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How to Beat ISIS

(American Interest) Walter Russell Mead - Running wild through the streets, gunning down the crowds in a night club: This is fantasy violence, video games brought into the real world. ISIS is again the coolest of jihadi brands, the cutting edge of the war against the real. The intent is not so much to terrorize the West as to galvanize the faithful. Life for the average ISIS fighter has to become a miserable affair of holing up, getting shot, running out of food, and putting up with bad medical care and low supplies. To cut the flow of recruits and funds to ISIS, we must make ISIS look unattractive and weak. The defeat of "terrorism" is a long way off. But the defeat of individual terrorist groups and forms of jihadi ideology contributes to the long-term solution: the definitive disillusionment of potential radicals. This is what we have to teach our enemies and those tempted to join them: disenchantment. The writer is professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and professor of American foreign policy at Yale University.
2015-11-24 00:00:00
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