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Thread: Isis

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    But if the lesson is that we cannot impose our wishes on other people, or that it is our self-serving meddling that has created various schisms in the fabric of their society, I still don't think the adequate response is to allow it to sort itself out.

    We imposed an external force on the region that has now let loose a terror on the people. If we do not intervene, we will have created the problem and not contributed to the solution. The problem with meddling in a complex system without knowing all of the consequences of your actions is that you are no longer external to it. You can't just walk away as though you have no responsibility for what ensues.
    You have identified the core problem, because the fundamental question must be -Can the Arabs sort themselves out? It seems to me after more than 100 years of meddling, that the one thing that has not worked is precisely the argument you propose to justify external interference in the Middle East.
    One of the reasons why the region has been such a permanent 'problem' in international relations has been the resistance that the Arabs have mounted to external meddling, a resistance far more effective than has been seen in Africa, Asia or Latin America -think of where Vietnam is today compared to say, 1964; across the whole of the Caribbean, rebellious states like Haiti and Cuba are in disarray, the rest, including Grenada, compliant satellites of the American economy (which was their fate anyway). Parts of Africa are now owned by the Chinese, other parts in debt to multi-national corporations plundering their mineral resources, few mount a resistance as clearly as the states as you find in the Middle East.

    There is a paradox here, because the modern state is in crisis, yet economic and social change has taken place, and it is this rift between the realities of the lives people lead and the way in which their states are run that is at the root of this crisis.
    What is being argued, by Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel, is that political Islam is actually in decline from a period between the 1960s and the 1980s when it was in the ascendant; that it has failed to deliver what people want, that most younger people are now plugged into a connected globalised world with its films and music and opportunities to be expressive, and have no real interest in chopping people's heads off or forcing women to cover themselves up and stay at home. But this generation is powerless because the Middle Eastern state has always been an overbearing, top-down structure in which a small group of elites -royal families, military cousins- run everything, while handing out food subsidies, above all, jobs to bring a percentage of people into a dependent relationship which it would be against their interests to harm and which protects the state from political change.

    Syria ran out of the money and the jobs it could hand out to maintain a compliant population, people wanted more than the state could deliver, but instead of embracing change, as many felt Bashar al-Asad would when he succeeded his father, he became another version of Hafez, convinced that what worked for Baba -the violent suppression of dissent- would work again.

    Middle Eastern states have to change; and they will change, but not soon, and not as long as the choices its people make are made on their behalf in Washington DC or Moscow, or Riyadh and Tehran. Raining bombs will kill a lot of people, what problems in actual fact, will it solve?


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  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Odelay View Post

    So the question still is, should anything be done and what is it that should be done? The world watched in horror at what happened in Rwanda and even the most ardent peacenik cannot rationally argue that no response was the correct response in that situation.

    I guess the answer points in the direction of where we did do something and it prevented something far worse from happening, and the best example I can think of is the worldwide response to the Balkans in the 90's. So applying the same formula to ISIS, it might be as simple as the UK and US simply following France's lead...
    It seems fatuous to argue that there were always alternatives to Hitler and Milosovic, that those wars happened because at various moments when those men could have been stopped people with the ability to stop them did not. Once this kind of violence has begun, the military solution is irresistible, but it only returns societies to the original problem which must be dealt with. Rwanda has become a one party state whose President assassinates anyone who challenges his rule -and not just in Rwanda (Kagame is behind assassinations of opponents in South Africa, for example), so that for all its economic success, Rwandan politics is as intolerant now as it was before, it just doesnt kill the same volume of people. The Balkans has turned away from Greater Serbian nationalism, but is it true that Milosovic entered into the Ohio talks that brought an end to his pet project because the alternative was annihilation? In the end, force plus diplomacy was said to have worked. For me the problem is that once military force is used as a substitute for politics, it changes the parameters by creating issues generated by military violence in addition to the original political problem, and many of those issues have not gone away in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia or Serbia itself.

    If there are examples of change happening, consider Sadat's trip to Jerusalem in 1977 followed by the peace with Israel in 1979 as one example, the other being Gorbachev's withdrawal of USSR troops from Afghanistan, and his agreement with Reagan to reduce the stockpile -and also the deployment- of nuclear weapons. The Communist autocracy did end, the Cold War did end, the Arabs -some of them- did make peace with the Israelis (or the other way round if you prefer).

    Time and again, we find turning points in world history that were not achieved through military force. But it does not need people with vision, and a lot of courage. Your comment in another thread some weeks ago does suggest we lack politicians with vision who are capable of change, while those who play the same record again and again are not in short supply. But we must live in the hope that change we have seen in our lifetimes will come again.



  3. #13
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    http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=25686031

    This is just a hard news update. The U.S launched its first attacks in Syria. It also launched something like 46 tomahawk missiles at various depots in Syria, and blew up training camps of the Khorasan group, which was allegedly trying to develop weapons that could be taken on civilian aircraft and used against U.S targets.

    The U.S gave Syria advance notice but did not coordinate with them...this is the administration line. A lot of articles say basically the same thing.

    I think France has said they will not launch airstrikes in Syria...


    Last edited by broncofan; 09-24-2014 at 12:15 AM.

  4. #14
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    Default Re: Isis

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    Time and again, we find turning points in world history that were not achieved through military force. But it does not [sic] need people with vision, and a lot of courage. Your comment in another thread some weeks ago does suggest we lack politicians with vision who are capable of change, while those who play the same record again and again are not in short supply. But we must live in the hope that change we have seen in our lifetimes will come again.
    Yeah, I don't disagree with that, assuming you didn't mean the negative about the need for vision. And holding the bar at the level of Mandela or Ghandi is more than a little unfair. But even a Rabin-like leader emerging from anywhere would be a welcome relief. Again, I'm just a little pessimistic about collective action. I see corporate power either squashing movements (union, occupy) or co-opting them (tea party). After 100's of years of capitalism, they've finally figured out how to fully rig the game with no consequences.

    Have to give Cristina props for this tweet...

    Cristina Fernandez, Argentina, asks who buys the oil from ISIS; who sells them weapons? September 24, 2014



  5. #15
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    Odelay, a lot of their weapons are stolen from barracks in Syria and Iraq so not bought, and in Iraq's case this means a lot of the weaponry they seized was provided by the coalition forces, ie the US and the UK when they were rebuilding Iraq's armed forces. Oil is being sold by IS to Iran, and to rogue dealers inside Iraq, Syria and Turkey. As for politicians, be grateful you don't have an idiot like David Cameron running your country.

    In the meantime this article from today's Independent by Patrick Cockburn is critical of the air power Cameron proposes to use once he gets his vote through the House of Commons, aided and abetted by the morally and politically bankrupt Labour Party. In his piece he suggests a ceasefire between the Asad government and the disparate rebel groups in Syria as a necessity if IS is to be taken on in Syria; what he doesn't discuss is Iranian forces currently on the ground in Iraq and the role Iran and Russia could play in de-escalating the Syrian conflict. When he refers to Arbil as the Iraqi capital he means of Iraqi Kurdistan. He is also not secure in referring to the links between IS and Saudi Arabia's 'wahabi' infection, as the al-Qaeda franchise from which these zealots have come (IS having broken with al-Qaeda) has its roots in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood which was the root of bin Laden's obsession but from which he and al-Zawahri deviated during their years in Afghanistan. That doesn't mean the Saudi's are exempt as they have been exporting their weird ideas for years.

    On the eve of yet another war in Iraq, is the UK’s strategy any more coherent than in 2003?

    Patrick Cockburn, who led the world in warning of the rise of Isis, wonders if David Cameron has really thought through his plans

    Britain is set to join the air campaign against Isis in Iraq, but, going by David Cameron’s speech to the UN General Assembly, the Government has no more idea of what it is getting into in this war than Tony Blair did in 2003. Mr Cameron says that there should be “no rushing to join a conflict without a clear plan”, but he should keep in mind the warning of the American boxer Mike Tyson that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.
    The Prime Minister says that lessons have been learned from British military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan but it is telling that he did not mention intervention in Libya for which he himself was responsible.
    In fact, there is a much closer parallel between Britain joining an air war in Libya in 2011 than Mr Blair’s earlier misadventures which Mr Cameron was happy to highlight.
    In Libya, what was sold to the public as a humanitarian bid by Nato forces to protect the people of Benghazi from Muammar Gaddafi, rapidly escalated into a successful effort to overthrow the Libyan leader. The result three years on is that Libya is in permanent chaos with predatory militias reducing their country to ruins as they fight each other for power.
    Whatever the original intentions of Britain and the US, their armed intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 has been to produce devastating conflicts that have not ended.
    It has become common over the years to describe Iraq as a quagmire for foreign powers and it is no less so today than when President Bush and Mr Blair launched their invasion 11 years ago.
    Mr Cameron draws comfort from the fact that the UN Security Council has received “a clear request from the Iraqi government to support it in its military action” against Isis. But this is a government who lost five divisions, a third of its army of 350,000 soldiers, when attacked by 1,300 Isis fighters in Mosul in June. Its three most senior generals jumped into a helicopter and fled to the Iraqi capital Arbil, abandoning their men. It was one of the most disgraceful routs in history.

    Mr Cameron blames all this on the mis-government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose sectarian and kleptocratic rule has just ended. But it is doubtful if much has changed since Mr Maliki was replaced by the more personable Haider al-Abadi, whose government is still dominated by Shia religious parties. Mr Cameron’s stated belief that he is supporting the creation of a government that is inclusive of Sunni, Shia, Kurds and Christians is a pipe dream.
    It is important to stress that there is little sign that US air strikes in Iraq, which Britain is planning to supplement, will be able to turn the tide against Isis. There have been 194 US air strikes in Iraq since 8 August but the militants are still advancing six weeks after the first bombs and missiles exploded.
    In a little reported battle at Saqlawiya, 40 miles west of Baghdad, last Sunday, Isis fighters besieged and overran an Iraqi army base and then ambushed the retreating soldiers. An officer who escaped was quoted as saying that “of an estimated 1,000 soldiers in Saqlawiya, only about 200 managed to flee”.
    Surviving Iraqi soldiers blame their military leaders for failing to supply them with ammunition, food and water while Isis claims to have destroyed or captured five tanks and 41 Humvees. The message here is that if the US, Britain and their allies intend to prop up a weak Iraqi government and army, it is misleading to pretend that this can be done without a much more significant level of intervention.
    In 2003, Mr Bush and Mr Blair claimed to be fighting only Saddam Hussein and his regime and were astonished to find themselves fighting the whole Sunni community in Iraq. This could very easily happen again in both Iraq and Syria.
    Many Sunni in Mosul and Raqqa, Isis’s Syrian capital, do not like Isis. They are alienated by its violence and primaeval social norms such as treating women as chattels. But they are even more frightened of resurgent Iraqi or Syrian armies accompanied by murderous pro-government militias subduing their areas with the assistance of allied air strikes. The Sunni will have no option but to fight or flee.

    The US is hoping that it can split the Sunni community away from Isis in a repeat of what happened in 2007 when many Sunni tribes and neighbourhoods took up arms against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). But this is less likely to happen this time round because Isis is stronger than its predecessor and takes precautions against a stab in the back. Mr Cameron cited the example of the al-Sheitaat tribe in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, who rose up against Isis only for their rebellion to be crushed and 700 of their tribesmen to be executed.
    Mr Cameron produced a laundry list of four measures that will make the present intervention in Iraq different from past failures. They are a ragbag of suggestions, high on moral tone but short on specificity and give the impression that Tony Blair may have been looking over the shoulder of Mr Cameron’s speech writer.
    For instance, we should defeat “the ideology of extremism that is the root cause of terrorism”, but there is nothing concrete about the origins of this narrow and bigoted ideology which condemns Shia as heretics and apostates, treats women as second-class citizens and maligns Christians and Jews.
    In fact, the belief system of Isis is little different from Wahhabism, the variant of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Supported by Saudi wealth, Wahhabism has gained an ever-increasing influence over mainstream Sunni Islam in the last 50 years. Politicians like Mr Cameron are much happier condemning school governors in Birmingham for religious extremism than they are complaining to the Saudi ambassador in London about the virulent sectarianism of Saudi school books.
    The US and British alliance with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan – all Sunni monarchies – creates other problems. It is hypocritical for Mr Cameron to pretend that US and UK intervention are in support of democratic, accountable and inclusive governments when he is in a coalition with the last theocratic absolute monarchies on earth.
    But the most short-sighted and self-defeating part of Mr Cameron’s justification for British intervention is to do with the war in Syria. He still claims he wants to change the government of Syria, a policy in which there is “a political transition and an end to Assad’s brutality”. He adds the shop-worn observation that “our enemies’ enemy is not our friend. It is another enemy.”
    Since Mr Assad controls almost all the larger Syrian cities, he is not going to leave power. What Cameron is in practice proposing is a recipe for a continuing war and it is this that will make it impossible to defeat the jihadi militants, for Isis is the child of war.
    Its leaders have been fighting for much of their lives and are good at it. They and their followers interact with the rest of the world through violence. And so long as the wars in Syria and Iraq continue, then many in their Sunni Arab communities will fear the enemies of Isis even more than Isis.
    What the plans of President Obama and Mr Cameron lack is a diplomatic plan to bring the war between the non-Isis parties in Syria to an end. The two sides fear and hate each other too much for any political solution, but it may be possible for the foreign backers of the two sides to pressure them into agreeing a ceasefire. Neither is in a position to win against each other, but both are threatened by Isis, which inflicted stinging defeats on both Assad and anti-Assad forces in the summer.
    Britain should press for such a truce even if it is only engaged militarily in Iraq, because it is the outcome of the war in Syria that will determine what happens in Iraq. It was the Syrian war beginning in 2011 that reignited Iraq’s civil war and not the misdeeds of Mr Maliki.
    If Isis is to be combated effectively, then the US, Britain and their allies need to establish a closer relationship with those who are actually fighting Isis, which currently include the Syrian Army, the Syrian Kurds, Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iranian-backed militias and Iran itself. The necessity for this is being made tragically clear in the Syria Kurdish enclave of Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border, where Isis fighters have already driven 200,000 Kurds into Turkey.
    If Mr Obama and Mr Cameron genuinely intend to rely on plans to combat Isis that they have just outlined, then they are, as Mike Tyson would have predicted, setting themselves and their countries up for a punch in the mouth.
    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...3-9756567.html


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  6. #16
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    I know nobody takes my posts seriously, and nor should they, HOWEVER, I look at Palestine, Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran.....I hope there is a room in the Pentagon or CIA that understands what's going on. I don't think there is a thing we can do to seriously bring peace to the hearts of ISIS.
    All the Peace Talks, wars, politics we've been engaged in the past 50 years, where has it led? .....if they're not killing each other, they're thinking about it. killing each other

    There is a thin line between 300 million Americans being hypnotized and ignorant.......or being a united and hard working force to be reckoned with.

    We would probably be better off looking the other way and let the CIA do it's thing. And keep it secret.


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  7. #17
    Hey! Get off my lawn. 5 Star Poster Odelay's Avatar
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    BS, I like your posts, and this made me laugh.

    Quote Originally Posted by buttslinger View Post
    We would probably be better off looking the other way and let the CIA do it's thing. And keep it secret.



  8. #18
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    Default Re: Isis

    It's terrific when a charismatic visionary comes about that can change world politics...but short of that (and dealing with a force that's so brutal it can't be dealt with in a diplomatic way...at least in the immediate future anyway)..what to do?...those of us who still watch actual current events (as opposed to facebook and tweeter)...watch beheadings ...read about mass rapes and forced servitude..etc..
    sometimes you are forced to act in the short term...and it becomes the long term...
    but who is going to say "no" when your gov't gives you the ability to say "yes" when it comes down to trying to prevent a horror show? Diplomacy may work...but it sometimes takes years...and how many torture tapes are people willing to watch in the mean time?


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  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post

    So what do you guys think? Can ISIS be negotiated with? If so, what demands of theirs should the world accede to? An Islamic State within what borders? Or if the West should respond, should it only be within the borders of Iraq and stop at Syria because we're afraid that hurting Isis might help Assad?

    This is a real challenge for our pacifists on the forum (). But to respond fairly, tell us the prescription. Abstention? Or War? What is the cost of abstention? What is the cost of war?
    Personally, I have not been a proponent of the trillion dollar campaign in Iraq, because I am one who believes that the US should avoid becoming entangled in foreign conflicts for numerous and obvious reasons.

    With that being said, I do believe that eventually the US must take ISIS head on. This organization will stop at nothing short of terror and world dominance and they are not open to negotiations.

    I have personally contemplated for a long time now about the idea of the US acting as the "world police." I think the US should of stayed out of other countries' affairs and should in the future, this could of potentially saved us a few million on the war on terror, and as we here from multiple sides, it is because of US involvement that the war continues. To what degree that is true I am not sure (curious to hear other opinions on that), but what I honestly feel is that if that approach is taken with ISIS, there will be a lot more trouble than there already is. Watch the video below from VICE News which is an interview with a Canadian ISIS member, it explains my thought process on why eventually the US MUST bring the war to ISIS.




  10. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by fred41 View Post
    It's terrific when a charismatic visionary comes about that can change world politics...but short of that (and dealing with a force that's so brutal it can't be dealt with in a diplomatic way...at least in the immediate future anyway)..what to do?...those of us who still watch actual current events (as opposed to facebook and tweeter)...watch beheadings ...read about mass rapes and forced servitude..etc..
    sometimes you are forced to act in the short term...and it becomes the long term...
    but who is going to say "no" when your gov't gives you the ability to say "yes" when it comes down to trying to prevent a horror show? Diplomacy may work...but it sometimes takes years...and how many torture tapes are people willing to watch in the mean time?
    The diplomatic option does not look promising right now, but it ought not to be dismissed as a waste of time. I cannot know if IS has enough support in either Iraq or Syria to survive politically, whatever the bombing does.
    I think the beheading of hostages is a provocation, but there has been a suggestion in the press in recent weeks that even the leadership of IS now realises that its show of bravado is counter-productive.
    Robert Fisk in the Independent has suggested that negotiations with IS ought not to be ruled out, on the basis that negotiations are often held between people who regard each other as evil incarnate. In the case of IS, which has based a lot of its appeal on being completely uncompromising, any move to negotiate -possibly by factions within IS if not the leadership itself- would probably lead its young radicals to accuse those willing to talk of selling out. There are in Iraq a fair number of ex-Ba'athists and alienated Sunni Arabs from Anbar province in the IS fold right now, but it isn't clear to me if they are in support of this mythical Caliphate that has been pronounced or if they are just using IS as a powerful wedge against the government in Baghdad. What exactly there is to negotiate about is also not clear. It there was a route back into government for the disaffected Sunni in some kind of federal division of the country, and this would run counter to the IS project in Iraq, while a ceasefire and some sort of proposal for a negotiated settlement in Syria would also undermine its support amongst all but those who think that the Caliphate has a realistic future. People are sick and tired of fighting, refugees want to go home. IS just offers them more of what they are exhausted from.

    The options though diplomacy using Iran and Russia are there, but they don't look good because of the stall in the negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme, Iran's deployment of 'forces' (mostly Republican Guard) inside Iraq, and of course the broader problem of dealing with Russia although Putin might actually see something positive for Russia if it were to support a ceasefire in Syria. It would be his way of showing the world that he is capable of co-operating with the west and might be one way in which he diverts attention away from the conflict in the Ukraine.
    The bombing campaign is in this context either likely to put more pressure on the parties to bring a halt to the worst excesses, or it could be an obstacle to diplomacy of any kind.
    Not a satisfactory analysis but its the best I can I do right now.


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