Western armies in Muslim lands prelude to disaster

Some thoughts about the atrocity in Paris.

While the Islamic State (IS) has been building its caliphate in Syria and Iraq, the West has been busy waging war against it. We have attacked IS, the French have, too, and so have the British and the Russians. Tens of thousands of IS soldiers have died in the weeks before an assault on Paris killed fewer than 150 innocent civilians. Just a few days before the attack on Paris, Iraqi Kurd Peshmerga fighters, backed by the U.S. Air Force, retook the town of Sinjar, which blocks the only supply route between the IS capital in Raqqa and IS’s greatest conquest: the Iraqi city of Mosul.

It should be no surprise that IS has decided to wage war on the West, since we have been waging war on them. The difference, of course, is that IS observes no civilized rules of war. It tortures prisoners (remember the Jordanian pilot burned to death in a cage), executes journalists, treats women as the spoils of war, and makes war on civilians by design.

The IS objective is to further its apocalyptic vision of a final showdown between believers and infidels; a battle that it believes will occur somewhere near Raqqa. It hopes to goad the West into putting an army on the ground in Muslim lands. It also hopes to goad the West into persecuting Muslims in Europe and the U.S., thereby driving them into the arms of IS.

IS has now taken the offensive against the West. It has attacked Russia; it has attacked France; and shortly, it will attack the U.S. What should we do? What should the West do?

One thing we should not do is to send thousands of U.S. troops to fight IS on its home turf. If by so doing, we could destroy IS, it would be a worthy expedition; yet as recent history should have taught us, sending Western armies into Muslim lands is fraught with unintended consequences. Bernie Sanders was right: there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq until we invaded. AQI is the direct lineal ancestor of IS.

Another thing we would do well to avoid is persecuting Muslims in the West. Most of those in Europe and the U.S. have migrated legally. While Muslim immigrants to the U.S. assimilate our culture and values, many in Europe do not. The French attackers were all of that category. Our European friends should engage in some introspection on that point.

Then there are refugees, primarily Syrian. This is a humanitarian crisis, and will solve itself when the Syrian civil war ends. It’s true that terrorists can infiltrate the refugee stream, but if that doorway were barred, terrorists would find another. After all, the 9/11 attackers weren’t refugees. Closing borders to people who are running for their lives is not the answer. The answer is to bring an end to the Syrian civil war.

One thing that the West could do is to turn these refugees to our advantage. If we provided their families with safety and survival, we could recruit them, train and equip them, provide their air support, and send them back to reclaim their country.

While atrocities like Paris unleash our bloodlust and have led us in the past to dramatic but foolish actions, it is well to remember the words of an old proverb: Revenge is a dish best served cold.