Doing what is best, can be most difficult

We all know the horror that is going in in the area of Syria and Iraq. I don’t want to call anyone out by name because I don’t want to give them any, well I was going to say credence or recognition etc., but I just don’t want to give them any.

First let’s step back a few years. I was one of the people who said we should have captured Bid Laden alive. I do have reasons for that and I will get to that in a minute.

A few days ago I was reading through some articles and read the one basically titled “Foley’s death isn’t changing views in Congress” And the comments were mostly filled with we need to kill them all statements, nothing is good for them etc…. I use to comment on the stories; however, I have cut back because it is either a hate fest on the topic or lambasting of someone politically. There is rarely a real discussion of the issue so I have cut back, yet this time I felt compelled and wrote:

The hate begets hate problem. How do we eradicate these monsters without succumbing to their hatred? We must stay rational in our endeavors. If we get caught up in hate also, they begin to win. We need to win, but we need to show the world we are out for justice and for people, not revenge.

Anyway I got a few down votes and some comments basically saying how much they hate them. Point not taken I guess.

Not only did they not get we need to rise above theory, I don’t think people understand how important it is how the world views how we handle this situation. The US is still a major, if not the major player, in the world. How others perceive us can help us down the road with other crisis and catastrophes. I think many of my fellow countrymen seem to miss that point. Our success or our success in building a coalition to rid the planet of these monsters can help us in the present and future. For example, how much more help would we get in supporting Ukraine if people felt what we were doing was the right thing, not just because another country was invading them, but other’s perception of us was in high regard. Putin gains ground or has gained ground because we have lost sight of doing the right thing. Russian can protect Russia’s interests and Putin has a right to protect his country, but how does the world view our interests towards Ukraine. Right now to some people it is tainted. If we show up regularly doing the right thing then in areas where it is more gray than black and white we can still garner support for which we consider right or at least make a case for one side and people will listen. And this is just one example, how about China and Vietnam and South China Sea. There will be many international events going forward. We are still a conflict driven planet, if we want to exert influence on events we need to have credibility by handling crisis in Iraq and Syria well.

So where does all this lead us. We just cannot go over there, kill the bad guys come home and be happy. This goes back to why we should have captured Bid Laden. If we kill them it only emboldens the next megalomaniac. They thrive on their philosophy and it includes high regard for being a “martyr”. And we will probably go through a few more horror stories before we really start to make a shift in terrorism, especially the terrorism fueled by the jihadist insanity. Bid laden being captured and put to trial would have made him a failure in their eyes. We may have the current craziness, but their ammunition in recruiting would be weakened if they have less people to show their world as martyrs. And this will have to go on a few times before the overall momentum they have is weakened. So we need to capture the current leadership and bring them to trail for war crimes. The world and especially their world need to see them fail. Killing them will only embolden the next psychopath who wants to be a jihadist hero. Whether any of them actually believe they get all this wonder if they die in combat is unimportant, they espouse this to gather more people to their cause. Take away their mantra and you can slowly take away others from rallying to their cause.

And yes capturing, holding them, putting them on trial is a logistics nightmare, but it must be done. If we take the easy way out (which won’t be easy, it is a tough fight) and just kill the current leadership or take back territory we will continue to have a growing problem. We must do the very difficult task of taking back their territory, capture their leaders, put them on trial for the world’s benefit, and then deal with the aftermath of probably another person trying to be the next leader in the jihadist world. And the cycle of capturing him etc. would need to happen again. We will need to do this until we can create a shift in the dynamic so the young guys who feel the insane calling starts to die down and these leaders then have no traction to begin. Eventually the momentum changes and we start to see a real decline in terrorism and a safer world.

And yes I know all of the above falls under the category easier said than done. Yet to really achieve success in the war on terror we need to remove the motivations. One is to remove the glory in their eyes. Another is to work on building a world where people see hope in their future rather than a need to die fruitlessly. And this second reason is a topic for another day. There are other tasks needed to combat this war, but we have to start somewhere. Their leaders must fail. And if needed, again and again. Killing them because we hate them is not going to solve the problem. If we hate, they begin to win