Readers React: Religion and oil: Two things about Islamic State no one wants to discuss

To the editor: I read with frustration Doyle McManus’ column on President Obama’s strategic options for combating the threat from Islamic State. (“Obama’s strategy to defeat Islamic State: a coalition of frenemies,” Op-Ed, Sept. 6)

Every week I read articles about the dire situation in the region and all of the military options available. Not once have I read or heard a serious discussion about the root causes of this dilemma: religion and oil.

Until people stop believing that there is an entity that blesses them and not others of a different faith and who has granted them land on this planet to the exclusion of others, and until wealthy oil producers decide to seriously redirect major portions of their immense profits to research and development of alternative energy sources, we can give up any significant hope of situations changing in the Middle East.

Matt Giorgi, Brea

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To the editor: The leaders of various nations working together will not be enough to defeat Islamic State. The citizens of those nations must also work together, just as the people of the Allied countries worked together in World War II.

They must all sacrifice their time, their effort, their wealth, their possessions, their luxuries, their lives and their children’s lives, and enlist as soldiers to fight against Islamic State. Then, maybe we will defeat it.

But sadly, we cannot defeat its ideology militarily. No ideology has been defeated by the loss of military and political power; even defeated ideologies live on. Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan arose out of the Confederacy, neo-Nazis and fascists are still with us, and communism hasn’t gone away.

However, it is vital that we defeat Islamic State militarily and politically. Are we willing to put our all into this battle and sacrifice whatever is needed to get the job done?

Elizabeth Kerr, Ontario

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