The big concern now among the U.S. and Western governments is the recruitment of young people in their own countries to go and fight with the Islamic State. There is fear that when these men/women return home, they will engage in terrorist actions within their homeland. The U/S. president has convened a summit to discuss this possibility and what can be done to prevent it.
Unfortunately, it has not occurred to the president or to the persons attending this summit that perhaps these young people are not attracted by the ideas and successes of the Islamic State as much as they are turned off by what we ourselves and our puppet states are doing. Our wars and policies in the Middle East have resulted in failed states such as Iraq is now, and as Syria and Libya are becoming. Our wars and policies have contributed to the creation of an Islamic State, which we are now seeking to destroy through more war and the same old kind of thinking.
The young people who are joining the Islamic State are perhaps not convinced that we are in the right and others are evil. Perhaps they see the disconnect between what our president says and what he does, and the friends he allies with. Perhaps they are disturbed that we are fighting injustice with bombs and ideas with weapons. . Perhaps they want to right some of the wrongs that they perceive. Sadly, they have not learned that violence breeds violence, that you don't destroy a village, or a world, to save it.
We can save them and the world by adopting a new mindset. The way to peace is through justice and support for human rights.. War is the evil to be avoided The president's summit will be successful only if it results in a change in thinking that admits the culpability on all sides, stands up for taking a different direction, and opens the door to honest, unconditional negotiation that leads to a fair resolution for all parties.
It's incumbent in the changed world of the twenty-first
century that we meet this challenge. Together, or if necessary, the U.S. alone as the world's role model..
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