Obviously, ISIS are too far gone to be salvageable, but everything I’ve read indicates that they’re destined to implode anyway. They’re running out of money, they’re running out of volunteers, and most importantly, they’re running out of credibility. All we have to do is sit back and wait and they’ll burn themselves out like a fever. Yes, lots of people will die, but lots of people are going to die no matter what we do so it would behoove us to take the long view.
We are hated in that part of the world. Our bombing ISIS will do nothing to dent the credibility of the ideas which gave rise to ISIS. It might even inspire more people to go and fight for them. It’ll almost certainly make it easier for them to radicalise disaffected Muslims in the West. If, as seems destined to happen, ISIS collapses from within, we could avoid those pitfalls.
Like I said in my previous post, I don’t know how we could win this war of ideas, this war of 21st century secularism and tolerance versus 7th century literalism and savagery, but I can’t see how bombing is going to play an integral part. It might just make things worse. God knows, everything else we try seems to make things worse.
Running out of volunteers cannot make ISIL implode unless you deplete the volunteers they already have. You know, by killing them. And they are running out of credibility because they are getting their asses handed to them militarily, and even a bunch of rapist sympathisers like ISIL’s fanbase start getting cold feet when the caliphate is getting ground up into dogmeat.
Our bombing ISIL will cull those who are susceptible to the ideas which gave rise to ISIL. ISIL’s ideas cannot infect people who are not already assholes, because people who are not already assholes do not look at a bunch of slavers who murder children for having pets and think “How do I get a piece of that action?”
How many ideologies has the West been able to vanquish in its long history by purely peaceful means?
Oh, I didn’t realizing that my plan was to murder civilians by dropping 500 pound bombs on them. Why didn’t you tell me before that I don’t support attacking ISIL terrorists, but I do support killing civilians! Why, that’s a whole different problem set!
Pro tip: if you have to resort to arguments like “you want to kill babies” in order to score points, you have no rational point. You’ve resorted to lying about what others have proposed, and have nothing substantive to offer anyone who will listen to your drivel.
Who cares? Those ideologies are not militant Islam.
Well…now you know. What you want to do is irrelevant. No-one gives a shit what you want to achieve. It’s what you will achieve that counts, and what bombing will achieve, whether you like it or not, is to kill a lot of innocent civilians along with the terrorists.
And if you have to Strawman people you don’t have a fucking point either. I never said you wanted to kill innocents. I just pointed out that innocents will be killed. I very much doubt ISIS has any qualms about using human shields, should the need arise. And if the recent conflict in Palestine is anything to go by, it will be trivial for ISIS to turn the casualty figures to their advantage to entice more recruits.
Make no mistake, I know innocents will be killed if we do nothing as well, but since the real war here is a war of ideas, what real use is bombing? Yeah, we’ll kill the people who are holding these ideas at this particular moment, but so long as the ideas still have currency there will always be others to take their place.
Gonna have to bomb France, Belgium, the UK, etc… too then. Cause ISIS recruits from there, too. Turns out 95% of everywhere is assholes. Just not always the *exact *same assholes.
A strong, coherent, well thought out and wittily conveyed argument. I cannot but bow out before such wit and intellectual prowess.
Or I could retort with a fart and bring just about as much substance to the table.
So you can’t name a single violent ideology we have snuffed out through whatever peaceful means you suggest, but what – you want the West to just try a little harder and you’re just oh-so-sure that we can turn radical terrorists to a more peaceful path?
Yes, innocent people will be killed in a war. I don’t think anyone has any illusions about that. It’s also true that ISIL and other extremist groups will lie and put out propaganda about the UK targeting babby milk factory #4.
I do not take the inevitability of civilian deaths lightly, but compared to the need to rid the earth of this crazy cult of murder, I think action is the right course. We could do nothing and maybe they would stop planning massacres in the West – maybe. But they would still dominate large portions of Syria and Iraq, beheading people because they are accused of being apostates, taking young girls as sex slaves, driving millions of Syrian civilians out of their homes and in many cases the country, and many other horrible acts. This alone justifies the use of force against them.
You keep parroting “but itz a war of IDEAS” but you – nor anyone else – exactly explain how we are supposed to carry out the war.
My proposal is to do everything you want to do, plus defend modern civilization from these bloodthirsty thugs by use of arms. It isn’t an either-or.
We’re not bombing beliefs, we’re bombing, among other things, the oil installations that fuel those extremist beliefs and allow the nutjobs to export terror in between throwing gays off roofs, raping women, beheading people and other pursuits that pass for entertainment in Daesh-controlled territories.
Do you really believe these people will understand anything else but violent retaliation. You want to reason with them? Good luck with that.
We need to hit these bastards where it hurts and keep hitting them.
No. I’m saying that nothing we’ve done in the past is germane here because, unlike past enemies, this one actually wants to die.
I read a book a while back called ‘The Looming Tower’. It’s about the origins of Al-Qaeda. In it, the author tells a story about a group of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan. One of them got shot dead by a Soviet helicopter. The author reported that after the chopper had gone, the dead man’s comrades stood around him weeping with envy, because he got to die that day and they didn’t. They “knew”, that at that very moment he was in Allah’s garden, being walked to his palace of pearls by a harem of almond eyed virgins while they were still stuck in their shithole desert.
That’s the mentality we’re fighting, and that’s why this is ultimately a war of ideas. Do you really think bombing is going to be a disincentive to people like that?
Honestly, I think our positions might be closer than they seem. The difference is that I don’t think you’re taking a long enough view. Bombing might be all well and good for ISIS, but what about the next lot? Or the lot after that? And in the meantime, how much of an impediment is our bombing campaign to the war of ideas we need to win in the greater Muslim world?
I don’t know how we can carry out the war of ideas. Personally, I think it’s just something the people of the region need to work out for themselves. While I’m all for supporting the forces of moderation wherever we can, I think bombing can only undermine them. You’re right that this isn’t an either-or deal, but maybe it should be.
At at time when there were a lot less people on the planet…
“In the end, the Albigensian Crusade is estimated to have killed 1 million people, not only Cathars but a significant portion of the general population of southern France.”
Both you and Daesh seem to vastly underestimate the bloodthirsty history of the “West”
We have done it before. This, by the way, is just the first example that sprang to mind. I would be very surprised if it is the sole example of our collective capability for murderous suppression of belief systems.
And the USAF is quite happy to accommodate them in this regard.
Killing them eliminates their ability to do much of anything for all eternity. It’s very effective in reducing them to a zero threat.
ISIS will become an example to those people who think the world won’t rally against them. If they really want their heavenly palace and their virgins, then let them stand up and wave at the bombers instead of running for cover when the the bombs start falling.
That link explains reasonably well why “western” reasoning is unlikely to make a lot of progress in this “war of ideas”
Reasoned debate with a group seeking to provoke the second coming of Jesus is quite the challenge…
The only reliable prediction I can think of is that we will kill every one of them we find.
Challenging the core values of the “west” is challenging a culture that has no historical difficulty with mass murder.
American history seems replete with belief systems and ancient civilisations that the “west” destroyed with violence. If they insist that “it’s them or us” I can only see one outcome in the end.
The female shooter in San Bernadino is alleged to have pledged the “baya’a” to “isil” and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the american media.
Sadly, it seems that sometimes violence is the answer.
It has pretty much worked for core Al Qaeda. We killed bin Laden and who knows how many other senior leaders, and it now seems that they are too weak to plan a children’s birthday party.
I remember the days when liberals used to criticize George Bush for saying we are fighting a “war on terror.” I remember it so clearly: “How do we fight a war against an idea? That silly Shrub - what a maroon!”
Now we’ve come full circle. “Fight a war against ISIL? We can’t do that. We have to fight the idea of ISIL!”
Where do you think Da-esh came from? They came from the ashes of Al Qaeda in Iraq. And when/if we reduce Da-esh to ashes, some other entity will rise up again. Until you fix the problem of Sunnis being subjugated by Shi’a in that area, the appeal of these groups is not going to go away.
And I don’t accept you assertion that “core al Qaeda” (whatever that even is) has been emasculated. They just moved on to greener pastures, like Yemen.
Well there it is right there. We’ll hire a publicist, print a few billboards, tell them they are equal, and those swamp donkeys will stop bombing airliners and massacring innocent people, raping women and all that other nasty stuff they do. Problem solved.
Let’s take your newsletter national.
Well, yeah. But, during that time, certain horrible things will no longer be happening. And there will hopefully be a reluctance to start again, knowing how it turned out last time.
This isn’t just a war against ideas. They’ve decided to use these ideas as an excuse to attack the rest of the world. They are taking over countries (at least, they were before we attacked them). Not to go all Godwin on the thread, but Hitler was also promoting ideas. Nazism was an ideology, after all.
Now, of course, we do also have to fight ideas. But we’re also fighting a bunch of violent psychopaths that are trying to cause World War III. And I mean that literally–that is their goal. They believe World War III ends with their perversion of Islam in control.
Da’ish is an expansionist state as much as it is an group of ideas. And war tactics do work against states. It isn’t pretty, but there is an immediate threat that we have to deal with.
We don’t have the luxury of just fighting the ideas–the same way we don’t have the luxury of fighting the ideas of a murderer.