There is at least one area where I wholeheartedly agree with the global super powers and this isn’t something that happens very often — because in reality it’s not very often that a group that the United States (or any other global super power) labels “terrorists” is actually anything close to being terrorists. Most of the time they’re anything but. More often they’re noble freedom fighters akin to the early American settlers during the American Revolutionary War (people who by all accounts were surely being labeled “terrorists” at the time, but who are now looked at as “heroes”); or they’re the last of the brave holdouts attempting to defend the truth versus the corporate bs propaganda that is so regularly being fed to the masses.
This is a sad and frustrating phenomenon that has made it nearly impossible for the average person to discern who is the hero versus who is the villain in the world of today. The majority of the people choose, whether they do so deliberately or not is up for debate, to just believe (or at least claim to) that whoever is in control, i.e. their government of the moment, is the hero, and whoever THEY brand a terrorist is the villain. Even though we have thousands of years of history that clearly disproves this.
Examples that come to mind are the Chechens, the Iraqi freedom fighters, the Ukrainians of today caught in the middle of a tense battle for control over their land between the United States and Russia, the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, the Iranians throughout the 20th century, Palestinians over the last 100 or so years, anti-Pinochet Chileans, etc etc. All labeled “terrorists” by the powers that be when in reality they were simply “those most brave and committed to truth among the throngs of masses who were willing to do whatever they were told by those with the biggest guns”.
But in the case of ISIS… they are not defending any truth, nor fighting for anyone’s freedom. Instead they are a plain and ordinary band of unscrupulous thugs and gangsters using religion as an excuse to murder and terrorize. And in these cases i personally believe it is very important that we bring the hammer down fast and furiously upon them, lest anyone forget how committed we are to the progress we’ve made as a species thus far and how adamant we are to never going back to a world that resembles anything remotely like an Islamic Caliphate or any other dictatorship. Islam is a religion. But it is not a valid excuse to terrorize.
There are very few cases I can feasibly imagine where I would condone the killing of another human being. And if the allied forces of the West, along with the Kurds of Iraq and free Syrian people, can round up and arrest every last one of these so called ISIS members, then so be it. But if that proves to be impossible due to the nature of the conflict then by all means we will be better off in the short term and the long run doing whatever is necessary to rid the world of these madmen as quickly as possible.
The same operating principle should apply to any groups of mindless murderous thugs who happen to spring up out of the vacuum of chaos and pandemonium created by the so-called Arab Spring, or anywhere else on plate earth at this time. This does not imply that the powers that be in the West, nor America, nor democracies or Christians even, are somehow the new world arbiters of what’s “good” “right” “just” or noble. Surely they’ve proved again and again that they are anything but. In fact it is this idea — the so called “Exceptionalism of America” — that is responsible for much of the trouble and heartache all over the world today. But at the very least they attempt to represent and defend the basic ideals that the majority of people around the world today deem the most preferable, freedom of the individual and not the state, personal liberty, a fair and just justice system, separation of religion and state and a relatively capitalist free enterprise system.
These ideas may be still more ideals than common practice in many parts of the world — including America at times, but they are certainly more preferable than anything put forth by the more radical Islamic groups that have sprung up over the last ten to twenty years in resistance to the admittedly imperialistic forces of the United States. Just because the United States and their overtly bullying and imperialist methods seem nefarious and repugnant to us does not necessarily imply that the forces who have cropped up to resist them are any better. In fact most of the time, if anything, they are worse.
Therefore if we have a mission in these various battles or even a say, it is to continue to attempt to improve on this most delicate democratic republic we have created in the United States and in many other countries around the world, rather than try to bring them down or radically change them in any major way. This is our noble goal.
