Solving a problem like ISIS

NOTE: This is a guest blog post written by blogger Rick Kimball. Rick is passionate about history and enjoys reading and writing about it. He shares this passion through his blog, as well as different social media websites like Facebook and Google+.

Last November 13 was a day that would strike the public imagination as one of great horror and grief for humanity. Forty-three people were killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in a working class neighborhood. Meanwhile, 150 lives were lost in Paris, many of them ordinary civilians simply going about their usual Friday night business, and welcoming the weekend. ISIS has claimed responsibility. ISIS, short for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (also, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is of course a terrorist group that advocates the establishment of an Islamic State everywhere, one that upholds Muslim law, and conservative Sunni values. It is a movement that can roughly be traced back to Al-Qaeda jihadi groups, whose mode of spreading their message almost always involved violence, and against a huge number of people. At the same time, it must be noted that current Al-Qaeda top man Ayman al-Zawahiri has called out ISIS for its excessive use of violence and sectarianism, and if another globally recognized terrorist group describes another as excessively violent, that is something we should all take seriously. Today, ISIS is growing in strength in many countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, So how does one solve a problem like ISIS? The current policy, as it is, is relentlessly launching airstrikes, in an operation called Inherent Resolve, which is said to be killing 1,000 ISIS militants every month in Iraq and Syria. This operation, ongoing since September 2014, draws support from what US President Barack Obama calls a “broad coalition” which includes such countries as Turkey, Australia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. But there is something so problematic about this move. While ISIS is a really violent group that deserves every bit of harm that now comes its way, there is something to be said about responding with aggression to acts of aggression: That it might only spawn something worse. Which is exactly what happened in the events following 9/11. Extremists grew so much more in number, with Al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups propping up a victim complex, a mentality where the notion of Western imperialism takes centerstage, and not without basis. I am inclined to say there is a better way to fight ISIS, one that does not breed more hate of the West, and will not entail the killing of more innocent civilians as “collateral damage.”