The terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on Sunday evidence two truths: Salafi jihad is a despicable ideology that values human life only as a slave to theological absolutism, and Salafi jihadis must be confronted by force.
Yet defeating this scourge will also require outsize political reform to deny jihadi recruiters the pool of anger in which they thrive. But counterterrorism lines of effort cannot exclude military force. Like the attackers who wreaked mayhem in churches and hotels this weekend, al Qaeda would not have lost its Afghan safe haven, nor the Islamic State its physical caliphate, absent American bombs and bullets.
This bears noting in light of how the two leading Democrats in America and Britain responded to Sunday’s attacks, because both offered the delusion that confronting Salafi jihadis simply requires nice words.
Take 2020 presidential hopeful, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Our hearts go out to the victims and families of the horrific attacks in Sri Lanka. No person should have to fear for their life in their place of worship. We must work to bring this world together around our common humanity.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 21, 2019
Now consider the anti-American, socialist leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
I’m appalled by the horrific attacks in Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. I stand with the victims, their families, the people of Sri Lanka and Christians around the world. We must defeat this hatred with unity, love and respect.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 21, 2019
Nice words. Sanders says we “must work to bring this world together around our common humanity,” and Corbyn calls on us to “defeat this hatred with unity, love, and respect.”
But coming from individuals who want to lead their respective nations, those words proffer a problem. They are utterly inconsistent with what is demanded of leaders facing enemy threats: action to address the threat.
Let’s take this back to ISIS and al Qaeda. As I say, terrorist recruitment would suffer in the face of political reforms to boost education and economic opportunity. But they cannot be defeated by political reforms alone. They cannot because ISIS has no “shared humanity” with the rest of us, nor vulnerability to defeat via Corbyn’s “love and respect.” To believe that the opposite is true, that the groups can be defeated by kindness, is to grant the enemy space to enact more violence against us.
Thus, where they entertain the growth of a threat, nice words aren’t that nice after all.
