No self-respecting conservative agrees with The New York Times' David Brooks all the time. Refusing to read what he writes, good stuff maybe half the time, is likewise folly. Today's column is one of the good ones.
Brooks argues we aren't taking ISIS nearly seriously enough, It exists, he believes, to destroy Arab nation-states representing weakness and decadence, and to resurrect the values of a thousand years ago, complete with official slavery and organized, sponsored rapine, and mass killings as both an instruments of policy and religious sacraments.
The only appropriate response to such ideas is to treat them, and their adherents, as a virulent plague and do our level best to eradicate both as we have smallpox, or polio. This will require a force of will, a clarity of purpose, indeed a bloody-mindedness the West is likely unwilling (or unable) to muster.
ISIS can therefore win.
Imagine, for a moment, what that will mean. The collapse of Rome under the onslaught of barbarian hordes will, by comparison, look like a warm-up act. A new Dark Ages looms.
