Another one that hurts

Whenever there is an enemy human instinct is to dehumanise and classify those who are against us as some sort of embodiment of pure evil whose motivations are the mirror opposite of our own more noble intentions. Where we hold life dear they deem it to be worthless etc.But that's too simplistic. In your analysis you have split the enemy into the truly evil and then the deluded followers brainwashed into evil acts by their genuinely evil ring masters. Again too simplistic. More likely is that, with the exception of a few genuine psychopaths, most ISIS members consider themselves to hold human life very dearly indeed and for that to be one of the core reasons for their actions.No doubt they consider the apparent lack of concern the West holds for Arab lives as a sure sign of our depraved inhumanity and deem this a dehumanising justification for why Western lives matter so little. In their eyes we are the evil 'other' who have little regard for the human lives that they can most about.No doubt I will be accused of advocating some sort of moral equivalence. But I'm not. It's perfectly possible to take a firm moral position on one side rather than another, to whole heartedly condemn the actions and philosophy of ISIS, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that human motivations and psychological needs are universally human.In fact I would suggest that NOT dehumanising those we oppose, NOT doing as they do in that respect, is a key part of maintaining a morally superior position.Are ISIS members motivated to do the things they do by the loss of lives they care about? It certainly seems so. In which case it is not that they hold life cheap so much as they have split the world into the human lives that matter and the dehumanised ones that don't. A very typical human psychological response.I say we try not to follow that same path.

Personally I see no conflict between denouncing people, their actions and their philosophy and NOT dehumanising them. Why do I have to dehumanise those whom I denounce?I think that as soon as we de-humanise our enemies we fall into the same trap that they, in this specifc case, have fallen into and lose a large part of what I genuinely think makes us morally superior to them.This need to deny that those we oppose do the things they do for reasons that are all too human I find ill considered.

Do you think every member of ISIS is psychopathic?What percentage of ISIS members are psychopathic?What drives those members who are not psychopaths to the actions that they undertake?If you were a Muslim young man in Raqqa - What do you think your position would be on the relative merits of Western bombing of Syria, ISIS, Assad etc?If you were a Muslim young man in Raqqa - What do you think your take would be on the recent attacks in Paris?I ask a genuine question to guage the level of empathy we are capable of achieving here......