Thomas Friedman, NYT, last week penned an op-ed "ISIS Heads to Rome"
From his neoconservative perspective, Friedman had a litany of things we needed to do to end ISIS as a threat. His first suggestion was to wipe out ISIS, or at least its leadership, etc, etc, etc...of course against the backdrop that there is no military solution to the problem.
A social media friend from the UK and I have been having a dialogue about this op-ed and the following are my responses to a couple of my friend's questions.
My Friend: Why should dramatic effect make it more a moral concern?
The simple answer is given Newton's Law of Motion, on consequentialist grounds, the more dramatic the cause the more dramatic the effect.
However, there seems to be this argument that if you just reason with people, and treat them with empathy and respect in dialogue, eventually they will come to see the error of their ways.
Somewhat totalitarian perspective--I'm right; you're wrong.
Our answer is always reason--logic. Remember what the Logical Positivists argued, that anything philosophically meaningful can be reduced to logic, and consequently metaphysical theories (religious theories) are meaningless--as is morality.
However, now we accept that there are rational metaphysical theories, and irrational interpretations of good metaphysical theories. Forgetting that Logical Positivism has been largely discredited as a philosophical theory, there is still this idea in Anglo-American philosophical tradition that rational dialogue is the only meaningful solution to everything, so everything has to be couched in its terms.
Be logical and the way is clear.
We all seem to think this way. Even as you mention, Schelling, whose work I know only very tangentially, tries to suggest that irrational behavior in the end is reducible to rationally motivated behavior. In other words, ISIL's desire to destroy us is irrational, but if you look deeply enough, it is a rational part of their master plan.
May be we ought just to recognize that some folks are just not rational or don't employ reason the way we do. May be we ought to not look for the rationality in ISIL's message, and accept the fact that some people's beliefs and metaphysical assumptions are contrary to our ideas or the way we use reason and logic--no more no less.
But, at the same time, we the acknowledge the dramatic effect of their threat, and recognize should it materialize, from 'our' perspective it will do great evil, and cause great damage and harm to the lives of people. We believe our governments will do everything to keep us safe.
However, at the same time, I am saying that many gave license to GWB and his neoconservative friends who turned the Middle East upside down and then 'we' walked away. The consequences of those decisions are self-evident. So the question is what to do about it now?
We say there is no military solution to the problem, implying that the true solution lies in rational dialogue. But if that results in our talking past each other, how does dialogue help?
My Friend: "Should we agree to play the game where the stakes are death?"
If you are asking whether war can always be avoided--my answer is no.
If you are asking should we continue to fight ISIL, my answer is more questions:
What is the alternative if rational dialogue is dead from the start?
What other tools do we have besides dialogue and war at our disposal?
At what point do we accept the responsibility for the mess we created that is affecting innocent people in the region, and do something reasonable about it?
I don't know, but again we keep saying there is no military solution to the problem, and at the same time there seems to be no reasonable solution to the problem either.