One scourge gives us pointers about the other.
Ebola has been in the news. Three thousand American troops are on their way to fight the disease in Liberia, where there are too few beds in too few hospitals, with too few doctors to treat patients, and too few policemen to enforce quarantines.
Quarantines have sparked riots. People don’t want the sick billeted in their neighborhood, and where whole neighborhoods have been quarantined, the healthy don’t want to be shut in with the sick. A coastal Monrovia slum called West Point was barricaded into an Ebola isolation zone without warning. The West Pointers rioted and attacked police; it’s not clear how many people were injured. There weren’t any doctors to treat them anyway. People inside the slum have no food; people who have tried to get out on boats have been turned back by the coast guard. A mob shouting “No Ebola in West Point” attacked an Ebola treatment center and looted it; several infected patients escaped. The virus is spreading. Things are pretty bad. West Africa needs our help, and helping is the right thing to do. In the meantime, everyone could use some good news.
Luckily, there is good news in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Really good news, if you look at it the right way.
Imagine if — along with West Africa — the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America were filled with entrenched Ebola patients. And if, suddenly, voluntarily, they all gathered themselves in one place. That would be a big load off everyone’s mind. Imagine if, instead of Ebola patients, they were radical, pro-decapitation Islamists.
It’s no secret that Russia, Europe, Australia, and North America have their fair share of home-grown junior jihadis. This week, Australian police rounded up 15 suspected Islamists suspected of planning to decapitate a random Australian and drape him in the ISIS flag. Nidal Hasan, who murdered a civilian and twelve of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, was born in Virginia. Hasan’s sometime imam, the terror-ringleader Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico. Chechen Islamists have fought the Russians and bombed the Boston Marathon. British Nigerians murdered — and tried to behead — a British soldier on a London street in broad daylight. Domestic terror-acolytes are a serious problem for civilized countries everywhere. But now they’re filtering themselves out. The Islamic State is a magnet that attracts only one kind of junk.
Hundreds of Americans, Europeans, and West Asians have joined up with the Islamic State. The person who murdered James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and David Haines was born in the U.K. — one of about 300 English-incubated terrorists who have joined the crusading in Syria and Iraq. There are 250 ISISites from Australia, 700 from France, and 800 from Russia, along with smaller contributions from smaller countries. A 31-year-old cook from Belgium joined the Islamic State, saying, “Fighting against the Americans and the Shiites is one of my biggest wishes.” He added that he expects to go “straight to paradise.”
There are also about a hundred Islamic Statists who come from the United States. We should be very glad that they’re not in the United States any more. There are 2 million Muslims in the U.S., and most of them are as benign as everyone else — but it’s not hard for a hundred lunatics to hide in a crowd that’s 2 million strong. And a hundred lunatics can kill a lot of people.
The Ebola metaphor isn’t perfect. Ebola patients can be treated; if they’re lucky, they recover. I’m afraid that the ISIS Islamists won’t. These aren’t disaffected youth looking for somewhere to fit in; they’re hard-core believers. A 25-year-old soldier of the Islamic State named Abu Anwar told CNN, “I’m from the south of England. I grew up in a middle-class family. . . . Life was easy back home. I had a life. I had a car. But the thing is: You cannot practice Islam back home. We see all around us evil.” These people can’t be negotiated with, can’t be talked to — any more than you could have talked down a kamikaze pilot, or negotiated with a member of the SS. They want their Blut und Ehre.
Mad-cow disease may be a better analogy than Ebola. Imagine if all the mad cows voluntarily herded themselves into one pasture in eastern Syria. It would make the culling a lot easier. That would be very good news. An opportunity not to be missed.
Looked at the right way, the Islamic State is very good news. A unique opportunity to kill a lot of people who, regrettably, have to be killed. Either right now, over in the Islamic State, or sometime down the road, back in the U.S., during the next Fort Hood massacre.
— Josh Gelernter writes weekly for NRO and is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard.