Parker: Time to acknowledge Islamic State fight is religious war

To this point, a Libyan terrorist group has announced its goal of destroying Rome. That’s so Middle Ages, but the men in black apparently didn’t get the memo about time marching on and are still seething at Pope Urban II. Here we are reveling in 40 years of “Saturday Night Live,” and they’re chopping off people’s heads.

At least their declaration liberates us finally to admit if only to ourselves that we are, indeed, engaged in a religious war at the behest of zealots whose bloodlust boils down to didactic theater. Herein lies a crucial point in our deliberations: To defeat an enemy clinging to the first millennium B.C., it may be necessary to huddle around a single candle and try to think as a Middle Ager.

We wonder, for instance, at the ritualized executions of innocents and marvel at the technological sophistication of the Islamic State’s distribution of its videotaped savagery. Yet a quick glimpse at history confirms that these spectacles are merely modernized versions of vintage rites. Medieval punishments, including beheadings, burnings and crucifixions, were popular both for their power to terrorize and for the religious connotation of penance.

These radical Islamists sure know their audience. They don’t necessarily hate those they kill; they’re not even necessarily punishing them. Rather they are using these human sacrifices as bait — for us. When President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, he said he was taking the war to the terrorists. In this case, it may be the Islamic State that is luring us to their battlefields.

Knee-jerk reactions

Their faith in our axiomatic response is not unfounded. The responses have a knee-jerk quality to them that speaks to concerns about a lack of strategy on our part, while enhancing the Islamic State’s recruitment and propaganda powers. Obama mentioned these concerns in his State of the Union address last month: “We must fight the battles that need to be fought, not those that terrorists prefer from us — large-scale deployments that drain our strength and may ultimately feed extremism.”

Meanwhile, bless our hearts for debating the parameters of war — whether three years is enough, too little or, most likely, inapplicable. We may as well be playing chess with polar bears. Obama himself has said that this war will extend well beyond his tenure, thus signaling that hell awaits his successor.

Guardedly, we await the next atrocity and the deliberations of a Congress in which we have little confidence. Our legislators and president will need more than noble intentions or good ol’ American values. They’ll need the wisdom of the ages — and a coalition of the civilized world.