As a pacifist I marched against the illegal invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition of troops which – it could be argued – destabilised the region to the extent where the very notion of Isis-style Jihadi groups running rampage could became a reality.
Given the nihilistic mindset of this besieging militia, further ground action in order to prevent their entrance into Kobane isn’t something to consider lightly, but given the consequences, must surely be seen as a moral and just course of action? Particularly if you aren’t a pacifist like myself.
Because if you believe that large professional standing armies whose ground troops are dotted around the world are a good thing, this must surely be the time you would use them. And yes Isis’ ideology needs Western military intervention to survive, indeed thrives off it; and yes the threat is not as widespread as is sometimes made out.
And yes it could get nasty. And no, air strikes don’t work how many times does this need writing down?
And no, threat of Isis should not be used as a convenient monster with which to denigrate the majority of the billion or so Muslims who are appalled by their actions.
This is the cause of much conflict. The category fail: all Westerners are my enemy because some Westerners invaded my country and killed my innocent child, all Muslims are the enemy because they beheaded a journalist and gloated about it, all Jews are bad because Israel currently illegally occupies land which does not belong to them, all Palestinians are terrorists because some of them send missiles in to Israel… and so on.
Bin Laden knew this; he knew how to stir up anger between peoples, and was successful in his objectives.
Global response to Isis should be measured; their numbers are relatively small, and their multinational nature reflects the relative ease of communications and travel rather than their global advance. They have effectively piggybacked technologies and techniques of communication as alien to their stated ideology as their increasingly sophisticated weapons, and we Westerners, we humans, should not form a angry mob torching to the wrong targets and fuelling fresh conflicts.
We should look at who armed them and how, and learn again that the export of arms, in which Britain is a major player, ultimately is an export of suffering. These are long-term lessons.
But in the short term, surely, we should not let Kobane fall.
