The foundational logic of governing is this: resources, both material and symbolic, are not equally distributed among people. Individuals and groups differ with respect to their personal abilities, education levels, talents, environmental resources, and particular skills. The fact that people in groups are organized around this inequality of resources makes for the “politics of difference.” In other words, politics is fundamentally about managing differences and making it so these differences and the tensions associated with them are under control. It also means that a culturally plural society that demands group-differentiated policies is the norm. Finally, it is a truism that groups seek to maximize their own desired outcomes and it is the communication process that controls these forces. Deliberation, dialogue, bargaining, negotiation, and all sorts of agonistic discourse are part of the political process.

But even though the politics of difference is the norm there are typically forces that are historically more powerful and responsible for driving differences between people and groups. Religion, for example, has become a symbolic resource that separates and marks groups as “different” or an object of distrust. The ISIS revolution is real and a genuine threat. Read Scott Atran on how ISIS is growing and winning its revolution. ISIS is a growing and dynamic counterculture that in two short years has expanded its territory and recruited thousands. It is a radical Sunni revivalism that is beginning to succeed at historic proportions. As a Atran explains, ISIS possesses the largest and most diverse volunteer fighting force since the Second World War.

While the West dithers and considers ISIS’s behavior to be nonrational and horrific it fails, as a Atran explains, to make the distinction between “rational” actors and “committed” actors. Horrific violence is coded into the ISIS religious consciousness so that statements such as “paradise lies under the shade of swords” or there will be  “volcanoes of Jihad” become alluring images for the development of a combination of violent and religious consciousness that justifies monstrous behavior with all the power of the “word of God.” What else would prompt a mother to abandon her baby so she could murder innocent people in San Bernardino and then sacrifice her own life. ISIS controls something more than the West controls when it commands behaviors that are infused with significance, when it makes its members feel as though they are part of an authentic consciousness that makes their life worth living. This they are “committed” to. Their behavior is not rational in any practical sense of the term but symbolic of their commitment to this authentic consciousness.

Patriotism, fidelity, obedience, and courage are all abstract psychological conditions that distort the secular motivations of those who are “rational.” These emotions are for ISIS tied to God or Allah and thus held in higher standing. Subjecting them to rationality (e.g. “I will not fight because I might get hurt.” “I must maximize my personal interests.” “My ideals are not worth hurting someone else.”) is ineffective. No, they are subject to commitment. ISIS fighters are committed to obedience and fidelity which makes it easier for them to do anything in the name of obedience and fidelity to God and cause.

Read the Atran article and think more about the “committed.”

The participants in intractable conflicts are not “rational” actors; they are, as Scott Atran explains, “devoted” actors. Intractable conflicts are intergroup conflicts and are on the rise. The actors use a logic of identity (I must preference the maintenance of my identity) rather than a logic of consequences (I must maximize my gains) and thus set into motion the construction of ingroup-outgroup distinctions that produce communicative distortions (e.g., false polarization, stereotypes, and attribution errors) and generate misunderstanding and confusion at best, and violence at worst. Identity conflicts and the chauvinism that accompanies them are a major obstacle to peace and a major challenge to a liberal society based on pluralism and respect for differences. The most typical explanation for these ethnic conflicts is Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis which is seen as replacing the competition between communism and capitalism with fault lines attributable to ethnoreligious groups. These are intergroup conflicts that require changes in how members of communities interact and perceive one another. Such conflicts are particularly defined by intense ethnic and religious forces and are a recent and virulent form of group conflict.

Divided societies have been studied in an effort to understand their causes and possibilities for resolution. Accordingly, analyses of psychology, economics, politics, and security dilemmas are typical. But a few exceptions notwithstanding , the role of communication has received less attention. There has been a strong tradition of using rational choice theories to explain these conflicts along with social psychologically informed research tradition. Security studies and economic theories represent a second and third strand of research each of which draws on rational choice theoretical assumptions. Rational choice theoretical models assume that group behavior is driven by the consequences of a reward- cost payoff. The utility maximization assumption has been criticized as expecting humans to be cyborg-like maximizers assuming decisions are made in a world of perfect information, when they are not, and failing to understand humans as creative information processors that are subject to more than rational forces. Identity and cultural processes are at the heart of group conflicts and it is essential to explore how culturally constructed identities connect individuals through perceived common experiences. These connections, which are communicative contact links, organize behavior and are responsible for interpreting reality in such a way that conflicts can be mitigated.

Communication is central to understanding and working with these intractable conflicts for four reasons. First, communication is elemental to the conflict; microlevel interactions structure behavior, and actors in intractable conflicts think about the communication process. They strategize, discuss, and manipulate symbols, all in an effort to control others and define themselves. The significant meanings of these conflicts do not reside in individuals but are accomplishments of the participants driven by social and political circumstances. Secondly communication is relevant to both micro and macro levels of society. At the micro-interactional level people argue, persuade, inform, and develop relationships. And then these interactions accumulate into macro structures such as institutions, media systems, and cultural forces that constrain behaviors with respect to racism, sexism, prejudice, and a host of other cultural stereotypes and distortions. These symbolic processes of communication are what bind individuals to political systems. Third, simplistic communication processes cannot resolve intractable conflicts; we know conflicts require interaction. Diplomacy, dialogue, mediation, negotiation and any form of conflict resolution is fundamentally communicative in nature. It is the communication process that reaches across cultural divides and provides the mechanisms by which conflicts are processed. Finally, modern intractable conflicts are ethnopolitical in nature and identity conflicts. They are deeply symbolic and complex with unclear boundaries. Such conflicts require deeper communicative engagement designed to widen the circle of identity and inclusion.

These processes are not naïve or soft, they are the requirements of problem solving.

In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs Nick Danforth likens the caliphate to an abstract concept such as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that has very little historical basis and is largely made up as different leaders need the concept. Danforth calls the caliphate a fantasy that has been exploited by political and military leaders in order to strengthen their claim to Islamic leadership. Westerners have confused the dream of a unifying religious power, a caliphate, with a cruder military and economic power claiming religious authority.

After Mohammed died in 632 there was no heir to his leadership and the conflict about who should succeed him began. The word caliph means succession and the caliphate is a governing body that manages political and religious affairs of state. You can begin to read more about the caliphate here.

The distinction between Shia and Sunni has its roots in the competition for leadership after Mohammed. Some believe that his son-in-law Ali should serve as leader and he was the rightful heir and they became “Shia.” Those who believe that Mohammed supporters and the people around him were eligible for leadership are the Sunni.

The caliphate is in the tradition of messianic Islam where at some point at the end of times the souls of all Muslims will join Allah. This resurrection is related to the Christian resurrection, but one difference is the restoration of the caliphate. Supposedly, an Islamic state under sharia law will be governed by a Caliph who has authority over all Muslims. The true caliphate will come after unjust kingdoms are destroyed.

But the caliphate has never been much of a governing organization and there are controversies over whether Islamic law is part of the state or not. But the notion of the caliphate has been used to exploit Muslim claims of control of their own rights and the rights of other Muslims. The caliphate is also used as justification for eliminating the borders that Europeans drew between countries and arguing for a transnational Muslim empire.

ISIS is trying to create a pan- Islamic moral order that does not recognize national boundaries. The idea of a caliphate is of course consistent with the Empire mentality of ISIS and their desire to speak with one voice. The presence of a caliphate is threatening to more secular democratic interests and for this reason the notion of a caliphate was outlawed by Ataturk. But Muslim societies are assumed to be fractionated at the moment and not held together by any common authorative source. The idea of a caliphate is pleasing to many and is viewed as a binding and coherent structure that keeps Muslims together. Osama bin Laden was attracted to the idea of a caliphate as one way to redress the humiliations and grievances heaped on Islam.

Finally, Danforth concludes that it would be a mistake to think that the idea of reviving the caliphate is anything but a power move with no basis in clear Islamic principles. The Syrians, Turks, Iraqis, Afghanis etc. are surely bound together by Islam but also represent political and cultural historical differences that would be obliterated by a pan- Islamic power organization called the caliphate. Westerners should not be duped into believing that the caliphate holds Islamic legitimacy; rather, it might slip easily into an unpleasant dominating authoritarian force.

A man holds a placard reading “Yazidi children want to live” and sporting the Yazidi flag next to others holding placards during a demonstration mainly by Yazidi refugees in support of their community in Iraq, on August 20, 2014 in Angers, western France. Yazidi refugees living in France’s Maine-et-Loire department, whom arrived in the region in the last 10 years, demonstrated along with Kurdish speakers on August 20 in Angers in support of Yazidis persecuted in Iraq by the Islamic State (IS). AFP PHOTO / JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER (Photo credit should read JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/AFP/Getty Images)

How long do you stand on the sidelines? How long do you wait? France has declared war finally and the US still isn’t doing enough against ISIS. The Kurds are brave and powerful allies who are the tip of the sword in the fight against ISIS. They need more support and our relationship with Turkey be damned.

The US Holocaust Museum has called the Islamic state’s treatment of the Yazidis genocide. It is unfortunate that terms such as “genocide” get tossed about too often and therefore drained of their power. When people claim genocide for rhetorical purposes only the term becomes weakened and then, like the little boy who cried wolf too often, no one believes him when the wolf is actually at the door. And as much as we want to avoid foreign entanglements and stay out of the business of others, how long do you stand on the sidelines watching one group of people being destroyed by another. I’m careful about Holocaust comparisons and invoking the Nazis as the epitome of evil because it also drains the reality of its power. Moreover, anti-Semitism and the Jewish Holocaust are particularistic enough such that comparisons fail.

But below is the United Nations definition of genocide and it is pretty clear. Every one of the five conditions certainly applies to the Jewish Holocaust and the first three are quite descriptive of the Islamic state’s treatment of the Yazidis.

General Assembly Resolution 260A (III) Article 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

But still, there are similarities and it’s important to find consistencies and defensible comparisons of genocide in one case so that we can recognize it in another.

Who are the Yazidis?

I’ll let the reader go to Wikipedia or some convenient Internet site for additional information on the Yazidis. But quickly, the Yazidis are a monotheistic religious community that lives in Iraq. They have been discriminated against religiously for centuries because their chief God is equated with a fallen angel in other religions and therefore Satan. In 2014 they were specifically targeted by ISIS in an effort to purify Iraq of non-Islamic influences. This unleashed a wave of rape and murder and calls for the destruction of the Yazidis by ISIS. Reports of Yazidis fleeing the town of Sinjar where they were being killed by ISIS forces in a genocidal manner are common enough. Young Yazidis women who had been raped by ISIS fighters were committing suicide.

The ISIS digital magazine Dabiq has claimed that slavery and the absorption of Yazidis women and children has religious justification. The US Holocaust Museum has identified the attacks on the Yazidis as genocide. This is based on evidence gathered by the Deputy Director of the museum during a visit to Yazidis camps.

There is clear evidence that the Islamic state has committed genocidal war crimes against the Yazidis as well as other religious offshoots. Every person interviewed claimed the violence against the Yazidis was systematic and more vicious than they had ever seen. Secretary Kerry should formally accuse ISIS of committing genocide and begin an international investigation.

Once again we are confronted with an extremist ethnopolitical group whose hate is of hallucinogenic proportions. Whether it be Jews, French citizens in a restaurant or at a concert, or Yazidis the question remains: how long do you wait before you do something?