Wake Up, World

Beheadings. Sectarian cleansing. Forced conversions.

In my nearly ten years of observing and writing on current affairs, I have never, ever witnessed anything like the grave, horrifying danger ISIS poses to the Middle East, the West, and perhaps even the world.

To learn more on them, see this Medium profile of the group.

Militarily, the situation is not encouraging.

13 years after 9/11, America is in a deep hole of debt, exacerbated by waging a multi-trillion dollar “War on Terror.”

Its political will, and NATO’s, are broken, and its foreign policy is in disarray under the leadership of a President who has proven to be hesitant in taking proper decisive action, backed by an overarching strategy for the region.

Violent jihadism, with its clearly stated — and now feasible — expansionist goals, has in a short period become shockingly more powerful than ever, spilling abominable increasing volumes of blood, with the majority of it being the blood of Muslims.

Iraq’s army is futile, Jordan is weak, and the rivalries among the only capable regional powers - Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and UAE - mean further chaos, instead of a badly needed united military front.

Far worse though, is the ideological situation.

It is extremely disturbing, and more prevalent than most realize, or would like to admit.

The ugly truth is, even if ISIS is militarily defeated in the short-term, the mindset that helped birth it has become far-too-common. Encouraged by the current political dynamics, it will continue unabated in birthing future similar groups to fill the gaps.

And we actually ought to expect many of them to graduate out of the thousands of “Islamic State” children in Syria and Iraq currently being indoctrinated to join the “holy war.” (See minute 33:38 in the VICE documentary below, and prepare to be horrified).

Simply put, the circumstances have unleashed an underlying culture war in the Middle East that makes the culture wars of America look like a picnic, and has made millions of Arabs and Muslims who believe in progress and modernity utterly disgusted.

How the hell did we get here? Especially after the optimistic, earlier euphoric scenes of the “Arab Spring”? And what can we do about it?

These are questions that have been weighing heavily on me.

Many have offered answers in the form of excellent brief articles like this one by The Guardian’s Brian Whitaker, but to discuss the matter elaborately, we first need to understand the enemy we’re dealing with.