March 3, 2015 12:00pm by David Farrar

Pagani on Islamic State

Not intervening isn’t necessarily the more peaceful option. We didn’t intervene in Syria. The result was genocide. 220,000 dead and counting. We didn’t intervene in Rwanda and a million Tutsi were slaughtered.

Those who didn’t want us to intervene in Syria, still don’t want us to intervene now. When will they face the fact that the opposite of intervention isn’t peace?

What does unite Al-Qaeda and ISIS is a complete rejection of the modern progressive world. That’s not a rejection of reality TV, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

But a rejection of the right to vote (god’s law is greater), the right of girls to be educated, and the right not to be executed or flogged for being gay or writing a critical blog.

It’s a vicious ideology that has its roots in religion. Denying that isn’t going to help us defeat jihadism. Most of its victims are moderate muslims or ‘takfir’ – muslims who don’t follow the koran literally and can therefore be excommunicated and killed, according to ISIS.

Pagani is right that this is about a group of people who want to turn the clock back around 1300 years, and have some or all of the world governed according to seventh century scripture.

Neither can we allow the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 to stop us taking action now to prevent crimes against humanity.

Military intervention worked in Timor, Uganda and and Sierra Leone. These interventions were legal (which doesn’t have to mean UN led); and they were long term.

And this is legal, as invited in by the Government of Iraq.

Those who call for New Zealand funding to go to good governance and long term development are right that these are the elements of lasting peace.

But they’re wrong to think you can stop violence with aid.

As Andrew Little argues.