By Edwin Cooney
Okay, ISIL or ISIS, take your pick, is evil. The question, however, is whether that’s a
good enough reason for us to destroy them.
Might there be a more compelling reason than their evil nature that
thoroughly justifies President Obama’s determination to do them in? I think so!
Sadly, people commit acts of “evil” such as murder, rape,
theft, and deception every day. The
forces behind individual acts of evil are anger, resentment, greed, feelings of
inferiority and perceived rejection by society.
Just societies seek to counter potential individual acts of evil in
several ways. First, they create an
expectation of justice. Second, they
pass laws and create institutions to punish and thus control those guilty of
evil deeds. Additionally, they foster
institutions to ease people’s anxiety, poverty and spiritual pain. Fortunately, modern practitioners of
medicine, psychology, and spiritual guidance are increasingly coming to realize
that acts of evil don’t mean that most people are evil by nature.
Certainly people and the nations they populate have
committed acts of evil since the dawn of creation. Some of the greatest human
civilizations have not only prospered, but have flourished while creating and
perpetuating “evil” institutions!
There was much that was evil in Greek, Roman, Spanish,
French, and British societies. Even we,
the United States of America, the land of the free, home of the brave, the
abiding place of noble men and women and authors of freedom and democracy, have
done evil things. After all, would the
great North American Indian tribes have been justified if they had regarded as
hoards of evil the ever-advancing Spanish, Dutch, French and British colonists
who, without provocation, invaded and occupied the tribes’ native land? Might the tribes of black Africa, whose lands
were invaded, again without provocation, have legitimately regarded British and
Americans slave traders as disciples of evil? Finally, didn’t President Reagan,
after labeling the Soviets as “the evil empire,” negotiate and accommodate
representatives of that “evil empire” before its political disintegration in
1991?
Last Wednesday night, President Barack Obama announced a
four-point strategy that he asserted must be applied in a successful effort to
destroy ISIL. First, the United States
will provide air cover and strategic bombing to destroy ISIL’s military forces
and fighting capacity. Second, we will
work to cut off their financial resources.
Third, we will coalesce with a group of nations to accomplish the first
two objectives. Finally, we will insist
that the government of Iraq and other Middle Eastern governments we support
institute social, political and religious equity in that region of the world.
Policies and practices we regard as “evil” such as mass
genocide, enslavement, political oppression, racial, ethnic and gender
discrimination are hardly original with ISIL. They have been practiced by most
“civilized” societies throughout human history as well as by us, meaning of
course, the USA. Hence, the question has
to be: “What is it about ISIL that requires its absolute obliteration?”
The answer lies in its stated brazenness, in its flaunted
disregard for any other political or spiritual entity except itself. As the president pointed out, ISIL is not
Islamic as many of its victims are Muslims. Nor, the president insists, is it a
state. Insofar as I am aware, its creed
or reason for existence is its own perpetuation and dominance over any entity
that might conceivably be willing to coexist with it. In that way, it is comparable to Hitler’s SS,
Pol Pot’s death squads and Stalin’s acts of midnight terror. It appears to lack a willingness to even recognize,
let alone acknowledge, the existence of anyone else’s worthiness. The immediate danger lies in its proximity to
the levers of power in two states, Syria and Iraq. In the final analysis, ISIL is nothing more
than a gang armed with sophisticated weapons and stolen money. As such, it redresses no grievance nor does
it seek justice. ISIL is about ISIL and
nothing else.
ISIL has blatantly charted its mission and labeled
itself. Its methods are certainly evil,
but its repulsiveness has to do with what it is all about: the perpetuation of
gangsterism.
Unfortunately, evil as a human frailty pervades the
planet. It masters the weak and too
often tempts the righteous. Evil is a
powerful source but, like all other human traits, it possesses within its DNA a
vital weakness.
Happily, when “evil” compels men and women to become that
which is intolerable in every society, specifically thugs and gangsters, that’s
when “evil” really and truly sows the seeds of its own destruction!
That’s how I view both “evil” and ISIL! How do you view them?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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