This is the last installment of VICE News’s unprecedented inside coverage of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). The whole report can be seen in one go (42 minutes) here.
This episode is called “Bulldozing the border between Iraq and Syria,” and VICE gives a precis:
In the final installment of VICE News’ unprecedented look inside the Islamic State, reporter Medyan Dairieh journeys 200 miles from the the group’s power base in the Syrian city of Raqqa to the border with Iraq. There, after defeating the Iraqi army manning the checkpoint, Islamic State fighters work further tobulldoze the border.
As they clear apart a barrier that divided Iraq and Syria, Islamic State fighters declare an end of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a nearly 100-year-old pact between France and Britain that divided up the Middle East. For now, that area between Iraq and Syria is part of a new territory: the Islamic State.
People objected to the title of Dawkins’s book The God Delusion, saying that it was a slur to call all those nice religious folks “deluded.” Well, maybe so (though I go back and forth on that), but if ever a group was subject to vicious mass delusion, it is these jihadis.
I am quite convinced that these people have some legitimate complaints. Why should the British and French occupy and them slice this area of the world along boundaries totally foreign to the politics of the area? Maybe they thought, as Civilized Christians(TM)we know better than these desert dwellers how to divvy up the oil wells.
On the other hand…
They have no legitmate complaint. Or else everyone does. The political world is repeatedly carved up into nations by exactly the same mechanism everywhere throughout history. What distinguishes these thugs from most is the means they use to address their “complaint”.
Sit down with them in a quite place and explain this to them. Begin with “You have no legitimate complaint…”
I was commenting on your post. *YOU* said they had a legitimate complaint. They do not, or else everyone does.
I couldn’t care less what these thugs might think about what I have to say.
Fair enough. My point was only that they have a history to point to. I defend them not.
History is their excuse for behaving badly. It’s funny how only Muslims use this use this excuse to get gullible rubes to be sympathetic to their reprehensible behaviour.
Remember that everything was just a-ok before Islam arrived what with the cradle of civilisation and advanced scholarship etc etc…
But then Islam happened. We give Christianity the blame for the Dark Ages because it was the undisputed cause. Yet we try to deflect blame when Muslims are revelling in their own Dark Ages. How nice.
Manzibe nailed it.
It’s hard to ascribe legitimacy to the complaints of an organization a year or so old against political deals made a century ago, especially when so many other local political organizations had no problem.
On the other hand, it does point to the very long and unabated history of outside Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, little if any of which has had a positive net effect.
There will never be a good time to stop interfering. There will always be some crisis that we’re convinced only we can resolve, some faction that will be lost without us and therefore suffer dire consequences.
Always.
But we will never be effective at actually making things better.
Never.
So, as with that tree that you should have planted a couple decades ago…the second-best time to stop making things worse in the Middle east is now.
Right now.
We can offer humanitarian aid and provide assistance in relocating refugees and that sort of thing. But deciding who becomes refugees and who becomes dead…that’s the same recipe for disaster we’ve been following for…well…forever — the very definition of insanity.
b&
Ok, so we just sit back and let ISIS persecute and slaughter every minority within reach who doesn’t fit their definition of a “True” muslim. And then afterwards, when the millions of corpses are being counted, people just like you will excoriate the West for NOT intervening to prevent genocide. Just like people like you did when the corpses were being counted in Rwanda. If we intervene, we’re meddling imperialists…if we don’t, it’s because we’re callous racists who don’t care about the lives of “brown people” (as you so typically label them). Damned if we do, damned if we don’t – either way, your air of pious superiority remains intact.
No, the way to deal with this “Islamic State” is the way we deal with a malignant tumour in the human body. Us whatever means are necessary to crush and destroy it before it has a chance to grow and metastasize. We should rain bombs on these thugs and send them to meet their 72 virgins. It’s the martyrdom they say they crave, after all, so why not give them what they want?
You would meet ruthless murder and indiscriminate destruction with even more death with destruction more widespread?
And you think you’re taking the moral high ground…how, exactly?
Oh — I know! You get your war technology information from comic books, where the smart bombs only kill bad people and only destroy their secret evil lairs, while simultaneously showering flowers upon the good people and putting a fresh coat of paint on all the good homes.
Get back to us once you’ve attained a level of sociopolitical sophistication at least equal to that of somebody who needs to take off his shoes to count his age.
b&
Wow. How you got that from what Mr. Goren wrote boggles. Your comment says a great deal more about you than about him
Yes, what we are seeing is their own division of borders. That is okay by me, but their crazy ass, genocidal, medieval processes is what is wrong.
Of course, they’d say this was an infidel’s opinion on how to do things, but I think those people trapped on the mountain may see things my way more than their’s.
It might help to look at it this way:
Do we have any obligation to rescue people in North Vietnamese labor camps? What could and should we have done in Rwanda? If I fail to go in with guns blazing to stop the next execution in Arizona, am I responsible for the death of the inmate?
We can drop supplies to the people trapped on that mountain. We might be able to evacuate them. It’s highly doubtful but not perfectly impossible that we might be able to broker a peace agreement. We can and should do all those things.
But just because we have a very big hammer does not mean that this is a good time to use it for HULK SMASH! Not even a little bit of smash.
American foreign policy for longer than anybody reading these words has been alive has been HULK SMASH! and it’s caused more problems than it ever could have even hoped to have solve. Isn’t it high past time we put away the hammer?
I know it can be frustrating to “just do nothing” as tragedy unfolds. But, as bad as it is to watch tragedy unfold, it’s far worse to pour fuel on the flames, and that’s all we’ve ever done or have shown we’re capable of doing. Never mind the intentions; just look at this very crisis to see the exact type of blowback we always get when we HULK SMASH!
b&
I think the fear is the control of oil and the threat getting closer to Israel. Then again, Israel will take care of itself but do we really want it to come to that?
I’ve said it before, governments work in their self interest, not for the good of humanity. If they did, they would be in Africa right now helping. I really do wish the UN were stronger. They are who we need.
Of course, you’re right; this is all about the oil. We wouldn’t be there were it not for the oil — which is why it’s all but guaranteed that this is going to escalate into the Iraq’s fourth major war in as many decades.
The UN is a great idea…but it suffers from the same problem all representative governments do: it’s representative of its members. Look through the current membership of the Human Rights Council and tell me with a straight face that China, Cuba, Kuwait, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and quite a few more questionable nation-states really should be in charge of determining what does and doesn’t constitute basic human rights.
Don’t get me worng — the UN is indispensable and has a vital role to play in global affairs. But it’s also most definitely not a white knight in shining armor, either…and, right now, a stronger UN might not be such a good idea.
Cheers,
b&
There is a whole lot of ground between HULK SMASH and the Monroe Doctrine.
In theory? Perhaps. In practice? Not really.
b&
That is a frighteningly black white position.
The black-and-white nature comes from a cursory analysis of American intervention. Finesse is not in our vocabulary — and certainly not in this instance. We have people, perhaps even a majority, claiming the Caliphate is the next Third Reich and calling for America to “nuke and pave” Iraq in response.
This is not only not new; it’s the rule, not the exception. Remember Shock and Awe? We’ve been killing women and children non-stop in Afghanistan for almost fifteen years, now. Thousands of women and children killed by drone strikes in Pakistan over the last decade.
Jump back a few decades…to Vietnam. Before that, Korea. Before that, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden…the Great War…even our own Civil War was one of the bloodiest and nastiest such in all history before the 20th Century.
There is one and only one legitimate reason for America to ever again use military force: in response to an actual invasion of American or allied territory. The Monroe Doctrine is nothing more nor less than an excuse for international thuggery and imperial conquest.
b&
sub
Freud called religiosity an illusion and had an explication as to why it was different from a delusion. I think the willfulness of belief was a factor. It’s easy to see why a person woul take offense at being called “deluded,” but given his thesis it is right on the nose. Believing in a claim without supporting evidence and ignoring evidence contra the claim is delusional. There is no more flattering way of putting it – and speaking for myself the slap-in-the-face was highly effective in changing my worldview. My understanding is I am not alone in having had that experience. Boghossian’s formulation “believing in things that are not true” is equally apt but cumbersome and ultimately no less confrontational; you cannot state these concepts without offending most believers.
Well, it is quite remarkable that so many people seem completely taken in by ideas that are so obviously unfounded. How do these fighters shout empty slogans as if they really knew. It has got to have all to do with early education. If the school teaches critical thinking from kindergarten onward, will it be enough to overcome the voice of the mother from birth? These feisty saber rattlers were told stories in their cribs, I can guarantee that.
I always wonder the same thing. Every young child I’ve ever met, including my own two children, has a natural propensity for asking “Why?” over and over again.
This curiosity is never satisfied by anything religion has to say. It may well be refuted with non answers to the point that the questions stop, but it seems hard to believe all these guys completely believe what they are saying. Consider, they talk of martyrdom as a high a ideal, yet here they are inflicting violence on people with no means to defend themselves. They could easily invade a region where they would get a quick ticket to eternal oblivion. I think it is a mix of belief, thirst for power, cognitive dissonance, and one of religion’s most insidious features: justification of any action based on it’s eternal merits, the ultimate discussion stopper.
Ok.
But what do you Jerry, or you any of the readers think can be done?
I come from the Eastern Europe. And I have moved, hopefully for good, to Western Europe. Countries like USA or Germany are just domed World like in the SciFi novels of the 50s. You have the whole World outside. The Eastern Europe is eaten year by year by nationalism. Eastern Orthoxy is very compatible with Islam. Bound to nationalism and you get Islamists with white skin shouting Jesus Christ.
What people call the Western culture is merely an exception.
But do you see Eastern Europeans as radical and bloodthirsty as these guys? I could be wrong, but aren’t those guys in the minority? I don’t see a place like Poland like this or a Western Ukraine. I read about Russian religiosity and from the surveys, the majority doesn’t call themselves religious or go to church even though they identify with the Orthodox Church.
It is my hope that Europe becomes more united, however the nationalist right wing groups are a problem. I don’t have any good answers but level heads need to apply long term solutions with the idea of mutual gain not one sided advantage.
Certainly they have a state that is rather working. But the discourse is pretty much Germany in 1930.
I have tried lately to reason a bit with the people back home on some forums. Saying gypsys are people generates the same arguments about slavery in the US. And I am clearly not from the US.
Honestly?
Damn little — at least, damned little that’s productive.
We can airlift some supplies. We might be able to evacuate them — but where to? Who will take them as refugees?
We could, of course, as so many are calling for, Shock and Awe the Caliphate, or send in the Marines, or bring the Afghanistan / Pakistan drone war to Iraq. But that’s exactly what got us into this mess in the first place, and it’s guaranteed, with as much certainty as that the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning, that it’ll only make things much, much, much worse.
As I already noted, we’ve already fucked this up and there’s really nothing that can be done to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Not even if we clap our hands really loudly.
b&
Yea. But they are coming after you. And nobody, not even their own family can tell who is migrating to kill infidels and who is trying to get a decent living.
Oh, please. If the Evil Empire never managed to awaken any of those Russian sleeper super agents hiding under every bed, what makes you think the Caliphate is going to manage to pull it off?
b&
The Russians have polonium. Rim shot!
True. Scary too.
I always thought the title God is Not Great was a little strange. I don’t think that anymore.
Was just listening to this from Hitchens, from 2002 (link to You Tube, will start at relevant part).
As it’s Hitchens I won’t attempt a summary. (If it’s not clear why I won’t, just try it yourself.)
The great shame is that the US and Britain were run by Bush and Blair at this critical moment in history.
George Bush and Tony Blair liberated more muslims from tyranny than any other leaders in history. If the people they freed are too backward, bigoted, primitive and stupid to do something positive with their freedom, as opposed to descend into mediaeval barbarity, then that’s hardly B&B’s fault.
This is a joke, right?
Yes, whether it was intended that way or not.
Speaking of delusions…
Sorry to digress, but listening to Hitchens from 2002, sited above, I was struck by his speed and eloquence. In some way it connected, for me, with the late Robbin Williams in a completely different context, but also deserving of profound admiration.
I transcribed a little of it. Not bad for a spontaneous position statement:
Also in the 1980s we were warned repeatedly. An attempt was made to destroy Algerian society by an armed fundamentalist revolt. An attempt was made to destroy the Coptic minority in the ancient state of Egypt by transforming Egypt into a Sharia state. Similar movements were launched in Turkey and elsewhere and all of them were beaten. And they weren’t beaten by Western imperialism… They were beaten by the determination of the FLN and of the Berbers and many other secular and civil society forces in Algeria who say that we will not give in to fascist rebellion that attempts to impose theocracy by force. We will keep shooting as long as they keep coming.
My solidarity is the with Front Liberation Nationale of Algeria as it always has been in that battle, in which the West was effectively neutral. As it was about Egypt and Turkey too. Defeated. It’s a matter of our solidarity too with those in the Islamic world who fight against tyranny and theocracy and the misery and war that it brings with it. And that’s going to call on all our intelligence, and all our curiosity, and all our sympathy and all our internationalism.
I have no knowledge of Algerian politics, but I just skimmed through the Wikipedia entry on FLN. It’s an extraordinary history, with
” estimated that at least 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the Algerian War.[citation needed]”…etc, in the 1960’s.
And then a more current history in which they seem to be a stabilizing, secular force. How is one to know who will end up in support of humanity?
To cite Robin Williams: “That’s because they’re french!” ( the actors in teh algerian war .
Kudos to VICE for producing such work, and for filming in such an incredibly dangerous region. No doubt they had contacts with the Caliphate to get permission to film there.
For good journalism on a the Caliphate, see Patrick Cockburn’s piece in the London Review of Books. Cockburn (an old friend of the Hitch) has been living and traveling in the region for 30+ years. He speaks the languages, and has produced many dune reports from the Middle East.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/patrick-cockburn/isis-consolidates
Cockburn talks for 10 minutes about ISIS/the Caliphate here
Patrick Cockburn on the rise of the Islamic State: http://youtu.be/wLdNLmBKayk
The VICE documentary is now available in full length here
The Islamic State (Full Length): http://youtu.be/AUjHb4C7b94
And last but not least, the British Sunni response to the VICE documentary is… troubling to say the least
Response to Vice Documentary “Grooming Children f…: http://youtu.be/W4n2ZPjT910
Re: ‘delusion’ (potential tangent alert): I go back and forth about this as well. Ultimately, I think that ‘delusion’ conjures connotations of mental illness and idiosyncratic beliefs with little empirical OR social support. So, even though I don’t fundamentally disagree with Dawkins’ application of the term ‘delusion’ on a purely definitional basis, I think it would be more productive to use a different term.
For example, an important aspect of how faith causes harm is that very intelligent beliefs can be held by otherwise balanced and well-adjusted people. In other words, you don’t have to be crazy to have crazy beliefs. The term ‘delusion’ can obscure this. Additionally, because ‘delusion’ is often connected with mental illness in the minds of listeners/readers, it can be perceived as an ad hominem directed at the believer rather than a simple description of the belief, even if this isn’t the intent of the speaker/writer.
I made a typo.
harm is that very *harmful* beliefs can be held by otherwise *intelligent* and
Hopefully we will wake up from our delusion that they don’t really mean what they are saying, before it takes a world-wide effort to straighten things out.
Kudos to Vice for this intrepid reporting. The courage of Medyan Dairieh is awe-inspiring. The exact antithesis of what he is reporting on. We as Americans have been indoctrinated into believing that “might is right” and “might solves all problems” and “we’re in charge”. At least for now, our policy doesn’t exactly fit that description. Will it eventually? Time will tell. I hope the world keeps a cool head, but it is the world that must come together on this, especially the Muslim world. When will America learn the worn out cliche that violence begets violence?
This is an extreme case to be sure, which makes it more important to stay calm and use intelligence and a measured approach. There will always be time to “carpet bomb” as some have suggested. It hasn’t come to that point (not even close). We must support the victims with aid, support the opposition with minimal violence and maximum intelligence and keep monitoring the situation very carefully. It would suck to be Obama though; I wouldn’t wish this situation on my worst enemy. I’m sure glad McCain didn’t get elected…we’d be bombing the hell out of everyone and everything by now. Thank Ceiling Cat for that at least.
The only way to stop ISIL in Iraq is for the local Sunni leaders to reject them. This is difficult of course because of genuine fear. ISIL was able to move into Iraq because of the style of the Maliki government. Instead of being inclusive, he completely alienated all Sunnis and Kurds and showed extreme favouritism towards the Shi’a. The Kurds had somewhere to go as their regional government was strong and effective, but the Sunnis didn’t. Also remember, the Sunnis had been in power for as long as anyone could remember, and it’s pretty hard to get used to losing it. Just look at the reactions of some Republicans after losing power in 2008, and that’s in a stable democracy. Throw the evil of extreme Islam into the mix and you have ISIL in Iraq.
It was lack of say in the government in Syria for many groups that ultimately led to civil war there. The enormous funding from Saudi, discipline and conviction they are right has meant ISIL has emerged as a strong force. The moderate groups should have been armed early on, but it’s easy to see that with hindsight.
One of the main reasons France fell in WWII was the US’s refusal to arm the resistance in case the weapons ended up in the hands of the Germans. It is unlikely D-Day would have been such a great success without the preparatory work done by the Resistance in the months leading up to the invasion using arms and training from the SOE.
I don’t pretend to know how to stop ISIL, but I do know they have to be stopped.
As heart-wrenching as the situation (that the US is almost entirely responsible for creating) is, I don’t see anything about the Caliphate that makes it something that outside forces must stop.
First, I doubt they have any more ability to hold a cohesive government than the Taleban or the Sandinistas or the various Somali warlord clans. Sure, they can wreak great havoc within their own borders, but the threat they pose outside those borders is negligible.
Second, in all honesty, they’re no worse than many of the other regimes that have a long-standing tradition in that part of the world — including our favored allies, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are every bit as brutal and repressive as the Caliphate is shown to be in this VICE News series; the Saudis are just more entrenched so executions and torture for trivialities are a routine state of affairs rather than a shocking turn of events…and they’ve got more oil than Jesus and are happy to sell it to us, so of course we look the other way.
If the Caliphate makes a pledge to sell oil at competitive prices on the open market, I bet this’ll all get bumped back to the inside pages.
b&
Read the first sentence of my post again.
“that the US is almost entirely
responsible for creating”
Isn’t this being a little soft on the jihadi gangster assholes who are actually bashing folk over the head with the butt of their Kalashnikovs? And, they’ve already crossed one border. Why would they be incapable of doing it again? I’m not obtuse to your points, in fact, these same points are why I am honestly undecided as to my own position on intervention. But after reading your post, I feel these are valid questions.
A beautiful young widow comes to Ahnold to beg him to help break her brother out of the prison for the criminally insane that’s being run by brutal sadists in some far-off banana republic. Ahnold of course reluctantly agrees. On his way to killing every last evil prison guard he collects a small but trustworthy crew of loyal misfits with checkered pasts who have proven their trustworthiness to Ahnold’s satisfaction. Eventually the guns stop blazing and the victorious Ahnold leaves the crew in charge of the prison, complete with an arsenal guaranteed to win the day. Ahnold returns home. As he’s chomping on a cigar, the truly dangerous inmates manage to overwhelm the Scooby Gang and take their weapons…and it turns out that they’re even worse than the guards Ahnold dispatched so handily.
Any sane, rational person, I would contend, would consider Ahnold to bear primary culpability in the entire fiasco. He couldn’t have freed and armed the crazy inmates more effectively than if that was his plan from before the widow ever showed up on his doorstep. A film like this would end with Ahnold having a knowing evil grin on his face, revealing in the final plot twist that that really was his plan.
Oh — and the Caliphate never really crossed any borders. They’ve been building from within both Iraq and Syria from the beginning. Unless you have evidence that the’ve got a similarly significant presence in some other country, there’s no chance of them doing the same sort of thing elsewhere. No fucking way are they going to, for example, roll a line of tanks across the Turkish or Iraqi or Saudi borders. Maybe they’re trying to build ranks in Iraq, but the government there, at least for the time being, is too strong and stable to allow them to gain any sort of foothold.
…of course, if we go do to Iran what we did to Iraq, as so many American politicians want us to, that would pretty much guarantee that Iran would get subsumed by the Caliphate.
b&
Not that i completely disagree, but many of the fighters of what is now known as IS infiltrated Syria from Iraq, to which they arrived from other places. So far, the Iraqi forces have proved incompetence and unwillingness to actually fight them. I am not as confident as you are about Kuwait and Jordan being able to stop them.
I also think that if the west was ready fully commit to fighting radical Muslims the same way it did in fighting fascism in the 40s, this war could be won. But at this point, just like in the 30s, we refuse to see how serious the threat is.
The level of paranoia and abject ignorance on this subject is astounding.
Germany in the 30s was a major industrial and intellectual and economic and military power, and had been such for centuries.
The Caliphate is an oversized band of street thugs. They have no industry, no Werner von Braun, they have no source of income and damned little in reserves, and their most sophisticated weapons aren’t a match for our least. Seriously — we have several urban police forces better equipped and trained than the Caliphate. The Caliphate has no air force, no navy…a single one of our Coast Guard cutters has far more force projection capability than the entire Caliphate.
Now, if you’re in Iraq or Syria, or maybe just over the border in one of the neighboring countries, life really, really sucks and the Caliphate represents an existential threat to you.
But outside of that? This is an humanitarian tragedy / crisis and nothing more. You’ve got far more to worry about from lightning strikes and shark attacks than you ever will from the Caliphate. Yes, even if you’re in Kansas, you’re more at risk from shark attack than you are from the Caliphate.
b&
America was superior to North Vietnam in any imaginable aspect and we know how that war ended.
Italy and Germany were not a threat to America until Pearl Harbor.
The aspirations of radical Islamists are not limited to Syria and Iraq or the Middle East. In my opinion, IS is not an isolated phenomena, but part of a wider picture. I am not sure what we’ll see in the areas it is controlling now when the dust settles, but the radicalization of Muslims everywhere, including Western Europe and the US, is an ongoing trend. They have no moral or other restraint when it comes to violence and death.
Just as the Nazis didn’t stop at eradicating their perceived or real opponents inside their Germany and Poland, radical Islam won’t stop in the areas where it operates now.
As time passes, they get more sophisticated weaponry and more state resources which enables them to become a bigger threat. I find your idea that if you stay away from them they will leave you to yourself, when the foundations of their ideology requires them to do the opposite is naive and childish.
See? This is what I mean. Complete and total ignorance of even the most basic and obvious and non-controversial facts of history.
List for us all the Vietcong attacks outside of Vietnam and Cambodia. Go ahead; take your time. Be thorough. I’ll wait.
Iraq is exactly a re-run of Vietnam. We went in with guns blazing to rescue the people from themselves. We burned the villages in order to save them. For some reason that almost nobody — especially you, it seems — can understand to this day, the Vietnamese didn’t exactly appreciate this and started killing their liberators. Pretty soon, we couldn’t tell which ones were the good Vietnamese and which were the evil Commie pinko gooks. We sent in more and more liberators who killed more and more Vietnamese women and children, and we did so with the excuse that some of them gooks were doing terrible things to the good Vietnamese. Eventually we had gotten our fill of gook-killing and gave up and came back home. And, of course, the over-arching narrative was the existential threat represented by the global march of Communism — a threat far more credible than that of the Caliphate, because it at least was backed by the Soviet empire which could project devastating force.
And here you are getting all worked up over a bunch of illiterate peasants who raided an abandoned small arms weapons locker we left behind.
For all the rationalism and proportionality you’re demonstrating, you might as well be advocating for sending SWAT teams to break up schoolyard playground fights. After all, one of those bullies might have taken a samurai sword from home, and she could hunt you down and kill you with it, just as it shows in the documentary.
The Caliphate is a lot of things. But the next global threat? Please — that doesn’t even work as comedic hyperbole.
b&
First, who said anything about a North Vietnamese attack out of the region. That example was to demonstrate that on-paper power balance is not enough to predict the outcome of a conflict. This is why your focus on the supposed weakness of the “Caliphate” vs. the strength of the US is irrelevant.
Second, again, I don’t look at IS only, but at radical Islam. Indeed, this is not a unified ideology, but there’s enough common for success in one place to boost it elsewhere. In this, they are also different from playground fights, which are isolated incidents.
Third, while playground bullies don’t aim to take over the world, radical Muslims do. This, combined with their belief that they are doing the will of their imaginary friend who runs the play on earth, and their willingness to kill and die in great numbers makes them a very serious threat.
On a side not, you are a clever person and I usually like reading your comments. It will be nice of you stop insulting others you know nothing about by labeling them as ignorant, paranoid etc.
No, that wasn’t the lesson of Vietnam. That was the propaganda which was used to support the war in Vietnam — the marching falling dominoes of the Red Menace — and it’s the same propaganda you’re using now to justify your own genocidal tendencies.
The lesson of Vietnam was that military force is not only utterly incapable of solving political and social problems, it will only exacerbate the problems.
We could have nuked every Vietcong military base plus Ho Chi Minh city and thereby conquered the North. And if even that wasn’t enough, we could have defoliated the entire North — turn it into a barren moonscape — and waited a year for the food to run out. Either would have been pretty minor military operations for us, were it a military conflict.
But it wasn’t a military conflict. It was a political conflict that we were trying to influence by force of arms.
You know what we call that exact process when we’re not the ones shooting the guns?
Terrorism.
Those playground bullies also want ponies, don’t they? So why aren’t you afraid that you’ll get stampeded by all the ponies the playground bullies are going to summon from the aether? After all, it’s the same method available to radical Muslims to take over the world.
I’m sorry, but worrying that the Caliphate represents a global threat is ignorant paranoia of the exact same variety as Chicken Little’s falling sky. The Caliphate is no more likely to conquer the world than the sky is to fall, and for you to think otherwise represents a childish degree of ignorance and a lunatic degree of paranoia.
Again, they’ve certainly caused a local humanitarian crisis — but, heartbreaking as that is, there’s damned little we can do to help alleviate the suffering.
But this talk of existential threats from the Caliphate…frankly, it’s the sort of thing I’d expect from the likes of Goebbels. Those crafty Jews had German money in their banks, did they not? How could you not see the existential threat that presented?
Cheers,
b&
Don’t tell me what lessons to take. GBJames nailed it quite well.
Anyway, you are obviously unwilling to make a civilized discussion without insulting those who have the nerve to disagree with you. I have no desire to seriously address anything you say this way.
The obvious retort is that you haven’t put forth anything serious yet, merely the same tired old war-drum-beating imperialist propaganda that didn’t even pass the sniff test before you were born.
If you can explain how you think the US is supposed to succeed in eliminating the Caliphate despite our previous failures to eliminate the Taleban and the Communists in North Korea and the Vietcong and so many others, I’ll concede you’re being serious and not just yet another bloodthirsty xenophobic warmonger. But, as they say, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and the evidence required to support this claim is right up there with the evidence required to support the claim that Jesus reanimated Lazarus’s putrid corpse.
b&
There is only one “lesson from Vietnam”?
I must add, Ben, that I’m surprised at your rather narrow understanding of the goals and international spread of radical Islam.
Well, of course, there were many. But the primary is clearly that military might is basically useless when it comes to effecting political changes in other countries. We attempted a military solution to a political problem, and it ended in disaster — and the parallel with Iraq (and Korea and Afghanistan and…) is truly perfect.
Oh, sure — the goal is a global Caliphate. But so what? Neonazis have the Fourth Reich as their stated goal, North Korea threatens the annihilation of the US every third Thursday, and so on.
As to its spread…can you not see the blindingly obvious parallel with the spread of Communism in the Cold War? Small numbers of the disaffected, mostly young with a few older stalwarts, are pledging newfound allegiance to the next big thing.
You want to encourage recruitment? Step up the violent reaction. Unleash the carpet bombs, put the boots on the ground to go door-to-door rooting out terrorist suspects. Do whatever it takes to contain the threat…and you’ll convince more and more people that you’re the real threat that needs containment. Most of them will be abroad, but increasing numbers will be domestic. Most of those at home will be like the Vietnam war protesters, caring mostly about getting the troops back home, but more and more of them will align themselves with the enemy as well.
In an attempt to head off a future appearance by Dr. Mohammad Noor and even Jerry himself at a future HUAC inquisition asking them if they do now or ever have had radical islamist sympathies, permit me to channel Joe Welch: have none of all y’all no sense of decency left?
Again, I’ll fully agree that the Caliphate is evil and a big destabilizing influence on the region and is the proximate source of much misery there. My objections are to these wild notions that they represent a domestic threat and that we’re somehow capable of having better luck eliminating them from the scene in Iraq than we did with the Vietcong in Vietnam or the Taleban in Afghanistan or….
b&
Like I said, a rather narrow understanding. I remain surprised.
Once again, let’s take a serious look at it.
The Caliphate doesn’t have the military power to do more than annoy its neighbors. Iran would squash them like bugs — indeed, the Iranian government is probably drooling over the possibility that the Caliphate would attempt to mount a serious attack, as it would provide them the perfect excuse to annex Iraq wholesale. Continuing clockwise, we have Kuwait; it might have slipped your mind, but Papa Bush first invaded Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait, and there’s no doubt but that we’d provide similar protection to Kuwait again should the need arise. Saudi Arabia is up next and should need no further comment. Jordan likely has the most to worry about…but they’d very likely get direct American support and even indirect Israeli support — indirect only so Jordan can save face in the Islamic world. Turkey is a NATO member state…and that’s brought us full circle.
So much for a direct imperialist military threat from the Caliphate. But what about the Third Column possibility that all y’all’re hyping? Can the Caliphate recruit from within other countries in such a way as to win them over with coups?
Perhaps, but not likely. The Arab Spring has shown that there’s sufficient unrest for turmoil, but to date there haven’t been any signs of Taleban-style radicals actually being able to take control and form stable governments and everything else necessary to become a regional military power. More likely is the sort of destabilization that we’ve seen already in Syria — destabilization that has left that already-troubled country a crippled, pale husk of what little it had been. Sucks if you’re Syrian, but Syria’s biggest threat today is to itself.
Now, if even the Arab Spring was unable to create a regional power in its homeland, what on Earth makes you think that the Caliphate poses a global political threat? A few loudmouthed youths burning cars in France? Loudmouthed youths have been burning cars in France since there were cars to burn. A random knifing of an off-duty British soldier? Ever heard of Jack the Ripper? A Muslim American soldier going postal on an American base? Where do you think the term, “going postal,” came from?
Sure, “radical Islam” is a real threat to those living in the parts of the Islamic world that we’ve just so spectacularly destabilized — but only in the same way that the Italian Mafia would be a serious threat to Italians were we to invade Italy, set up an ineffective puppet government, and leave. You pull that kind of shit, and of course the local thugs are going to take advantage of it. What on Earth else would you expect?
So why, pray tell, is it that the chorus is calling for more of the same lunacy that got us into this mess in the first place?
And if all that represents a “narrow understanding,” then I’d suggest that the breadth of your understanding is spilling over into “mind so open your brains are falling out” territory.
Cheers,
b&
It is as if, Ben, you can’t see that ISIS, or whatever it is called this afternoon, isn’t part of a larger world-wide phenomenon. That’s what I find remarkable. You’ll bend over backwards to find some difference between them and other islamist/jihadist organizations, but that totally misses the point. This affects the lives of people the world over, although far less directly in some places than in others. If you don’t believe me, start reading the news from the UK. The attempts to segregate audiences by gender at universities is not un-related to recruiting for ISIS that happens on the streets.
Sharia imposed in Iraq is not unrelated to Sharia imposed in Brunei. And it isn’t any different from what these guys want.
The first principle should be to recognize the real world of Islamism. A separate question is what to do about it. The disastrous “contribution” of Bush-Cheney/Blair and the idiots who lied us into the invasion of Iraq is not in question. If we could undo that catastrophe I doubt there would be many who would object. But that’s not possible. And equating that fiasco with any and all responses to a world-wide threats is simply naive, regardless of how many times you repeat the assertion.
It is perfectly legitimate to recognize a threat and to be unsure about exactly the best response. But pretending the threat doesn’t exist is delusional.
But don’t you see? That’s the exact same rhetoric used to argue for the military intervention to prevent the global spread of Communism that led us into disaster in Korea and Vietnam and almost got the entire planet nuked in Cuba.
Yes, of course — Islam and especially the strict fundamentalist interpretations enjoys global popularity. So does evangelical millennialist Christianity; so did Communism; especially amongst the more downtrodden and oppressed and desperate.
But your worries that spectacularly failed attempts at British universities to impose Sharia-mandated segregation on non-Muslims somehow represents an even vaguely similar threat as the Caliphate does to those within its own borders…I mean, sure, the base motivations are the same, but the contexts are radically different. If you want to compare them in the sense of how we are all subject to the same fundamental psychological influences as revealed by Milgram and others and thus remain eternally vigilant, that’s one thing. As I noted in an earlier thread some time back, the Hijab mandate and Western indecency laws are cut from the same cloth, though the Hijab cut is much more unkind.
But, best I can tell, that’s not what you’re doing. You seem to be suggesting that Londoners face the same threats from domestic Muslims as Sunnis in Baghdad do from the Caliphate — or that they soon will if we don’t do something about it. If that’s the case, I simply have no clue where you think you’re getting that from, aside from shameless propaganda playing off blatant xenophobia. Yes, there are certainly Muslims in London who would love to impose Sharia on all of London — but do their wishes really carry any more weight than a child’s wish for a pony? You already pointed to some damned hard evidence (the failed attempt at segregation) that they do not.
Okay, lay it out for me. Present a credible argument for the threat the Caliphate poses to Londoners (since you used that example already).
Or, explain why the Caliphate poses a global threat (your language) using logic that wasn’t already tried and empirically disproven with respect to Communism. Remember, Communism was backed by both Russia and China; what power more super than them is backing Islam that can succeed where the Red Menace failed?
Or, propose some sort of action inside Iraq and / or Syria (presumably beyond the humanitarian aid I’ve already repeatedly encouraged) that you think is worthy of serious consideration but that doesn’t fall neatly into the same so-disastrous interventionist mold of Bush and Blair.
That’s where I see these disconnects. Everybody’s claiming that this time the boogie man is real, but it sure looks the same as the old Communist one to me. And everybody’s suggesting the exact same horrors to fight the new boogie man as not only didn’t work against the old one but created the new.
But somehow I’m the one being naive and short-sighted and delusional.
b&
Ben, if you write long enough comments you effectively eliminate serious response to it all. I advocate for brevity when possible. Which is most the time.
It is passing strange, if not surreal, to be accused of using “the exact same rhetoric” as the likes of Donald Rumsfeld. Having opposed most American military involvement since Vietnam, I don’t really have the patience for the black/white hyper-simplified view you are pushing.
This actual planet is well supplied with some very hazardous people and movements. Some are domestic theocrats. Some are fascisticly-inclined corporate interests. Some are fascisticly-inclined Islamists. You are free to pretend such hazards don’t exist. Rose glasses do tend to make the world look young.
The fact that you see all responses as being identical says it all. In a world of nice-nice, nobody would need any military. Nobody would need a police force. We don’t live in that world.
And yet, here you are, calling for military action with the same rhetoric hawks have used to call for military action since at least the days of the Roman Republic.
Yet, in your brevity, you neglected to indicate the actual threat that the Caliphate poses to Londoners, or the global threat the Caliphate represents, or what justifies your proposed military action that didn’t apply to Rumsfeld’s actual action.
Not that long ago, the Troubles in Ireland were a terrible domestic terrorist problem right on London’s doorstep, yet there was no need nor justification for airstrikes nor artillery fire on IRA positions. The Caliphate is 2500 miles away, with all of Europe, including a significant portion of the world’s modern military forces, between the two; all that separated the IRA from London was the Irish Sea and some lovely countryside.
Londoners personally experienced a real existential global threat half a century ago when Hitler’s buzz bombs rained down from above much like you’re presumably preposing we do to the Caliphate. What evidence do you have that the Caliphate will ever even have the theoretical potential to attain that level of military sophistication?
Let’s wave a magic wand and pretend they manage it. Are you unaware of the power of the British military? A single ship of the Royal Navy, the HMS Vanguard, could, in a matter of minutes, drop as many as forty-eight hundred-kiloton warheads anywhere in Iraq and Syria — and Britain has four such ships. Only the US has more aircraft carriers than Britain; between HMS Ocean and HMS Illustrious, those two ships alone likely represent more military might than the entire Caliphate can muster. And we’ve barely even started in on the Royal Navy, a mere half-dozen ships in the roster — let alone the rest of the UK’s military, let alone the rest of NATO, let alone the US, all of which would stand together in the event of a real military threat.
You keep harping on the desires and stated intentions of these madmen, yet you don’t even pretend to address how their fantasies align with reality. Again, would you call the SWAT team on schoolyard bullies?
So, permit me one more attempt to draw out of you a reason why we should, once again, bomb the living shit out of a bunch of brown people.
Which, in your opinion, represents the bigger threat: the Caliphate or North Korea? If the Caliphate, why do you expect me to take you seriously? After all, North Korea actually has nuclear weapons and a million soldiers on active duty with another eight million reservists, plus waaaaay more conventional weapons than the Caliphate will ever have. If North Korea, why are you clamoring for attacking the Caliphate instead?
b&
Ben. You should read more carefully. An actual conversation would ensue. I’m not interested in playing cardboard caricature for you.
“One of the main reasons France fell in WWII was the US’s refusal to arm the resistance in case the weapons ended up in the hands of the Germans.”
History major here. There was/were not a French resistance organization(s)until AFTER France fell. And as for weapons, prior to May, 1940, US companies were happy to sell arms to France after the US changed it’s policy on selling arms.
Furthermore, the French Army collapsed not because the US refused to sell arms to them but because of their incompetent strategy. They expected a repeat of the WW1 Schlieffen plan and sent all their armored units into Belgium, assuming that tanks couldn’t traverse the Ardennes. General Gudarian thought otherwise and was shown to be entirely correct and accurate. The German Panzers debouched from the Ardennes at Sedan, crossed the Meuse there, brushed aside the weak French forces stationed there and proceeded to drive onto to Dunkirk, cutting off the Franco/British forces in Belgium from the rest of the French army. It was only due to Frankenberger halting the advance for 24 hours that allowed the Franco/British forces in Belgium to beat the Germans to Dunkirk where they could be offloaded from the beaches and transported back to Britain. Otherwise, the Germans might have bagged the lot of them and pretty much ended the war in 1940.
Ok. I’ve read all the serious comments and I’m going to be silly. Am I the only one who thinks these stalwarts of the Caliphate sound like one giant game of Marco Polo?
Takbir!
Allahu Akbar!
Rinse
Repeat.
After reading Stephen Pinker “the better angels of our nature” the violent conflicts and conquests of history he has described throughout the book makes this campaign of the ‘juggernaut of arseholes’ (you might like to call them the caliphate/ IS) I just can’t..but a mere blimp in a continuous story.
His book documents the demise of millions upon millions to a incredible waste of lives pasted and sadly this is another page being written while we go about our lives.
I care not one molecule of thought for the history of religion insofar as to what land belongs to who, that is a black hole where no light escapes.
The ‘west’ can only do so much and we do but after that, it’s time and our resolve to soldier on as it were, is to my mind our best course of action.
Empirical science, courageous people showing and writing without bias, talking to each other, belittling the absurdities of man, have a laugh and remain diligent I think I owe and acknowledge them this for my relatively peaceful slice life.