What ISIS Really Wants

agree with Ace, this is one of the most important articles written this century

it explains the nature of the most dangerous threat to civilization we have seen in decades

 

Thank you for the link - I am still reading it. I would recommend it to everyone so far.

 

I don't pop into this side of the forum much, but thank you for the opportunity to read a thorough and fairly unbiased breakdown of ISIS' goals and beliefs.

 

Excellent article. It seems almost insane to grasp that there is an army bent on murder, domination and bringing on the apocalypse.

 

This was an excellent piece, basso, and I'm glad you shared it. It was certainly thought provoking.

There's a lot that can be taken the wrong way from this, though, as is evident from the comments, many of which seem like uncritical responses engaged in bias confirmation.

The writer makes a reference to Davis Koresh and Jim Jones which is probably appropriate. In my experience I've met Christians and Jews who were "true believers" and had similar apocalyptic views gleamed from the less humanistic parts of their own religious texts. What makes them different, of course, is that these groups don't come close to claiming 8 million people and an area the size of Great Britain.

It takes the administration to task for underestimating the threat of IS, but I think that's a mistake shared by many, and not one I would place squarely and exclusively on Obama, much as I don't blame Bush solely for the mistakes in his foreign policy and the execution of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also makes clear that IS is a much larger threat to the region and to it's neighbors than it is to the West.

It makes a point of showing the contrast with Al-Queda, which it regards as an enemy, which is much more focused on attacking the West (and was ultimately behind the attacks in Paris), and I would still regard as a greater threat to the Western world.

It didn't at all convince me that the US declaring all-out war on IS is a good idea. If anything it seemed to support that some patience and support of protecting shiites and Kurds to contain IS is probably a better long term strategy and one with way less chance of blowback. IS has absolutely no allies and won't survive long as a state if the West doesn't feed it's messianic mystique, IMHO.

 

Great piece, thanks basso.

ISIS is an irrational actor. You can't talk a person down from the edge of the cliff if they believe heaven awaits them on the other side. What they are doing is evil and barbaric and cannot be negotiated with. Intellectually, they are operating on a different plane from the rest of the world.

The discussion of ISIS' feud with al-Qaeda is an interesting one I wasn't aware of. The military strategy is also interesting: every defeat they suffer delegitimizes their claim to divine breadth and power.

If they're really stupid enough to believe that the "armies of Rome" will fight them in the "farmland" fields of Dabiq, can't we Trojan Horse them somehow? Lure their braindead masses there and then bomb it to hell?

 

Finally finished reading that article. Very good read. I rarely venture into this forum because the partisan sniping absolutely turns me off from even wanting to keep up with current events, but I will admit I am glad I read it today.

 

She seems in over her head. Lack of opportunity for jobs...wtf.

 

Hey if the insane people of the Muslim world want martyrdom, who are we to not give it to them?
This is merely an extension of Charles Darwin's work as we weed out the insane, stupid, and mentally ill from society by bombing them to oblivion.

The smart people in those countries are either keeping a low profile or have already emigrated out.

Seriously though, we are not responsible for the citizens of Middle East. We shouldn't be the ones eliminating their domestic problems. If they don't want to do it, we shouldn't be doing it for them. The only thing the US can and should do it prevent ISIS from killing more people; not eliminate radicalism forever (as if that were even possible).

I have friends that are Muslim and it just baffles me the difference between how they think through things, and how some crazy radical in the Middle East thinks through things. I don't think anyone that resorts to terrorism should be humanized or emphasized with.

/rant

These people really piss me off.

 

Unfortunately, this is how I feel.

 

I'm wondering if you can truly get rid of this. It's a virus. As long as one or two people with this mindset are still alive, they will breed more violence.

 

Like the article says, if we contain them and they don't expand in territory or are forced to accept territory, then it's a "death blow" to their caliphate based on the laws they are going by. That being said, I'm sure they can change the rules and continue to slaughter innocents for a few decades if we don't do something. Isolationism from them seems very wrong morally.

 

The concern should not be how crazy they are. The world has always been full of people wanting to do crazy things. There were a million people before Hitler who would have liked to kill all the Jews or take over the world.

The thing that made Hitler different was his ability to nearly follow through.

The ultimate way to get rid of that craziness, after killing a whole bunch of them, was to overload Hitlers narrative with another that was hostile to Hitler. There are still people around that want to kill all the Jews and take over the world for the "master race", they just have to hide in the shadows because everybody else has been inoculated against their ideology.

Immunize the susceptible by giving them something else to aspire to.

 

Maybe you can stone her or set her on fire for not using the right words or expressing enough enthusiasm for killing them.

That's when you gotta love wingnuts on ISIL- fail to denounce them in proper terms and you are a blasphemer. This chick only seemed to KIND OF LIKE killing a lot of 'em, she didn't go all the way and say KILL KILL KILL, it was more of a kill, kill.

Mirror brah, mirror. The ability to say things you disagree with separates us from nutjobs like that. Thank god/pretend magic man in the sky who is responsible for all this bullsh-t.

 

You are mentally confused. The ones stoning people and setting people on fire are the ones you are ridiculously trying to play white knight for.