Retribution

Around the world, support for the victims and the city of Paris continues to pour in, while anger and cries for vengeance stack up against ISIS on the other side. Most notable in this line would be the mild revelation out of Russia that the passenger plane that crashed last month in Egypt was brought down by a "homemade explosive device." That means all those Russian citizens, more than two hundred of them, were most likely brought down by a terrorist. The Federal Security Service issued a statement offering a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible, appealing to the "Russian and international communities for cooperation in identifying the terrorists." The FSB, Russian for Federal Security Service, specified that the reward would be paid in dollars. If the friend of my enemy is my friend, what does this make the United States in this equation? It is pretty obvious that the bad guys are the ones with the homemade bombs, and while we may all sneer at the idea of worldwide cooperation on anything, it does conveniently fall in that category of zombie apocalypse. 
You remember the scenario, where zombies or aliens invade our otherwise tranquil planet and suddenly all those petty squabbles about currency and the Ukraine and human rights get pushed to the back as we focus on ridding ourselves of this otherworldly scourge. A common enemy is something we haven't had for, well, ever. What made the first couple of world wars so satisfying is that first of all, we won. Second, even though the bad guys were unrelentingly bad, we all seemed to be fighting in roughly the same fashion and century. ISIS doesn't seem to mind that their strategies and targets don't seem to fall under that "conventional warfare" heading. Their targets seem to fall outside the "conventional" as well. Women, children, concertgoers. Infidels. They chop people's heads off, which seems old school enough, but they post them on Youtube. I don't know how Muhammad would feel about that.
And in the end, that's what I hope does ISIS in. Not retribution from world powers and fire from the sky, but the fire from within Muslims everywhere who are tired of having these jokers be their spokes-terrorists. The prophet said, 
"You will not enter paradise until you believe,
and you will not believe until you love one another.
Let me guide you to something in the doing of which you will love one another.
Give a greeting to everyone among you."

I didn't make that up.