Harf: ISIS Is All about Lack of Jobs

We have all seen the video of ISIS's recent horrific beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya.

Mr Obama, how many Christian terrorists have beheaded Muslims? How can you compare violence in Islam with violence in Christianity?

US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf was interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball about the atrocity.

She mantained that “we cannot win this war by killing them [ISIS], we cannot kill our way out of this war”.

I don't know if it's possible to respond to an enemy that kills, beheads and burns people alive without the spilling of blood.

Harf went on to argue:

[The video of ISIS] underscores to people that it isn’t just a fight in Iraq and in Syria and that it’s not just a fight about dropping bombs on terrorists. It’s really how we stop the causes that lead to extremism in a place like Libya, the fact that there’s no governance, and there’s no opportunity for young people, it lets groups like ISIL grow there and flourish there, which is what you saw with this awful situation with these Egyptians that you just mentioned, but this is a longer fight, it’s fighting them on social media…they’re using social media to get converts to their cause and to spread their hatred all over the world. This week, we’re going to have over 60 countries here in Washington to talk about how do we combat this violent extremism together in the long-term, not just in the short-term fight.

Right now, what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and in Syria, that’s really where they flourish…we’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them, so are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians they’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them, we cannot kill our way out of this war. We need, in the longer term, medium and longer term, to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…

[W]e can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance, we can help them build their economies, so they can have job opportunities for these people. You’re right, there is no easy solution in the long-term to preventing and combating violent extremism, but if we can help countries work at the root causes of this, what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47, instead of try to start a business? Maybe we can try– try to chip away at this problem, while at the same time going after the threat, taking on ISIL in Iraq, in Syria, and helping our partners around the world.”

This is a particularly absurd version of the old socialist position: it's the economy, stupid!

From Karl Marx to Bill Clinton, socio-communists believe that everything in human society is governed by the economy and every problem can be solved by trowing money at it.

"What makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47, instead of try to start a business?" is an especially ridiculous way of putting the question, in the context of Muslim jihadists. Materialists don't attach any importance to what people believe in, what doctrines and ideals inspire and motivate their behaviour.

That's why they're so badly equipped to deal with the Islamic threat, deriving as it does from a faith and frame of mind.

Harf's half-baked theory about how to address the big problem posed by ISIS echoes the "liberal" proposed elimination of crime in Western societies by getting rid of poverty and unemployment as its "root causes".

I'm not so sure that the US really wants to defeat ISIS. But this is not the first time that Ms Harf is out of her depth when trying to defend the indefensible: American strategy in the Middle East.