Alighieri, in general I would agree with you that Islamic extremism is about ideology, not geography.
But in the specific case of ISIS, geography is a core part of their ideology:
What ISIS Really Wants
Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.) As for Obama's "contained" statement, it's really chickens--t to say, "Oh, he didn't mean 'contained' in the sense that Paris couldn't happen." That shows just how reluctant Obama is in taking any ownership for his foreign policy mess.
We now have MULTIPLE examples of how the ISIS crisis has spread and inspired acts of hatred, violence, and deep division. San Bernardino is the latest one.
Ideology is at the root of the evil, but if ISIS really does consider geography to be that important to their legitimacy, then let's take it out. If they or some other ideology then evolves and decides that geography doesn't need to be that important, we'll deal with it later, but now's not the time to say, "Oh we can't do anything because we might breed more terrorism."
Tenchusatsu
EDIT: I posted the link to the Atlantic before I saw that you posted that same link to me. What I don't get, however, is how you missed the part about ISIS being a geographic caliphate. |
