Ian Buruma is right about the "appalling lack of historical memory" of some hawkish GOP presidential candidates. Ted Cruz has vowed to "carpet bomb" - a tactic straight out of Vietnam - the Islamic State, while Donald Trump would "bomb the shit" out of ISIS."

Inded, the problem with these men is that "none has any personal experience of war," and they lack "moral imagination" to understand the "consequences of what they are saying." Indeed they have failed to realise that getting to the root cause of Islamist extremism is a battle for hearts and minds of its adherents. Air supremacy alone didn't help America win the Vietnam war, nor eradicate the Taliban in Afghanistan. Historians claim "the Nazis were not defeated by carpet bombing," while "Russian tanks did more to bring down the Wehrmacht."

According to Buruma, this complex multi-layered conflict in the Middle East, which started with a civil war in Syria, has attracted regional and global powers to confront each another, by backing opposite sides. He says this conflict has "much more in common with the Thirty Years War that devastated much of Germany and central Europe from 1618 to 1648." The three-decade-long war between Catholics and Protestants, was less a religious conflict, but more "a struggle for European hegemony between the Bourbon and Habsburg monarchies," because supporters of the warring parties forged alliances across sectarian divide and "switched sides whenever it suited them."

Again in the Middle East the "main axis of conflict" is less religious but more "geopolitical" - a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the region. Taking the two former Cold War opponents - the US and Russia - on board, the two players "deliberately whip up religious fanatics" to spread violence and unleash mayhem. Yet religion is not Assad's ulterior motive to prevail, but his survival. ISIS is fighting for its "revolutionary caliphate," not for "Sunni orthodxy."

Buruma asks whether this conflict would trigger soul-searching in the Muslim world. A "thorough religious reformation" is badly needed to "bring about long-term peace in the Middle East." He says, although "reformation of Islam might be desirable in itself, it will not bring an end to the war at hand," as long as leaders don't abandon their zero-sum game mindset. Nearly four centuries ago, the "will to take advantage of" a political solution to the war "was lacking," because "one party or another still sought greater advantage by fighting on (or encouraging others to do so)." It looks as though the warring parties in the Middle East have little appetite for settlements and compromises, as this would be seen as weakness, prolonging the "agony" and causing an "even greater catastophe."