ISIS wants martyrdom - we must give them humiliation instead.

Glory.

At the heart of every one of these muslim extremists, from the true believer to the opportunist, there seems to be a common obsession. Martyrdom, or glory through self-sacrifice. For the true believer of this twisted interpretation of Islam it seems ultimately self serving to die fighting one's enemy, whether in combat, bombing, or a suicide attack. For the opportunist this "sacrifice" or "honorable death" can be spun in different ways. A man who kills himself can be regarded as a hero, whereas a jihadist slain by an airstrike can have his death pinned on a supposedly "cowardly enemy" who won't fight them man to man on the ground. This all serves the immediate function of spurring additional support and zeal for their crusade.

If your opponent wants glory, you should feed them humiliation. Not to the common person who is trapped in the middle of the engagement, but to the hardened fighters who stoke themselves on delusions of grandeur and who rely on intimidation to extort locals. Those are the beacons that must be extinguished in an utterly inglorious fashion. There is a mechanism to their legacy building, a machine, and like any other it can be dissected and disassembled. We need to set aside our simplified physical goals and win the psychological war in the middle east by stamping out this ideology once and for all. Future jihadists need to realize that their crusade is absolutely futile.


There is a certain strength in barbarity.

We can choose to ignore it if we want to, but the truth of the matter is that the tactics of ISIS work for their immediate goal of subjugating the locals. We must take a look in the mirror and weight the actions we are willing to take in order to win this fight once and for all. Are we really as honorable as we'd like to believe? I don't ask this question in order to shake our resolve, or challenge our moral compass. I ask this question so that each one of us can take stock of our nation's actions and see if there's a facade that we can stow away. The USA speaks of barbarity, dishonor, and other atrocities even as it commits war crimes, kills innocents, and allows or encourages financial imperialism ranging from the illicit and covert to the opportunistic and overt.

We cannot afford to hamper our full response simply for the sake of appearances if we are unwilling to live by the virtues we extol. If our actions aren't going to match our words of condemnation each and every time then they aren't worth speaking, and the lives wasted and opportunities missed are unforgivable. If we will cease to play the game of the perfect nation and accept the gritty, nuanced, imperfect nature of our country we will be able to climb down off our high horse and thoroughly crush these vermin into dust. Only through absolute and decisive victory to the spirit of our enemy can we hope to put an end to jihadist terrorism. Every half-measure is a failure before it even begins.


End their legacy.

A legacy lives in a book, in a mind, in a body. In order to ultimately defeat ISIS and their ilk you need to put an end to their legacy. Make no mistake, the women and children of their domain are an equal threat, albeit a more insidious one. There are surely children in the hands of ISIS being brainwashed to regard the West as an enemy of morality and spirituality. There are surely wives and mothers hidden behind their ceremonial dress, inscrutably harboring the same ideals as their fighting husbands or sons. They will feed the idea of glorious sacrifice to their children, and their children will be raised to believe that their fathers died fighting the good fight - heroes to be emulated.

I do not support half measures. I do not support the temporary fix of eliminating solely adult male fighters. In order to absolutely defeat ISIS and their peers, the entire cult has to be destroyed. Though it may seem intolerable or unpalatable, we must harden ourselves to the task of scrubbing them and their progeny from the face of the earth.

Humiliation.

There is another way of course, that does not require indiscriminately killing every person remotely attached to a muslim fundamentalist extremist. That is to fully crush their will to fight. To take their heroes and symbols and flip them on their head, from enviable martyrs to shameful wretches. To levy upon their sons and daughters not death or destruction, but instead such an immense shame that their crusade is paralyzed for a century. Make the mere mention or thought of their ideals repulse them. A concerted effort by the entirety of the coalition to make ISIS a laughing stock among their own kind.

Videos of journalists being beheaded on twitter? The buzzing of gnats. Fighters taking ground in the middle east? A bunch of unloved punk kids with a chip on their shoulder. Our nation can be invincible. We can crush them from the air, or the ground, at our leisure. Capture them and disarm them, then send them waddling buck naked back into the desert. Are you going to stand proudly and say "that's my dad, I want to be just like him!" when he's sent back to you alive, but utterly defeated? Will the locals of Iraq and Syria continue to be intimidated by men who are no longer martyrs, but instead clowns? How many victories would it take against ISIS, not in the fashion they desire but the one we dictate, before the truth of their incompetence became plainly apparent?

ISIS, not Islam.

As always, accuracy is of fundamental importance. The case needs to be clearly made that our reaction is on the frankly absurd organization at the heart of this mess, and not the religious feelings they've picked to exploit. When we cut down the poisonous tree we must be careful not to lay waste to the entire forest. Islam is not to blame for the actions of an extreme minority. While I don't particularly support any religion as an agnostic, I similarly have nothing against them personally. The technique ISIS uses in relation to Islam needs to be carefully disentangled in the local populations through a strong counter-propaganda campaign, followed by decisive surgical strikes. Additionally, moderate muslim voices in the region ( not moderate rebels, but actual moderate locals ) need to be empowered in a grass-roots fashion.