In a recent speech President Obama would have us believe that ISIS extremists have no ideology. This statement begs the question: can extremism exist without an ideology to support and sustain it? In my opinion, the President’s argument, however well intentioned it may have been, is a fallacy. There is no question that ISIS adheres to an ideology. Undoubtedly, ISIS and other like-minded organizations have an ideological foundation. That is evident in its writings, language, symbolism, and objectives. If so, the President’s argument is a ‘deductive fallacy’, wherein true premises lead to a false conclusion. It is also politically misguided, insofar as it weakens the effort to permanently defeat ISIS. Why? Because every extremist ideology by definition is embedded within a community of adherents that share elements of the ideology but who are not fanatical or radical in their beliefs. The Islamic ideology that ISIS combatants adhere to transcends the battlefield. It appeals to a much wider cohort of individuals within Islam, who, for whatever reasons, may be undecided, passive or unwilling to advance the cause. One can kill those radicals who have deployed to the battlefield but unless you confront their false ideology with the truth, it will prevail. As such, the effort to defeat ISIS must be two-fold, immediate and protracted, 1) immediate: its armed agents must be defeated militarily on the battlefield, and; 2) protracted: the ideology that provides ISIS its adherents must be unequivocally discredited by thought leaders. In summary, we can and will succeed on the battlefield but ultimately the false ideology must be identified and its lies uncovered for all to see. The naked truth is that the Emperor does not have new clothes and we cannot be a party to a lie, regardless of who it is we are trying to protect by believing the lie.
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