Is ISIS Worse Than Imperialism?

From my perspective it is very difficult to tell what ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - actually is.

Perhaps it is a type of infant nation-state, angrily half-stillborn across what was once a national border, both feared and hated.

Perhaps it is an outgrowth of terrorism, much like the Taliban fighters who came to dominate what had been the nation-state of Afghanistan.

Or perhaps it is something else, something my Western mind has a difficult time grasping.  I don't know Arabic, and sometimes, things seem to get lost in translation.

Little help comes from the media.  I learn occasionally what ISIS has done.  I am told that various military forces - the U.S. military, the Iraqi army, the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad - are poised to destroy ISIS.  Maybe there's a great in-depth journalism piece out there that digs in and telling me about the origins, purpose, true state, and nature of ISIS, but I haven't seen it.

And despite military victories against it, ISIS isn't dead yet.  Indeed, it is now present in some form or another in 18 countries.  And since such reports tend to be a bit behind the times, it's likely in many more.

Reports today seem favorable.  Iraqi soldiers - after, apparently, performing poorly the past few years - although I no longer believe everything I read - have driving ISIS out of Nimrud, one of the world's most ancient cities.

ISIS, like al-Queda before it, destroys cultural artifacts that pre-date Islam in an attempt to erase history - one of its many disturbing policies.

I would not know how to subdue ISIS without becoming things that the Third World, the media, and liberals of all stripes hates the most - an imperialist or a dictator.

And yet British imperialists, centuries of occupying governments in Iraq, and even Saddam Hussein at least left artifacts and a country for ISIS, in ancient Nimrud and elsewhere, to destroy.

I genuinely believe that Americans - naive, ineffective, and ignorant of history as we were - went to Iraq to make it a better place.  The struggle fought by our armed service members there had meaning in and of itself.  They were led poorly, but fought well.  Yet to date, our efforts have not succeeded in bringing about a free, safe, and stable Iraq.  Rather Iraq has become a staging ground and lighthouse for global jihad.

Was Western imperialism actually the worst force that had ever been unleashed in Iraq?  A slightly deeper glance into Iraqi history seems to indicate that ISIS is merely the most recent in a long line of resistance to and violence against Western-occupying or 'Western-backed' governance.

Saddam was deeply evil, yet if you know of a better way to contain ISIS and prevent the spread of terrorism and chaos inside and outside of Iraq, chime in on comments below.  U.S. occupation did not work.  Maybe we did it wrong - maybe there were tactics and policies that would have worked.

Cynically, I am beginning to believe that certain countries should be left in their own private hells, if the reward for liberating them is being shot at.  And yet what do we do if that hell spawns global jihad?

Can we really sit back and do nothing?

And yet if ISIS is defeated, will Bashar al-Assad be the region's ruler?  Or, even if ISIS should be destroyed, will the region continue to be as it is now, a hodgepodge of fractured nation-states, terrorist groups, and rebels?

Somehow I don't think that answer is on Wikipedia.

If ISIS threatens Americans' lives, it must be opposed, violently, with military action.

Anything less simply invites more terror.

I am doubtful that we can successfully occupy Iraq over the long term without having to kill, seemingly, millions of Iraqis - a result no less unacceptable than Americans being killed.

And so we are limited to air strikes, special forces, and client armed forces, like the Iraqi army and the Kurds.

It is a broken and frustrating non-solution in a broken world, and yet there seems to be little better we can do.