If it were not so sad, one might laugh. Andrew White, dubbed the ‘Vicar of Baghdad,’ is committed to dialogue at essentially any cost. The Christian leader, who some might recall for his eccentric demeanor and slightly slurred speech (due to the ravages of multiple sclerosis), has dined with terrorists before. In fact, inviting the world's most heinous creatures to break bread is the man's modus operandi and it seems few if any have rejected the vicar’s gracious invitations. Until now, that is.

In a report for the Independent, Cole Moreton writes of the doctor-turned-priest and how a recent dinner-RSVP from ISIS leaders included a vow to “chop off” the vicar’s head. White has responded with humor.

They were coming for him and his people. Friends were being killed or fleeing for their lives. So Andrew White did what he always does when faced with an enemy. “I invited the leaders of Isis [Islamic State] for dinner. I am a great believer in that. I have asked some of the worst people ever to eat with me.”

This extraordinarily self-confident priest is best known as the vicar of Baghdad, leader of a church in the chaos outside the protected Green Zone. He made his offer last year as the terrorist forces threatened to take the city. Did he get a reply?

“Isis said, ‘You can invite us to dinner, but we’ll chop your head off.’ So I didn’t invite them again!”

And he roars with laughter, despite believing that Islamic State has put a huge price on his head, apparently willing to pay $157m (£100m) to anyone who can kill this harmless-looking eccentric.

In addition to dining with everyone from world leaders to warlords to Saddam Hussein's sons, the Independent reports that White has been "shot at and kidnapped, and was once held captive in a room littered with other people’s severed fingers and toes, until he talked his way out of it."

If one scoffs at White for his naivety in forever seeking dialogue with savages, it should be noted that he does acknowledge that there is evil that can only be dealt with via the use of force. As a priest, he says it is painful to admit such truths.

“Can I be honest? ... You can’t negotiate with them [ISIS]" he told the Independent. "I have never said that about another group of people. These are really so different, so extreme, so radical, so evil."

While he stated that there are "good Sunni leaders" who can indeed be reasoned with, ISIS radicals need to be dealt with "radically."

In response to a question about how best to deal with ISIS, the priest was candid:

The only answer is to radically destroy them. I don’t think we can do it by dropping bombs. We have got to bring about real change. It is a terrible thing to say as a priest.

“You’re probably thinking, ‘So you’re telling me there should be war?’ Yes!”

Iraq's Christian population has disintegrated from 1.5 million to just over 250,000. It comes as no surprise. In fact, the Jewish community in Iraq walked this same path in the years both preceding and following the country's British Mandate. Deadly subjugation, dhimmitude and ultimately pogroms catalyzed by Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini (the same person Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently, accurately condemned for his role in the Holocaust) ravaged the country's 2,500-year-old Jewish community, rendering it essentially non-existent.

White, a priest committed to peace is cogent enough to acknowledge that there are times when dialogue is not the answer, yet too many world leaders have yet to catch on to this essential truth and attempt to reason that the Iranian regime, Palestinian nationalists, Syrian rebels, al Qaeda and other Islamic militants should be dealt with differently from ISIS. While it is true that each group possesses disparate motivations and capabilities, these terrorists (because at the end of the day that is what they all are) posses the same core trait: they value death over life, thus there is no leverage with which the West can engage to move them beyond barbarism. Until the Western world accepts this truth and realizes that the only language militants respond to is that of brute-force, the world will continue to live in a perpetual state of terror.

(h/t: Jihad Watch)