November 2015: Paris Bataclan attack/hostage taking

[The Bread Guy]

A really nasty and scary thought. We (the west) could go in, fight a mean fight and eventually wipe out as many ISIS fighters as possible (probably be a lot if we take the gloves off), HOWEVER, what about children & unstable/vulnerable/alienated adults they have brainwashed and warped into little anti-west jihadist?

And it's that bit in yellow & orange that's actually harder to fight than those willing to stand up to conventional arms.

 

[Edward Campbell]

A chilling and insightful take on ISIS as, essentially, an apocalyptic death cult... and why one should never underestimate that sort of appeal to the spiritually and societally disenfranchised.  Disturbing implications that wiping them out in a conventional military sense could activate widespread and disparate action.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

And that is precisely why I assert that we, the US led West, should not be involved in "wiping them out," we want, we need other Muslims from the region (North Africa through to South West Asia) to do that. We need an almost pan Islamic civil war to settle, eventually, maybe after 25 or 50 or 100 years, the issues that divide and motivate so many Muslims.

 

[George Wallace]

And it's that bit in yellow & orange that's actually harder to fight than those willing to stand up to conventional arms.

Is it harder to deprogram religious indoctrination than political indoctrination?  We have seen that the Hitler Youth were politically indoctrinated and successfully deprogrammed after the war.  We have seen deprogramming have various degrees of success, mostly success, with various cults.  Will deprogramming of these children be any different?  Time is the factor that many today don't seem to want to accept; wanting a quick solution over a time consuming one.

 

[tomahawk6]

And that is precisely why I assert that we, the US led West, should not be involved in "wiping them out," we want, we need other Muslims from the region (North Africa through to South West Asia) to do that. We need an almost pan Islamic civil war to settle, eventually, maybe after 25 or 50 or 100 years, the issues that divide and motivate so many Muslims.

If muslims fail to take on IS,then what ?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Is it harder to deprogram religious indoctrination than political indoctrination?

I'm guessing similar - the RCMP and others (PDF) have been doing work on that front for a while.  That said ....

Time is the factor that many today don't seem to want to accept; wanting a quick solution over a time consuming one.

.... you're bang on - many people want a switch you can flick to make something go away, not a rock you can carve into whatever you want with sandpaper.

 

[Haggis]

If muslims fail to take on IS,then what?

Then, without outside intervention, ISIS becomes the preeminent military force regionally and, eventually, internationally, driven by the world's new politically dominant religion.

 

[Edward Campbell]

If muslims fail to take on IS,then what ?

IS** is a Wahhabi/Salafi ~ Sunni ~ movement, the Shias cannot help but "take them on."

 

[Haggis]

IS** is a Wahhabi/Salafi ~ Sunni ~ movement, the Shias cannot help but "take them on."

  So, why have they not done so?

 

[Kirkhill]

If we, the US led West (supported by China) are unwilling to do this ...

   

    Boots and tracks on the ground
          ... with several armoured and infantry divisions and, indeed, the whole panoply of modern war, leading to this ...

             

              Punitive attacks on enemy held towns and cities
                    ... followed by rather a lot of this ...

                       

                        Public (exemplary) executions of enemy leaders
                        'pour encourager les autres'
                              ... and then, this ...

                                 

                                  A speedy withdrawal, leaving the locals to cleanup and rebuild as they wish

Then ...

          ... we need to do this:

   

    A "wall" ~ physical in many places, on what amounts to being on a regional
    basis, separating "them" from "us" until "they" sort themselves out

          ... because this doesn't work:

             

Boots?  Most definitely.
Tracks?  En masse initially, tapering to penny packets.
Hangings? Judicially and judiciously.

Bugouts? Never.

Walls? Absolutely. But not to contain 2/3 of the planet or even to wall off our continent but walls of Alfred's burghs, walls of Caernarvon, Gaillard and Chevalier ,  and walls such as those built at Ramala's police compound in the 30's. The walls necessary to protect the permanent garrison neceessary to impose our rules.  Ideally the garrisons will be locally staffed but we can only demonstrate the value of our ways, we can only win over the locals, by getting in among them, living with them, working with them, nurturing a new society....and tending to the weeds.

That is the lesson of all empires. Empires are natural and normal.  They exist only as regimes of rules.  They are necessary to manage chaos. The only questions are:  Whose empire? Whose regime? Whose rules?  Who pays?

Those dandelions stll need to be dug out, cut down and doused every weekend  as much as I detest the chore.  There is no escaping it.

Our rules or their rules.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Yes, that's a fourth option.

So we have four choices, so far:

    1. Isolation ~ fairly complete isolation which includes removing the human "safety valve" of emigration;

    2. Boots (and tracks) on the ground ~ lots of killing followed by a hasty, complete withdrawal. Let the locals sort themselves out in their own ways;

    3. Boot and tracks on the ground followed by a reimposition of Western (and Chinese?) colonialism until the (necessary, in my opinion) enlightenment happens; or

    4. The worst possible choice: more of President Obama drawing lines in the sand.

 

[Loachman]

4. The worst possible choice: more of President Obama drawing lines in the sand.

And he has a new playmate, now, on this side of our mutual border.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Then, without outside intervention, ISIS becomes the preeminent military force regionally and, eventually, internationally, driven by the world's new politically dominant religion.

There is, actually one thing the rest of the world can do, and must do at some point in my opinion, even though I think that 'big business" has the ear of too many world leaders and want to protect their profits more than solve some of the world's problems: Stop selling them friggin ammunition !!!!!

Do you know how much ammunition the part of the world under isis control produces? None, nada, zero.

Let them run out of bullets and then see how long they last when they fight by hitting one another over the head with their AK-47's or Machine Guns.

I am just not sure the world is ready to do that, unfortunately.

 

[Kilo_302]

Then, without outside intervention, ISIS becomes the preeminent military force regionally and, eventually, internationally, driven by the world's new politically dominant religion.

Not if the commie hordes get us first! Or we could throw in an alien invasion... :

There are what, 15,000 fighters in ISIS? The sky isn't falling.

Now IF we were serious about dealing with them, we would cut off the Saudis immediately, and engage with the Iranians and the Russians. The optics of dealing with Assad are not good, but we're pretty adept at doing about faces when it suits our needs. Saddam and Qaddafi could tell you that if they were still alive. The problem is this means accepting ISIS is a greater threat to Western interests than Iran or Russia, undoing our "strategy" in the region of the last 10 years.

It's tiresome at this point, because the same people pushing for further intervention now are the same people who won't accept the deal with Iran, and who were also supporting action against that country as well. Oh, and we definitely CAN'T deal with Russia because Putin is apparently bent on invading Western Europe again :. I would say we can't have it both ways, but more accurately, we can't have it every way that works for us in a particular 5 year period. Our (the West broadly) policy in the region is absolutely incoherent, and we're reaping the blow back from ISIS, just as we did with the Mujahedeen and Al-Qaeda before it.

There was also a time (around 3 years ago) when the usual suspects were pushing for intervention against Assad. He's awful, just as Putin is, but again this has never stopped us before from dealing with people like them. Assad's Syria is was actually a modern secular nation with guarantees for religious minorities including Christians and Jews. He's done horrific things in the name of fighting extremists (so has his father, remember the Aleppo and Hama Massacres of the early 80s) but who hasn't? The Russians were pitiless in their war with the Chechens, and the US kills more civilians than actual targets with drone strikes. Israel killed over 1000 civilians in its most recent operations in Gaza. The point is, we're being pretty selective when using Assad's crimes as a reason we can't coordinate with him and the Russians in the fight against ISIS.

When we decided to support "moderate factions" against Assad we actually ended up arming and training ISIS. The Russians are now responding because they (unlike us somehow) seem to understand what happens when a stable government (no matter how distasteful) collapses and ISIS is there to fill the void. Not only did we help the Saudis train and equip ISIS, we threw down the welcome mat by destroying the government/civil society in Libya even though we knew what happens in a vacuum (Iraq).

Realistically, our governments are ok with NOT dealing with ISIS, because the main targets of our policy in the region are Iran, Russia and to a lesser extent, China. ISIS is simply a tool we no longer control, and our refusal to deal with the Russians or Iranians on the matter only underlines how low it is on the priority list.

So either we go to war with everyone, ISIS, Iran, Russia, etc etc, OR we do what we always do when our own meddling gets us into a pickle. We about face. We decide that the Saudis are actually the threat, we publicly announce what we've known for years, that the Saudis have been exporting radical Wahhabism, training and equipping terrorists (and exporting those as well), and we reorient to Iran.
Of course, then we get into the real reason we can't deal with Iran, which is our relationship with Israel. Israel understands the key to its survival is making that survival a crucial pillar in Western policy in the region. Years of lobbying and funding pro-Israel groups in the US (and Canada to a far lesser extent) have achieved a lot on this front. Actually very commendable from a purely political point of view.

So realistically we can continue "sort of" bombing ISIS, pretending that the Saudis are our allies and are somehow preferable to Iran and Assad's Syria, and maintaining our close ties to Israel as much as that country no longer serves our purposes either.

Progressives often critique realism in foreign policy as being immoral (or more accurately, amoral) in that human rights, justice and equality will always take a back seat to national interest. But what we've done since 9/11 wouldn't even pass muster as being effective realist policy! At every turn it seems decisions have been made without even a thought for implications beyond the next 12 months. So now we're stuck in this cycle of whack-a-mole, having to deal with every new threat that arises, and creating new ones in the process.

There is, actually one thing the rest of the world can do, and must do at some point in my opinion, even though I think that 'big business" has the ear of too many world leaders and want to protect their profits more than solve some of the world's problems: Stop selling them friggin ammunition !!!!!

Do you know how much ammunition the part of the world under isis control produces? None, nada, zero.

Let them run out of bullets and then see how long they last when they fight by hitting one another over the head with their AK-47's or Machine Guns.

I am just not sure the world is ready to do that, unfortunately.

100% agree, and I think that business interests can explain most of what I wrote above. But to take your point to the logical conclusion, the Saudi LAV deal must be reconsidered as well.

 

[Journeyman]

My biggest worry is these attacks were launched by some fake "refugees" and we begin to put limits on genuine ones.

First off, you are to be envied for the sublimely peaceful life you must lead if that  is your biggest worry.  :not-again:



Now, some random thoughts:

1. The refugee angle in the Paris attacks is a red herring (or red shawarma, if you prefer). These attacks were well-organized and orchestrated; too well for it to have been the work of someone who's recently worked his way in-country by way of the refugee chain through at least one other country.  So they found one passport linked, however it turns out to be, to a refugee -- much ado about nothing.

2. I'm increasingly seeing the Reformation/30-Years' War analogy as apt. Particularly that this may be  their Reformation.  As such: a) it's going to get worse before better, and b) much like the Ottomans et al mucking about on the periphery, the West is only causing more problems than helping. I think it's in our best interest to focus our efforts on helping those who are trying to escape, and containing the threat from our own shores. Wading in with a 'father-knows-best' attitude towards their culture/religion will simply drag us deeper into the cesspool -- even if what they are displaying is abhorrent  ('Christians' did some pretty nasty things to themselves and others in the first-half of the 17th Century too).

3. Following on from #2, if we insist on getting involved, we're going to need a better strategy than we've been using (or not having) so far. While military forces have managed to keep ISIS from a clear-cut victory, our mere presence acts as a catalyst for radicalization. This 'insight' comes from something as simple as raising two boys. They were always scrapping... until some kid came along and threatened one of them, then they were back-to-back against any and all. Yes, I know it's an oversimplification, but our presence is an irritant to many who are not otherwise radicalized.


4. Finally, a pedantic point [yes, I'm back  ]. For those bandying about numbers, Canada has not agreed to take in 25,000 refugees. Canada had previously agreed to take in 10,000 by Sept 2016; we've since committed to an additional 25,000 by 31 Dec 2015 -- we're fast-tracking 35,000 refugees.1

1. http://www.unhcr.ca/news/unhcr-hails-canadas-pledge-to-take-another-25000-syria-refugees

 

[Altair]

I keep seeing people talking about actions against Saudi Arabia.

I would be very careful about how one goes about doing that. Saudi Arabia is probably one of the most vulnerable nation states in the region. The only thing keeping that country together is the very generous redistribution of oil money. The Saudi people are among the most socially conservative Islamic countries on the planet, a natural hotbed for extremist and should the Saudi government suddenly face some sort of stress test brought on by sanctions, freezing of assets, running g out of money, that population will turn the country into another syria, and a natural next step for isil.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[observor 69]

Nope he still hasn't updated his profile. 
Articulate comments such as the above cause great wonder amongst your readers.

 

[Altair]

Nope he still hasn't updated his profile. 
Articulate comments such as the above cause great wonder amongst your readers.

Nice to know. How about you stop focusing so much on me and perhaps focus on what I say, what you agree with, disagree with, ect. I'm really not that special.

 

[Kilo_302]

I keep seeing people talking about actions against Saudi Arabia.

I would be very careful about how one goes about doing that. Saudi Arabia is probably one of the most vulnerable nation states in the region. The only thing keeping that country together is the very generous redistribution of oil money. The Saudi people are among the most socially conservative Islamic countries on the planet, a natural hotbed for extremist and should the Saudi government suddenly face some sort of stress test brought on by sanctions, freezing of assets, running g out of money, that population will turn the country into another syria, and a natural next step for isil.

Be careful what you wish for.

If you're referring to my comments, I should clarify that I'm not suggesting any military action against the Saudis, just pointing out the obvious conflict of interests our current policies toward the kingdom represent. Complicated is an understatement.

 

[Altair]

If you're referring to my comments, I should clarify that I'm not suggesting any military action against the Saudis, just pointing out the obvious conflict of interests our current policies toward the kingdom represent. Complicated is an understatement.

Any action, whether military, political or economic could destabilize Saudi Arabia greatly. They are truly the next big powder keg and any spark could set them off.

I'm already nervous watching them flood the market to keep the price of oil low while burning through their monetary reserve while trying to fight a war in Yemen. Should the price of oil not recover and they start dialing back things like no taxes, free education, 16 cent gas,ect, the stability of the country is in question.

Toss in western pressure? Sanctions? Freezing assets? Watch that place go up in flames.

 

[Kilo_302]

Any action, whether military, political or economic could destabilize Saudi Arabia greatly. They are truly the next big powder keg and any spark could set them off.

I'm already nervous watching them flood the market to keep the price of oil low while burning through their monetary reserve while trying to fight a war in Yemen. Should the price of oil not recover and they start dialing back things like no taxes, free education, 16 cent gas,ect, the stability of the country is in question.

Toss in western pressure? Sanctions? Freezing assets? Watch that place go up in flames.

It sure would. And we've all but guaranteed whatever comes after won't be moderate and secular by favouring radical Islam over more traditional nationalist movements in the region during the Cold War. Like I said, complicated.