Hearts and Minds

There seem to be three different perspectives on the general progress of the world:

1. The world is getting better.  This view is generally held by those who are optimistic and progressive, who look at the human race as a flawed but generally well-meaning lot, and have a hopeful outlook that some how, some way, perhaps with a bit of divine intervention, all will be well with the Creation.
2. The world is getting worse.  This view is generally held by those who are pessimistic and would much rather see things go back to being the way they were in "the Good Old Days."  They may be a bit delusional about how good the old days were, but whether you're talking pharisees in Jesus' time or Fox News in ours, these conservative caretakers of the status quo will probably always be with us in some way.
3. The world is pretty much the same as it ever was.  Human sin is a relatively known quantity from a historical perspective.  I don't imagine that Genghis Khan was really much better, or much worse than ISIS.  I suspect that the ultimate failure of the Crusades had a lot in common with the current failures of our Middle Eastern foreign policies.  The names may have been changed but the pernicious sin and misapprehension remains.  We never learn from history and thus we are doomed to repeat it.

Something rather crucial is going on in Syria and Iraq (you may slap your forehead and say, "Duh" if you wish).  There is an evolutionary step taking place, which does not bespeak good things for the immediate future of an already troubled part of the world.  ISIS, which is currently being roundly criticized and justly attacked by most of the world, is transmuting from a terrorist organization to a genuine movement of the people.
There has been a line crossed in the sand (take the pun if you want it).  A group has stormed the castle, so to speak, and taken control of a large geographical area, but more importantly they have given a voice to a group of people who have felt marginalized in their particular place.  The Sunni Muslims, who are being absorbed into ISIS, and who are giving this ersatz collection of extremists their real power, may not broadly agree with the fundamentalist extremism of the group, but they do agree that they have been neglected, marginalized and oppressed by the secular government in Baghdad, and they certainly have no love for the Kurds, Christians and Shia who are being persecuted by the IS.
I heard a phrase that rather chilled me in an interview on the radio this morning: "hearts and minds."  ISIS is winning the "hearts and minds" of the populace in areas they have conquered through their sheer brutality.  This idea chills me because it is precisely the phrase used during the Vietnam conflict, before it became the Vietnam War.  Many people do not realize exactly how long we were in Vietnam, they only remember the years of open conflict, with the draft and occupying forces and thousands of rather reluctant US teenagers getting blown to bits in the jungles of southeast Asia.
But well before that, there were the Green Berets.  Men who were trained and prepared for the actual tactics of winning hearts and minds and honestly preventing the spread of communism into South Vietnam.  In the beginning, we had such a wonderful idea: show up in villages that were being strong-armed by Viet Cong and NVA regulars and "liberate" them.  Vaccinate children, fix up things that had been broken and generally protect the people from the "bad guys."
For a long time this actually worked out pretty well, our special forces had the hard earned trust of most of the South Vietnamese who weren't so thrilled about the communist threat.  They were trained and immersed in the culture, they spoke the language and knew who to trust and who not to trust.  They could hold off the "red menace" one village at a time.
The problem was that this approach was never going to win the decisive end to conflict that a lot of politicians craved.  They wanted another solid "win" like Korea, where they kept the Commies north of a certain line on a map.  Our inability to see the nuanced differences between Asian people and places led to some rather dire mistakes, much worse than referring to Sushi as Chinese food.
As it turns out, you know what doesn't win you a lot of points with poor peasants who sort of like you but don't really trust you?  Bombs, people who live in little villages in the jungle, who don't like the Viet Cong extorting them for money, actually really hate having napalm dropped on their kids a lot more.
Fast forward 50 years.  You know what's not going to really defeat ISIS or any other organization like them?  Bombs, except maybe of the sort we really don't want to use, you know the kind that will turn the desert sand into radioactive glass littered with charred skeletons for a thousand years.
This is one of those: stuff doesn't really change sorts of moments aka SSDD.  We still don't fully grasp the deep-seated differences between an Iraqi and an Iranian, any more than we understood the difference between the Chinese and the NVA, or the North Koreans, we just think they're all the enemy.  We don't get that some of the people who are fighting for ISIS may not actually buy into the ideology, but are just sick and tired of other people telling them what to do.
We need to be the people that offer a better alternative, not just the people who have the bombs.