We have to face the reality of the situation we are dealing with regarding the world’s situation with ISIS and terrorism in general. Both sides of the political spectrum have extreme differences in ideologies on how to deal with it. The far right want to “bomb the shit out of them,” despite the fact that we bomb targets that aren’t military related (like schools), all to kill only a few ISIS fighters, while simultaneously killing 10 times that amount in innocent civilians and children in some cases. And then they have the nerve to say we shouldn’t accept refuges at all from the same areas we bomb and displace people from. The far left, as Katy Perry said, want to defeat them with “co-existing”, “open borders” and “love.” Sounds like Katy Perry is smoking crack, and the far right aren’t considering that, yes, killing innocent people by the masses, especially children, only makes people more susceptible to being recruited by ISIS and other terrorist factions by seeing us as terrorists and murderers as well.
Let’s get straight to some realizations both sides must come to terms with. Not doing so is simply void of any reasoning whatsoever:
- Completely open borders with no vetting is just asking for invasion and trouble. Bad idea Katy.
- Yes, killing innocent people by bombing facilities that are non-military in nature will cause people to rally behind terrorist causes.
- Yes, Islam itself has its radical factions, and some Imams are perpetuating radical rhetoric with the intention of creating more terrorists.
- There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, which make up about 23% of the world’s population. If “all Muslims are bad,” then a majority of the world would be on fire. But it’s not. In fact, if you know your history, some 1200 or so years ago, Muslims in their territories were perfectly fine with Christians residing among them, so long as they didn’t try to convert Muslims to Christianity, and Christianity didn’t interfere with their Islamic form of government. This holds true today in countries like Egypt, and Syria.
- Do they really hate us for our freedoms? Eh, this is somewhat true in a sense, but not completely. It’s not really our freedoms they hate us for. Many come to the US because of the freedoms that we have. They hate us because we don’t subscribe to their version of who God is. That, and of course us bombing hundreds of innocent Muslims and occupying their countries simultaneously.
- We are not at war. This is not any war in the traditional sense. ISIS is using guerrilla warfare tactics in making singular lone wolf attacks. This is no different than any other domestic terrorists here who have done so, with the exception of their reasons why. Black Lives Matter extremists who murder police in cold blood are acts of terrorism themselves. They are at war on the ground in many areas of the Middle East, such as in Syria, but mostly outside of the areas where ISIS mainly operates, there is no war, only these lone wolf singular guerrilla attacks.
- As libertarians, we believe in a non-interventionalist foreign policy, but I don’t see how this is a bell we can just un-ring. Had we not overstepped our bounds in the first place (overthrowing Iraqi and Libyan governments), we probably wouldn’t be dealing with this now. But now that we are, I don’t see any way to not see it through.
- This is about politics rather than strictly religion. In the Muslim world however, the two are intertwined, Sharia law being the Islamic version of government and politics.
This is a new type of conflict we’re dealing with. But it’s not one country we’re fighting, or a traditional type of combat where the enemy is crystal clear. If people are radicalized, don’t dress up as combatants, and don’t portray any type of rhetoric or behavior to suggest they are a combatant, then how are we to know who they are? This is especially true in western countries where they live among us.
The United Kingdom monitors many things that we do not here in the United States. They live in a surveillance state. The Manchester bomber was even reported to authorities as being dangerous, yet he was still successful and was not stopped despite all of this. Giving up our freedoms from unreasonable searches and surveillance will not make us any safer, so this is not the answer to the problem.
The bombings aren’t working over the long run. From 2014 to now, estimates of the amount of ISIS fighters have grown from around 9,000 to 18,000 to an estimation of over 100,000 currently. Clearly, they are still successful at rallying people to their cause. Some of this, no doubt, is by simply radicalizing youth through extremist education. Other causes include utilizing our bombing of innocent civilians as a catalyst to get others to join the fight against the “oppressive and evil west.” How easy is it to offer someone revenge for the loss of a child or another loved one by claiming they can do so by joining them? Not hard. In fact, in many of the recent attacks, those who were captured and/or interviewed at some point, such as the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Miami when negotiators were on the phone with the shooter, explicitly state that they “just want the bombing to stop.” I can agree that this is probably true, but I’ll also agree that if we just stopped tomorrow, the problem isn’t just going to go away on its own either. Now some will argue “But we dropped bombs on Japan after Pearl Harbor, and they’re not committing terrorist acts in revenge!” That is not an equal argument to what we are dealing with for two reasons. One, they attacked us first, and we simply responded. Two, they have a different culture than Islam does, and therefore, a different mentality on combat or war in general.
I suggest a change in tactics. If we have the intelligence and means to track down one guy (Osama Bin Laden), and successfully take him out, I find it hard to believe that we can’t find and successfully destroy an army of 100,000 without killing thousands of civilians in the process. Estimates of collateral deaths currently lie in the thousands. Will there be collateral damage? Probably, but it shouldn’t be anywhere near the amount that it currently is. If this were WWII, and we were fighting an actual country, I wouldn’t have an issue with the collateral damage of dropping an atom bomb, like we did on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The far right would like to do that now and turn the entire Middle East into one “glass bowl,” but I don’t think they’ve thought through the full consequences of doing so. Doing that would likely set off Muslim revolts and attacks worldwide, and cause even more death and destruction than we already have, essentially perpetuating the cycle of what we’re dealing with now. Are we going to bomb the whole world like that? I don’t think so.
The majority of these attacks have occurred in Europe and Asia, including the Middle East. There are a few similarities between the two areas. One, they are neighboring nations to Arab countries or are Arab countries, and therefore are easily accessible. Two, many of the European and Arab countries outlaw the average citizen either owning guns, or carrying them in public. This is a right we as Americans have, and need to expand upon by removing gun free zones, and allowing us the liberties that we are supposed to have to carry pretty much anywhere and everywhere. Let’s get real: an armed society is more often than not a polite society. The fear and the unknown if everyone around you is armed at any time, is an extremely strong deterrent. An armed populace, paying attention to their surroundings, will no doubt be able to deter or stop active shooters, or other lone wolf attacks. We have stopped such attacks here on American soil before, and we can continue to do so. Every American is responsible for our homeland and domestic security.
So, what do we do? ISIS has changed the type of fight from being a broad sword type of war, into a scalpel by implementing lone wolf guerrilla warfare tactics. We need to do the same thing. In doing so, we can both kill them off, and simultaneously avoid all the civilian casualties we have now from indiscriminate bombing missions. I’m not suggesting we have our own suicide bombers, but rather we implement a guerrilla warfare style strategy and do our own singular attacks instead of indiscriminate bombing. Some may argue “but that’s what drone strikes are for,” and I say to them “not when you’re killing hundreds or thousands of non-combatants.” We also need to reach out to the Muslim population who stands against such attacks, and let them know that we respect them and have their backs if they have ours. The more confident they are about standing up and speaking out against these attacks because they know we support them, the more they will do so.
All you have to do is spend 5 minutes on Facebook to see how hard the far right pushes people to hate anyone who practices Islam, from Sean Hannity to Tomi Lauren. They almost all do it, and they shouldn’t. It just discredits us in the eyes of those who are not extremists and pushes them further in the extremist direction the more we talk shit about them. I’ll credit Steven Crowder as one of those conservatives who actually makes the distinction between those who don’t believe in martyrdom with those who do. But we have to stop blaming Islam itself. Any religion taken to the extreme can cause what is going on now. Any religion, including Christianity, is not above nor impervious to this.
Let’s start focusing on the individuals and the core of extremism and fight that. But currently all ISIS has to do is piece together a few videos of our commentators into an edited version of what they espouse and wham, an easy propaganda video is what you have to recruit more people. Also, cutting Middle Eastern countries off from arms sales is a good way to starve them out of weaponry over time. Russia just started doing so, and I think it’s time we do so as well. Utilizing our law enforcement resources at home for undercover operations inside of domestic mosques is another good idea, and isn’t violating anyone’s 4th amendment rights by using otherwise illegal electronic surveillance without probable cause to do so.
Bottom line, we as Americans have rights many other countries don’t have, the right to bear arms and the individual being allowed to fight back and potentially stop one of these attacks. We also need to focus our military efforts in a different manner if we’re going to eradicate this threat, instead of facilitating ISIS’s excuses to recruit more members to their ranks by killing numerous innocent people.
Aside from these efforts, and also those protecting South Korea from North Korea currently, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t shut down all other US operations worldwide, and bring our troops home.
* Shane Foster has worked his entire career in military law enforcement, corrections, and as a private investigator. He has a unique perspective into how law enforcement operates from within its ranks, our judicial system, as well as our privacy laws and how every day our individual freedoms and liberties are gradually taken away from us and our individual rights abused on a regular basis.
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Shane, you cite Daesh as having “100,000” members. Not arguing figures, just how and why they’re there.
“ISIS” is a product of Failed State politics, Failed State economics, anti-Bathist purges and persecution, and a lack of viable alternatives for a population segment (which was used-to being on-top and reaping the rewards).
Is there demonstrable harm in our bombing? Should that bell be unrung? Yes. But the tail wags the dog.
We bomb, as the masters of the politicians say: Make budget for more bombs. Use more airframe hours.
Buy a new “joint fighter” as your airframes are aging excessively. (R) or (D), the only actual foreign policy?
Export more weapons. Some operators bear the logos of the USA, others “allies” in the GWOT.
The long-term solution? Probably the destruction of the post-Ottoman borders. That Kurds should own and operate Kurdistan. Persians, Shite areas. Iraqis, Sunni areas. Yazidi are Kurds. Syria? Is more densely sectarian, and has a history of persecutions. Eventually someone, it may be the Alawites, dominate what’s left of Syria.
A century ago, nearly a million Syrian Christians immigrated to the US, due to an anti-Christian genocide.
Perhaps this time it will be the Druze, the Alawites, and the Ismaeli, and “Syria” becomes a Sunni annex of Turkey.
Or Jordan. As Twelvers, the Alawites have affinity to Shia – the reason for Iran’s assistance, and the reason for Daesh to use “apostate” as a rallying cry against the Assad regime.
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