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Nov. 16th, 2015 09:40 amI just want to say...
Well, first, I want to say that there have been a number of horrific terrorist attacks recently- Paris, Beirut, and others. And they all sadden me deeply, and leave me feeling powerless and frustrated with the world, and I pray for peace to settle on us all.
But I wanted to say that I've seen in a variety of contexts different claims along the lines of, "ISIS wants us to respond by doing X, therefore we should not do X." Whatever X might be, I want to say that I think this is a really stupid argument to make.
It's stupid because it's an elementary school way of viewing the world, the most rudimentary kind of tit for tat. But it's particularly stupid because it acts like ISIS has tactical superiority over us, that their supposition of how they want us to respond to their attacks for their maximum tactical advantage is actually correct, and that therefore our only valid response is to try to deny them their goals. There are some intelligent people involved with planning for ISIS, that is clear, but they're hardly psychic mindreaders. They may believe that a bold attack on Paris will help to radicalize recruits and continue to foster their expansion, but that doesn't mean that they're right. It could be that it will backfire, making potential recruits realize the intellectual bankruptcy of the ISIS endeavor. Or it could be that it will serve as the recruiting bonanza they expect, but sufficiently incense the West that the West will finally assemble a coherent military strategy to defeat them anyway.
And in the meantime, it's on us to respond to ISIS according to the tactical assessment of our own best experts in combating terrorism, regardless of whether or not ISIS believes that we are playing into their hands. And what they believe, tactically, only matters inasmuch as it is a tool for us to predict how they will respond to our moves against them.
Of course, some of the Xes in "therefore we should not do X" are pretty transparently things we ought not to do anyway. "ISIS wants the West to explode in Islamophobic hatred, therefore we shouldn't explode in Islamophobic hatred," is dumb, but "We shouldn't explode in Islamophobic hatred because it's immoral and evil" is not dumb.
Well, first, I want to say that there have been a number of horrific terrorist attacks recently- Paris, Beirut, and others. And they all sadden me deeply, and leave me feeling powerless and frustrated with the world, and I pray for peace to settle on us all.
But I wanted to say that I've seen in a variety of contexts different claims along the lines of, "ISIS wants us to respond by doing X, therefore we should not do X." Whatever X might be, I want to say that I think this is a really stupid argument to make.
It's stupid because it's an elementary school way of viewing the world, the most rudimentary kind of tit for tat. But it's particularly stupid because it acts like ISIS has tactical superiority over us, that their supposition of how they want us to respond to their attacks for their maximum tactical advantage is actually correct, and that therefore our only valid response is to try to deny them their goals. There are some intelligent people involved with planning for ISIS, that is clear, but they're hardly psychic mindreaders. They may believe that a bold attack on Paris will help to radicalize recruits and continue to foster their expansion, but that doesn't mean that they're right. It could be that it will backfire, making potential recruits realize the intellectual bankruptcy of the ISIS endeavor. Or it could be that it will serve as the recruiting bonanza they expect, but sufficiently incense the West that the West will finally assemble a coherent military strategy to defeat them anyway.
And in the meantime, it's on us to respond to ISIS according to the tactical assessment of our own best experts in combating terrorism, regardless of whether or not ISIS believes that we are playing into their hands. And what they believe, tactically, only matters inasmuch as it is a tool for us to predict how they will respond to our moves against them.
Of course, some of the Xes in "therefore we should not do X" are pretty transparently things we ought not to do anyway. "ISIS wants the West to explode in Islamophobic hatred, therefore we shouldn't explode in Islamophobic hatred," is dumb, but "We shouldn't explode in Islamophobic hatred because it's immoral and evil" is not dumb.