Chuck Hagel calls ISIS “an imminent threat to every interest we have… They are as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen. They’re beyond just a terrorist group.” Martin Dempsey has echoed these comments.
Is Hagel inflating the ISIS threat (for any number of reasons) or is it time to start prepping?
My initial reaction to the rise of ISIS was that by this time next year, no one would be talking about ISIS except as a mere stump of what it claims to be today. It seems to me their strategic position is basically weak (everyone hates them; no sustainable source of armaments; vulnerable to airstrikes as they maraud from place to place) and I thought they would pretty soon be reduced to a local criminal organization. But the hysteria coming from our military leaders is making me wonder if I’m being overly optimistic.
We should be worried, but a panic response to ISIS would produce poor results. See Iraq, post 9/11. We (the US) reacted with rage toward some of the wrong people, creating more anti-American Islamist militants. Islam is an especially dangerous religion.
They’re beyond a terrorist threat, but I don’t know that that’s a reason to be worried. If anything, it makes things easier - if they want to build an empire on slavery and genocide, that makes them something we can kill a lot easier and with a cleaner conscience than a bunch of murderers who hide in the shadows.
Well, I wouldn’t go so far. Why does it always have to go straight to killing with you guys ?
But they do ostensibly want to build a country - they’re building it bloody, sure, but then show me one nation that wasn’t built on a pile of corpses. I expect that in the event that they don’t split into a million self-serving warlords, they’ll soon face the same options every would-be empire builder must : settle the fuck down, or overextend and implode/step on one toe too many and get crushed.
In any event, the threat they represent for anybody outside of their immediate sphere of influence seems pretty remote to me. They don’t seem much different from, or more influential than, say, Chechens rebels or the Taliban ever were. In fact, they’re seem *less *influential since even Al fucking Qaeda has disavowed them as dangerous extremists, too sectarian and overly violent. Which is kinda like Hitler telling you to calm down about the Jews.
The 42:30 video is the result of work done by Medyan Dairieh, who spent 3 weeks embedded with ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. It contains senior members of ISIS (one now dead) explaining what they intend to do (set up a new Caliphate under a man now calling himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) and including a lot of threats against the United States. It’s a truly remarkable piece of journalism, IMO, and an important & timely source for information about ISIS.
What do you consider “stepping on one toe too many.” To me, invading neighbouring regions, murdering their religious minorities and selling their women as sex slaves would qualify. Do they need to start eating Shia babies first?
Hell, why do you care? If you’re willing to make excuses for genocide and slavery as moral relativism, why doesn’t my desire to see their teeth kicked down their throat deserve the same treatment?
I would have thought it to be rather self-evident, if circular : as long as they get to keep it up and nobody really gives much of a shit, they demonstrably haven’t overstepped their bounds.
And where would *your *country be, if genocide and slavery had ever been casus bellis in and of themselves ? I’m not making any excuses - I’m a pessimist/realist, that’s all.
As for why I’m annoyed at the saber rattling : because it’s fucking tacky, mostly. And because I still hope against hope that someday, somehow, people (Americans in particular) will figure out that killing people until they gosh darn learn that killing people is wrong / that you can’t kill folks until you get what you want and they do as you say is a grand strategy in dire need of rethinking. Or thinking to begin with.
Also because a major reason ISIS is a thing at all is because the US already did a lot of random killing and blowing shit up out there. But hey, don’t mind me, by all means, keep bombing the shit out of Iraq. I’m sure it’ll help a ton. You’ll be greeted as liberators, too !
If ISIS establishes an Islamist caliphate stretched across several nations in the Middle East, it will be a nightmare for the region and for the safety of us and our allies.
We should be crushing them before they grow bigger. Take them out in a quick but brutal assault and cut off the head before the body grows.
It won’t happen though. I agree with the OP that this has got overblown.
Syria is in the midst of a bloody civil war and Iraq is still fragile, with many disaffected Sunnis. These are the only reasons that IS has been able to engage in old-school empire building in the 21st century.
People have been surprised how much of Iraq they managed to seize, and how quickly, so now we get all these What Ifs.
But realistically, the day IS try to push into Iran, Saudi Arabia, probably even Jordan, will be the end of the organization.
There are 20 million disenfranchised Sunnis in Syria and Iraq (about half in Syria even though they are the overwhelming majority of the population and half in Iraq where they have been shut out of the Shiite dominated government). So what happens if the US, etc bomb and destroy the 50,000 or so current Islamic State terrorists? I would expect they will easily be replaced-- just 1% of these 20 million disenfranchised Sunnis is 200,000 terrorists.
Clearly IS has done enough damage to turn most, if not ALL, of the civilized world against them. If the Iraqi govt. can get their act together and form an inclusive government, the Sunni’s might have sufficient reason to turn on them too. Remember, the ONLY reason IS was able to take Mosul was because the mostly Sunni Iraqi army that was protecting it walked away. Even though if they had stuck together, they had IS overmatched. They didn’t walk away because they were cowards, they just didn’t feel their govt was worth fighting for. And it’s important to note that even though they walked away, most DID NOT join IS.
My off-the-cuff take is that they don’t seem very sustainable. This sort of thing tends to pop up in ungoverned spaces, especially in areas so violent that local people are grateful to anyone-- no matter how dysfunctional-- who can keep order.
But these things rarely survive the transition from guerrilla army to functioning state with a working bureaucracy, foreign relations and the delivery of services. And without a friend in the world (ok, apparently Boko Haram likes them ) they aren’t getting much help. Even as sophisticated as they are, I don’t think they are ready to govern in such a difficult region.
If anything, they provide a handy magnet for our crazies and extremists, who we are happy to let get killed on foreign soil far away from us.
That’s not the issue ! The issue is we can’t let ISIS establish a Moon base with a giant “laser” aimed straight at New York !
You know, this kind of crap makes one pine for the Cold War. At least back then when fearmongers fearmongered frantically, they didn’t make you want to pat them on the head and say “there, there”.
Well, Donald, I am worried about ISIS. I am afraid that the president is going to try to start a war in the Middle East. He probably won’t be able to get rid of Isis. They will probably come here, but not through any of the seven countries that are on the banned list.