Civilization versus Barbarism

I'm certainly not a "war fan" (although I was called that, once, a long time ago), but I like to think that I recognize when the means of armed force should, and shouldn't, be employed to achieve necessary ends. Since 9/11, many have questioned the legitimacy and necessity of international campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

On December 11th, the BBC reported that five thousand people died in jihadist violence in November of 2014. On the BBC Global News Podcast, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London - an institution not known for its bellicosity - nonetheless used the phrases "global movement" and "generational challenge", and noted:

"We were all a bit naive in 2011 when bin Laden was killed, the Arab Spring was coming in, apparently or seemingly ushering in a new era of democracy and freedom, that this problem would simply go away."
- Professor Peter Neumann

One might be forgiven for believing that Professor Neumann was channeling his inner George W. Bush. I take some exception to Professor Neumann's statement about bin Laden's death; the idea that bin Laden's death was some sort of game changer is so blatantly absurd that I was dismissing it as far back as 2006, when people were criticizing President Bush by equating bin Laden's hypothetical death with an automatic end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Aside from that, Dr. Neumann is correct: jihadist/takfiri barbarism is a global movement, and the war between global civilization (to include Islamic civilizations - for example, recent outrage in the Islamic world over the barbaric murders perpetrated by ISIS/DAESH, as well as the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris) and that barbarism is a generational challenge. And lest our short Western memories lead us to forget what the dividends of defeat in this generational challenge yield, the BBC has also been releasing a series of compelling reports based upon dispatches from ISIS/DAESH-held territory: Mosul Diaries.