Despite Manbij, America must starve ISIS of oxygen by leaving it to its own devices.
Copyright: Tasnim News Agency [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)]
ISIS is the offspring of an unholy union of the worst that traditional tribal societies and vacuous liberal democracies have to offer. It combines the bottomless fear of progress and the love of brutality that have always existed within the Muslim tribal subculture with the failure of the West to offer acceptance and even a modicum of human recognition to the slaves they have been importing ever since the end of WWII. Slaves they needed to do the jobs that whites wouldn’t because they can always go on the dole. The resulting petty and not so petty criminal underclass growing up around major European cities, getting no parental guidance from mom and pop who were slaving day and night in the family donair shop and who sent them to spend Sundays at the local madrasah funded by the Saudis and operated by radical preachers of hate from Pakistan, these young men never had a hope in hell. They could never hope to join the master race, never hope to not draw disdainful looks from the folks on the Champs Elysees or in Piccadilly. All they could hope for was to inherit their parents’ small business and slave away at it with the girl next door at their side. But they wanted more, and that more was revenge. ISIS gave them the chance to do precisely that. The rest is history.
ISIS survives and thrives on wars, paradoxically, wars that it loses. It does not want to win, because it has no plan what to do with its victory, no desire to deal with improving sewage systems. Taking away its territorial possessions was only a good idea in so far as it deprived it from a base from which to launch attacks against western interests. Now that this goal has been accomplished, rapid disengagement from remaining ISIS elements is what is needed to starve them from their oxygen of armed conflict. What ISIS fears the most is the lack of whom to fight, especially its favorite foe, Americans. What makes Americans the perfect enemy for ISIS? First and foremost their deep aversion to casualties. The psychological and public relations effects of killing a single American serviceman or servicewoman are equivalent to killing a hundred Arabs or Kurds. After all, the death of any number of those far less important humans hardly registers on Western news feeds.
The last thing ISIS wants is to fight the Assad regime or the Kurds, and least of all the Turks, especially when the US isn’t there to kvetch about human rights and police the use of weapons of mass destruction. Today’s attack on a joint Kurdish and American target in Manbij is specifically designed to make America stay, preying on America’s and specifically president Trump’s reluctance to give the appearance of running away in defeat. America must resist this provocation and if anything accelerate the withdrawal of its forces from the region, not only from Syria, but also from Iraq and Afghanistan. ISIS, like the rest of radical Islam is a rabid dog and you don’t fight rabid dogs, you quarantine them or kill them. Killing ISIS may be as tough as killing cancer; you can put it in remission, but a few malignant cells will always find a hiding place as long as the patient is alive. Let us deliver ISIS a true mortal blow, the one it fears most; let us tell them: “We have much better things to do than play here with you maniacs. You’re on your own, boys.”
