By Sheldon Greaves

As the global Islamist insurgency attempts to expand their war to a new level, it is a good idea to remind ourselves of a few things, particularly in light of the growing debate over whether to accept Syrian refugees into our country.

This war is even more ideological than most. On a very real level, it is a struggle over which vision of humanity and the world will dictate the course of future events for the remainder of the century, or at least a significant piece of it. For that reason, there is a moral component that we cannot ignore because, at the end of the day, the victory (to the extent that there can be one) will go to whichever side can claim moral superiority.

ISIS already has abandoned any pretence of moral standing. They may claim religious mandates and cloak their criminality under religious language, no one is buying their claim to be a legitimate religious movement. The Muslim world, especially has an almost universal hatred and revulsion for ISIS. Their claim of a caliphate is considered a bad joke by global Islam. ISIS kills far more Muslims than westerners. That this fact is not reported by US media is a dereliction of duty–one of many.

But if this were their strategy, ISIS has already lost the war. I don’t think it is.

ISIS is betting on two things, which are related: First, is their claim that the US is in an existential war against all Muslims, that they are irredeemably corrupt, an must be eliminated.

Second, ISIS and its leadership learned from the aftermath of 9/11 that the US can be baited into overreach with catastrophic consequences to our standing as a world power. They want us and our allies to self-destruct and, in so doing, destroy the West.

It is an absurd notion. The idea that a bunch of criminals with some funding from Saudi Arabia and other nearby Muslim states, plus some internal income generators can topple Western Civilization by occasionally shooting up public places is ludicrous. Hell, we do that to ourselves every other week, and we’re still here.

However, they can tear at the fabric of our society by asking us to submit to fear. It was fear as much as anything that caused us to overreach in so many way, both foreign and domestic, in our response to 9/11. One way that now dominates the news is the claim by a number of cowardly GOP state governors that they will no longer accept Syrian refugees. It is a decision based on fear, and completely plays into the hands of ISIS’ larger strategy.

Allow me a brief digression: after 9/11, in spite of what we saw on cable news, there was no more hated figure in the Muslim world than Osama bin Laden. Killing innocent people, engaging in acts of terror and calling it jihad was universally condemned in the Muslim world. But as the US began beating the drums to invade Iraq, and carried out its threat, a fair number of people began to think that maybe bin Laden had a point. We risk a similar problem with ISIS. In fact, they are counting on it.

But let’s return to the refugees. So far we have accepted over 750,000 refugees, none of whom have been charged with domestic terrorism. Only two Iraqis have arrested on terrorist charges; they had not planned an attack in America, but aided al-Qaeda at home.ISIS is their mortal enemy. They hate ISIS with a bitter fury. If we were truly smart, our intelligence community would start recruiting heavily from these people to find some willing and able to work as intelligence analysts. Only a precious few would have the right combination of knowledge and ability to pass a background check, but even if we recruited no more than one in a thousand, can you even begin to imagine what we could do with 750 native Arabic-speaking intelligence officers who want nothing more than to see ISIS trampled into the sand?

For decades, the United States had a hard time spying on the Soviets because Stalin and his government were able to cover up their atrocities from the rest of the world. The excesses of Capitalism in the 20’s and 30’s allowed Soviet Communism to make a play for the moral high ground, and they did, recruiting heavily on college campuses. Eastern European refugees weren’t particularly interested in spying for us because Stalin didn’t seem like much of a threat. But when he invaded Hungary in 1956, all that changed. Suddenly the mask was off, the world saw him for what he was, and recruiting eastern Europeans who spoke fluent Russian became a lot easier. It was, arguably, a game-changer.

But that is why the moral high ground is so important. In order to make someone from another culture turn against that culture, you must demonstrate that yours is superior to the one they just left; so much so, that they would be willing to direct their efforts towards spying on their own countrymen, or at least their own ethnic group. To those who fear refugees trying to infiltrate the CIA, that’s a non-starter. In fact, I hope any terrorists are stupid enough to try.

For these reasons, it is not only advisable, but imperative that we allow the refugees into the United States, and treat them very well. Aside from being the right thing to do, this is how the world will take the measure of who we really are.

If we turn them away, we will lose our souls and, perhaps, the war.