The French Treat

Judging from the events of the last few days, it may fall to France to issue the rallying cry for all of Europe. The Arab Spring may indeed be now followed by the French Fall, but with a bit of a twist. ISIS has been picking a fight across the globe and with the newest editions of France and Russia, they might have finally taken on a bit more than they can chew. My main question is, how much will be enough?

The Russian KGB was once so completely feared that they enjoyed several decades of freedom from any harm to their citizens, then they got a bit lax and have been the target for a few foreign extremists. The latest downing of one of their commercial jets would certainly be all the provocation that Mr. Putin would need to declare his own outright war is ISIS as the French President suggested today. The main question is if Europe can collect enough serious minded countries to go out and do the deed. Certainly there are many conflicting interests among the various countries, but if they could be put aside, even for just a year, it might just be possible to irradiate ISIS from the earth, but, what exactly would that take?

The same was said about the Nazi’s as well as a few other choice countries, but try as they might, nobody has been 100% successful at a complete eradication. Why? There will always be sympathizers and children grow up remembering the fates of their parents, only too willing to seek revenge. To absolutely wipe out the possibilities would mean to destroy every living relative, near and distant of every ISIS member. You will recall Hitler’s attempt as a failure and there have been a few others along the way. The simple fact is that it is impossible to completely wipe anyone’s religion, sect, heritage or whatever you want to call it, from the face of the earth. If nothing else, it gives the historians more to study and with knowledge comes the desire to revive and give rebirth to an otherwise thought dead culture.

So, how do you solve this seemingly endless dilemma? The starting point has to be to confront the leadership of the opponents and in this case, there are many of them, each with their own opinion of the reasons for the start of the “cause” as well as their own particular spin on the same. No, it certainly won’t be easy and could literally take centuries to resolve, if it can be at all. Let’s not forget that for some of ISIS, this is now a business, used to rob, cheat, and steal from other Muslims as well as the other local religions. For others it is their occupation that, once eliminated, they have nothing else to fall back upon and who wants to give up what they were born, breed, and trained to do? And lastly, there are those that are true believers. They will be the least likely to lay down arms and accept a peace for there are convinced that the intifada is real and endless until they kill or convert every person with an opinion other than their own. It certainly isn’t new or recent. History suggests that the first intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West bank of Gaza which lasted from 1987 until the final conclusion in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords. Since that time there have been a constant stream if incidents and issues which has spread to other sects until today.

It appears to me that all of this seems intended to drive the races and religions back into their own separate boarders and countries and discourage any travel between them, but then again, in this day and time that is certainly not very likely.

Adjusting for the cost of inflation I would have to say that this is the 64 Trillion Dollar Question and despite many of the silly suggestions like “nuke em all”, there certainly is no simple answer other than there will most certainly be more to come …..