Waiting for the barbarians

Constantine XI Palaiologos (brandishing sword at left) rallies his soldiers in the final battle of the Byzantine Empire, 1453

News item:

ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — Gen. Martin Dempsey said that once he determines that the Islamic State militants in Iraq has become a direct threat to the US homeland, he will recommend the US military move directly against the group in Syria.

But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday that right now, he still believes the insurgent group is still more a regional threat and is not plotting or planning attacks against either the US or Europe.

Like Ebola, it’s always easiest to stop an epidemic when it’s small — when it can be isolated, contained and destroyed. It’s too late now to do it cheaply, but it’s still easier than after they’ve pulled off a massive terror attack that gets them even more recruits.

The IS represents the very darkest side of the human psyche. The more destructive they are, the more young men are drawn to them. Look, they say, we are giving you an opportunity to shoot down real people with real automatic weapons, rape all the women you like — much better than video games and internet porn — inspire unimaginable fear and gain respect. Be like a king. And all for the sake of the true religion! Allah gives you a pass to live out your bloody fantasies in the name of his jihad!

President Obama commented on the murder of James Foley a few days ago:

Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims, both Sunni and Shi’a, by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can, for no other reason than they practice a different religion.

They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people. So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.

He is not correct that “they speak for no religion.” They do what they do in the name of a religion, Islam, and part of their ideology is that their jihad is in order to spread the true Islam. The fact that many of their victims are Muslims doesn’t change this. They promulgate a way to be Muslim which is gaining adherents daily, the ones that are attracted by the opportunity to murder and rape, the ones that are afraid of them and the ones who somehow see ‘purity’ in their atavistic behavior.

Waiting for the barbarians to actually be at the gates, as Gen. Dempsey suggests he is doing, may not be the best strategy for dealing with a movement that is mushrooming in size and gaining strength daily as this one is.

The president continued:

People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.

Really? Ask the ghost of Constantine XI Palaiologos, killed by the troops of Mehmed II when they took Constantinople in 1453 and put an end to the almost 1000-year old Byzantine Empire. Sometimes the barbarians win.