Whenever I hear the media refer to the “U.S.-led coalition against ISIS,” I cringe. Here’s why.
Suppose everyone wakes up tomorrow to learn that the U.S.-led coalition’s campaign has succeeded beyond anyone’s highest expectations. Every member of ISIL is now dead or taking up new residence at Guantanamo. Even better: Every oppressive tyrant, terrorist sympathizer, and enemy of peace, justice, and the American way from Bashar Assad to Edward Snowden is dead, confined to Guantanamo, or both.
The question is: What will be the new political shape of the Middle East? Who will lead the Levant?
The answer is: It doesn’t matter.
Whoever emerges as the new political force east of the Mediterranean Sea, whatever Hussein, Pahlavi, Arafat, Saud, Sadat, Begin, Marcos, Noriega, Pinochet, or Duvalier comes into power, will face the suspicion that he (she?) came into power with the backing of the United States, has made secret deals with the United States, and will betray the peace and prosperity of the peoples of the Levant to promote the interests of the United States.
To oppose this new premier, or king, or shah, a new terrorist group will emerge, one so despicable it will make ISIL look like, well, like al-Qaida. The U.S. will see the need to send in military assistance, and the whole bloody mess will repeat for the umpteenth time since the days of Lawrence of Arabia.
We Americans debate between interventionism and isolationism. The interventionists say: America must dominate the world with U.S.-led coalitions because we have the strongest military, and we know what’s right for everybody. The isolationists say: We need to take care of ourselves, and the rest of the world can go to hell in a handbasket.
Can we forge a new option? Can we seek to be a nation that engages with the rest of the world with integrity and perhaps even humility? To adapt the words of the great American philosopher, Clint Eastwood: A nation has got to know its limitations.
Our limitations are revealed, strangely enough, by the word “Levant,” the “L” in “ISIL.” The Obama administration says that this word best translates the last word in the name ISIL once used for itself: al-Sham, an old Arabic term for the geographical region bordered on the west by the Mediterranean Sea.
For some, the L word “conjures up a colonial association from the early 20th century, when Britain and France drew their maps, carving up Mesopotamia guided by economic gain rather than tribal allegiances,” as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it. But “Levant” first appeared in the English language sometime between 1490 and 1500. Indeed, it seems to have emerged just as the Crusades were running out of steam. Maybe President Obama chose the word to convey a message: It is time for the region to discover its own destiny, one not dictated by pseudo-religious terrorism, nor determined by paternalistic imperialism.
But does the president realize that “Levant” means “lands of the rising sun?” Our use of the word reveals that we are incapable of dealing with the Middle East without imposing our Western perspective on the region.
The U.S. government’s insistence on “ISIL” is a symbol of President Obama’s well-meaning ineptitude. Or it is a sign of American hegemony masquerading as altruism. The U.S.-led coalition may win some battles. But it has already lost the war.
David Paul Henry was pastor of Lamoine Baptist Church from 1984 to 2009. Since then he has taught ethics courses as an adjunct instructor at Husson University in Bangor.