Written by Alex Ellis
In the year 1212, it is believed that a young boy from central Europe heard a message from God that he must lead the youth of Europe on a crusade through the holy lands. While there are different accounts of what happened, one of the more likely accounts tells the tale of a boy from Germany who traveled to Italy, spreading his message and amassing a following of about 7,000 people. Upon arriving at the Mediterranean, two merchants offered free passage to all who could fit on their boats, saying they would take them to Jerusalem. However, the ships instead sailed for Africa, where the passengers were either sold into slavery or died in a shipwreck.
Our current enemy in the Middle East (which seems to change every few years) is ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sometimes also referred to as ISIS. This group has certain characteristics which set it apart from other groups the U.S. has fought in the Middle East. For example, in June, ISIL pulled off one of
the biggest bank robberies in history, making them one of, if not the most, well-funded terrorist groups in the world.
Also different is the amount and extremity of their violence against the people within their territory. In fact, the ISIS leadership and ground soldiers are so extreme that in February, the infamous terrorist group
Al-Qaeda broke all ties with them.
However, there is one similarity between the U.S.’s enemies in Iraq, and that is that they were created by the U.S. itself. In 1958, the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown, and the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, the party of Saddam Hussein, controlled the country from 1968 until 2003. Of course, this was done with the support of the U.S. Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11, is a child of Operation Cyclone,
a CIA program during the 1980s that channeled funds to groups who fought the Soviets during the war in Afghanistan.
Now, the U.S. is facing off with ISIL, an Islamic terrorist group with
connections to the U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. Even still, it is impossible to tell how many people have turned to Jihad in the wake of modern American colonial wars.
Despite the criticism the U.S. has received in recent times, Western meddling in the Middle East goes much farther back than the wars of the past two decades. The Ottoman Empire, an empire formed by the Turks and which stood for over 600 years, once stood where the Arab world exists now. Despite the many different religious and ethnic groups that existed within its borders, the empire was able to rule these groups in stability, even going so far as to create
a legal system with three courts to appease its people. When the empire was defeated at the end of World War I, the Western powers partitioned the Arab world into borders which, as we can see from decades of war along religious, ethnic, and political lines, are anything but stable. When the United Nations threw Israel into the mix in 1948, tensions in the region only increased.
While President Obama may claim that the new military operations will be limited to bombing and that no American boots will touch ground, we must ask ourselves how credible this claim is. How many times has “no boots” turned into supplying allies, then to providing military advisors, then into a full-blown conflict? Vietnam veterans may hold some doubts in the president’s claims, as should the general American public. It should be noted that much of America’s current youth has spent their entire lives in wartime; peace is something they have yet to experience.
With this in mind, we must ask ourselves if a new military operation in Iraq is warranted. While the actions of ISIL and other terrorist organizations are awful and reprehensible, it is important to examine what gave rise to these groups and the sentiments behind them. A resistance to these Jihadis is necessary, but the resistance must come naturally from the Arab people.
As we have seen these past few decades, foreign intervention by the U.S. and her allies only sows the seeds for more war, effectively creating a state of perpetual conflict that we can see happening in the Middle East right now.
