Can We "Understand" ISIS?

The left, including people like Hillary Clinton and Loretta Lynch (and I'm hoping there are very, very few people like either of them), has been spewing out a bunch of pap lately about needing "love" and "tolerance" and "understanding" in order to make this a better world.

Now, I want this to be a better world, same as they do.  More so, probably, because the left is not content when problems are fixed, as fixed problems no longer require big, central government solutions.  And I'm a big fan of love and tolerance and understanding, all in their place.

But I digress, I think.

Today's point is simple and crisp.  Over eighty people are dead in Nice, France, because a newly-converted ISIS type ran a truck over them in an attempt to kill as many infidels as possible, and if a few practicing Muslims happened to be in the body count, well, that's collateral damage as far as ISIS is concerned.  The truck driver is dead now and well on his way to getting his 72 raisins in his version of Heaven (what, he was expecting "virgins"?   Read the link).

Despite what Barack Obama seems to say, such as in regard to the Orlando night club murders, there is really no doubt what is going on in these people's minds.  Their intent is to create a world caliphate imposing sharia law everywhere.  If they have to kill non-believers (and a bunch of ancillary, unfortunate believers along with them), well, so much the better.

Can someone please, then, explain to me how you apply any solution to Islamist fanatics trying to rule the world, and expect that it will change them?  Love?  Give peace a chance?  I'm at a loss what you think you could say, or could have said, to the Orlando killer, or the San Bernardino killers, or the Paris bombers or the Nice truck driver, that would have gotten them off their jihadist intent.

But if you know it, please tell the world.  I'm sure they'd like to know.

Aside ... at this point it is probably a good idea to mention that the Paris bombers and the Nice truck driver would have been no more successful had they been armed and used those arms.  Their weapons were bombs and a truck.  Let us keep that in mind as we charge merrily down the path that suggests that gun control is going to take care of terror in this country.  We have trucks here, too, and the wherewithal to make bombs.

But I digress, again.

The main point is still simple and just as valid.  Historically, appeasement has been universally unsuccessful at dealing with people who want to rule the world.  It didn't work for Neville "There will be peace in our time" Chamberlain before World War II, and it isn't going to work with Islamist radical terrorists.

There is one solution, and it is a military one.  I do not doubt that an ancillary -- but not a dominant -- part of the solution is going to be to devalue the ideology in some manner.  But it has to be implemented as an adjunct to the military solution, so that not only is our principal focus the deletion of the terrorists, but their ability to attract more followers is short-circuited in the communities from which the arise.

But the Hillary Clinton solution has no basis in historical success.

Not that it matters when all you care about is getting votes.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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