Can Obama Speak Truth About IS?

The White House likes to play verbal games, games of labels and spin. Verbal games often blind the speakers and mislead them into poor strategies. They surely obscure and distort truth for millions of Americans. But since actions speak louder than words, these games don’t persuade everyone. In this case, they won’t dissuade potential recruits into IS.

Is IS comprised or religious fanatics or terrorists? Which label gets more closely to the heart of the matter?

IS proclaims a territorial state based on its variety of Islam. Just as there are many varieties of other religions, like Christianity (perhaps as many as 41,000), there are various interpretations of Islam. The White House, for its own reasons, denies, in public communications at least, that IS is a religious movement, which it in fact is. Deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes says “They need for this to be a war between the United States and Islam, for people to believe that they are religious figures and not just terrorists. We don’t want to grant them that legitimacy.”

Rhodes is playing verbal games. He acts as if people cannot tell the difference between a war on IS and a war on Islam.

This White House stance is hopelessly wrong. The White House wants a war on IS, but it wants to deny IS legitimacy as a religious movement and instead identify them as terrorists. It wants to paint IS as a terrorist movement, when its essence is a religiously-motivated conquering state that uses violent methods. This verbal tactic will utterly fail to dissuade potential jihadists who can see the very real U.S. military intrusions and attacks.

Rhodes is correct that IS wants to draw the U.S. into a war. This will confirm IS’s interpretation of history and Islam and raise recruitment to the side of IS. As Graeme Wood writes “The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself. The provocative videos, in which a black-hooded executioner addresses President Obama by name, are clearly made to draw America into the fight. An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists worldwide: irrespective of whether they have given baya’a to the caliph, they all believe that the United States wants to embark on a modern-day Crusade and kill Muslims. Yet another invasion and occupation would confirm that suspicion, and bolster recruitment.”

Rhodes and the White House are wrong to think that a label (terrorists) uttered by themselves alters the “legitimacy” of IS. The standing of IS among potential recruits (“legitimacy”?) is enhanced by the very real military opposition from the U.S.

The only way for the U.S. not to legitimize IS is not to go to war against it. There are, of course, other reasons not explored in this blog why the U.S. should not go to war against IS.

If the opposition to IS comes from within Islam or Islamic countries, not the U.S., then the conflict becomes one within Islam. Then IS has a very different kind of fight on its hands. It then has to declare huge numbers of Muslims as apostates. IS will be painted into a very extreme corner. Their prophecies of an enemy (“Rome” with the U.S. playing the part) will be undermined.

The White House is trying to make war on IS and, by calling them terrorists, not play into the hands of their prophecies and historical interpretations. This cannot succeed. The White House decided on war on IS when it launched the bombing raids. Seeing them as terrorists, it misunderstood its chosen enemy and still does.

Obama cannot describe IS for what it is. He cannot say it’s a bunch of murdering thugs who have a religious-political agenda and who are forming a state in the classic way, through conquering and killing people. He can’t do this without raising the parallels with the formation of any number of currently existing major states. France, Russia, Great Britain, the United States, Germany, China, and Japan all have long histories of wars and conquests within their present boundaries.

If Obama calls IS terrorists, then if he’s consistent he has to label as terrorists many of those figures in history who fought in prior wars that produced today’s states. But even terrorists do what they do for reasons. Obama cannot admit that those who lead IS believe in a certain set of religious-political ideas, just as those who fought in the wars of past centuries often had such ideas. By calling IS terrorists, the White House attempts to narrow and confine our understanding of both them and those in our own history and the history of other lands. This takes us back to the deeply flawed idea of a war on “terror”.

We need truth. We need to face history squarely.

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