With its penchant for telegenic barbarism, and its success at rapidly gaining territory and affiliates in 2014, Islamic State (IS) made itself seem terrifying. Yet its rapid collapse in recent months, and the fall of its de-facto capital of Raqqa, have made clear its weakness, as Victor Davis Hanson explains:
The zealotry of Islamic State in celebrating the unthinkable added to its cult of invincibility. Young would-be jihadists from the Western world flocked to the group’s Middle East compounds, eager to engage in viciousness as if it were the latest video game. Dejected Middle Eastern armies seemed to have no answer for the medieval violence of IS. . . .
[But] their past horrors had earned Islamic State jihadists only ill will. Tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian victims volunteered to fight IS with a ferocity that they had rarely exhibited in the past. The net result is now mass IS surrenders. Half-starved jihadists in rags and tears beg their captors for forgiveness—and plead not to be shown the same savagery that had so often fueled IS slaughtering. The fate of IS reminds us that throughout history those who posed as superhuman savages, without any limitations to their cruelty, were often bullies who could not stand up to the determined payback of their finally aroused and outraged victims. . . .
Civilization in peace becomes complacent. People understandably hope that growing terror on the horizon will burn out on its own. During calm periods, prosperous and more liberal nations certainly do not want to send their youth across the world to fight those who claim that they would enjoy nothing more than dying while trying to kill those who are more successful and better off.
But the true strength in arms is usually civilizational, not tribal. A modern state that lives by the rule of law and the consent of the governed, and is energized by free markets and a free people, can be a deadly force when finally provoked into rage. The same is true of innocent victims initially overwhelmed by tribal killers like those of the SS, al-Qaeda, or Islamic State. IS may have been able to invent ever more macabre ways of dismembering innocent victims, but it could not make a fighter plane or win the lasting allegiance and loyalty of the majority of Iraqis and Syrians.
Read more on National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453114/isis-raqqa-defeat-reminds-us-limitations-their-cruelty