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A Battle Won in the War on Terror

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's death isn't the end of ISIS. Angry, alienated and profoundly confused people will continue to find the message of ISIS and similar groups seductive. Baghdadi and his lieutenants promised their followers paradise. They crafted a god in their own image - a god of genocide, violence, rape, enslavement - and claimed that this god was powerful enough to give victory in battle. It turned out they were wrong. Baghdadi's fate makes the task of recruiting fresh jihadists a little harder. The fanaticism of Baghdadi and his ilk is a minority view. Most of the forces that ground the caliphate into dust came from the Muslim world; if ISIS tries to rise again, Muslims will again be on the frontlines trying to defeat it. Not long ago, people in the West generally believed that we had the wisdom and the power to curb religious extremism by curing its causes. By promoting the political and economic development of the Muslim world, we thought we would reduce the appeal of radical religious ideas. But those hopes were delusional. The West can help at the margins, but the cultural, social, religious and economic reform the Middle East needs will have to be enacted by the people who live there - in their own time and in their own way. America won't "fix" the Middle East by killing bad guys like Baghdadi. But leaving them to flourish unmolested would be worse. The writer is Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College.
2019-10-29 00:00:00
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