...would that make Bashar al-Assad the new Stalin?
But, of course, both comparisons are absurd. Assad's regime is merely a modern favor of what used to be called "oriental despotism": the rule of an elite minority headed by a strongman backed by a lot of weapons, holding power by right of inheritance, paying lip service to law and tradition but doing pretty much as he pleases. This is the sort of government that has prevailed in the Middle East since time immemorial.
And what of ISIS? More than once in history has a movement of religious zealots erupted out of the desert to found a state or empire. The creators of the first Saudi state were one such, as were the Almohads, Fatimids, and indeed Islam itself. Ibn Ishaq, the biographer of Muhammad, speaks of the fate of Banu Qurayzah, a Jewish Arab tribe of Media who rebelled against the Prophet during the Battle of the Dyke. The men were all executed, and the women and children sold into slavery. After Muhammad's death, armies of his followers invaded both the Persian and Roman empires, completely overrunning the former and depriving the latter of Syria, Egypt, and all North Africa.
If ISIS can be compared with any of history's great conquerors, it is not Hitler but Genghis Khan who most readily comes to mind. The fourteenth century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun described a dynamic between city and desert, by which people of the desert, possessing "asabiyya" -- strong social cohesion -- would conquer a city, establish themselves as its rulers, and slowly sink into decadence, to be overcome a few generations later by a new wave of desert warriors. Seen in this light, ISIS may be a threat to dysfunctional states such as Iraq or Syria, but it is hardly the global menace we are being led to believe. Should the west interfere to prevent the rise of a new Middle East order, particularly when it is not willing to use enough force to establish its own order, as it did in 1918?
Is terrorism any excuse for military intervention? Terrorists are criminals not soldiers; they come with all sorts of ideologies, and the idea that defeating ISIS will somehow reduce the probability of domestic terrorist incidents strikes me as naive. There will always be terrorists, just as there will always be robbers and murderers, and armies are entirely the wrong tool for fighting crime. Should we have bombed Chicago to stop Al Capone?
It is hard to see how a military response to terrorism does anything but promote the terrorists, grossly inflating their stature and giving them influence far beyond thier own meager powers. Have we learned nothing from the past thirteen years?
But what if ISIS were Hitler? We made Stalin our ally in that fight, and could not have won without him. Can you imagine President Roosevelt declaring that instead of aiding the Soviets, he would train 50,000 Ukrainian nationalist rebels and drop them into Odessa?
Mr. President, do you really want to be master of the Middle East? Then get Congress to make a formal declaration of war, raise a coupld hundred divisions, mount a full scale invasion, and make the place American. Otherwise, leave it alone. These people have managed their own affairs for centuries, if not always prettily. The fate of the inhabitants of Jericho at the hands of Joshua's victorious host comes to mind.