Feb. 26--There's a growing desire among Americans to ramp up our military action against the Islamic State.
A Pew Research Center poll released this week showed that sending ground troops to fight these terrorists in Iraq and Syria is supported by 47 percent of the country, up from only 39 percent in October.
It's a natural reaction many of us have to the barbarism of this group. Beheading people, burning people alive, the wholesale slaughter of innocents -- none of that inspires a reasoned reaction. We want to wipe the monsters out. And I would be all for that, save one thing: Force alone won't work.
If you don't believe that, take a look at the violent-as-always streets of Chicago's South and West sides. What has the drumbeat been all these years when it comes to gang violence? Arrest them all. Send in the National Guard. Or worse yet, just let all those gangbangers kill each other.
The only consistent action taken to stop violence and homicide in this city has been of the law enforcement variety. Little is done to address the factors that lead to violent behavior. Little has been done to improve the communities where violent behavior has become the norm.
We've locked up scores of gang members, and thousands have killed each other. But the problem persists. Young people move in to fill the spaces that are cleared. The death toll ebbs and flows, but remains unacceptable. Innocent people are killed.
Why? Because muscle alone isn't enough. When it comes to gangs, you're not fighting an enemy, you're fighting an idea -- the idea that this is what a young man does to be a man, that the gang life is the path to recognition and respect.
With the Islamic State, you're fighting a twisted ideology, one that's managing to attract young men in much the same way as the Latin Kings or Gangster Disciples of Chicago.
"You can't bomb an ideology and you can't arrest and imprison an idea," said Arthur Lurigio, a psychology professor at Loyola University Chicago who specializes in criminal justice. "Americans want solutions tomorrow for problems that were created with many yesterdays. They want to do it with a great deal of forcefulness and immediacy. So send in a bunch of cops to the hot spots and then a bunch of Marines to Syria. It's the same kind of mentality, instead of working toward a long-term solution."
The Obama administration has been widely mocked for suggesting other approaches to dealing with the Islamic State, from combating the group's propaganda on social media to addressing economic factors that may create paths more attractive than "murderous terrorist." That was quickly dubbed "Jobs for ISIS," which appropriately ridicules the way the thoughts were presented but overlooks the fact that a diverse, multifaceted approach to this problem is needed.
Gary Slutkin, founder of the Chicago group Cure Violence, formerly known as CeaseFire, has spent years studying how violence spreads like a contagious disease and experimenting with treating violence as a public health problem. His group's work in Chicago and in other cities and countries -- utilizing outreach workers to alter the view that violence is a normal behavior -- has been quantitatively and qualitatively successful.
"The first time I saw a photo on the news of ISIS, I saw our clients," he said. "I saw them whether it was Chicago or Baltimore or Honduras. It was the same age, they had the same kind of posturing. The only thing different is they had a tank behind them and this black flag, but I was seeing the same guys we work with."
Slutkin continued: "This is an outbreak of violence. In terms of the bombing, what (the administration) is trying to do is limit the spread and the capacities of this set of violent groups. But they're also aware that this is not going to fully work, or possibly not even work at all. It's extraordinarily limited what any amount of bombing or physical force can do."
Referring back to Chicago gangs, Lurigio said: "Law enforcement comes into the neighborhoods, they put a lot of boots on the ground in the hot spots, they make sweeping arrests. That gives the immediate, short-term quelling of the disorder and the violence. That's exerting force and removing from the streets for the short term the gang members who are disruptive. The long term solution, I would argue with regard to ISIS, is to combat the gang ideology and what fuels that."
Slutkin said most young people involved with groups like the Islamic State are seeking "approval and inclusion."
"They need to feel that this is disapproved of by people they care about," he said.
That's not an easy thing to do, not here and certainly not in Iraq and Syria. It's part of an approach that would take far more time than a swift and powerful military sweep of the region.
We should absolutely respond with force to halt the unspeakable acts that the Islamic State's followers are committing, in the same way we send police into neighborhoods to quell outbreaks of gang violence.
What we shouldn't do is let our visceral reaction to this terrorist group's atrocities override logic. And logic, as well as experience here at home, shows that bombs and boots on the ground alone won't stop the madness.
If you don't believe that, take a look at the violence that erupts nightly in Chicago. And tell me how much has really changed.
rhuppke@tribpub.com
