How to Confront ISIS
There may be a responsible way to fight the Islamic State, but the U.S. will have to leave its boots in the closet and the drones in the hangar.
Harvard professor Stephen Walt suggests that a policy of containment and patience will result in ISIS creating a limited state and eventually joining the rest of the civilized world. He argues that many other governments currently in power — such as those in the Americas, China, Russia, and Israel — were built on brutal and coercive means. Yet Walt does not consider any moral frame in the outcome of these nations. Should the world have waited for the Nazis to become civilized?
The people of the region opposing and ready to fight ISIS and their allies, including the United States, must demonstrate a clear and consistent moral basis in all of their acts. We cannot fight ISIS while routinely killing civilians in the process. We must peel back the layers of support for ISIS by engaging the local community to work with us out of their own beliefs — and not just solely for our payments. Each layer of support to ISIS requires the engagement of a different community.
In the long run, promoting sectarianism in Iraq by arming the Sunnis in the Anbar region will help strengthen ISIS, a sectarian Sunni group. Eventually many Sunnis will go back to their roots and support their own group against Iranian Shia and foreign infidels. Already an explosion of sectarianism mixed with a generous supply of weaponry has engulfed the whole region.
There may be a responsible way to fight the Islamic State, but the U.S. will have to leave its boots in the closet and the drones in the hangar.
Harvard professor Stephen Walt suggests that a policy of containment and patience will result in ISIS creating a limited state and eventually joining the rest of the civilized world. He argues that many other governments currently in power — such as those in the Americas, China, Russia, and Israel — were built on brutal and coercive means. Yet Walt does not consider any moral frame in the outcome of these nations. Should the world have waited for the Nazis to become civilized?
The people of the region opposing and ready to fight ISIS and their allies, including the United States, must demonstrate a clear and consistent moral basis in all of their acts. We cannot fight ISIS while routinely killing civilians in the process. We must peel back the layers of support for ISIS by engaging the local community to work with us out of their own beliefs — and not just solely for our payments. Each layer of support to ISIS requires the engagement of a different community.
In the long run, promoting sectarianism in Iraq by arming the Sunnis in the Anbar region will help strengthen ISIS, a sectarian Sunni group. Eventually many Sunnis will go back to their roots and support their own group against Iranian Shia and foreign infidels. Already an explosion of sectarianism mixed with a generous supply of weaponry has engulfed the whole region.
