ISIL: STARVING THE BEAST

ISIL is a beast. A beast that cannot be killed directly because it is (to a significant degree, though not completely) a leaderless organization (see link - better yet, read the book).

Air strikes and special operations can kill the leadership but - as with al Qaida - more leaders will replace them.

But a beast needs to eat and what this beast eats is money and radicalized, alienated, young adults of all nationalities.

The money largely comes from oil and transnational crime whereas the recruits come through slick media propagated over the internet showing atrocities and successful attacks and projecting .

Unlike al Qaida, their ideology requires a geographic base so there is an additional military vulnerability there - they need to project success on the ground as part of their recruiting.

To starve the beast allied forces, especially regional, largely Islamic forces, need to:

1. Stop them in the ground "game" and start rolling them back.

2. Stop their source of oil money.

3. Use international law enforcement resources to disrupt their criminal moneymaking alliances and funding sources with gangs and organized crime in criminal enterprises involving money laundering, trafficking of drugs, weapons, and people.

4. Use cyber resources to fight back through detection of radicalization, counter-propaganda, disruption of operational plans, etc.

5. The root of the problem is highly empowered, profoundly alienated people - largely young adults. Some alienation is the alienation of a child who isn't getting his own way. But much - perhaps most - of the alienation comes from the predatory history the West has had with the Middle East through both colonization and, later, the propping up of ruthless and despotic regimes (LIKE Saddam Hussein's) so long as they were anti-communist.

Sadly, this does not fit as neatly in a sound bite as "just bomb the bastards." It's that "nuance"  thing that conservatives despise.

But it took more than a century to help arrange our current situation and, as they said in WWI, we will NOT be home before the leaves fall.

The Starfish and the Spider (Summary, All Chapters)

PAXIL THE TEACHER

PAXIL THE TEACHER

November 15, 2015

The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.

-Frederick Buechner

Originally published in The Sacred Journey

http://frederickbuechner.com/content/humanly-best

I dispersed Paxil’s ashes this morning at a local cemetery that shall remain nameless as it would not fully appreciate the honor I’ve bestowed on it with the ashes  of three out of my four dogs.

For a long time I’ve wanted to write a book on theology. It will never happen.

The older I get, the simpler the gospel of God in Christ becomes.

It doesn’t fill a book. Not even sure it makes a decent essay.

For a long time I’ve believed that the gospel of God in Christ is the proclamation that God has authority over Death, understood as the various ways in which biological death is anticipated in our ordinary lives in events such as my  short life with Paxil as well as how that anticipation is experienced as a threat to any final confidence  in  the meaning, value, and purpose of our lives.

That’s  the “God” part.

The “in Christ” part is the rub.

God’s authority over Death is exercised in God’s apparent defeat by Death in the cross of Christ rather than by the serious butt-kicking that characterizes a vigilante movie.

This affirmation of God’s gift of life, though concealed in the suffering and messiness of life, is distinguishable from all religions (including the Christian when it succumbs to the religious temptation) through its lack of prerequisites.

God in Christ dispenses freely what religions, both sectarian and secular, demand human sacrifice for.

Paxil’s death, after I reluctantly took the hound to better safeguard him from his street-wandering ways, is the first time in a long time that I’ve experienced serious guilt, remorse, regret on  top of the normal grief of losing a loved one.

I suppose Paxil’s lesson to me was simply this: if God is sufficient unto any Death than God is sufficient unto EVERY death, no matter how terrible, no matter how apparently forlorn, no matter how senseless.

God does not only vouchsafe the life of a beloved grandparent when  they peacefully “pass away” (I HATE that euphemism), but of a child who burns to death in a house fire caused by some simple, ordinary negligence  on the part  of the parents that most parents, thankfully, get away with from time to time.

Belief in God is not believing in theological doctrines, but trusting God as sufficient in all things including suffering, evil, futility,  guilt, and death.

One may start with faith the size of a mustard seed but, in the end, life challenges us to go “all in,” completely vulnerable to the power of Death so as to remain open to God’s improbable gift of Life.

PARIS ATTACKS

As of last night it became clear to me that we are at war.

It's not clear with whom we are at  war or who "we" are.

I'd hazard a guess that "we" represents civilization - East and  West - and that we are at war with transnational barbarians.

We will have  to kill  people and break things. Probably a lot of people and a lot of things. And, hopefully, the RIGHT people and the RIGHT things.

And I'm okay with that.

But I also know that however necessary that may be in the short run to protect  civilization, it will not RESOLVE the issue  of super-empowered, alienated people.

Only reconciliation can resolve alienation.

We won the American Revolution,  the North won the Civil War, and the Allies won WWII: each victory was accomplished by force yet has been cemented by the reconciliation of enemies.