The “if it bleeds, it leads” headlines all across major media sources on a recent Sunday morning begin with a report that a new video has surfaced in which the “Islamic State” (a.k.a., IS/ISIL/ISIS) purports to have carried out another series of public executions, including that of an American aid volunteer who was working in war-torn Syria.

That this made headlines across the nation (and probably the greater part of the surface of the earth) demonstrates that IS has a first-rate propaganda operation that almost instantly achieves its three most prized goals of simultaneously:

• frightening those who live in or near its orbit;
• outraging and taunting the Western World; and
• exciting the prospects for real-life action and revenge that lie deep within the slums of Paris, London, and Cairo — not to mention neighborhoods in Jersey City or Dearborn, Michigan.

Screenshot: Vice News

But the prospects for an end to the violence are not bright, nor are the prospects for success of the recently instituted U.S. bombing campaign to “degrade and destroy ISIL.” In strictly military terms (if there is anything “strictly military” in human affairs), history has yet to witness any air campaign which, in and of itself, ever brought victory to any side in any war, the claims of Bomber Harris, Curtis LeMay, and Herman Goering notwithstanding. Indeed, many attempts at bombing an enemy into submission have had the opposite effect, witness the U.S. effort in Viet Nam or the Luftwaffe’s demolition of the East End of London. Folks on the ground simply buried their dead and stiffened their resolve.

That said, the basic reasons for what is happening in the Middle East today (and has been happening for decades now) will not be found in our headlines – they usually don’t appear anywhere in the major media, even on the back page. Notions like “alienation from modernity” or “an existential sense of shame and honor” don’t make for simple reading. In fact, much to the chagrin of most intelligence agencies, they don’t make for easy “real time” analysis, either, by the super-nerds of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica or for the MOSSAD-nicks in Tel Aviv (let alone the work-a-day stiffs in the CIA, the MI6, or the FSB). And the simple fact is that you cannot bomb “humiliation” and “alienation,” the drivers and impetus for terroristic acts, any more than you can bomb “terrorism” itself.

Yet the overwhelming disaffection for dealing with the effects of modernity, as developed in the West, on the part of traditional communities everywhere on the globe, combined with the relatively easy availability of admittedly “modern” technologies with which to seriously challenge the West and its modernities, has presented the world with issues whose solution are not in sight and whose outcome cannot be predicted. The words “major long-term problem” are hardly adequate to describe what we as a people are facing.

Nearly a quarter century ago, Professor Bernard Lewis at Princeton published an article in The Atlantic which drew “politically correct” consternation and much criticism from the academic acolytes of Edward Saïd et al, but which opened the conversation in a reasoned and thoughtful manner, based on his years of research and scholarly understanding of the Muslim world and its history. That article, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” which can easily be seen and read on-line though admittedly dated, should be read, with a critical eye, by anyone who is truly interested in beginning to comprehend the problems at hand.

Endless high-level considerations of that initial article, some in essential agreement and many others very angry indeed, and of what it had to say have since flowed from pens both East and West. They are too numerous to list here, and going through them requires hours of patience, but they are fairly easy to procure, either in local libraries or on-line, for those who wish to take the time to do so.

At the other end of the dialogue is a book that just came out just last year entitled, “The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam,” by Akbar Ahmed.

“The Roots of Muslim Rage” may not be the alpha of the field and Akbar Ahmed’s book, to be sure, is not yet the omega, but they are good places to start and I would encourage Civil Beat’s readers to start now – you’ll probably have a very long time ahead to watch things play out.