There is much talk now in Congress about coming up with the money to fund several local militia in a campaign against the latest ideological Muslim terrorist group: ISIS. We shouldn’t do it.
In our long, storied history of trying to bring peace and justice to the Middle East we have repeatedly supported armed “rebel” groups only to find several years later our largesse comes back to bite us in the ass – that our former allies are now our latest enemy and armed with the things we gave them in the previous Middle East go-around.
The sad fact remains that there are few if any “good guys” in the Middle East, no Jeffersonian democrats, no passionate parliamentarians, no champions of civil liberties. There is no part of this blood-soaked, ideologically-ridden miserable corner of the planet that has ever been, is, or will ever be the Athens of Pericles. As one bloodbath follows another, the occasional protagonist may emerge who appears marginally less barbaric than the others but it’s all relative. There is no identifiable group, save Israel, that has any understanding, let alone a belief in representational government, in settling differences through discourse rather than violence, that prefers compromise over the death of one’s adversaries. Let us not perpetuate the cycle of violence by training or sending arms to any more Middle Eastern “freedom fighters.” It will do little to make the situation better in the short run, and in the long run will surely make matters worse.