TO DEAL WITH "DAESH", IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN BOMBS & BOOTS

…Daesh on the Move

 

Rejecting those that are running from being slaughtered in their own lands is not who we are.

 

As a political opinion writer, I have always felt that as a follower of our society, it is my responsibility to offer possible alternatives to recognized problems within that society.  Just as I have a good friend that is an accomplished artist and poet.  His responsibility is to offer thoughtful examples of the positive and sensitive ways he sees the world.

 

If this attitude of my perceived responsibility to our society is correct, then it is my job to offer some possible ideas for responding to the issues that are happening today regarding the vicious cult we refer to as Daesh.  (As I have recently stated, wherever possible, going forward I will be referring to the barbaric Islamic State by using the offensive Arabic term of “Daesh”.)

 

The real question in dealing with this abomination of an extreme terrorist group is to ask, “How many lives need to be lost while trying to accomplish what sometimes appears to be impossible?”

 

As another writer who also feels as I do about a social and political writer’s responsibility has stated about Daesh,  “We may as well be fighting sandworms.”

 

The writer I am referring to is the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker.  And for those that are scratching their head as to what Ms. Parker stated, the comment she made is not a bazaar insult.  It is instead a reference to the fictional monsters in the late Frank Herbert’s highly successful science-fiction book series called “Dune”.  Ms. Parker also properly states that Herbert, who died in 1986 was, “eerily prescient [of Daesh] when he began the Dune series back in the mid-1960s”.         

                             

By her statement, what she means is, just as Daesh has come to their devastating reality from the deserts in the middle east, the Dune’s people that worshipped the sandworms were desert dwellers that viewed their actions as being directed by God.  And just as Daesh appears and destroys everything in their path, “the gigantic Dune sandworms were an unstoppable foe that lurked out of sight until it was too late.  They were virtually indestructible and had an indefinite lifespan”.  Sound familiar?

 

As Ms. Parker wrote, “Too bad he [Herbert] isn’t here to advise us. We could do — and have done — worse.”

 

The point of what both I and Ms. Parker have to say is, “How does turning our backs on those that are being slaughtered today by a 21^st century “sandworm”, make us or them any safer?”  Or does rejecting them just create more “sandworms”.  As Ms. Parker also wrote, “This is a call not to look away but to be solemnly cautious, thoughtful and creative. Is the Islamic State’s mission to establish a caliphate, thus to hasten the End Times, a mental disorder? Is it treatable? Is their tactical savagery pathological.”

 

Many people in America and around the world do not understand that the goal of Daesh and their so called “caliphate” is that they believe that it is time for Armageddon, or the “End of Times”.  They feel they are willing to die because it is their responsibility to kill all who are not followers of their true God, Muhammad.

 

The point of all this is to ask, “What makes rational individual subscribe to these kind of drastic beliefs?  What can cause a modern, young, well-educated individual to strap on a suicide vest and walk into a crowd and kill dozens of innocent people?”

 

As Ms. Parker wrote and I too believe, “Winning the war against an ideology that rejects freedom and welcomes death will require something more than bombs and boots. It will require genius.”

 

But I  believe it will not only take “genius”, it will take millions of positive thinking people such as the artist and poets that say “personal freedom is more important than any extreme ideology”.  This could become one of the most important conflicts that this nation ever encounters.

 

Copyright G.Ater 2015