The Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris weren’t just an attack on the French capital or an attack on America’s oldest ally. They were an attack on the values we share as nations in the civilized world.
The barbaric nature of the attacks underscores the reality the United States, France and other Western nations now face in dealing with the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known by its Arabic transliteration of its English acronym, Daesh.
Words matter in a war being waged by rabid ideology.
And Daesh, depending on how it’s conjugated, can mean “to trample down and crush,” or it can also mean “bigot,” according to nbcnews.com, which is exactly what the Islamic State group represents. It’s no wonder ISIS has threatened to rip out the tongues of those the group hears using the term.
Evan Kohlman, an NBC contributor and security analyst, points out why government officials are increasingly using the term as French President Francois Hollande did after the massacre in Paris.
Associating the terrorist group with “Islamic” and “State” offers legitimacy to a group of terrorists whose perversion of one of the world’s major religions aspires to create a “state for all Muslims,” despite the fact Muslims have been the primary victims of its own barbarism, according to the Daily Beast.
Calling the group Daesh refuses to acknowledge any claim of legitimacy to which they might cling.
Yet terminology is just a fraction of the overall strategy the West, including the U.S., must reconfigure in order to address what was once considered a regional threat.
In times of crisis, the world looks to the White House for leadership.
This past weekend the Democratic candidates running for president laid out a vision to tackle the threat posed by Daesh during the second Democratic debate in Iowa. All three candidates agreed the world needs American leadership. President Obama certainly sees the need for it, yet also recognizes the potential for another quagmire in the Middle East.
With the attacks in Paris, the urgency for a more aggressive response has increased and it absolutely warrants it.
Yet we must also recognize stakeholders in the region must also be part of the solution. This can’t be a fight the U.S. or the West should wage alone — though, ultimately our leadership might require us to be at the forefront.
On the other side of the aisle, candidates running for the Republican nomination took to politics rather than policy to discuss how we should move forward. Some talking points by candidates have ranged from accusing the president of being soft on terrorism to proposing we close the U.S. border or flatly refusing to accept Syrian refugees, according to USA Today.
We can’t afford to play politics with the world’s security, and our politics should reflect that. The Western world must remain united in the face of terror, with a resolve to eliminate the evil of violent extremism while also protecting what they wish to destroy most: our way of life.
edsalas@indiana.edu
