We can't ignore the atrocities committed by ISIS in Iraq and the West must consider intervening, argues James Snell.
Due to the wonders of the modern age, it is now possible to watch one of the millions of videos pouring out of Iraq as easily as it is to switch on the evening news. I did so this morning. ISIS – the horrific offshoot of Al-Qaeda which is now in de facto possession of much of Iraq and Syria – has certainly been busy in the editing suite.
Unlike the news, however, where films are carefully and conscientiously edited to fit an audiovisual template, there was a sense of real immediacy to proceedings. Shot remarkably well, with techniques almost reminiscent of a low budget reimagining of a Hollywood blockbuster, this particular film depicted savagery of almost indescribable proportions.
All the usual horrors were present, but captured in glorious Technicolor rather than dingy home movie quality. There were drive-by shootings, a token beheading and bombings galore. Rather unsavoury stuff, then, but it did help drive home the point.
These films are made as propaganda, both to extort like-minded would be murderers to sign up, and to warn off potential adversaries.
For me, however, it had the exact opposite effect. I did not feel the urge to fly out to Mosul and begin slaughtering its Shia inhabitants, and nor did I get the message that ISIS were not to be trifled with. Rather, seeing this cruelty unfold on screen solidified my interventionist impulses. For me it became very clear: evil on this scale should not be allowed to continue.
Reports – unconfirmed as yet – hint at the potential scale of these and similar atrocities. ISIS claims to have massacred over 1,700 officers from the Iraqi army. An example of footage of this nature shows an ISIS thug interrogating and taunting his captives. In one of his films he takes immense pleasure in the fact that the man he has just killed was a Shia. Such instances may constitute war crimes in the eyes of the United Nations.
Of course, the rapid territorial expansion of a nakedly brutal Islamist militia ought to worry everyone who knows about it – and the question needs to be asked: what can we, in the west, do to stop this evil.
But it is not being asked, and it would be shouted down if it were. William Hague has already ruled out action in the country, despite the fact that support for intervention is rapidly gaining traction – even from normally anti-war centre-left think tanks, like the Center for American Progress, which this week suggested that the US government should ‘prepare for limited counterterrorism operations against ISIS, including possible air strikes’, in a new report.
The crisis in Iraq is a direct consequence of the disaster which has engulfed Syria for the last three years. In the aftermath of war crimes committed by the Assad regime, including the widespread use of chemical weapons and ‘barrel bombs’, the West at large – unlike me – remained unmoved by the suffering of the Syrian people, despite the fact that their plight was transmitted to millions of TV screens daily and dominated internet news around the clock.
Regardless of that, intervention was spurned by the British and American people, with consistent polls demonstrating a public consensus against the use of military force to alleviate the effects of the awful civil war.
After that, support for more extreme groups, such as ISIS, grew. Pro-Western rebels, such as the fairly moderate FSA, were usurped by assorted Islamists and radicals. Suffering tends to push political opinion towards the fringes, and the Syrian people have suffered more than anyone would wish upon them.
Their plight was caught on a thousand cameras. Heroic citizen journalists documented the effects of airstrikes and chemical attacks.
The world watched, and calmly changed the channel. The direct result of inaction, and inattention, towards the Assad tyranny is the barbarism shaking Iraq to its foundations. Looking away once again, in the face of yet more carnage, would only be deliberately blinkering oneself to realities of this most terrible of realities.
51 Responses to “We should intervene to stop ISIS atrocities in Iraq”
Paul J
It’s slightly too complicated for you to grasp, so I’ll try to simplify it.
There WERE peaceful demonstrations, which WERE brutally put down. SIMULTANEOUSLY there were a bunch of guys, with foreign funding, (mostly Qatari) who were ALREADY fighting sunni supremamcist jihad.
Slowly, the first group, the peaceful protesters, reconciled to the regime, because they preferred him to the jihadis. Some, however, became jihadis themselves. There is a small number who left the country and became feted “opposition activists”.
I don’t support Assad, I acknowledge that he is the better of the devils, and I want peace in Syria, as soon as possible. That means hoping his side win. Then the refugees can return home, see?
Oh, and Assad IS NOT AN ISLAMIST. OK? He just isn’t, no-one who pays the slightest bit of attention to Syria claims that. (And while we’re on the subject of me totally pwning you, it’s generally rebel supporters who refer to “rebellion”, rather than civil war).
Leon Wolfeson
Yea, there’s no talking to your blind utterly pro-Assad views is there.
swatnan
Send for Glubb Pasha.
Paul J
Well, that’s not something you see very often.
You’ve been so bested in debate you’ve deleted your comments altogether. I suggest you might make this an opportunity to change your mind on the subject, Leon.
Perhaps admit you lack the information to hold a valid view.
Jason Pike
As far as I know, the US is preparing to wage war jointly with Iran against the equivalent of the FSA in Syria while pretending this is agaisnt ISIS and if the UK joins in, it will be doing the same. This may well help ISIS (perhaps even intenmtionally) and is intended to help Maliki and Assad. Tge Arab and Kurdish democratys don’t need western armies to step in and abuse their internal conflicts to take over their countries – look what a mess the West has already made in Afghanistan and Iraq! If the weapons the FSA have already bought with their own money but that Obama ordered to be impounded in Turkey were released, i.e. if Western innterfernce was ENDED, that might help. Of course if the West actually armed the democratic rebels, that would help more, but the chances of that happening are proably 0.0000000000000000000000000000001%. They gave PLENTY of military hardware to the arch-butcher Maliki and he gave some of it to ISIS. Frankly, as far as I can see, the author of this article is either not left wing at all or is an absolute fool. This isn’t really an article based on solidarity with the Syrian, Kurdish and Iraqi people trying to rid themselves of ruthless tyrannies and oppose colonisation by Iran (or genocide in Syria) so much as an article about how British imperialism could better exploit their woes to futher its intersts which are completely opposed to theirs.