There will always be fanatical nuts willing to commit atrocities for one purpose or another, and in the modern Internet era it’s easier for them to find each other and band together. The question is, who or what is empowering these people? A tiny handful of bandits and brigands never conquered anyone; without support they have no resources and no refuge. On a sliding scale of popular support from none to complete, you get criminals, terrorists, guerrillas, a rebel army, and the new government. So other than the front line soldiers, just who approves of their actions and why? To solve a terrorist/ guerrilla problem in the long run, if you’re not going to use ethnic cleansing to eliminate an entire population, you have to address why enough people are so pissed off that they consider ISIS preferable to the status quo. Or to put it another way, you aren’t going to solve a roach problem as long as you have a dirty kitchen.
What is it about Islam that makes people act like a character from a Nick Cave song?
Yes I get it that all Muslims aren’t like that, but we have not one but TWO maniacally murderous wannabe caliphates in the world today, on top of all the maniacs blowing up food courts or shooting up newspapers and so on and on and on. Are other groups just as crazy and just don’t get the coverage, because it seems to me that Islam generates way more maniacs than average?
A declaration of war, particularly by a Western power, legitimizes Daesh. They are not a state, however they might claim to be, and should not be recognized as such.
Thanks for that article, voltaire. Mr. Crooke is a seriously brilliant guy, and with his diplomatic pedigree I take him very seriously.
And I think he’s right: Daesh is playing a very smart long game.
Isis is a pretty cool goddess. I don’t particularly like that these assholes are sullying her good name.
And that’s ISIS’ undoing in the long run. Even if they’re somehow successful in carving out a sovereign territory - even if they managed to take Baghdad and/or Damascus and fully subsume Iraq and Syria to their will - they are never going to be a functional state that anyone will engage in meaningful diplomacy with, because they’re intentionally making themselves into pariahs by embracing genocide, rape, slavery, and mass murder. North Korea at least has China watching its back - what state is going to grant recognition to ISIS or open an embassy there and expect its diplomats to be treated fairly and safely?
But that’s like Cato the Elder saying “the Tophet needs to be destroyed.” (they’d just build another one somewhere else)
What needs to be destroyed is Wahhabism
How is that possible?
Don’t worry; I said the words a year or so ago. Well, maybe I didn’t say every single little tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
I could buy that within ISIS there are rivalries to demonstrate who’s the most brutal bloodthirsty murderer in service to loving Allah.
What’s the other? (It ain’t Iran and it ain’t SA.)
It’s like medieval monks competing over who can endure the worst self-torments and austerities.
Only with more, you know, dignity.
bin Laden wanted to be the Caliph, but…
I assume he’s talking about Boko Haram.
I thought the Caliph’s headsmen used scimitars. Under 40 bucks at Amazon. Are those guys even trying to bring back the Caliphate?
Why not? We’ve had a group like IS in central Asia before, fighting with conventional tactics to control territory in which to impose harsh Islamic principles: the Taliban. I mean, the Taliban didn’t get much de-jure recognition as a government when they controlled Afghanistan, and got hit with some sanctions, but no one outside the country was eager to help their opponents, and they did a fine job of styling themselves as a sovereign government and controlled the country for what, 5 years or so? And they were only removed when they were perceived to have been complicit in a direct attack on U.S. soil. Iraq’s government will probably continue to get U.S. support to prop it up, but if ISIS swept through Damascus, executed Assad and set up the Islamic Emirate of the Levant, I don’t think anyone’s going to be super eager to wade in.
I can think of all kinds of despicable regimes who were welcomed into the family of nations. When the Turks took Cyprus, the sliced off the Venetian governor’s eyelids, chained him to a post and skinned him alive. Nobody made a pariah state of the Ottoman Empire though. The Mau Mau committed nauseating atrocities in Kenya in the 50’s, and it’s members put on suits and became government officials after independence. Israel’s fight against Great Britain was not about a bunch of nice, polite Jewish boys, either. And God help you if the Apaches or Comanches captured you, but they have limited sovereignty in the U.S. now.
It’s just history: you do horrible shit until you’re either wiped out or triumphant, then you can relax the horrible shit and be invited to tea.