The Islamic State, Syria & Iraq - Part III

[Galactus]

ST, Galactus,

Then I find it highly disturbing that there are so many people who see ISIS as their ideal vison of a religious society.

They aren't neccessarily, any more than communists saw Stalin's USSR as the ideal vision of a communist society. Omelettes, egg breaking, etc. And as mentioned, there's probably other issues involved as well (thrill-seeking, mercenary interests, wanting to look cool and "bad ass", IE: all the usual reasons for going off to war) not to mention that at least a chunk is probably more about who they are fighting than what they are fighting for.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Galactus,

Selling women as slaves? Is that how men look manly?

[Clueless Northman]

There's always been a marginal proportion of the overall population that is downright psychopath. Just look at the people from occupied countries in WWII that openly and willingly joined the Waffen-SS. My bet is that these scum now feel that they have a way to express their psychopathic tendencies to their fullest extent - which obviously they couldn't do in Western countries - and are jumping on the occasion to fulfill their "dreams".

Which is another reason to make sure none of them ever makes it back home.

[Darzin]

Yeah they want war and adventure and pickup trucks to be manly The selling of women is incidental to that, and if anything probably feeds into their fantasy. Why not buy a hot chick to go with your pickup truck and house?

Lots of people believe lots of terrible things, and not everyone is as existential as you Ser Scot, hell I had one co-worker who wanted to go fight in the Ukraine, he has no connection to it he just wanted to go. ISIS has an appeal that's obviously limited itself to Muslims, but if you had some kind of gamer-jihad whatever that would look like, where you could fight post cool picks and buy a Japanese girl. I'm sure some of the more psychopathic denizens of reddit would go fight, introspection and morality be damned.

Most people are good but a fair amount of people suck almost every news sight comments sections has someone call for the genocide of some group, why do people say that? Because a lot of people are hateful and small minded.

[The Iceman of the North]

I'm not sure there are, in the grand scheme of things. With such a large audience you only need a tiny percentage of them to react positively to your message to end up with what IS got. IIRC there were about 500 people from the UK who went to join up at the last count - from a country of 60 million that's nothing. But when you get similar contributions from all over the world, suddenly the numbers start adding up to something significant.

ST

Here's an interesting article with some data on the origin of the IS fighters.

Poverty does not explain the lure of jihad for Western fighters. Many of them are quite middle-class. Nasser Muthana, a 20-year-old Welshman who goes by the name Abu Muthana al-Yemeni in IS videos, had offers to study medicine from four universities. Nor does a failure to integrate into the societies around them. Photographs of Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, another British fighter thought to have recently been killed, show a young man in a snazzy suit with a slick hairstyle. He worked at Primark, a cheap retailer, in Portsmouth, a city on the English coast. His father ran a curry restaurant. Nor does religious piety. Before leaving for Syria, Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, two young men from Birmingham who pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in July, ordered copies of “Islam for Dummies” and “The Koran for Dummies” from Amazon. Some fighters are religious novices, says Mr Maher.

[daskool]

Yeah they want war and adventure and pickup trucks to be manly The selling of women is incidental to that and probably feeds into their fantasy why not buy a hot chick to go with your pickup tuck and house?

Lots of people believe lots of terrible things, and not everyone is as existential as you Ser Scot hell I had one co-worker who wanted to go fight in the Ukraine, he has no connection to it he just wanted to go. ISIS has an appeal that's obviously limited itself to muslims, but if you had some kind of gamer-jihad whatever that looked like where you could fight post cool picks and buy a Japanese girl I'm sure some of the more psychopathic denizens of reddit would go fight, introspection and morality be damned.

Most people are good but a fair amount of people suck almost every news sight comments sections has someone call for the genocide of some group why do people say that because a lot of people are hateful and small minded.

Every action produces a reaction. The behavior of Islamic jihadis is bound to produce a countervailing extremism among their targets. We're in for some interesting times no doubt.

[Umel of Ys]

So the flow of depressing news never stops. I don't even feel like commenting on the latest execution. Instead, here are two different outlooks on the ISIS situation:

(I realize they are from last June, so they may have been posted in a previous thread, I apologize in advance if that's the case)

The first one is a satirical sketch from a Palestinian show (I didn't know they had those ). It's pretty broad but frankly fuck those bearded clowns (ISIS).

The second one is a rather optimistic piece on the the actual combat power of ISIS by the War Nerd. Now for those who know him from the Exiled, he does tend to be a little too glib with regards to certain details (eg. he underestimates the number of European Jihadis and probably overestimates the strength of the Jordanian army solely based on how they dealt with PLO in 71). Anyway, he contends that they easily conquered the Suni part of Irak because it was a vacuum but as soon as they come near the Kurds in the North or the Shias in the South (backed by Iran) they could be obliterated (and afaict they are indeed facing stronger opposition in the north.

It may explain the wait and see attitude of Obama which many interpret as a sign of weakness. I hope it is in fact circumspection, we need to see how they fare when faced with actual soldiers. You never know they may suffer significant losses in the coming weeks.

[Wise Fool]

Sure, some people see them as bad-ass, but others see them just as ass.

[Free Northman Reborn]

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/09/03/your-throne-is-being-threatened-by-us-isis-sends-warning-to-russia-putin/

Quote from the above article:

“Vladimir Putin, these are the Russian planes that you sent to Bashar. Allah willing, we will take them back to your own turf, and liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus, Allah willing. Your throne is being threatened by us,"

End quote

OK, so that effectively ends ISIS's prospects as a long term threat to the world.

Of all the people on earth, the one you want to personally go and threaten with violence is Vladimir Putin? Genius move.

[Lady Sansa Stark]

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/09/03/your-throne-is-being-threatened-by-us-isis-sends-warning-to-russia-putin/

Quote from the above article:

“Vladimir Putin, these are the Russian planes that you sent to Bashar. Allah willing, we will take them back to your own turf, and liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus, Allah willing. Your throne is being threatened by us,"

End quote

OK, so that effectively ends ISIS's prospects as a long term threat to the world.

Of all the people on earth, the one you want to personally go and threaten with violence is Vladimir Putin? Genius move.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/09/03/your-throne-is-being-threatened-by-us-isis-sends-warning-to-russia-putin/

Quote from the above article:

“Vladimir Putin, these are the Russian planes that you sent to Bashar. Allah willing, we will take them back to your own turf, and liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus, Allah willing. Your throne is being threatened by us,"

End quote

OK, so that effectively ends ISIS's prospects as a long term threat to the world.

Of all the people on earth, the one you want to personally go and threaten with violence is Vladimir Putin? Genius move.

But wouldn't it be awesome to see them bite Putin right back? Especially considering the fact that they will fail miserably and be wiped from the earth because of it.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Haha. I see Putin's puppet-maniac Muslim ruler of Chechnya is already onto this. From RT:

Ramzan Kadyrov, the flamboyant President of the Chechen Republic, which is a highly-autonomous part of Russia, reacted angrily to the video.

“Those bastards have nothing to do with Islam. They are enemies of Muslims everywhere,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

“Whoever dares to threaten Russia and say out loud the name of our President Vladimir Putin will be destroyed right where he is… These people will end their days under the hot sun of Syria and Iraq and moments after death they will be greeted by the flames of eternal hell.”

[Lady Sansa Stark]

Haha. I see Putin's puppet-maniac Muslim ruler of Chechnya is already onto this. From RT:

Ramzan Kadyrov, the flamboyant President of the Chechen Republic, which is a highly-autonomous part of Russia, reacted angrily to the video.

“Those bastards have nothing to do with Islam. They are enemies of Muslims everywhere,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

“Whoever dares to threaten Russia and say out loud the name of our President Vladimir Putin will be destroyed right where he is… These people will end their days under the hot sun of Syria and Iraq and moments after death they will be greeted by the flames of eternal hell.”

Well, that settles that, then.

I cannot stop laughing whenever they begin rambling about standing at the gates of Rome, conquering all of Europe, establishing a worldwide caliphate and all of that other bullshit. And then I remember that the heartless bastards are not so laughable in parts of Iraq and Syria, so I shut my mouth.

[The Fallen]

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/09/03/your-throne-is-being-threatened-by-us-isis-sends-warning-to-russia-putin/

Quote from the above article:

Vladimir Putin, these are the Russian planes that you sent to Bashar. Allah willing, we will take them back to your own turf, and liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus, Allah willing. Your throne is being threatened by us,"

End quote

OK, so that effectively ends ISIS's prospects as a long term threat to the world.

Of all the people on earth, the one you want to personally go and threaten with violence is Vladimir Putin? Genius move.

Oh, wow! ISIS done messed up now. Our Last Action Hero Putin will be down in Syria within the week, leading from the front, right? Right?

[Shryke]

I don't think poverty per se had much of an impact, but a certain level of feeling "stuck", lack of advancement and a stake in what's going on. (and perhaps just as importantly, knowing/believing that others are somehow getting a better deal than you are)

I think this is an important point in that these kind of feelings are not class dependant. One can be the child of the rich and still feel like politics is all wrong and that you don't have power to change it expect through extreme actions.

People of all classes join political movements.

[Shryke]

Oh, wow! ISIS done messed up now. Our Last Action Hero Putin will be down in Syria within the week, leading from the front, right? Right?

Just like he fucked up those Chechens and completely ended the problems there.

/wankwankwankwankwank

[Relic]

Just like he fucked up those Chechens and completely ended the problems there.

/wankwankwankwankwank

i laughed. out loud. i didn't want to but i did.

[Relic]

Sort of makes me wonder something kind of silly though.

If you were President of the USA would you go to Iraq and personally "lead" a battalion or four into combat?

There is all this talk from the White House by the C.I.C. about the reach of America and justice being served, but it all sounds a bit silly being delivered from behind a podium dressed in a suit. It's always been this way in America, as long as i can remember, and it always sounded highly disingenuous. If i was the PotUS I think id lead by example when it came to sending troops into combat.

[The Fallen]

Just like he fucked up those Chechens and completely ended the problems there.

/wankwankwankwankwank

Shhh, we don't want to destroy the fantasy of Putin fanboys.

[The Fallen]

Sort of makes me wonder something kind of silly though.

If you were President of the USA would you go to Iraq and personally "lead" a battalion or four into combat?

There is all this talk from the White House by the C.I.C. about the reach of America and justice being served, but it all sounds a bit silly being delivered from behind a podium dressed in a suit. It's always been this way in America, as long as i can remember, and it always sounded highly disingenuous. If i was the PotUS I think id lead by example when it came to sending troops into combat.

Of course the President won't be leading any armies. That's why the comments upthread about Putin going after ISIS are silly.

Unfortunately, a segment of the U.S. population gets off on that kind of talk and so our presidents have to throw them some meat every now and then. I don't Obama is half as bad as Dubya was. And it's typical of guys like Dubya to talk tough even though they did everything they could to avoid going to war when it was their time to serve.

[Relic]

Of course the President won't be leading any armies. That's why the comments upthread about Putin going after ISIS are silly.

Unfortunately, a segment of the U.S. population gets off on that kind of talk and so our presidents have to throw them some meat every now and then. I don't Obama is half as bad as Dubya was. And it's typical of guys like Dubya to talk tough even though they did everything they could to avoid going to war when it was their time to serve.

You mean declaring victory after roping down 20 feet from a helicopter onto an aircraft carrier isn't bad ass enough to win at everything, ever?

Seriously, thought i want our politicians out in the field. Otherwise they need to STFU.