I've been trying to think like these guys for a couple days after Friday night's violence - what's the end game..? What are they aiming for? I think this is a useful approach because if we understand their strategy, we can defeat it. I'm not condemning the knee-jerk retribution reaction the French are having as they are outraged and humiliated and suffering, but I do wonder if the actions they are now undertaking are the ones that will have the most impact.In the West's various misdirected activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on (hindsight being 20/20) in the last 15 years, we have hopefully learned that without a clear and concise exit strategy (what happens after the soldiers leave), then the effort while positively motivated at the outset, ends in quagmire. I think as an aside that's why we haven't seen ground troops to date in the Syrian civil war as the end game is anything but clear, even while the atrocities committed there scream for intervention. Recall for a moment that ISIS came to light after the Syrian conflict began, and started to fight in the midst of that conflict.
If that principle applies to us - the need to have the exit strategy, then surely it equally applies to ISIS. Let's say they win the efforts on the ground, capture the territory they're aiming for and cease being a militant army and start to want actual recognition as a governing body. There's countless precedents for this from the Taliban to the IRA. What's their plan..? Well, having provoked and pissed off the Russians and the West within the last month, it seems illogical that they are attempting to make their Syrian territory ground warfare efforts more effective to be able to govern one day. The natural reaction is what we've seen- retribution and increased focus on eradicating them via smart bombs - cutting out the cancer.
As any doctor will attest however, cancer is a tricky disease, it can be removed and re-appear, it can go into remission and then re-emerge. If you were ISIS strategic direction, what would your aim be in light of what's happening on the ground in Syria, and with the recent attacks in mind.
I have a theory that I want to share, that the evidence to date supports. ISIS aims are to stir up global retribution against Islam itself, knowing they themselves are going to be short-lived and in the context of history, just a blip. Around me outside of France, I'm seeing witness to senseless attacks on innocents that happen to be Muslim - personally and against Mosques. This is being perpetrated by those that don't understand the difference between the militants and their associated religion and are angry at what they saw in Paris. On a national scale, the effects of increased war efforts by Russia and France with air raids and cruise missiles will accelerate into a more coordinated activity by a 'coalition' of many countries no doubt aimed at destroying ISIS strongholds. And while they'll kill some ISIS fighters, they're also aiming their bombs at innocent Syrians - Muslims that are being victimized on all fronts. ISIS needs to spread more than anything, and the idea that the West is killing Muslims because Islam itself is being targeted is their end-game I think. That's how the cancer spreads.
ISIS isn't afraid of the active war against them, they needed to provoke it and that was the rationale behind the very high profile activities of knocking passenger jets out of the sky and killing a couple hundred innocent Parisians. If I'm right - by reacting strongly, motivated by revenge in the way we're seeing it playing out today, we are playing into their hands of creating martyrs for their greater cause. If that's the case, the answer could well be to surgically remove the issue, quietly and without fuss. We need to address what's been done, but let's do it in a manner that doesn't give birth to the next generation of anger that spawns into the next ISIS. We aren't at war with Islam and we cannot let the insanely criminal activities of a few, convince us that we are.
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