The current war against ISIS cannot be won with air strikes. I would go further and say it cannot even be won with a large ground force either. The reason is simple. You cannot fight an idea with guns or bombs. Guns and bombs may blow people away but the idea remains. And no matter how many people you blow away, others will come to take their place. That is the power of an idea. You can only fight an idea with a better idea. And thus far, no one in the west has been able to do that, if indeed it can be done.

One would have thought that the billions of dollars spent in just the last 25 years trying to restore some degree of peace and stability in the Middle East would have been enough to demonstrate the futility of waging wars. But no, it hasn’t. If it were not for the strategic interests of the region (i.e. Oil), the rest of the world would not have the will or desire to intervene.

And to think that Australia’s efforts in sending a couple of planes to drop a few bombs on an uncertain target will make a difference is just ridiculous. We, along with a multinational coalition, spent eight years routing out ‘evil’ and replacing it with supposedly highly trained ‘good’ for what result? The ‘good’ we left in place has disintegrated. Hugh White makes it clear that if we do it all again, this time for longer and with larger numbers, such a strategy will achieve no more than the last great effort. It might bring some form of political stability to the region for a short time, but it won’t bring a lasting peace.

It certainly doesn’t address the idea that motivates the ‘enemy’. The raw truth is, we do not know how to identify the ‘enemy’. Is it ISIS, is it Islam? Is it Israel? Is it far away Christians believing that this potent mixture of cultures and religions can ever be at peace? Even in a world without gods, there would still be conflicts but nothing as complex as this.

We should commend President Obama for at least holding back and not being sucked into sending another ground force to try and resolve this mess. But for how long can he hold back? The Hawks in the Pentagon are busting for another fight. The American people, by and large, are not. They’ve had enough. So have we, in Australia. Western interference in the Middle East has brought the conflict to our own backyards in ways no one ever dreamed of 50 or 100 years ago. We are reaping what we have sown.

I don’t think Tony Abbott has the mental maturity to realise this, and I fear that before long, he will commit us to increase our pathetic contribution to something that will make things worse.