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The War ISIS Wants

207 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

amelius 11y ago
I'm wondering how this all will affect the debate on online privacy and mass surveillance, since the threat is now coming from among us.
- simonh 11y ago
  A deliberate part of the Al Qaeda/ISIS strategy is to turn our security apparatus against our population and push us into becoming police states. They know that this is the natural, automatic response of governments on the one hand, and that it will make minimal difference to our ability to protect ourselves on the other, while manipulating us into a state of continual fear and paranoia.
- neuronic 11y ago
  Adding to this, has anybody else noticed just how much encryption is being mentioned in news articles and talk shows about Paris? In articles and discussions on TV it's always in a fear-mongering tone: "They communicated with encrypted messages!" I mean yes, that poses a problem. But the solution isn't to antagonize encryption. Should we all send our letters without envelopes? Why are people ready and willing to do that online and not offline when the same information is FAR more likely to be intercepted by crazy criminals? How much potential exposure does your data get via snail mail versus Internet transmission? Ignoring any sort of conspiracy theories I think despite the subtlety it is still blatantly obvious that politicians are immediately taking advantage of the situation, associating negativity (terrorism) with encryption. It is a VERY dangerous time because emotions of people can be swayed in any direction now. It is the same phenomenon observed when the Patriot Act was enacted. Discussions and discourse are discouraged because it isn't considered moral to talk about these things less than a week after these horrifying attacks. NOW is the time to stab the pro-encryption arguments right in the heart, charged with emotion, in a subtle and covert way.
blfr 11y ago
The fact that the EU’s replacement rate is 1.59 children per couple and the continent needs substantial levels of immigration to maintain a productive workforce The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is shoehorn enough to keep the economy going. Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong. If this was the case, the entire world would already look like Europe and there would be no waves of migration. It's also bizarrely narcissistic to think that ISIS care about how Europeans feel about Islam or how Muslims are treated since according to OP they will be replacing locals anyway.
- Amezarak 11y ago
  > Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong. Indeed. And there seems, to me, to be something nihilistic in the idea that Europeans should simply let immigrants replace them. Maybe instead, European nations should look into instituting domestic policies that encourage the population to maintain a healthy replacement rate. The article appears to be implying that Western nations should not make war against Daesh because "that's what they want." Well, the status quo of surveillance, arrests, and half-hearted airstrikes isn't stopping them. There seems something profoundly suciidally nihilistic in the idea that Europe should simply do nothing different and simply be more and more welcoming as attacks happen in an attempt to appease extremists until at last Europe is no longer populated by Europeans. On the timescale of centuries and millenia, it's amazing how little has changed in the past thousand years. This could be just another couple chapters in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Which, for those who don't know, covers mostly in later chapters the European nations and the various Muslim empires.)
  - simonh 11y ago
    >The article appears to be implying that Western nations should not make war against Daesh because "that's what they want."... I agree the article spends a lot of time implying what we shouldn't do and not much time at all saying what might make for effective policies, but it's hardly advocating Islamising Europe either. I took two things away from the article. One is that the kind of pretty much deliberate social and economic marginalization of Muslim minorities in France is a terrible mistake. You can have a pluralistic egalitarian society without insisting that everyone has to dress, talk and behave exactly like white western Europeans all the time. Having an Imperial legacy and historic connections with extensive regions of the wider world isn't compatible with being culturally allergic to anyone who looks or acts foreign. We in Europe need to build strong cultural bridges connecting us to the Muslim minorities in our midst that are now also Europeans and deserve respect and support. I may take flak for this, because it turns my stomach to imply that France has any responsibility for the recent attacks, but frankly the French state is not doing it's job. The second lesson is regarding our foreign policy in the Middle East. Keeping out of Syria and letting whatever happens just happen hasn't worked. The result has been a breeding ground for radicalization and chaos that has exacerbated the situation in Iraq, and lead to the biggest Refugee crisis Europe has seen since WW2. The Iraq war was awful and the political pressure to withdraw and 'bring the troops home' intense, but doing so was a horrible mistake. Once you're in, you're in for better or worse. We can't wash our hands of these conflicts and expect that the resulting mess will stay put and not affect us. As a corollary, I think that our consistent policy that none of the borders in the Middle east are up for negotiation is a mistake. If the Sunni, Shia and Kurd regions of Iraq want to be separate states, they should have the freedom to do so. Trying to insist that the Sunni minority had to stay welded to a larger hostile Shia population was just asking for unending trouble. Partition isn't always the right answer, but in some situations it needs to be an option.
kefka 11y ago
So, it seems that the only way to fight this was is to change their minds by asking assistance from the peaceful Muslim groups. We can discriminate Daesh and Muslims, and that only shows the monsters they say we are. We can bomb Daesh, which only encourages more to join their cause. Worst case, we can nuke the whole area of Iraq and Syria where Daesh has power, and that would only show every Muslim in the world that we are intolerant of Islam. This is a war of ideology, and that war cannot be fought with guns and bombs. It has to start from the ground, with 'militant moderate Muslims' willing to show people another way; one that does not involve in slavery, beheadings, suicide bombings, and crucifixion. Weaponry has its place to keep the borders of that state in its place, given that we know their religious orders are of limitless expansion and no regard for state boundaries.
- varjag 11y ago
  You underestimate the degree to which people of violence listen to the language of violence. The article suggests the military conquest is the key of Daesh attractiveness. But similarly, its military loss will be its demise. Lost territory and decimated ranks will make it a lot less exciting to the recruits. Harder wars have been fought and won before.
  - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
    I agree. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in Afghanistan, and the only thing that saved them was a sympathetic government next door in Pakistan, allowing them to regroup and rearm. The Americans, had they stayed, could have protected the democratic government until it was strong enough to stand on its own, but war weariness and impatience caused them to withdraw prematurely. This was not a sign of jihadist strength and resilience, just good luck. Interviews with some of the fighters suggested actually that they were tired of war as well.
  - maxharris 11y ago
    Daesh What do you think of this piece by Maajid Nawaz? Why Not Calling ISIS “Islamic” Hurts Muslim Reformers: http://jrbenjamin.com/2015/03/06/maajid-nawaz-why-not-calling-isis-islamic-hurts-muslim-reformers/ http://jrbenjamin.com/2015/03/06/maajid-nawaz-why-not-callin...
omginternets 11y ago
It's not that I disagree with the points brought up by this article (how could I! We've known these things to be true for years!), but I'm worried about the leap that people make, namely that military action isn't necessary. It's hard to imagine any effective strategy that doesn't involve killing people in Syria. It's disgusting, necessary, and -- I willingly admit -- not sufficient.
- acjohnson55 11y ago
  It's also hard to imagine how such killing doesn't simply fertilize the soil of radicalization.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    It's also hard to imagine how not killing doesn't facilitate the vile activities of daesh. I swear this is the late 1930's all over again. "Surely Herr Hitler will get tired of invading countries before he gets to France. Surely military action will only anger him more..."
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      ISIS and the NSDAP are not even close to being similar geopolitical entities.
      - csallen 11y ago
        The purpose of analogy is not to say that two things are similar in every way.
        vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        Except the two groups are starkly different in every way but irredentist and domineering ideology that the analogy is useless.
        11y ago
cheez 11y ago
> This is a strategy that has enabled it to confound far superior international forces Are superior entities typically confounded by inferior entities in high-stakes games? I ask this having been humbled myself thinking myself superior once upon a time. Or is it that the superior entities are pretending to be confounded to achieve domestic goals? If I were a megalomaniac, I know what I'd do.
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
The article is a nuanced view of the present situation, but doesn't go into the historical perspective. Contemporary radical Islam is a response to Western modernity and perceived decadence and has been brewing for decades if not centuries. It is an outgrowth of Salafi Islam, a severely literal interpretation of the Koran that has become widespread over the past 70 years thanks to trillions of petrodollars that fund thousands of fundamentalist madrassas and other cultural dissemination centers all over the world, including in the United States and Western Europe. It's important to note that ISIS, al Qaeda, al nusra etc. are Sunni movements and are bitterly opposed to Shi'ism. The rise of Shi'a political power, led by Iran since 1980, poses a huge ideological threat. What we're seeing today is a tiny group of very clever, highly motivated people, patiently watching for opportunities to sow chaos because they believe it will tip the scales eventually toward a Caliphate. They are hugely aided by technology and by the West's earnest desire to integrate the East. However, I believe the ISIS is doomed to failure. There are only so many young people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in other words, aren't that stupid. ISIS is siphoning off a certain kind of malcontents who make good fodder for the cannons, but history has shown that this approach is not sustainable. The Muslim world is already showing signs of backlash against the constant images of extreme violence, and reformists continue to call for tolerance and dialogue as the only true solution to territorial and ideological differences. Whether the Levant succumbs to unending civil war for the next few decades, or is ultimately dominated by a set of secular dictatorships that suppress the jihadists, or can they achieve peaceful multiplayer democracy--these are questions to which no one has the answers.
- thewarrior 11y ago
  Isn't it funny that Wahabbists hate being called that ? They get really agitated and say we're not Wahabbis we're just true muslims. One interesting theory I read is that 19th Century Islam was forced to confront the reality that they had declined while Europe had soared. In the ensuing conflict of ideas the one that won out was the thesis that the Islamic world had declined because they had gotten out of touch with the true values of Islam as practised by those at the time of the prophet. Hence Salafism - Literally a return to the time of the prophet. Francis Fukuyama was laughed at for claiming the end of history a few years ago as he believed Western Democracy had achieved an eternal triumph. What are we then to make of these people who believe that the end of history happened more than a thousand years ago ?
carlob 11y ago
My girlfriend taught in the Parisian banlieue for a year. In her experience most of what is said in this article is very much true. In this areas (which would correspond pretty much to inner cities in the US) the draw of radical Islam is very strong, starting with high school kids. After all what else is there to do? Deal drugs? On the other hand I would like to see this study that shows that increase in the level of education and occupation doesn't do much. I suspect the issue is more subtle: in that many immigrants coming from the former colonies of France don't really identify as French (even after a couple generations) and don't fully accept the so-called 'republican values'. The fact that many of Portuguese origin are converting to radical Islam seems to me as a further symptom that the power of Jihadism actually stems from socio-economical marginalization.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Many of the extremists have come from affluent homes, e.g. second generation Pakistanis with secular, professional parents living in comfortable London suburbs. Converts come from across the socio-economic spectrum.
- deleted 11y ago
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  - carlob 11y ago
    So are you saying that because some have made it marginalization is not a thing? Of course its causes are also cultural, that is exactly my point: we need to find cultural answers to this. Your argument smells a lot like the self-made-man American myth. Just because some have made it out of poverty, often in different conditions than these, doesn't mean we don't have to fight poverty because everyone who is smart enough will pull herself out of it by her bootstraps (and I'm not talking just about material poverty).
    - deleted 11y ago
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ck2 11y ago
TL;DR "ISIS" (or merely the concept of ISIS because it will be replaced by something worse when it is "defeated") wants to make the west attack muslims and islam itself so that muslims take their side and go to war for them, because they are only 30k right now and would love 300k or 3M Conclusively, most religion is moronic and extreme religion is extremely moronic. It's going to get much worse before it gets better and probably not better in our lifetimes or at least this decade. If Paris was horrible, imagine what they could do in the USA where guns are super easy to collect. They could wipe out entire malls in an afternoon.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  It depends on the mall, but the nearest 80s-style enclosed mall to me has quite a few vacancies in it. The parking lot has tumbleweeds blowing across it, and they don't even grow here. And on the other side of the equation, American cops are trigger happy, their SWAT-team-equivalents are swimming in drug war forfeiture slush, combined with military surplus purchase programs, and the citizenry itself has a decent quantity of concealed pistol carriers. Shooters on foot could kill a lot of people in that first 30 minutes, but after that, the easy targets are all gone, and the retaliation force is on its way to "arrest" your shooters. It doesn't take all afternoon to [opportunistically grab some unpaid merchandise and] scramble for the exits. Making Americans fear shopping malls is a tactical wrong move. We have already turned against them, mostly. You have to know the culture better. You have to make us fear our own cars and roads. If we stop driving on a daily basis, the whole country collapses. But with over 30k highway deaths per year occurring already, in the absence of any malice, that's a steep uphill battle. It'd be like putting additional poisons in a carton of tobacco cigarettes.
macspoofing 11y ago
... and they hope that this war results in the outcome they envision - which is some utopia that the Muslim world unites against the crusading threat and a caliphate is established? But they are human and they are perfectly fallible. And maybe force is necessary. In an ideal world, this is when a multi-national force under the UN banner is actually warranted. By the way this is the exact situation that American after 9/11 swore would never happen again - a safe haven for global terrorism to be planned and launched from. That one is on Obama, though with Iraq Bush made that option incredibly difficult.
- Borogravia 11y ago
  >That one is on Obama Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have actually made the world a safer place. Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish. The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.
  - enlightenedfool 11y ago
    So, are you saying that what Bush started is incorrigible? Perhaps not. If only the politicians have a will to take the right path. Obama clearly doesn't have it.
    - csours 11y ago
      See also: The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency. [1] This is not a get out of jail free card for inaction, but a reminder that just pushing an issue does not create positive action by itself. At this point any action that Obama takes will be resisted by US politicians, perhaps leading to a worse outcome than the status quo. 1. http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...
kbart 11y ago
"A July 2014 poll by ICM Research suggested that more than one in four French youth of all creeds between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have a favorable or very favorable opinion of ISIS. Even if these estimates are high, in our own interviews with young people in the vast and soulless housing projects of the Paris banlieues we found surprisingly wide tolerance or support for ISIS among young people" Despite these astonishing numbers, it still has nothing to do with religion, right? Downvote me to hell, but if a quarter of certain group openly supports mass-killers, I have a very serious reason to be afraid of them and avoid at all cost. EDIT: formatting
- vanderhosen 11y ago
  You seem to be ignoring the "all creeds" portion of that quote.
  - nightspirit 11y ago
    This is what you get following link in the article: An ICM poll on behalf of the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya tested the awareness of the group ISIS (previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), in three European nations; Great Britain, France and Germany. The poll revealed that overall 2% and 7% say they are very favourable and somewhat favourable towards ISIS but a greater 26% and 43% are somewhat unfavourable and very unfavourable towards ISIS. Not only they didn't break it down betwene religions, but I'm not even sure how NYT themselves extracted their "1/4 youths support ISIS" claim from this data. OTOH, have a look at this link originally posted by imaginenore in some other thread: http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf#page=60 http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-ameri...
    - return0 11y ago
      This is the poll they refer to, if you scroll down to the isis question, it's 27% among french 18-24. http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/New-EU-Comb.pdf http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/New-EU-Comb.pdf
endymi0n 11y ago
So if declaring war on ISIS is the wrong thing, what's the alternative? Giving in and taking terror for granted?
- danieldk 11y ago
  No. Recognize that the terrorists were from Europe. Recognize that integration, investing in suburbs, and improvement of basic living conditions has failed for decades. Then start solving these problems.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    People don't spray random other people with automatic weapons because of the marginal level of welfare benefits. The fact that you can even entertain that opinion is mind boggling.
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littletimmy 11y ago
Have you read George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf? I think it gets to the heart of why ISIS is so popular. "Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense, they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades... Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet." Replace Hitler with ISIS, and the point still stands. In fact, it is made even emotionally stronger now that it is religious. Is there an alternative? Can capitalist democracy provide any greater meaning in life?
- Spearchucker 11y ago
  The missing context of Orwell's review is what Hitler had on offer isn't what he sold. Hitler sold the promise of a better life for a then-struggling, repressed Germany. There is irony in that.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- ekianjo 11y ago
  > In fact, it is made even emotionally stronger now that it is religious. Is there an alternative? ISIS does not rely on free choice, it relies on brainwashing kids since from the get-go. That's really not the same.
- CrimsnBlade 11y ago
  Hitler was one of the greatest public speakers of his time. He didn't advertise how horrible things would be to the people of Germany, he promised them that he was going to perfect their country with a master race. The way he presented things and the outlook he gave are why people followed him, not because he promised them destruction.
jordanpg 11y ago
How could it be that there are people in the world who, on the one hand, post videos on YouTube, and on the other, believe things about the universe that are manifestly and self-evidently false? (Yes, I'm referring to all religions here.) Religion -- all religion -- is so obviously nonsense, and yet the human race goes on and on and on, having endless tortured discussions about the earthly consequences of religious tenets, with a straight face. How can we even begin to address these problems when all religious viewpoints are considered with an air of seriousness and profundity? On what ground do we (non-"holy warriors") stand when we say their viewpoint is wrong? None, so long as any religious viewpoint is taken seriously. There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible. Let us stop playing games and acknowledge that so long as grownups are considering religious viewpoints alongside secular ones when making important decisions, we will get absolutely nowhere.
- enlightenedfool 11y ago
  "There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible." That approach has proven to not work. Didn't you realize that the "religious people" would do the same to you? Their reality is different from yours.
  - jordanpg 11y ago
    Proven not to work by who? By what? The point is, "their reality" is manifestly, obviously wrong.
    - csours 11y ago
      So you have ferreted all the gods out of all the gaps in human knowledge? That is an amazing accomplishment! Bases for belief are weird, even when they are not based on religion. Many mentalities are based on absolutes, it seems you have replaced god with no-god. I don't think the anti-theist mindset is particularly useful. You cannot use facts to change someone's mind, especially where facts were not used in the first place. Religion is a largely emotional experience to most people; denying them that experience is just hurtful, not constructive.
graycat 11y ago
Interesting article. Here's why the ISIS plans won't work as the article describes how ISIS is planning: ISIS has basically five things going for them: (1) A lot of oil money, (2) a lot of desert no one wants to try to live in, (3) a lot of young men without much to do except live off the oil money, (4) a totally, world-class, grand-champion, one of a kind wacko leader -- calling that guy a wacko is an insult to all the ordinary wackos there have ever been, and (5) by far the most important of the 5, the humanitarian desire of the Western countries to avoid civilian casualties. But ISIS doesn't "avoid civilian casualties", and the Western countries have a very long and/or significant history of not avoiding civilian casualties. That is, still, now, if the West wants, then it can also quit avoiding civilian casualties. E.g., the US military fought hard and brilliantly, and took casualties and deaths, fighting in Fallujah, but there was a much faster, safer, cheaper, and easier way -- just level Fallujah from the air. The US could easily have done that in time from a day, an afternoon, an hour, or a millisecond -- literally. Why not? Avoid civilian casualties. Mean? ISIS mean? In the list of world class mean countries, if want to call ISIS a country, ISIS isn't mean. ISIS is crude, medieval, stupid. For world class mean, the all time, unique, unchallenged grand champion, and may I have the envelope, please, yes, here it is, the US. Way, way back in honorable mention is a four way tie -- Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist Russia, and Mao's China. Why US #1 on mean? The bomb, the atom bomb, used over Japan. Setting that aside, the B-29 and the fire bombing of Japanese cities. Setting that aside, the B-17 and the bombing of German cities including the fire storms where much of the civilian population was converted into burning torches -- shortest way to put it. Horror that can only be tolerated from 20,000 feet up or higher. The best thing those German people had going for them was that they could die only once and, on a night of a fire storm, hopefully, likely quickly. One of the worst horrors in the history of the planet. For more, and more recently, in a 6 week air campaign and a 100 hour ground campaign, General Schwarzkopf brought to unconditional surrender Saddam's army, the fourth largest army in the world, with 7 million men under arms. Mean? IIRC the US had more casualties (but not deaths) from recreation, e.g., softball, than from enemy action. Soon the Iraqi air force got the message that it was not smart to fly at all (US AWACS could see them and send in F-15s) so would fly just to get away, low, slow, and to ditch in Iran. Mean? General Schwarzkopf was asked what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the desert next to Saudi Arabia. The answer: "They are still there." Mean? When a US A-10 flew over the Iraqi troops, they rushed out with white flags. What one or a few A-10s did to the escaping Iraqi troops on the road from Kuwait City back to Iraq -- turned the whole crowded road into teeth, hair, eyes, blood, guts, big pieces made into small ones, and fires, all in just a few A-10 passes -- so shocked the world that Bush 41 rushed to stop such actions. The A-10 is one mean machine -- reduce really big pieces of metal to small ones in a few seconds. And the A-10 is long out of date -- the US has much meaner machines now. In Gulf War I, it went on this way, our tanks against theirs, our planes against theirs, and especially our F-117 stealth bomber against their radar and anti-aircraft artillery and missiles -- the F-117 flew through Saddam's exploding defenses, bright enough to light up the night sky, and literally never got even a single scratch. Why? The sky is a really big place; shooting blind gives really small chance of hitting anything; and against the F-117 Iraq was shooting blind. The F-117? From the Lockheed Skunk Works -- bright guys out there. We, here in the US, have GPS, surveillance satellites, smart bombs, cruise missiles, drones, the B-2, the F-22, the M1-A1 tank, aircraft carriers (so difficult to do well the US has about all there are in the world), submarines, both attack and missile firing, etc. Mean? The US is mean, unique, world-class mean. Net, without (5), that is, the determination of the US to avoid civilian casualties, the US could "wipe the desert clean" (from an Indiana Jones movie?) of ISIS in a day, much faster if we were in a hurry. E.g., all within about 30 minutes of the ISIS areas, several US SSBNs, each with about 16 missiles, each missile with several warheads, each warhead with, IIRC, ballpark 330 KT of exploding fusion energy. The US has been willing to kill enemy civilians in the past and can be again in the future. So far, the US is still being a nice guy -- we just blew up some ISIS oil trucks, but first we dropped leaflets telling the civilians to get out of the way. France? "They are a funny race", but they are no joke: Great wine, cheese, bread, food, really pretty, world class feminine young women, great art, and more. And, in pure and applied mathematics, both physical and medical science, philosophy, etc. France has a very long history of world-class excellence. Since WWII, some of the best mathematicians have been French -- e.g., Bourbaki. My favorite is J. Neveu. In technical excellence, the French are no joke. They are darned good at making both airplanes and working with nuclear materials, both the electricity generating kind and the exploding kind. Net, anytime France wants to be "merciless" to ISIS, France can wipe the desert clean of ISIS in an hour. France is a member of NATO. Maybe that old organization looks like a comedy act, but without firing a single serious shot it's kept the peace in Europe since 1945 or so. Other members include Germany and England and, of course, the US. Basically, ISIS attacked NATO; definitely a Darwin award on the way. As from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping tiger and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yup. If NATO were a country, then it would be by a wide margin the meanest in the solar system. ISIS can't make glass or matches but attacked NATO? Did I mention wacko? As soon as, as in no more than a day, the West is willing to kill ISIS civilians, there will be no more ISIS -- in the ISIS areas no more buildings, oil infrastructure, vehicles, tents, camels, flocks, or people. None. The desert wiped clean. The West has killed plenty of civilians before and can do it again, especially against an enemy eager to kill civilians. For me, IIRC ISIS has said that they intend to get a nuke bomb and explode it against the US. They would likely aim for Wall Street, and I'm just 70 miles north of there. They could hurt me. 'Nuff for me -- wipe the desert clean.
kaz1 11y ago
Anders Behring Breivik had a long manifesto that was meant to provide conceptual landscape behind his killing of 77 people. Unsurprising is the appearance of Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes et al. in there, but its remarkably instructive that the likes of the respected George Orwell are also cited. Part of his worldview (and not necessarily his course of action) is shared by a substantive part of the people coming from ethnic-European origin. Much of the less-than-graceful themes in the manifesto were from the doctrinal elements that contributed to the unprecedented carnage across Europe during the WWII, particularly symbolized by the horrific sufferings of the hapless humans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (There are similar aspects pertaining to the thoughts of Dylann Roof et.al). I wonder whether these affairs and the associated ideological terrains have been examined as widely and with as much interests. The recent horrific criminal acts in Paris have connections with France's colonial past with Algeria (https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-paris-massacre-and-zionism/ https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-pari...). And Daesh, the brutal group implicated, has its genesis in other brutalities, not unlike other similar affairs in the past (http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything...). In different settings with reduced level of invasions and imposed/incited sufferings, such as in Malaysia, things have remained at least as decent as any other.
liotier 11y ago
Want to know what ISIS is up to ? Just take it from their official magazine - it is right there, explicit. The strategy is called "The extinction of the gray zone" - it is about polarizing western society by eliciting islamophobia: "Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western land. [..] Eventually, the gray zone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls and movements. There will only be the camp of īmān versus the camp of kufr". So, if you want to counter ISIS influence in our society, you know what to do: love each other... Turning to epidermic identity politics won't help a bit. Even ISIS remarks that our "response is often violently reactionary instead of forward-thinking" - and that is just the way they want it. Source: http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-state-dabiq-magazine-issue-7-from-hypocrisy-to-apostasy.pdf http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-... - (WARNING: shocking images, including severed heads - on top of the shocking text)
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  Everybody should read this. I'm skimming through it, and I'm realizing how little I know about the complexity of Daeshi culture. I think many of us, whose extent of exposure to the subject is listening to and watching the news, have no idea what is actually happening, and are completely unaware of what life is within ISIS borders. This magazine is first hand information from inside the minds of ISIS members. Yes, it's a propaganda magazine, but how can we even being to try to understand ISIS without knowing what they believe, and what their media says?
- sjs382 11y ago
  The Intercept just posted an article about this, too: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/islamic-states-goal-eliminating-the-grayzone-of-coexistence-between-muslims-and-the-west/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/islamic-states-goal-elim...
- nickff 11y ago
  So you are proposing that the French should respond to having over a hundred of their fellow citizens killed, and hundreds more injured by loving the supporters and leaders of ISIS?
vlehto 11y ago
>To be effective, attacks should be launched against soft targets that cannot possibly be defended to any appreciable degree, leading to a debilitating security state: > "If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronize…is hit, all of the tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary amount, and a huge increase in spending." That is huge misunderstanding by the author. That is absolutely standard military tactic at least as old as Sun Tzu art of war. The idea is to force enemy to spend more money than you are spending. Security state is just meaningless side effect for ISIS point of view.
vlehto 11y ago
ISIS recruiting seems to live from making things black and white. I think the best course of actin would be to leave ISIS alone from military perspective. Then airdrop food, water and medical supplies to the area. Not discriminating between fighters and civilians. Smother them. Then give the civilians living in that area a way to voice their grievances. So that Muslim people in Egypt and France could feel sympathy for ordinary human beings trapped in that area. "How can you treat our fellow Muslims so bad?" Now ISIS should be busy stopping people from messaging the outer world. And stopping people from drinking filthy crusader water. They would have to spend their energy enforcing a totalitarian state. It's difficult for them to explain how there is holy war when the enemy is being so nice.
natvod 11y ago
Here's a very relevant article about how French youth get radicalized: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-france http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-franc... Major points: Unless you have the right connections, go to the right schools, have the right French names, it's very difficult to get a good job. Even more so if you come from banlieues. With no job prospects and isolation from mainstream society, some Muslim youths retreat to religion and out of those, some discover and/or led to radical ideologies. If you read the article, you'll see that there are some Muslims who are trying to rescue these youths. I feel this could be part of an actually solution. Since Muslim youth won't trust outsiders at all, the government can provide Muslim community leaders some resources to intervene in the lives of youths that are going down the wrong paths from crime to radicalization. Also, they can consider setting up programs for parents to identify the signs of radicalization and educate them about how to intervene and de-escalate. Apparently, a father of one of the Paris attackers even went all the way to Syria to persuade his son to come home. Even after offering him a plan where he didn't have to go to prison but could resettle in Algeria and try to rebuild his life, the son refused. After a certain point in the radicalization process, there seems to be a point of no return. Clearly, just bombing ISIS is not going to work when the majority of these terrorists lived in Europe.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
These people are looking for something that the western civilization is not giving them. For some, it's just to be treated like human beings rather than something less. But others are looking for something else. They look at the materialist view (where all we are is a collection of atoms created by random chance, obeying the laws of physics and biochemistry and neurology, and where it's very difficult to find any real (non-arbitrary) meaning in life), and they find it empty - empty in a way that more material prosperity won't fix. And they look at Christianity in Europe, and too often they find it to be dead - full of unreality and dust. Their cry is in essence the same as the hippies in the 1960s: "Your society isn't giving us adequate answers. It's not enough to satisfy our hearts."
throwaway_user 11y ago
I am a regular HN user and sometimes commentator. I am Muslim, both by background and choice. I am glad that HN is having a conversation a 100 times more serious and intellectual than I am seeing on popular Western and Muslim media. First of all Daesh are a bunch of psychopaths and a far greater threat and problem to people like me. Their every move has been against not just non-Muslims or moderate Muslims but also and even more so against mainstream and all major currents of Sunni Islam. If people are interested, I can provide specific sources to support this assertion. From the Muslim world side, we have a huge mess. I wanted to put in my two cents for Westerners trying to understand WTH is going on with the Muslim world. Basically, the Assad regime, nominally "secular, progressive" tyrants such as the Egyptian and Algerian militaries or Kurdish marxist armies, numerous "radical" Sunni and Shia groups have all been at fault since they could not agree on a set of principles on which disagreeing parties could come to peace. The long Iraqi civil war brutalised already damaged societies. This produced the sort of psychopaths such as Zarqawi and Baghdadi and numerous others. Also, even otherwise somewhat moderate Sunnis have been driven into ISIS's arms and somewhat moderate Nusayrites and Shi'ites have been driven into Ass'ads arms because they don't see another option. The biggest problem now is that while many people are disgusted by all this, there is so much blame to go around that one can be completely justified in blaming everyone else. So the problem is that people sympathetic to Assad (old-style socialists, Shi'ites etc.) sit there blaming the Saudis, Turks and the "West" for the supporting rebels who they say are all Daesh. On the other hand, Assad has killed and driven out many times more refugees than Daesh, and many Syrians and Sunnis find it hypocritical and self-serving to support Assad like Putin is doing while neglecting the plight of the Syrian population being hammered both from Assad and Daesh. The conspiracy theorist streak finds it easy to blame the US, without trying to eliminate the local actors who are instruments of said conspiracy, if they really believe there is one. Unless all sides are brave enough to not only fight for their principles but more importantly admit their own mistakes it is hard to fix this. But this requires some trust, which only gets harder to find the more precarious your own situation becomes.
benjaminmhaley 11y ago
It's an old strategy. I was reading Grimm's Fairy tales to my wife this morning and the brave little tailor used the same clever approach. * * * Leaping into the woods, he looked to the left and to the right. He soon saw the two giants. They were lying asleep under a tree, snoring until the branches bent up and down. The little tailor, not lazy, filled both pockets with stones and climbed the tree. Once in the middle of the tree, he slid out on a branch until he was seated right above the sleepers. Then he dropped one stone after another onto one of the giant's chest. For a long time the giant did not feel anything, but finally he woke up, shoved his companion, and said, "Why are you hitting me?" "You are dreaming," said the other one. "I am not hitting you." They fell asleep again, and the tailor threw a stone at the second one. "What is this?" said the other one. "Why are you throwing things at me?" "I am not throwing anything at you," answered the first one, grumbling. They quarreled for a while, but because they were tired, they made peace, and they both closed their eyes again. Then the little tailor began his game again. Choosing his largest stone, he threw it at the first giant with all his strength, hitting him in the chest. "That is too mean!" shouted the giant, then jumped up like a madman and pushed his companion against the tree, until it shook. The other one paid him back in kind, and they became so angry that they pulled up trees and struck at each other until finally, at the same time, they both fell to the ground dead. Then the little tailor jumped down. "It is fortunate," he said, "that they did not pull up the tree where I was sitting, or I would have had to jump into another one like a squirrel. But people like me are nimble." Drawing his sword, he gave each one a few good blows to the chest, then went back to the horsemen and said, "The work is done. I finished off both of them, but it was hard. * * * From The Brave Little Tailor by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

207 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

I'm wondering how this all will affect the debate on online privacy and mass surveillance, since the threat is now coming from among us.

simonh 11y ago
A deliberate part of the Al Qaeda/ISIS strategy is to turn our security apparatus against our population and push us into becoming police states. They know that this is the natural, automatic response of governments on the one hand, and that it will make minimal difference to our ability to protect ourselves on the other, while manipulating us into a state of continual fear and paranoia.
neuronic 11y ago
Adding to this, has anybody else noticed just how much encryption is being mentioned in news articles and talk shows about Paris? In articles and discussions on TV it's always in a fear-mongering tone: "They communicated with encrypted messages!" I mean yes, that poses a problem. But the solution isn't to antagonize encryption. Should we all send our letters without envelopes? Why are people ready and willing to do that online and not offline when the same information is FAR more likely to be intercepted by crazy criminals? How much potential exposure does your data get via snail mail versus Internet transmission? Ignoring any sort of conspiracy theories I think despite the subtlety it is still blatantly obvious that politicians are immediately taking advantage of the situation, associating negativity (terrorism) with encryption. It is a VERY dangerous time because emotions of people can be swayed in any direction now. It is the same phenomenon observed when the Patriot Act was enacted. Discussions and discourse are discouraged because it isn't considered moral to talk about these things less than a week after these horrifying attacks. NOW is the time to stab the pro-encryption arguments right in the heart, charged with emotion, in a subtle and covert way.

blfr 11y ago

The fact that the EU’s replacement rate is 1.59 children per couple and the continent needs substantial levels of immigration to maintain a productive workforce The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is shoehorn enough to keep the economy going. Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong. If this was the case, the entire world would already look like Europe and there would be no waves of migration. It's also bizarrely narcissistic to think that ISIS care about how Europeans feel about Islam or how Muslims are treated since according to OP they will be replacing locals anyway.

Amezarak 11y ago
> Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong. Indeed. And there seems, to me, to be something nihilistic in the idea that Europeans should simply let immigrants replace them. Maybe instead, European nations should look into instituting domestic policies that encourage the population to maintain a healthy replacement rate. The article appears to be implying that Western nations should not make war against Daesh because "that's what they want." Well, the status quo of surveillance, arrests, and half-hearted airstrikes isn't stopping them. There seems something profoundly suciidally nihilistic in the idea that Europe should simply do nothing different and simply be more and more welcoming as attacks happen in an attempt to appease extremists until at last Europe is no longer populated by Europeans. On the timescale of centuries and millenia, it's amazing how little has changed in the past thousand years. This could be just another couple chapters in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Which, for those who don't know, covers mostly in later chapters the European nations and the various Muslim empires.)
- simonh 11y ago
  >The article appears to be implying that Western nations should not make war against Daesh because "that's what they want."... I agree the article spends a lot of time implying what we shouldn't do and not much time at all saying what might make for effective policies, but it's hardly advocating Islamising Europe either. I took two things away from the article. One is that the kind of pretty much deliberate social and economic marginalization of Muslim minorities in France is a terrible mistake. You can have a pluralistic egalitarian society without insisting that everyone has to dress, talk and behave exactly like white western Europeans all the time. Having an Imperial legacy and historic connections with extensive regions of the wider world isn't compatible with being culturally allergic to anyone who looks or acts foreign. We in Europe need to build strong cultural bridges connecting us to the Muslim minorities in our midst that are now also Europeans and deserve respect and support. I may take flak for this, because it turns my stomach to imply that France has any responsibility for the recent attacks, but frankly the French state is not doing it's job. The second lesson is regarding our foreign policy in the Middle East. Keeping out of Syria and letting whatever happens just happen hasn't worked. The result has been a breeding ground for radicalization and chaos that has exacerbated the situation in Iraq, and lead to the biggest Refugee crisis Europe has seen since WW2. The Iraq war was awful and the political pressure to withdraw and 'bring the troops home' intense, but doing so was a horrible mistake. Once you're in, you're in for better or worse. We can't wash our hands of these conflicts and expect that the resulting mess will stay put and not affect us. As a corollary, I think that our consistent policy that none of the borders in the Middle east are up for negotiation is a mistake. If the Sunni, Shia and Kurd regions of Iraq want to be separate states, they should have the freedom to do so. Trying to insist that the Sunni minority had to stay welded to a larger hostile Shia population was just asking for unending trouble. Partition isn't always the right answer, but in some situations it needs to be an option.

kefka 11y ago

So, it seems that the only way to fight this was is to change their minds by asking assistance from the peaceful Muslim groups. We can discriminate Daesh and Muslims, and that only shows the monsters they say we are. We can bomb Daesh, which only encourages more to join their cause. Worst case, we can nuke the whole area of Iraq and Syria where Daesh has power, and that would only show every Muslim in the world that we are intolerant of Islam. This is a war of ideology, and that war cannot be fought with guns and bombs. It has to start from the ground, with 'militant moderate Muslims' willing to show people another way; one that does not involve in slavery, beheadings, suicide bombings, and crucifixion. Weaponry has its place to keep the borders of that state in its place, given that we know their religious orders are of limitless expansion and no regard for state boundaries.

varjag 11y ago
You underestimate the degree to which people of violence listen to the language of violence. The article suggests the military conquest is the key of Daesh attractiveness. But similarly, its military loss will be its demise. Lost territory and decimated ranks will make it a lot less exciting to the recruits. Harder wars have been fought and won before.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  I agree. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in Afghanistan, and the only thing that saved them was a sympathetic government next door in Pakistan, allowing them to regroup and rearm. The Americans, had they stayed, could have protected the democratic government until it was strong enough to stand on its own, but war weariness and impatience caused them to withdraw prematurely. This was not a sign of jihadist strength and resilience, just good luck. Interviews with some of the fighters suggested actually that they were tired of war as well.
- maxharris 11y ago
  Daesh What do you think of this piece by Maajid Nawaz? Why Not Calling ISIS “Islamic” Hurts Muslim Reformers: http://jrbenjamin.com/2015/03/06/maajid-nawaz-why-not-calling-isis-islamic-hurts-muslim-reformers/ http://jrbenjamin.com/2015/03/06/maajid-nawaz-why-not-callin...

omginternets 11y ago

It's not that I disagree with the points brought up by this article (how could I! We've known these things to be true for years!), but I'm worried about the leap that people make, namely that military action isn't necessary. It's hard to imagine any effective strategy that doesn't involve killing people in Syria. It's disgusting, necessary, and -- I willingly admit -- not sufficient.

acjohnson55 11y ago
It's also hard to imagine how such killing doesn't simply fertilize the soil of radicalization.
- omginternets 11y ago
  It's also hard to imagine how not killing doesn't facilitate the vile activities of daesh. I swear this is the late 1930's all over again. "Surely Herr Hitler will get tired of invading countries before he gets to France. Surely military action will only anger him more..."
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    ISIS and the NSDAP are not even close to being similar geopolitical entities.
    - csallen 11y ago
      The purpose of analogy is not to say that two things are similar in every way.
      - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        Except the two groups are starkly different in every way but irredentist and domineering ideology that the analogy is useless.
        11y ago

cheez 11y ago

> This is a strategy that has enabled it to confound far superior international forces Are superior entities typically confounded by inferior entities in high-stakes games? I ask this having been humbled myself thinking myself superior once upon a time. Or is it that the superior entities are pretending to be confounded to achieve domestic goals? If I were a megalomaniac, I know what I'd do.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

The article is a nuanced view of the present situation, but doesn't go into the historical perspective. Contemporary radical Islam is a response to Western modernity and perceived decadence and has been brewing for decades if not centuries. It is an outgrowth of Salafi Islam, a severely literal interpretation of the Koran that has become widespread over the past 70 years thanks to trillions of petrodollars that fund thousands of fundamentalist madrassas and other cultural dissemination centers all over the world, including in the United States and Western Europe. It's important to note that ISIS, al Qaeda, al nusra etc. are Sunni movements and are bitterly opposed to Shi'ism. The rise of Shi'a political power, led by Iran since 1980, poses a huge ideological threat. What we're seeing today is a tiny group of very clever, highly motivated people, patiently watching for opportunities to sow chaos because they believe it will tip the scales eventually toward a Caliphate. They are hugely aided by technology and by the West's earnest desire to integrate the East. However, I believe the ISIS is doomed to failure. There are only so many young people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in other words, aren't that stupid. ISIS is siphoning off a certain kind of malcontents who make good fodder for the cannons, but history has shown that this approach is not sustainable. The Muslim world is already showing signs of backlash against the constant images of extreme violence, and reformists continue to call for tolerance and dialogue as the only true solution to territorial and ideological differences. Whether the Levant succumbs to unending civil war for the next few decades, or is ultimately dominated by a set of secular dictatorships that suppress the jihadists, or can they achieve peaceful multiplayer democracy--these are questions to which no one has the answers.

thewarrior 11y ago
Isn't it funny that Wahabbists hate being called that ? They get really agitated and say we're not Wahabbis we're just true muslims. One interesting theory I read is that 19th Century Islam was forced to confront the reality that they had declined while Europe had soared. In the ensuing conflict of ideas the one that won out was the thesis that the Islamic world had declined because they had gotten out of touch with the true values of Islam as practised by those at the time of the prophet. Hence Salafism - Literally a return to the time of the prophet. Francis Fukuyama was laughed at for claiming the end of history a few years ago as he believed Western Democracy had achieved an eternal triumph. What are we then to make of these people who believe that the end of history happened more than a thousand years ago ?

carlob 11y ago

My girlfriend taught in the Parisian banlieue for a year. In her experience most of what is said in this article is very much true. In this areas (which would correspond pretty much to inner cities in the US) the draw of radical Islam is very strong, starting with high school kids. After all what else is there to do? Deal drugs? On the other hand I would like to see this study that shows that increase in the level of education and occupation doesn't do much. I suspect the issue is more subtle: in that many immigrants coming from the former colonies of France don't really identify as French (even after a couple generations) and don't fully accept the so-called 'republican values'. The fact that many of Portuguese origin are converting to radical Islam seems to me as a further symptom that the power of Jihadism actually stems from socio-economical marginalization.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Many of the extremists have come from affluent homes, e.g. second generation Pakistanis with secular, professional parents living in comfortable London suburbs. Converts come from across the socio-economic spectrum.
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- carlob 11y ago
  So are you saying that because some have made it marginalization is not a thing? Of course its causes are also cultural, that is exactly my point: we need to find cultural answers to this. Your argument smells a lot like the self-made-man American myth. Just because some have made it out of poverty, often in different conditions than these, doesn't mean we don't have to fight poverty because everyone who is smart enough will pull herself out of it by her bootstraps (and I'm not talking just about material poverty).
  - deleted 11y ago
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ck2 11y ago

TL;DR "ISIS" (or merely the concept of ISIS because it will be replaced by something worse when it is "defeated") wants to make the west attack muslims and islam itself so that muslims take their side and go to war for them, because they are only 30k right now and would love 300k or 3M Conclusively, most religion is moronic and extreme religion is extremely moronic. It's going to get much worse before it gets better and probably not better in our lifetimes or at least this decade. If Paris was horrible, imagine what they could do in the USA where guns are super easy to collect. They could wipe out entire malls in an afternoon.

logfromblammo 11y ago
It depends on the mall, but the nearest 80s-style enclosed mall to me has quite a few vacancies in it. The parking lot has tumbleweeds blowing across it, and they don't even grow here. And on the other side of the equation, American cops are trigger happy, their SWAT-team-equivalents are swimming in drug war forfeiture slush, combined with military surplus purchase programs, and the citizenry itself has a decent quantity of concealed pistol carriers. Shooters on foot could kill a lot of people in that first 30 minutes, but after that, the easy targets are all gone, and the retaliation force is on its way to "arrest" your shooters. It doesn't take all afternoon to [opportunistically grab some unpaid merchandise and] scramble for the exits. Making Americans fear shopping malls is a tactical wrong move. We have already turned against them, mostly. You have to know the culture better. You have to make us fear our own cars and roads. If we stop driving on a daily basis, the whole country collapses. But with over 30k highway deaths per year occurring already, in the absence of any malice, that's a steep uphill battle. It'd be like putting additional poisons in a carton of tobacco cigarettes.

macspoofing 11y ago

... and they hope that this war results in the outcome they envision - which is some utopia that the Muslim world unites against the crusading threat and a caliphate is established? But they are human and they are perfectly fallible. And maybe force is necessary. In an ideal world, this is when a multi-national force under the UN banner is actually warranted. By the way this is the exact situation that American after 9/11 swore would never happen again - a safe haven for global terrorism to be planned and launched from. That one is on Obama, though with Iraq Bush made that option incredibly difficult.

Borogravia 11y ago
>That one is on Obama Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have actually made the world a safer place. Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish. The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.
- enlightenedfool 11y ago
  So, are you saying that what Bush started is incorrigible? Perhaps not. If only the politicians have a will to take the right path. Obama clearly doesn't have it.
  - csours 11y ago
    See also: The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency. [1] This is not a get out of jail free card for inaction, but a reminder that just pushing an issue does not create positive action by itself. At this point any action that Obama takes will be resisted by US politicians, perhaps leading to a worse outcome than the status quo. 1. http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theor...

kbart 11y ago

"A July 2014 poll by ICM Research suggested that more than one in four French youth of all creeds between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have a favorable or very favorable opinion of ISIS. Even if these estimates are high, in our own interviews with young people in the vast and soulless housing projects of the Paris banlieues we found surprisingly wide tolerance or support for ISIS among young people" Despite these astonishing numbers, it still has nothing to do with religion, right? Downvote me to hell, but if a quarter of certain group openly supports mass-killers, I have a very serious reason to be afraid of them and avoid at all cost. EDIT: formatting

vanderhosen 11y ago
You seem to be ignoring the "all creeds" portion of that quote.
- nightspirit 11y ago
  This is what you get following link in the article: An ICM poll on behalf of the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya tested the awareness of the group ISIS (previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), in three European nations; Great Britain, France and Germany. The poll revealed that overall 2% and 7% say they are very favourable and somewhat favourable towards ISIS but a greater 26% and 43% are somewhat unfavourable and very unfavourable towards ISIS. Not only they didn't break it down betwene religions, but I'm not even sure how NYT themselves extracted their "1/4 youths support ISIS" claim from this data. OTOH, have a look at this link originally posted by imaginenore in some other thread: http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf#page=60 http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-ameri...
  - return0 11y ago
    This is the poll they refer to, if you scroll down to the isis question, it's 27% among french 18-24. http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/New-EU-Comb.pdf http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/New-EU-Comb.pdf

endymi0n 11y ago

So if declaring war on ISIS is the wrong thing, what's the alternative? Giving in and taking terror for granted?

danieldk 11y ago
No. Recognize that the terrorists were from Europe. Recognize that integration, investing in suburbs, and improvement of basic living conditions has failed for decades. Then start solving these problems.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  People don't spray random other people with automatic weapons because of the marginal level of welfare benefits. The fact that you can even entertain that opinion is mind boggling.

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littletimmy 11y ago

Have you read George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf? I think it gets to the heart of why ISIS is so popular. "Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense, they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades... Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet." Replace Hitler with ISIS, and the point still stands. In fact, it is made even emotionally stronger now that it is religious. Is there an alternative? Can capitalist democracy provide any greater meaning in life?

Spearchucker 11y ago
The missing context of Orwell's review is what Hitler had on offer isn't what he sold. Hitler sold the promise of a better life for a then-struggling, repressed Germany. There is irony in that.
- deleted 11y ago
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ekianjo 11y ago
> In fact, it is made even emotionally stronger now that it is religious. Is there an alternative? ISIS does not rely on free choice, it relies on brainwashing kids since from the get-go. That's really not the same.
CrimsnBlade 11y ago
Hitler was one of the greatest public speakers of his time. He didn't advertise how horrible things would be to the people of Germany, he promised them that he was going to perfect their country with a master race. The way he presented things and the outlook he gave are why people followed him, not because he promised them destruction.

jordanpg 11y ago

How could it be that there are people in the world who, on the one hand, post videos on YouTube, and on the other, believe things about the universe that are manifestly and self-evidently false? (Yes, I'm referring to all religions here.) Religion -- all religion -- is so obviously nonsense, and yet the human race goes on and on and on, having endless tortured discussions about the earthly consequences of religious tenets, with a straight face. How can we even begin to address these problems when all religious viewpoints are considered with an air of seriousness and profundity? On what ground do we (non-"holy warriors") stand when we say their viewpoint is wrong? None, so long as any religious viewpoint is taken seriously. There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible. Let us stop playing games and acknowledge that so long as grownups are considering religious viewpoints alongside secular ones when making important decisions, we will get absolutely nowhere.

enlightenedfool 11y ago
"There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible." That approach has proven to not work. Didn't you realize that the "religious people" would do the same to you? Their reality is different from yours.
- jordanpg 11y ago
  Proven not to work by who? By what? The point is, "their reality" is manifestly, obviously wrong.
  - csours 11y ago
    So you have ferreted all the gods out of all the gaps in human knowledge? That is an amazing accomplishment! Bases for belief are weird, even when they are not based on religion. Many mentalities are based on absolutes, it seems you have replaced god with no-god. I don't think the anti-theist mindset is particularly useful. You cannot use facts to change someone's mind, especially where facts were not used in the first place. Religion is a largely emotional experience to most people; denying them that experience is just hurtful, not constructive.

graycat 11y ago

Interesting article. Here's why the ISIS plans won't work as the article describes how ISIS is planning: ISIS has basically five things going for them: (1) A lot of oil money, (2) a lot of desert no one wants to try to live in, (3) a lot of young men without much to do except live off the oil money, (4) a totally, world-class, grand-champion, one of a kind wacko leader -- calling that guy a wacko is an insult to all the ordinary wackos there have ever been, and (5) by far the most important of the 5, the humanitarian desire of the Western countries to avoid civilian casualties. But ISIS doesn't "avoid civilian casualties", and the Western countries have a very long and/or significant history of not avoiding civilian casualties. That is, still, now, if the West wants, then it can also quit avoiding civilian casualties. E.g., the US military fought hard and brilliantly, and took casualties and deaths, fighting in Fallujah, but there was a much faster, safer, cheaper, and easier way -- just level Fallujah from the air. The US could easily have done that in time from a day, an afternoon, an hour, or a millisecond -- literally. Why not? Avoid civilian casualties. Mean? ISIS mean? In the list of world class mean countries, if want to call ISIS a country, ISIS isn't mean. ISIS is crude, medieval, stupid. For world class mean, the all time, unique, unchallenged grand champion, and may I have the envelope, please, yes, here it is, the US. Way, way back in honorable mention is a four way tie -- Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist Russia, and Mao's China. Why US #1 on mean? The bomb, the atom bomb, used over Japan. Setting that aside, the B-29 and the fire bombing of Japanese cities. Setting that aside, the B-17 and the bombing of German cities including the fire storms where much of the civilian population was converted into burning torches -- shortest way to put it. Horror that can only be tolerated from 20,000 feet up or higher. The best thing those German people had going for them was that they could die only once and, on a night of a fire storm, hopefully, likely quickly. One of the worst horrors in the history of the planet. For more, and more recently, in a 6 week air campaign and a 100 hour ground campaign, General Schwarzkopf brought to unconditional surrender Saddam's army, the fourth largest army in the world, with 7 million men under arms. Mean? IIRC the US had more casualties (but not deaths) from recreation, e.g., softball, than from enemy action. Soon the Iraqi air force got the message that it was not smart to fly at all (US AWACS could see them and send in F-15s) so would fly just to get away, low, slow, and to ditch in Iran. Mean? General Schwarzkopf was asked what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the desert next to Saudi Arabia. The answer: "They are still there." Mean? When a US A-10 flew over the Iraqi troops, they rushed out with white flags. What one or a few A-10s did to the escaping Iraqi troops on the road from Kuwait City back to Iraq -- turned the whole crowded road into teeth, hair, eyes, blood, guts, big pieces made into small ones, and fires, all in just a few A-10 passes -- so shocked the world that Bush 41 rushed to stop such actions. The A-10 is one mean machine -- reduce really big pieces of metal to small ones in a few seconds. And the A-10 is long out of date -- the US has much meaner machines now. In Gulf War I, it went on this way, our tanks against theirs, our planes against theirs, and especially our F-117 stealth bomber against their radar and anti-aircraft artillery and missiles -- the F-117 flew through Saddam's exploding defenses, bright enough to light up the night sky, and literally never got even a single scratch. Why? The sky is a really big place; shooting blind gives really small chance of hitting anything; and against the F-117 Iraq was shooting blind. The F-117? From the Lockheed Skunk Works -- bright guys out there. We, here in the US, have GPS, surveillance satellites, smart bombs, cruise missiles, drones, the B-2, the F-22, the M1-A1 tank, aircraft carriers (so difficult to do well the US has about all there are in the world), submarines, both attack and missile firing, etc. Mean? The US is mean, unique, world-class mean. Net, without (5), that is, the determination of the US to avoid civilian casualties, the US could "wipe the desert clean" (from an Indiana Jones movie?) of ISIS in a day, much faster if we were in a hurry. E.g., all within about 30 minutes of the ISIS areas, several US SSBNs, each with about 16 missiles, each missile with several warheads, each warhead with, IIRC, ballpark 330 KT of exploding fusion energy. The US has been willing to kill enemy civilians in the past and can be again in the future. So far, the US is still being a nice guy -- we just blew up some ISIS oil trucks, but first we dropped leaflets telling the civilians to get out of the way. France? "They are a funny race", but they are no joke: Great wine, cheese, bread, food, really pretty, world class feminine young women, great art, and more. And, in pure and applied mathematics, both physical and medical science, philosophy, etc. France has a very long history of world-class excellence. Since WWII, some of the best mathematicians have been French -- e.g., Bourbaki. My favorite is J. Neveu. In technical excellence, the French are no joke. They are darned good at making both airplanes and working with nuclear materials, both the electricity generating kind and the exploding kind. Net, anytime France wants to be "merciless" to ISIS, France can wipe the desert clean of ISIS in an hour. France is a member of NATO. Maybe that old organization looks like a comedy act, but without firing a single serious shot it's kept the peace in Europe since 1945 or so. Other members include Germany and England and, of course, the US. Basically, ISIS attacked NATO; definitely a Darwin award on the way. As from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping tiger and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yup. If NATO were a country, then it would be by a wide margin the meanest in the solar system. ISIS can't make glass or matches but attacked NATO? Did I mention wacko? As soon as, as in no more than a day, the West is willing to kill ISIS civilians, there will be no more ISIS -- in the ISIS areas no more buildings, oil infrastructure, vehicles, tents, camels, flocks, or people. None. The desert wiped clean. The West has killed plenty of civilians before and can do it again, especially against an enemy eager to kill civilians. For me, IIRC ISIS has said that they intend to get a nuke bomb and explode it against the US. They would likely aim for Wall Street, and I'm just 70 miles north of there. They could hurt me. 'Nuff for me -- wipe the desert clean.

kaz1 11y ago

Anders Behring Breivik had a long manifesto that was meant to provide conceptual landscape behind his killing of 77 people. Unsurprising is the appearance of Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes et al. in there, but its remarkably instructive that the likes of the respected George Orwell are also cited. Part of his worldview (and not necessarily his course of action) is shared by a substantive part of the people coming from ethnic-European origin. Much of the less-than-graceful themes in the manifesto were from the doctrinal elements that contributed to the unprecedented carnage across Europe during the WWII, particularly symbolized by the horrific sufferings of the hapless humans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (There are similar aspects pertaining to the thoughts of Dylann Roof et.al). I wonder whether these affairs and the associated ideological terrains have been examined as widely and with as much interests. The recent horrific criminal acts in Paris have connections with France's colonial past with Algeria (https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-paris-massacre-and-zionism/ https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-pari...). And Daesh, the brutal group implicated, has its genesis in other brutalities, not unlike other similar affairs in the past (http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything...). In different settings with reduced level of invasions and imposed/incited sufferings, such as in Malaysia, things have remained at least as decent as any other.

liotier 11y ago

Want to know what ISIS is up to ? Just take it from their official magazine - it is right there, explicit. The strategy is called "The extinction of the gray zone" - it is about polarizing western society by eliciting islamophobia: "Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western land. [..] Eventually, the gray zone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls and movements. There will only be the camp of īmān versus the camp of kufr". So, if you want to counter ISIS influence in our society, you know what to do: love each other... Turning to epidermic identity politics won't help a bit. Even ISIS remarks that our "response is often violently reactionary instead of forward-thinking" - and that is just the way they want it. Source: http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-state-dabiq-magazine-issue-7-from-hypocrisy-to-apostasy.pdf http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-... - (WARNING: shocking images, including severed heads - on top of the shocking text)

LesZedCB 11y ago
Everybody should read this. I'm skimming through it, and I'm realizing how little I know about the complexity of Daeshi culture. I think many of us, whose extent of exposure to the subject is listening to and watching the news, have no idea what is actually happening, and are completely unaware of what life is within ISIS borders. This magazine is first hand information from inside the minds of ISIS members. Yes, it's a propaganda magazine, but how can we even being to try to understand ISIS without knowing what they believe, and what their media says?
sjs382 11y ago
The Intercept just posted an article about this, too: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/islamic-states-goal-eliminating-the-grayzone-of-coexistence-between-muslims-and-the-west/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/islamic-states-goal-elim...
nickff 11y ago
So you are proposing that the French should respond to having over a hundred of their fellow citizens killed, and hundreds more injured by loving the supporters and leaders of ISIS?

vlehto 11y ago

>To be effective, attacks should be launched against soft targets that cannot possibly be defended to any appreciable degree, leading to a debilitating security state: > "If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronize…is hit, all of the tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary amount, and a huge increase in spending." That is huge misunderstanding by the author. That is absolutely standard military tactic at least as old as Sun Tzu art of war. The idea is to force enemy to spend more money than you are spending. Security state is just meaningless side effect for ISIS point of view.

vlehto 11y ago

ISIS recruiting seems to live from making things black and white. I think the best course of actin would be to leave ISIS alone from military perspective. Then airdrop food, water and medical supplies to the area. Not discriminating between fighters and civilians. Smother them. Then give the civilians living in that area a way to voice their grievances. So that Muslim people in Egypt and France could feel sympathy for ordinary human beings trapped in that area. "How can you treat our fellow Muslims so bad?" Now ISIS should be busy stopping people from messaging the outer world. And stopping people from drinking filthy crusader water. They would have to spend their energy enforcing a totalitarian state. It's difficult for them to explain how there is holy war when the enemy is being so nice.

natvod 11y ago

Here's a very relevant article about how French youth get radicalized: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-france http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-franc... Major points: Unless you have the right connections, go to the right schools, have the right French names, it's very difficult to get a good job. Even more so if you come from banlieues. With no job prospects and isolation from mainstream society, some Muslim youths retreat to religion and out of those, some discover and/or led to radical ideologies. If you read the article, you'll see that there are some Muslims who are trying to rescue these youths. I feel this could be part of an actually solution. Since Muslim youth won't trust outsiders at all, the government can provide Muslim community leaders some resources to intervene in the lives of youths that are going down the wrong paths from crime to radicalization. Also, they can consider setting up programs for parents to identify the signs of radicalization and educate them about how to intervene and de-escalate. Apparently, a father of one of the Paris attackers even went all the way to Syria to persuade his son to come home. Even after offering him a plan where he didn't have to go to prison but could resettle in Algeria and try to rebuild his life, the son refused. After a certain point in the radicalization process, there seems to be a point of no return. Clearly, just bombing ISIS is not going to work when the majority of these terrorists lived in Europe.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

These people are looking for something that the western civilization is not giving them. For some, it's just to be treated like human beings rather than something less. But others are looking for something else. They look at the materialist view (where all we are is a collection of atoms created by random chance, obeying the laws of physics and biochemistry and neurology, and where it's very difficult to find any real (non-arbitrary) meaning in life), and they find it empty - empty in a way that more material prosperity won't fix. And they look at Christianity in Europe, and too often they find it to be dead - full of unreality and dust. Their cry is in essence the same as the hippies in the 1960s: "Your society isn't giving us adequate answers. It's not enough to satisfy our hearts."

throwaway_user 11y ago

I am a regular HN user and sometimes commentator. I am Muslim, both by background and choice. I am glad that HN is having a conversation a 100 times more serious and intellectual than I am seeing on popular Western and Muslim media. First of all Daesh are a bunch of psychopaths and a far greater threat and problem to people like me. Their every move has been against not just non-Muslims or moderate Muslims but also and even more so against mainstream and all major currents of Sunni Islam. If people are interested, I can provide specific sources to support this assertion. From the Muslim world side, we have a huge mess. I wanted to put in my two cents for Westerners trying to understand WTH is going on with the Muslim world. Basically, the Assad regime, nominally "secular, progressive" tyrants such as the Egyptian and Algerian militaries or Kurdish marxist armies, numerous "radical" Sunni and Shia groups have all been at fault since they could not agree on a set of principles on which disagreeing parties could come to peace. The long Iraqi civil war brutalised already damaged societies. This produced the sort of psychopaths such as Zarqawi and Baghdadi and numerous others. Also, even otherwise somewhat moderate Sunnis have been driven into ISIS's arms and somewhat moderate Nusayrites and Shi'ites have been driven into Ass'ads arms because they don't see another option. The biggest problem now is that while many people are disgusted by all this, there is so much blame to go around that one can be completely justified in blaming everyone else. So the problem is that people sympathetic to Assad (old-style socialists, Shi'ites etc.) sit there blaming the Saudis, Turks and the "West" for the supporting rebels who they say are all Daesh. On the other hand, Assad has killed and driven out many times more refugees than Daesh, and many Syrians and Sunnis find it hypocritical and self-serving to support Assad like Putin is doing while neglecting the plight of the Syrian population being hammered both from Assad and Daesh. The conspiracy theorist streak finds it easy to blame the US, without trying to eliminate the local actors who are instruments of said conspiracy, if they really believe there is one. Unless all sides are brave enough to not only fight for their principles but more importantly admit their own mistakes it is hard to fix this. But this requires some trust, which only gets harder to find the more precarious your own situation becomes.

benjaminmhaley 11y ago

It's an old strategy. I was reading Grimm's Fairy tales to my wife this morning and the brave little tailor used the same clever approach. * * * Leaping into the woods, he looked to the left and to the right. He soon saw the two giants. They were lying asleep under a tree, snoring until the branches bent up and down. The little tailor, not lazy, filled both pockets with stones and climbed the tree. Once in the middle of the tree, he slid out on a branch until he was seated right above the sleepers. Then he dropped one stone after another onto one of the giant's chest. For a long time the giant did not feel anything, but finally he woke up, shoved his companion, and said, "Why are you hitting me?" "You are dreaming," said the other one. "I am not hitting you." They fell asleep again, and the tailor threw a stone at the second one. "What is this?" said the other one. "Why are you throwing things at me?" "I am not throwing anything at you," answered the first one, grumbling. They quarreled for a while, but because they were tired, they made peace, and they both closed their eyes again. Then the little tailor began his game again. Choosing his largest stone, he threw it at the first giant with all his strength, hitting him in the chest. "That is too mean!" shouted the giant, then jumped up like a madman and pushed his companion against the tree, until it shook. The other one paid him back in kind, and they became so angry that they pulled up trees and struck at each other until finally, at the same time, they both fell to the ground dead. Then the little tailor jumped down. "It is fortunate," he said, "that they did not pull up the tree where I was sitting, or I would have had to jump into another one like a squirrel. But people like me are nimble." Drawing his sword, he gave each one a few good blows to the chest, then went back to the horsemen and said, "The work is done. I finished off both of them, but it was hard. * * * From The Brave Little Tailor by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm