Islamic State is destroying the common patrimony of the human race
by DANIEL HANNAN June 2, 2015
Not many of us get the chance to visit Palmyra, the ancient city in central Syria. As one of the lucky few who has, I wish I could express how bleak I've been feeling since those magnificent ruins fell to the brutes of Islamic State.
Palmyra is one of a handful of places on the planet - along with Machu Picchu, Petra and the Taj Mahal - whose presence can't easily be conveyed through a camera lens. You don't get a proper sense of it from the Discovery Channel. You have to see the rosy pillars rising from the trackless desert for yourself.
The thought of those ancient remains under the sledgehammers of the jihadi iconoclasts is almost unbearable. We know well enough what is now happening in Palmyra. It happened in Nimrud and in Nineveh. The narcissistic idiots who swell the ranks of Islamic State make a point of effacing the past, systematically wrecking anything that they deem to be pagan. Even as they dynamite the temples and colonnades, they will be selling off artifacts in neighboring countries to fund their depredations.
The early Caliphs, on whom these enthusiasts claim to model themselves, respected the majesty of Palmyra; but the Islamic State dunderheads, with their boastful Twitter accounts, think they know better. An ancient entrepôt, a place where Greek and Roman and Arab and Persian cultures swirled and blended, will be pulverized. The pluralism which the Prophet's first followers respected is too much for this generation of nihilists. Never again will visitors stand in awed silence before the stones, as I did 23 years ago.
One reason Palmyra makes such an impression on the visitor is that, unlike Pompeii or Ephesus, it's in the middle of nowhere. Getting there involves a lengthy drive through the speckled Syrian desert. Islamic State couldn't have seized the town without moving columns of troops across open country. No skulking in urban centers, no sheltering behind civilians. Yet the U.S.-backed coalition that has supposedly been patrolling Syria's skies did not halt the advance. All the drones and missiles of eight allied air-forces couldn't turn back a gang of self-regarding teenagers.
The United States enjoys a military superiority without precedent in human history. No coalition of rival powers can hope to match its capacity. Yet it seems unable to slap down a few hundred militiamen. Eight months have passed since the commander-in-chief promised to "degrade and ultimately destroy" Islamic State. How's that working out?
It's true, of course, that this is not simply about weaponry. There are political as well as military constraints on America. Indeed, to the extent that Islamic State can be said to have a coherent strategy, that strategy is to goad the U.S. into a ground invasion, so allowing the jihadis to pose as the champions of Islam against a new Crusade and - according to some of the millenarian fanatics in the movement - triggering the last battle, which will usher in the End of Days.
The hope used to be that the West would build up stable states in the region able to contain the terrorist threat. We spent more than a decade reconstructing Iraq's army from scratch. The officer cadets we started training were majors by the time we left. Yet, when the moment came - I still find this almost unbelievable - 56,000 Iraqi regulars defending Mosul fled before 1800 Islamic State gangsters. It makes you wonder whether the billions of dollars in military aid given over the years to other allies in the region - Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest - might just as usefully have been buried in the lone and level sands of Arabia.
I'm not a gung-ho interventionist. I supported the first war against Saddam, but not the second. I backed the overthrow of the Taliban, but not the prolongation and extension of the West's military presence in Afghanistan. Foreign policy is not an all-or-nothing choice between, so to speak, Ron Paul and John McCain. It ought to be possible to be wary of foreign entanglements but not immovably opposed. When the federal debt is $18 trillion, you have to pick your battles carefully. But that doesn't mean you should never wage them.
Islamic State has, under any normal definition, committed acts of war against my country and yours, targeting and murdering our citizens wholly on grounds of their nationality. In Nimrud and now in Palmyra, it is destroying the common patrimony of the human race.
To those who ask why I am more upset about old ruins than about thousands of slaughtered civilians, the only reply is that you don't need to tell me about the victims. I was working with some of them in a refugee camp just across the Turkish border last year. They were desperate for help from any source.
Whether you care about old monuments or orphaned children, about the radicalization of Western hotheads or the destabilization of the region, about the security of our allies or the prestige of the United States, the conclusion is the same: We can't let these monsters win.
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