[CNN] When most people look at ISIS, they see the incarnation of evil. Among its many horrific acts, the Islamic holy warrior group beheaded American journalist James Foley and posted the video this week in retaliation for U.S. The problem with that question is that the answer is as easy as it is useless. Yes, ISIS is evil and must be stopped. Saying so over and over again could very well make it harder to stop them.
There is only one good reason to denounce a group as evil -- because you plan to injure them, and calling them evil makes it psychologically easier to do so. "Evil" is the most powerful word we have to prepare ourselves to kill other people comfortably.
The flip side is that "evil" is also a word that stops us from thinking.
Once you've decided that it's evil what is there to think about? From there you start thinking about how to exterminate them.
There is no point in trying to understand evil because it is, in the most typical phrasing, "inhuman," "senseless" or "beyond comprehension." It is a fool's quest to analyze the local realities and strategic imperatives of unthinking savages. There is something almost offensive about trying to understand such evil.
"Tut tut. And tut, my good man!"
National Review's Jonah Goldberg tried to shame those who are trying to think seriously about ISIS. In a recent tweet, he mocked the attempt to understand ISIS in its social and political context, suggesting that we should focus instead on one fact: "They're evil. They do obviously evil things for evil ends."
The fact is, there are few things more dangerous now than allowing ourselves to think that way.
Yeah, buddy. There are few things more dangerous than allowing ourselves to think.
To resist ISIS and, perhaps more importantly, the larger social forces it represents, the U.S. will need more than a collective psychological readiness to injure, and more than bombs.
"We'll need money, lotsa money, in the form of grants to emminent scholars like... well... like me."
The Wall Street Journal editorialized that this evil ideology will only be stopped when "enough of its fanatics have been killed." But if we've learned anything as a nation since our "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq, it is this: While invasions and bombing can be effective in the short term, they are not durable solutions to terror-based violence.
The "shock and awe" campaign ejected Sammy in under two weeks. The follow-up war wasn't against Sammy and his Baathists, it was against Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. They called themselves "al-Qaeda in Iraq," not The Saddam Hussein Revenge Squad. Violence solved the Sammy problem. Violence also solved the AQI problem. Maliki letting them grow back was third in a series of problems.
Even if U.S. military force could effectively destroy ISIS, there will be similar groups waiting in the wings. If we are to have any hope of preventing the spread of bad boy ideologies, we must do more than bomb the believers. We must understand them. We must be willing to continue thinking.
Go ahead, bub. Explain them.
How is ISIS able to achieve the support it needs?
A base of financing from the Gulf States, with additional revenues from narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, probably prostitution and gambling, and kidnapping for ransom. The moral support comes from salafist holy men whom we're not bothering to suppress because we don't take religion as seriously as they do.
What drives people into its ranks?
Holy men, Groupthink, and sheer stupidity. The average jihadi is something like 22 years old. Substitute "orators" for "holy men" and it's no different from the Nazis or the Fascists or the Directorate of Public Safety.
What social pressures and needs, what political and regional vacuums, make it possible for a group like this to thrive? We can choose to answer these questions in two ways.
We can say they are evil people doing evil things for evil ends. Or we can do the hard work of understanding the context that made them, so that we can create a context that unmakes them.
The context is a culture that's antithetical to the West. There was a slogan going around Bangladesh a year or two ago: "Sy no to democracy." It came with a yellow flag bearing the same koranic nonsense that's inscribed on the black Islamic State flag. Can we kill them now?
We can analyze the ways its violent tactics are effective for its purposes given the local power dynamics, so that we can also better understand its weak spots. And we can ask how it is that normal men -- men who were not born evil -- get turned into monsters, so that we can work to change the structures that produce hard boyz over the long term instead of locking ourselves into an endlessly repeated, short-term policy of "killing fanatics" until they are gone.
They're locked into an endlessly repeated, short-term policy of "killing infidels." While we're holding symposia and filling out applications for grants they'll continue "killing infidels." At some point, while all us good-hearted folk are gathered around a round table trying to decide some way to exonerate Islam from what Islamists do there will be a big kaboom and we'll all be dead and our granddaughters will wear burkas and our grandsons will strut around waving AK-47s and scimitars and such and wearing bomb vests. So what will the symposia and the grants and the round tables accomplish? My guess is squat.
Trying to understand something isn't the same as trying to justify or excuse it. That's a basic mistake, and a costly one.
"Oh, costly. Very costly. Tut."
As Jane Harman, president of the Woodrow International Center for Scholars,
Ohfergawdsake.
recently wrote: "We can't counter radical narratives if we don't understand the motives of the radicalized."
Sure we can. When their life's blood has trickled into the gutters they'll be countered.
Nonetheless, trying to understand evil is an offense.
That may be one of the two or three most stupid statements I've ever read.
It is an offense to everything we hold dear, because understanding -- that is, true and effective understanding -- must bring us close to the other, must help us see the world through their eyes.
That is a painful, offensive process, and that is exactly what we must do.
Then why'd you write all that blather, bub?