound silly to some and even provoke ridicule, but the solution is Eros oriented, the aspect of our inner and public lives that seems never quite as compelling -- certainly, never quite as able to give quick, satisfying results -- as the feverish call for blood and destruction. The only way to really beat a death cult is with a dedication to life. This would seem to me a no-brainer for Christians, because, while I'm an atheist, there's few people in the history of the world better at the life cult message than Jesus Christ, who war advocates like Bill O'Reilly claim to worship.
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