By JOE RONCA
Staff Writer
As we all know by now, over 100 innocent people were slaughtered a few nights in Paris. As I write this, the death toll stands at 129 civilians killed, and that number is only expected to climb higher as close to 100 more victims are critically wounded.
The people who carried out this vile attack on the City of Lights, along with those in Iraq and Syria who planned, ordered, and directed it, do not deserve to be called human beings. The people who did this are monsters. They are animals who have massacred thousands around the globe from Paris to Palmyra in the name of a group that seeks to return the world to conditions mirroring those in seventh century Arabia. They are the embodiment of human depravity. They are evil incarnate, there is simply no other way to put it.
This was not one of the “lone wolf” attacks, where one delusional young man read too much propaganda and decided to attack a target of opportunity. No, this was a coordinated and meticulously-planned attack designed to kill hundreds and cripple one of the world’s great cities. The leadership of ISIS likely planned and coordinated this vile injustice and they need to be punished. More than that, they need to be annihilated.
I thought that after what took place just this January at the offices of “Charlie Hebdo” and at a Jewish supermarket in the same city, we in the West would have woken up and finally done something serious about ISIS once and for all. We didn’t. Now maybe we will. If there is any silver lining to the terrible events that took place over the weekend in Paris it is that maybe we will finally get serious about taking the fight to the ISIS terrorists who seem to despise humanity itself so much.
ISIS has committed almost every atrocity under the sun. They have beheaded people en masse, sexually enslaved women, massacred entire villages, burned a man alive, and demolished priceless historical artifacts and buildings.
If you can name an act of human depravity, they have most likely done it. All in the name of their narrow interpretation of Islam. Now they have managed to strike in a coordinated fashion in one of the great cultural centers of the world.
ISIS must be defeated, and for better or for worst it seems that we in the United States and Europe are going to have to be the ones to do so. Obviously, there is a lot of political opposition to the fight against ISIS. It is understandable that Americans would be wary of conflict after ten years of seemingly unending war in the Middle East.
I only have a few things to say in reply to those who say that we should simply get out of the Middle East entirely and maybe then groups like ISIS and al Qaeda will not have any reason to attack us anymore. If you consider yourself a supporter of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, individual liberty, gender equality, LGBT rights, or just the plain old right to direct the course of your life, then I’ve got news for you: ISIS is your enemy. They are the enemy of all human beings who inhabit this planet.
The criminals who lead and lend support to ISIS seek to destroy all of this that we call humanity. They wish us all to live life according to the strictest interpretations of Islamic teaching possible. They wish for women to be covered from head to toe at all times. They wish to live under a legal system that punishes minor crimes with amputation and even beheading. They wish to live in a world where homosexuals are tossed off of buildings to their death. They wish for alcohol, pre-marital sex and even music to be banned as un-Islamic.
I do not know about you, but I do not want to see any of those policies enacted anywhere that I live. However, ISIS has declared itself to be a caliphate, meaning that, in essence, they seek to impose these policies worldwide, by force if necessary.
This is why we, as human beings, should both fear and oppose ISIS. This attitude is what causes ISIS to carry out acts of mass murder like the one that they committed in Paris. If we are going to defeat ISIS and ensure that they never again commit such an unspeakable act of war, then we have to defeat the Jihadists where they operate.
That means we have to greatly step up our bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. We have to start hitting any ISIS targets that we can find across their desert caliphate. We also have to begin arming the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, the Peshmerga and People’s Protection Units or YPG respectively, at much greater levels then we are currently.
We have thousands of M1 Abrams tanks just sitting unused at an Army depot because our military has no need for them. Let’s start sending some of those to the Kurds and training them in how to operate them. This would give both the Peshmerga and the YPG, neither of which currently have any tanks at all, the added advantage that they need to begin making decisive advantages against ISIS.
Our NATO ally Turkey, who has been in conflict with Kurdish groups on and off since the 1970s, will be upset with us for this, but defeating ISIS is more important than our relationship with the increasingly authoritarian regime in Ankara.
Also, we need to expand our bombing campaign against ISIS. What I mean is that we should start bombing ISIS targets outside of Iraq and Syria. We should begin bombing ISIS units and troops involved in the civil wars in Libya and Yemen. We also should begin bombing ISIS’s West African affiliate Boko Haram. This may allow the multinational force of African nations led by Nigeria to finally push forward and take Boko Haram’s final strongholds in the forests around Lake Chad.
We also should lend military equipment and training to Egypt, which is battling an ISIS affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula. As a nation, we also need to start monitoring ISIS social media accounts better in order to stop the radicalization of disenfranchised individuals in Europe and the United States. Doing so would help reduce the amount of “lone wolf” terror attacks taking place in the West.
The most controversial suggestion that I’ll make in this article is that the United States and the European Union have to start strictly screening refugees from the Middle East in order to determine if they have any ties to ISIS and radical Islam. This is controversial because it will likely require refugees to wait long periods in camps in Turkey, Lebanon, or Greece before being granted access to the European Union.
It will be hard to get the EU to do this, as one of the biggest tenants of the Union is its wide-open borders between members. It is why you can travel through Europe so easily, and it is a point of pride for Europeans. However, it is imperative to do so in order to protect the security of the United States and Europe.
We already know that one of the terrorists who carried out the attack in Paris registered in Greece as a refugee. That is all the proof that we need to have in order to know that ISIS is sending terrorists into Europe disguised as refugees. It is essential to the security of the continent that they put security measures in place in order to weed out ISIS operatives, the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The massacre in Paris was not a crime, it was an act of war. This unspeakable, unfathomable tragedy that took place in the French capital cannot go unpunished.
We, the civilized human beings of planet Earth, must band together in order to stop this threat against stability and freedom on Earth. It may be difficult to accomplish, but together we can and will end the scourge of ISIS.
God bless Paris and the people of France.
