ISIS bulldozes ruins of ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, Ira

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It certainly seems like it, these changes need to happen organically and I think by addressing the legitimate grievances of these and just plain letting them fight it out is the only solution. Is it ethical? You have to look at what the alternative is and Western intervention has proven time and time again to cause even more pain and suffering so what are we actually accomplishing? If we look back at this War on Terror and take score, we're losing right now so this current strategy is not and will not ever work. Change has to be to be organic, we can't force these people to like us. Imagine if some foreign invader came to our country and tried to change our way of life, obviously it would be resisted. In Afghanistan the Taliban is a lot more popular the American occupiers, the Taliban while obviously being significant step back are still their own people. Its best to try to contain and limit our involvement, things have to play out for them to get better. The correction from all our past actions will have to come to pass for positive change to happen, the countries of middle east as I am sure you know are imaginary and are based on the lines in the sand that their colonial drew for them and those lines did not reflect real borders.

It is unfortunate that with the tradition of our leaders, from both major parties, starting needless wars or wars without any direction of any kind, we've become so burnt out and so over the idea of starting wars against nations that have not attacked us that many of us may find it hard to get behind a WW2 style campaign against ISIS. And this is in spite of the fact that in order to ensure that ISIS and future groups like ISIS are not a threat, we would have to be willing to fight them in the regions they control exactly how we fought the Germans and Japanese in WW2. It is clear as day, I think, even for most Americans who would generally consider themselves war doves that these people have no interest in peace with anyone who is not exactly like them and does not have the exact same beliefs.

The issue is that many Americans may not have the stomach for an appropriate war with ISIS after so many years of seeing their military getting dragged into military actions that turned out to be counterproductive at best and disasters that made us less safe at worst. And now ISIS does seem to be losing ground and power and is no longer a point of major public interest like it was at the end of last year. Which is unfortunate because in order to ensure that they and groups like them never pose a threat to our lives and liberties, they would have to be obliterated indiscriminately.

It would be great if we could return to the traditional applications of war - that is, reserve it only for the instances of groups, armies, nation states etc that have threatened our safety and lives and have made direct attacks on our people. And make sure not to resort to war for any other reason. And then, once we do resort to war, make sure we do what is needed to ensure they are never a threat again, absolutely nothing less and absolutely nothing more.

ISIS was born out conventional war, it is a predictable reaction to our adventurism overseas in the Middle East and waging conventional war against only plays into their hands. You have to understand the motivation and origins of these extreme beliefs, I would agree with the opinion it not religious in origin. They utilize religion and are influenced by it but the root cause to this uprising is not because they hate our freedom or some 1600 year old book tells them to. A WWII style campaign meaning what? Firebombing and nuking cities? That is one immoral and would kill far more people than ISIS could ever dream of and two would not work, the result of that would be an even larger religious war. Bombing and occupying won't solve anything and will only cause more of the same. The unfortunate fact is that despite the trillions of dollars we've spent on our military we cannot defeat a religion or idealogy, that has to play itself out.

But they do hate our freedoms. They stop people from drinking and smoking, want women to be all covered up. Their internal civil war has been going on since the First Fitna, which toppled the last of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. These people have been at war since before most of the Western countries came into existence. England did not even exist at this time.

You have to separate dogmatic beliefs from what causes these people turn to them in the first place, they're not crazy people but rather just completely desperate. The West has meddled in the Middle East for a very very long time and is the power behind an expansionist Apartheid state in Israel, the pain and suffering we've caused in the part of the world is why they really hate us. More bombing and occupying is just more of the same to them, we cannot wage a conventional war and expect the result to be any different, this is a reaction to what the West has done.

I'd really have to refer you back to Tawfik Hamid on p2. I mean if you're really married to your present way of seeing it as described above commentary from a guy who came from Islamic Jihad won't matter but it's worth hearing him give his opinion both on the economic hypothesis of terrorism and the Israel hypothesis of it.

I would say look carefully at this man's background and who he makes money speaking to, I did not watch the entire 40 minute video but I did some googling and found some questionable ties. It's hard for me to take anyone seriously as an Islamic reformer that makes their money by speakings at Neoconservative, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish functions rather than actual Muslims. If you like you can give the bullet points of his argument. I am not a defender of Islam by any means but only a fool would think that what the US does overseas does no influence and motivate their actions, just listen to any speak and this becomes abundantly clear.

I am sure this has already been posted, but it has to be shared repeatedly since ti spells out to mainstream American audiences something that should be totally apparent: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... ts/384980/

Bottom line is, it is obscene to insist that religious beliefs have nothing to do with ISIS's motivations. They have gone out of their way, in both words and actions, to explain that nothing we can do will lessen their desire to murder every one of us. As for WW2 style war campaigns, well they worked in Germany and Japan, didn't they? You don't really see huge numbers of Germans and Japanese who were hell bent on wiping us out like they were in 1940.

And I would concur that given the number of needless wars without direction we have had, that a WW2 style smackdown of ISIS would not gain any meaningful support now, not after we just got done finally bringing the bulk of them home from the outrageous Iraq campaigns and not after decades of pointless campaigns everywhere else across the world. That said, ISIS is the kind of group where fighting ISIS controlled areas the same way we fought Germany and Japan is the only way the threat they posed will ever be neutralized. This should be abundantly clear to anyone.

Furthermore, training the Iraqi Kurds and Assyrians and elements of the Iraqi Army with zero sympathies to ISIS should always be on the table and should be a priority. They will have no qualms whatsoever with going after ISIS the way we went after the Germans and the Japanese. Hell, their campaigns will probably make ours look soft and merciful by comparison, and honestly, we need to be ok with that.

There is a kernel of truth to this; American foreign policy has often been highly beneficial to Islamic Jihadists, mostly because the creators of our foreign policies over the last several decades do not understand the first thing about Islamic Jihad. And it still does not change the fact that not going after Islamic enemies who want us exterminated in hopes that others in that region will learn to like us is completely pointless. And it does not change the fact that their Islamic beliefs, which come from how the interpret the texts of Islam, cannot be ignored. I think at this point, after Boko Haram, the Hebdo killings and ISIS, this has become crystal clear. You cannot simply say ISIS, Boko Haram or Hebdo's killers are not authentic Muslims. They genuinely are and this is not opinion but as basic a truth as 2 + 2 being equal to 4.

Meh - I still don't agree with you. I'm of the opinion that absolutely all of the problems in the west - from Islamic fundamentalism to western imperialism are all caused by male circumcision. All us guys have horrified memories of the doctor coming to take our plumes and the stress of that moment resonates outward and gives us a strange sourceless frustration that we can only assuage by either killing people not like us or by stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. For all negative world events, regardless of what people say were there intentions, you have to ask the question "Is this gentleman circumcised?" and if the answer is yes he can't speak accurately on his real motives because he has no idea what his reality, identity, or thought processes would be like if he hadn't been robbed of his bell-end. You can't even trust me on what I say my motivations are because I'm circumcised!

I really think it's less a case of Tawik saying anything fraudulant for money and much more the case that the regional realities and problems of terror in the Middle East seem almost custom made to fall into the hands of neoconservatives mainly because it edifies things Fox News would say on the topic. In that case to many it's better to deny reality than admit that conservatives are right about anything at all.

The Islamic fundamentalism we have seen of the last few decades is a relatively recent phenomenon, 40+ years ago the Muslim world was more moderate and open to modern ideas so what has changed? Israel has fought wars against Arabs and has expanded its borders, Arab nationalism as a political movement has largely been dismantled, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the US helped facilitate a guerrilla war as resistance, there is a lot more obviously. Its not something that has been ingrained in their faith since the beginning, even today the Muslim world is no monolithic grouping as far as these beliefs. Indonesia and Turkey are both largely secular Muslim countries. Perhaps some of the blame here can be put on the spread of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist beliefs which they have used their vast oil wealth to spread, the US and the House of Saud have developed a very close relationship since as well.

I'm not saying these Jihadists are inauthentic Muslims either but rather they've been influenced and motivated by their environment, this extremism is a predictable result of actions that were taken long before.

The west is intellectually defeating their way of life, particularly in that their kids want all the gadgets, the iphones, internet, pop music, and things fundamentalists would consider harram. The western way forces multiculturalism, Islamic multiculturalism is a society of Muslims and dhimis unless you're dealing with a much more secular Islam than what you have in the Middle East. Oil money is pumping all kinds of glass buildings, shopping malls, and western style commerce in. They can't not use the technology, the way existence is becoming in how the world does business, to do business at all or have any advantage in the world they're being forced onto our platform, really the platform of the heathens.

If it looks like the apocalypse to them I can understand why - the space for their life style is shrinking in on them fast and a lot of this is what it would look like to a fundamentalist Christian if all of a sudden the world forced them to honor same-sex marriage or take genetic modification of embryos or computerized brain implants from Google for any personal relevancy in the work and income environment.

Other than that I think Tawfik's point - that the radicals with in Saudi Arabia, all of a sudden it was the radicals blessed with oil wealth, they made a connection that God bless the radicals, and became radicals themselves as it almost seemed to play out like the Westboros becoming the Beverly Hillbillies. It's like American 'prosperity doctrine' but gone even more wrong than usual.

Don't also forget Iran's change and its influence. This country was changed upside down in no time.

There was a popular US Libertarian my friends liked and encouraged me to friend on Facebook. I finally got him off of my friends list today because he posted something like "Iran worried that the US is building its 85,000th nuke". With nukes Iran would use them - primarily on Sunnis, secondarily on Europe, we'd quickly have a solid case for WW3. You might see countries over there like China and Russia handling it in ways we never would have thought of - ie. more in lines with the country yayhoo "Glass em all!" - best case scenario would be brass-knuckled imperialization.

I guess I know if Rand Paul runs, unless his foreign policy outlook is completely different from his dad's, there's no way I could vote for him. Isolationism, if pursued with current immigration and entrance/exit capabilities in our country, would be a temporary fantasy bubble which would quickly deteriorate into intense reactionism on our part when two or three cities got hit with far bigger events than 9/11. Two or three major events over here and the values we've upheld for centuries might be changed out for fascism almost overnight - just taking a look at the Boston lockdown after the marathon bombing goes to show that we're ready to lay down and take that. For as much as so many people hate neoliberal/neoconservative foreign policy I can't help but feel like the sentiment against it is based on world models that have a hanging void in the 'otherwise' scenario or worse have quite a fantasy filled in.

Neolibs are far from choir boys and they like to use the 'right thing' as a guise for oil grabs but hell, a nuclear Iran would be a world-changing problem. I'm half afraid without them though it'll be Putin laying an even heavier hand on things and people crying in outrage while secretly to themselves saying "Whew - that God/Allah/Krishna/FSM someone had the balls to do it!".

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 09 Mar 2015, 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

^ However, the Shah regime wasn't all that rosy, it was a police state controlled by the USA - the Iranian people have democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh as Prime Minister back in 1951 who was pretty popular among the poor and wanted to nationalize the oil industry, then he was brought down by a coup d'état orchestrated by the British and the American intelligence and put the Shah in power, turning Iran into a ruthless western-puppet police state.

The rise of the Islamists in Iran was a direct consequence of this sh***y policy.