Firstly, I think, regarding ISIS/ISIL/whatever, I’m fairly sure it’s the ‘hostage-taking’ and ‘killing-by-beheading’ parts that get people upset. Desecrating the corpses of already-dead combatants doesn’t strike me as retaliating in kind.
But I’d greatly appreciate it if you could walk me though the logic of this. What, precisely, do you think this would do? Bacon isn’t some kind of muslim Kryptonite, for fuck’s sake.
Actually, IIRC, having any pig product about them after death prevents them from getting their handful of virgins on the other side, or even making it to the other side. If they truly believe in that hogwash, then it would probably piss them off to no ends to be covered with bacon grease. It’s something like that anyway.
Can’t this be a UN rather than a US issue?
Yeah, those moderates sure have been great to have “on our side” so far. They are always very helpful in there continual silence.
I’m pretty sure that’s a myth. I’ll see if I can look up something definitive.
I would consider it helpful to not make enemies of more than a billion people unnecessarily, but obviously that’s just me.
It should be but the world prefers to sit back and do nothing and wait for the US to take action. Then if it’s going well they may throw some sort of token effort towards the issue but if its going badly then they would rather just criticize the US for acting unilaterally.
Silence is better than roaring. Or bombing.
I know there’s no real hope of putting the idiotic “pork = muslim Kryptonite” meme to rest, but hey, I’ll give it a try. I would hope folks will accept this cite as factual:
The article discusses a company that supposedly is making pork-coated ammunition for small arms (and how silly that is):
[Quote=The Firearm Blog]
This is blatantly false. Muslims are permitted to eat pork if it is strictly necessary for survival, or if it is forced upon them (bolding mine). It explicitly states this in the Quran 2:173 “… whoever is forced [by necessity], neither desiring [it] nor transgressing [its limit], there is no sin upon him …”.
[/Quote]
The Peshmurga and the Shiite militias are the only people fighting ISIS on the ground. FWIW, they are both Muslim groups.
But what exactly does it take to make this extremely large but apparently extremely passive group of people regard another group as an “enemy”?
Again, the people who are actually fighting ISIS are Muslims. They are also ISIS’s main victim. ISIS has killed two Americans and thousands of Muslims: Kurds and Arabs.
Also, I’m still waiting to find out what the practical effect of the bacon wrapping is supposed to be. How will it help us defeat ISIS?
Snopes
The Muslim and being buried with pork thing.
Undetermined
But you get points for participation. So that’s nice.
How many Muslims are fighting ISIS though? It would seem that a super-majority would have a relatively easy time defeating a minority enemy; no matter how “vicious” that minority is.
Most Muslims aren’t there.
The ‘undetermined’ refers to whether Pershing actually used that strategy, not whether it was effective in, er, bringing muslims to heel.
Back when 911 took place there were reports that Saddam Hussein was also an enemy of Osama Bin Laden and Al-qaeda. The so called “intelligence” showing a connection between them was found later to be poppycock.
I wondered then if we should had followed what the allies in WWII had to do, when they made Stalin our ally against Germany. Knowing what took place it makes me realize that while it would had been a tall order to get people behind that effort, nevertheless some moves should had been done then to turn Saddam into the “Stalin” of the war against terror.
In WWII the Allies then knew what the Soviets were, but they figured out that eventually the Soviets would fall or be dealt with at a latter time. (I do think that in the alternative time line Saddam would had fallen like Kaddafy in the Arab Spring, with no invasion needed).
Instead, Bush the lesser showed all how he forgot about history.
No, I do not approve of Assad, but I reluctantly agree with your idea here, in time we will deal with the Syrian Dictator.
I think we might also think about reaching out to Iran, though I have no idea how feasible that is.
Did you read the last few paragraphs?