Sadly and ominously, some of the hardline American response to the Islamic State is trending towards a war of religions. It is the path terrorists want but is the worst on which to be. It is a time-tested labyrinth of inconclusive attrition. [icopyright one button toolbar]
President Barack Obama took a step into the labyrinth after James Foley’s barbaric beheading. “There is evil in this world … Ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless evil. ISIL is the face of that evil … The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil. ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed,” he said.
These reactions are laudable. But they sound like George Bush’s “Axis of evil” and resonate the religious drivers of both Sunni and Shia extremists who insist that America is the “Great Satan” and font of evil.
The axis of evil comment encouraged Iran’s Shia mullahs to intensify programs to acquire nuclear fuel technologies that many now fear will soon turn into nuclear weapons.
Their Sunni Saudi rivals already have access to nuclear weapons through very close friendship with rabidly Sunni Pakistan, now stumbling towards a chaotic failed state.
At least half the world’s people hold views about evil different from those of American and European Christians as well as Shia Iran and Sunni Islamic State, Al Qaeda and Taliban-style terrorists.
It is understandable that Obama is tempted to bring Biblical brimstone to a stunningly violent bid for hegemony by zealots who profess an Islam that the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims would reject, were their opinions ever sought.
It may help some American voters to shelter under an Abrahamic dichotomy that asserts, “Good must prevail; evil must be destroyed” to justify military use of still more intensely lethal force on their behalf.
They could be masking their craving for US global supremacy by branding its most virulent enemies as evil. Thus, they quieten their natural human reluctance to kill others by arguing that “destroying evil is truly righteous”.
However, they and Obama may be misunderstanding would-be allies. The world’s majority admires America not for its religious rigor or destruction of evil but for enlightened leadership towards non-denominational and secular human dignity, freedoms, prosperity and progress.
This is the soft power that allows Obama to be accepted widely as the free world’s leader. It is the reason why so many diverse peoples around the world pause to listen when a President of the American people speaks.
They do not listen because the US is the world’s overwhelmingly supreme military force. They listen because most accept that the American President deserves esteem because he is the freely elected leader of the world’s only truly inclusive State and a proponent of human freedoms regardless of creed or race.
If evil must be brought to light, the words are wiser when tempered with pragmatic recognition that its lurking slivers sully every human heart regardless of origin.
The Islamic terrorists are unimaginably heinous. Yet, never in history has the sword wiped out all the heinous. Never has victory capable of nurturing peace been obtained by branding the other as evil and savage.
More often, the heinous met extinction when their disillusioned followers abandoned them. They lost when none would use their currency.
Obama’s great challenge does not lie only in gathering better armed coalitions to kill terrorists. The more enemies are killed, the more their children will rise to fight with passionate hatred.
It lies in leading all those who accept him as “leader of the free world” to finds ways to demonstrate the vacuity of the terrorists to potential followers, whether willing or coerced.
The would-be followers need to be convinced that terrorists will visit ruin upon them because their doctrines are intrinsically mendacious.
There is no need for local pulpits. The web, social media, radio and TV are readily available superb allies to unveil the lies disguised as purer Islam.
This is not public diplomacy for the US by the US, as in the past. The goal is to demonstrate the falseness of “truth” propagated by the terrorists.
Americans cannot do this alone because they have no credibility. They would invite accusations of being militarist Christians continuing crusades to discredit and defeat Islam.
Many countries that are more credible will have to join hands, while Obama wields the sword not as an Abrahamic ethicist but as the world’s secular and even-handed leader.
Surely, it is possible to find enough Muslims in Muslim-majority countries who will readily help to save their religion from being hijacked by a monstrous version propagated by the IS and its supporters.
This should be started quickly since military solutions unavoidably kill the civilian shields of terrorists.
A bonus would be to preclude children of those shields from turning into revenge seekers beheading American hostages on global video just because nothing less cools the heart.