ISIS or ISIL: A Really, Really Simple Solution

You won't hear this from any of TV's talking heads and don't ask me why.  But the solution to ISIS, or whatever, is to acknowledge the ethnic differences in Iraq.  Acknowledge freely that the Kurds have a claim to nationhood in the north.  Acknowledge that Sunnis have a claim to the middle and, indeed, into parts of Syria.  And, acknowledge the rights of the Shia in the south.

What's the big deal with such acknowledgements?  We acknowledged the rights of the Serbs, the Croatians, and the Bosnians in what had been formerly Yugoslavia.  That's worked out relatively well.  Why not do the same for the people of this cobbled together mess of a nation called Iraq.

Let's also acknowledge the religious dimensions of this, as is the case with so many of these failed states.  If you restrict yourself to describing it as solely a terrorist matter, you obfuscate the problem.  It is of course a terrorist matter, but it's also a struggle within the Islamic community.  (I'm not going to even try to use an Arabic word like, "uma," or "uhmah.")  The Iranians and the Saudis hold one another in contempt.  They're both Muslim countries.  Hamas and Hezbollah are both supported by Iran, but one is Sunni and one is Shiite.  The only thing that allows them to work together is their common hatred of Jews and, by extension, their hatred of Israel.

Al Queda, ISIS, and the Sunnis all share more or less the same Islamic religious views.  However, the Sunni people are a more secular people.  They do not necessarily hate the west.  Al Queda does hate the west, and, in the final analysis, was not found acceptable by their Sunni co-religionists.  ISIS is al Queda on steroids.  To win the fight against ISIS, we need the Sunnis, and that means giving the Sunnis something to fight for.  That's what the Sunni Awakening was all about.  That's when the U.S. told the Sunnis that we understood their desire to be rid of Shiite domination.  And, that's when the Sunnis began to fight alongside the Americans against al Queda.  Regrettably, the promise was not fulfilled.  (Something we should have easily foreseen.)  In other words, the Sunnis got screwed.

So why should the Sunnis work against ISIS?  Many of the ISIS military people had served under Saddam Hussein.  How driven they are by Salafist theology, I do not know.  They do, of course, fight under the Salafist banner.  And, in the end, that's all that really counts.

We really do need Sunni support.  So let's give them something to fight for and stop with this nonsense of building an Iraq nation.