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There was an article posted here a few weeks ago, written by a man who was held captive by ISIS for a long time. He said that he learned their ultimate goal has

There was an article posted here a few weeks ago, written by a man who was held captive by ISIS for a long time. He said that he learned their ultimate goal has nothing to do with our culture or freedom. They believe armageddon is coming, that it is literaly going to be a big battle in a particular town in Syria near the Turkish border, and that the West is the enemy (descendants of the Roman empire) that their Moslem army must defeat. The terrorist acts are intended to force this battle to commence, which they are confident they will win. If they really believe this, I'm stunned at how oblivious they are. If an all-out battle really took place, they wouldn't face an army. They'd face an airforce that'd be a lot more aggressive than the one they're currently facing. The US and Russia could turn Syria into a sheet of radioactive glass if they wanted to / had to in order to "win armageddon". The only reason ISIS is able to continue to exist is because of our tolerance and compassion.

vixen99 11y ago
This view has also been put forward by Bernard Haykel who appears to be regarded as a notable secular authority on Islamic State. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Haykel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Haykel "What ISIS Really Wants" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...
ameen 11y ago
Or Indifference? IS never really threatened U.S. or Western interests, the Paris attacks were the first time they reached so far. They (along with the Syrian regime) have been butchering Syrians by the thousands. Btw, the Daesh captive was Nicolas Henin, and he's actively campaigning against airstrikes [1] as that's exactly playing into their sick plans. And he speaks that they're deluded enough to think they'll find support despite their inhumane acts. Muslims despise Daesh, heck the orthodox the individual their hatred for these individuals deepens.[2] [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/nicolas-henin-video-isis-syria-strikes http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/nicolas-henin-v... [2] Source: My family and friends, I'm a Muslim born in the holy city of Makkah, no one I know doesn't actively despise Daesh and their kind. Most of us identify more with western values.
- mahouse 11y ago
  Do literally all Muslims despise the IS? After thousands of Turkish football fans starting chanting "allahu akbar" during the minute of silence for the Paris attacks, I would not agree. Who are the Muslims that support the IS?
  - tajen 11y ago
    I am (white, Christian) French. I don't support the "minute" of silence. It means there is a full range of opinions which lead one to not recognizing the minute of silence. I'll detail my opinion for an example, but many other opinions must be respected too. 1. We don't do a minute of silence for 300 ppl per month who die in car accidents. Nor for 200 per fortnight for passive second hand smoking. The characteristics are the same: They're innocent, they're taken away suddenly in atrocious conditions, and they're taken at random. 2. A minute of silence, whether you like it or not, is a political gesture. The more we do a minute of silence, the less there will be opposition to repressive actions by the gouvernent. Look: the law says the Etat d'Urgence is limited to 15 days, they've extended it to 3 months and they want to extend it to a Permanent Etat d'Urgence. 3. We don't listen to terrorists. They may be protesting against very legitimate things with a very similar number of crimes. As a citizen of the occident, I am collectively responsible for Guantanamo and Irak and Palestine and all wars that have destroyed the future of youngsters in those countries. Who's to say I should do a minute of silence for the French and not for the Palestinians or Iraqis who have been subjected to torture? 4. A minute of silence will encourage France to perform war. Terrorism cannot be won with war. We're just destroying someone's land in a country where I don't know the cultural situation. 100% sure we are creating tomorrow's terrorists. 5. Those terrorists? They were born in France. It's a failure of our social system. We are racist, we don't give them enough future economically. I once was an Australian immigrant: When there's huge bucks to be made, there's no time for subversion. 6. France is in economic dismay. Hence the difficulty of the youth to earn enough for an optimistic living. Hence please don't send an aircraft carrier, we're digging our debt, if not or grave. With two billions, let's hire teachers and lower our taxes on wages so we can get more jobs. 7. Let's not give the terrorists what they wanted: Everyone is impressed by the violence, so during the next 10 years well start to think it's normal that all concert halls have to have x-more entrances. Those will have a huge cost on culture. We'll say it's normal to implement stringent security measures, without looking at the cost. I bet people will even use it as an excuse for everything: "Because of security measure, you are required to ditch your bottle of water, pay per card, hire the official coach instead of walking there, ...". A minute of silence today, and during 15 years any objection to everyday security will be frowned upon. I don't support the terrorists. But I don't support government-sponsored minutes of silence either. And I say this as a white, male, French, conservatist person.
mkaziz 11y ago
I didn't read the article, but my gut instinct would be that the people this man was held captive by were foot soldiers. They are frequently illiterate people who are fed such "prophecies" as truth. I do contend with your statement about ISIS continuing to exist because of western compassion. If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians), the compassionate thing to do would be to do it ASAP.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > without harming millions of innocent civilians But that little caveat means putting a large number of our own people at risk and this is where we lack fortitude. That is what resulted in the Iraq mess, which in turn led to IS gaining a foothold.
- tremon 11y ago
  > If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians) When the GP speaks of compassion, I think (s)he is referring to the millions of civilians there, not the fighters.
  - DougWebb 11y ago
    Yes, that's exactly what I meant. The cold-hearted decision would be to count those civilians as acceptable losses, and just carpet-bomb the whole area.
- mseebach 11y ago
  > If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians), the compassionate thing to do would be to do it ASAP. That exactly what the west thought they could do in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it turned out that it is a lot more complex than, well, a lot of smart people expected. That said, were western militaries not still smarting from those wars, there would probably have been boots on the ground a long time ago, in the hope of some sort of Balkan-war outcome.
jon-wood 11y ago
That being their end game really isn't even a big secret, Cracked.com (of all people) did a really good piece on this after one of their journalists read the back issues of ISIS' official magazine.
ergothus 11y ago
I'll also submit that The Powers That Be have learned it sucks to create a power vacuum and deal with the fallout (see: Iraq, Afghanistan for examples) The developed nations' abilities to crush a military opponent doesn't solve all problems, something we've been aware of for a long while and had recent reinforcing lessons. I know the US had strong roles in rebuilding both Japanese and German governments post-WWII, but those were both circumstances that were dramatically different than this. (And, since HN has lots of informed people, some of whom are doubtless facepalming at my statements, I'd love to see some resources that describe those efforts with some depth and hopefully not a one-sided view of things, just for my own enlightenment)
- DougWebb 11y ago
  During WWII, we engaged in all-out war against Japan and Germany, and devastated both countries to the limit of our technical ability. Had the Japanese government not surrendered after the atomic bombs, we would have continued dropping them until there was no one left. We were already fire-bombing cities at that point, despite the huge number of civilian casualties. After the war, Japan still had a functioning government which the US had a stranglehold on for years during reconstruction. Germany's government was wiped out and replaced with two puppet states for a long time as well. We were truly imperialistic then, having invaded and taken control of those countries until they were stable enough to run themselves. (Or couldn't be held anymore, in the case of East Germany.) We didn't do it that way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Years of bad outcomes with cold-war-era puppet governments got us away from that approach, and instead we tried to set up locally-run governments that were allies but not subservient. But that didn't work so well either. Maybe we let them go too soon, or maybe the population wasn't beaten down enough by the war, the way Germany and Japan were, to just accept any government so long as it stops the devastation.
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  Just to put numbers to this, sickening as that is... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War estimates between 150k and 1 million dead. That's out of a total population of 32 million or so according to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq>, so somewhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 30 killed. For comparison, the population of Germany in 1939 was about 70 million according to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statistics_since_1900> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statis.... And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War... there were somewhere between 4.3 to 5.3 million military deaths, somewhere between 500k to 2 million civilian deaths due to some of the Soviet end-war and post-war shenanigans, another 350k to 600k civilian deaths due to Allied bombing. Let's call it 5 million all told on the low end. That's 1 in 14. And due to the fraction of this that were military, the resulting demographic distribution has some interesting features. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_12_31.png> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_1.... In particular, note the deep notch in the 30-35 demographic that would have been born during World War 1 and the large differences between numbers of males and females in all the 20-30 age group. So one difference is that a larger fraction of the population was dead, and a significantly larger fraction of the "young male" demographic that tends to do things like fight back against the occupier as opposed to going on with life. People were just _tired_ of fighting, effectively. Another difference was the massive aid/rebuilding program financed via the Marshall Plan. And I suspect a final difference was a much smaller feeling of "us vs them" or "we're fundamentally different", on both sides....
dragonwriter 11y ago
> He said that he learned their ultimate goal has nothing to do with our culture or freedom. They believe armageddon is coming, that it is literaly going to be a big battle in a particular town in Syria near the Turkish border, and that the West is the enemy (descendants of the Roman empire) that their Moslem army must defeat. While I don't doubt that that is what was revealed to him while he was captive, I will note that there are three potentially very different things that that could be, that can be very hard to distinguish: 1) The actual goals of the Daesh leadership, 2) The propaganda the Daesh leadership uses to motivate its foot soldiers, 3) Deliberate fabrications presented by captors to captives for propaganda, misinformation, or other purposes.

vixen99 11y ago

This view has also been put forward by Bernard Haykel who appears to be regarded as a notable secular authority on Islamic State. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Haykel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Haykel "What ISIS Really Wants" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

ameen 11y ago

Or Indifference? IS never really threatened U.S. or Western interests, the Paris attacks were the first time they reached so far. They (along with the Syrian regime) have been butchering Syrians by the thousands. Btw, the Daesh captive was Nicolas Henin, and he's actively campaigning against airstrikes [1] as that's exactly playing into their sick plans. And he speaks that they're deluded enough to think they'll find support despite their inhumane acts. Muslims despise Daesh, heck the orthodox the individual their hatred for these individuals deepens.[2] [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/nicolas-henin-video-isis-syria-strikes http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/nicolas-henin-v... [2] Source: My family and friends, I'm a Muslim born in the holy city of Makkah, no one I know doesn't actively despise Daesh and their kind. Most of us identify more with western values.

mahouse 11y ago
Do literally all Muslims despise the IS? After thousands of Turkish football fans starting chanting "allahu akbar" during the minute of silence for the Paris attacks, I would not agree. Who are the Muslims that support the IS?
- tajen 11y ago
  I am (white, Christian) French. I don't support the "minute" of silence. It means there is a full range of opinions which lead one to not recognizing the minute of silence. I'll detail my opinion for an example, but many other opinions must be respected too. 1. We don't do a minute of silence for 300 ppl per month who die in car accidents. Nor for 200 per fortnight for passive second hand smoking. The characteristics are the same: They're innocent, they're taken away suddenly in atrocious conditions, and they're taken at random. 2. A minute of silence, whether you like it or not, is a political gesture. The more we do a minute of silence, the less there will be opposition to repressive actions by the gouvernent. Look: the law says the Etat d'Urgence is limited to 15 days, they've extended it to 3 months and they want to extend it to a Permanent Etat d'Urgence. 3. We don't listen to terrorists. They may be protesting against very legitimate things with a very similar number of crimes. As a citizen of the occident, I am collectively responsible for Guantanamo and Irak and Palestine and all wars that have destroyed the future of youngsters in those countries. Who's to say I should do a minute of silence for the French and not for the Palestinians or Iraqis who have been subjected to torture? 4. A minute of silence will encourage France to perform war. Terrorism cannot be won with war. We're just destroying someone's land in a country where I don't know the cultural situation. 100% sure we are creating tomorrow's terrorists. 5. Those terrorists? They were born in France. It's a failure of our social system. We are racist, we don't give them enough future economically. I once was an Australian immigrant: When there's huge bucks to be made, there's no time for subversion. 6. France is in economic dismay. Hence the difficulty of the youth to earn enough for an optimistic living. Hence please don't send an aircraft carrier, we're digging our debt, if not or grave. With two billions, let's hire teachers and lower our taxes on wages so we can get more jobs. 7. Let's not give the terrorists what they wanted: Everyone is impressed by the violence, so during the next 10 years well start to think it's normal that all concert halls have to have x-more entrances. Those will have a huge cost on culture. We'll say it's normal to implement stringent security measures, without looking at the cost. I bet people will even use it as an excuse for everything: "Because of security measure, you are required to ditch your bottle of water, pay per card, hire the official coach instead of walking there, ...". A minute of silence today, and during 15 years any objection to everyday security will be frowned upon. I don't support the terrorists. But I don't support government-sponsored minutes of silence either. And I say this as a white, male, French, conservatist person.

mkaziz 11y ago

I didn't read the article, but my gut instinct would be that the people this man was held captive by were foot soldiers. They are frequently illiterate people who are fed such "prophecies" as truth. I do contend with your statement about ISIS continuing to exist because of western compassion. If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians), the compassionate thing to do would be to do it ASAP.

jacquesm 11y ago
> without harming millions of innocent civilians But that little caveat means putting a large number of our own people at risk and this is where we lack fortitude. That is what resulted in the Iraq mess, which in turn led to IS gaining a foothold.
tremon 11y ago
> If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians) When the GP speaks of compassion, I think (s)he is referring to the millions of civilians there, not the fighters.
- DougWebb 11y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what I meant. The cold-hearted decision would be to count those civilians as acceptable losses, and just carpet-bomb the whole area.
mseebach 11y ago
> If the West had the means to destroy them (without harming millions of innocent civilians), the compassionate thing to do would be to do it ASAP. That exactly what the west thought they could do in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it turned out that it is a lot more complex than, well, a lot of smart people expected. That said, were western militaries not still smarting from those wars, there would probably have been boots on the ground a long time ago, in the hope of some sort of Balkan-war outcome.

jon-wood 11y ago

That being their end game really isn't even a big secret, Cracked.com (of all people) did a really good piece on this after one of their journalists read the back issues of ISIS' official magazine.

ergothus 11y ago

I'll also submit that The Powers That Be have learned it sucks to create a power vacuum and deal with the fallout (see: Iraq, Afghanistan for examples) The developed nations' abilities to crush a military opponent doesn't solve all problems, something we've been aware of for a long while and had recent reinforcing lessons. I know the US had strong roles in rebuilding both Japanese and German governments post-WWII, but those were both circumstances that were dramatically different than this. (And, since HN has lots of informed people, some of whom are doubtless facepalming at my statements, I'd love to see some resources that describe those efforts with some depth and hopefully not a one-sided view of things, just for my own enlightenment)

DougWebb 11y ago
During WWII, we engaged in all-out war against Japan and Germany, and devastated both countries to the limit of our technical ability. Had the Japanese government not surrendered after the atomic bombs, we would have continued dropping them until there was no one left. We were already fire-bombing cities at that point, despite the huge number of civilian casualties. After the war, Japan still had a functioning government which the US had a stranglehold on for years during reconstruction. Germany's government was wiped out and replaced with two puppet states for a long time as well. We were truly imperialistic then, having invaded and taken control of those countries until they were stable enough to run themselves. (Or couldn't be held anymore, in the case of East Germany.) We didn't do it that way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Years of bad outcomes with cold-war-era puppet governments got us away from that approach, and instead we tried to set up locally-run governments that were allies but not subservient. But that didn't work so well either. Maybe we let them go too soon, or maybe the population wasn't beaten down enough by the war, the way Germany and Japan were, to just accept any government so long as it stops the devastation.
bzbarsky 11y ago
Just to put numbers to this, sickening as that is... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War estimates between 150k and 1 million dead. That's out of a total population of 32 million or so according to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq>, so somewhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 30 killed. For comparison, the population of Germany in 1939 was about 70 million according to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statistics_since_1900> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statis.... And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War... there were somewhere between 4.3 to 5.3 million military deaths, somewhere between 500k to 2 million civilian deaths due to some of the Soviet end-war and post-war shenanigans, another 350k to 600k civilian deaths due to Allied bombing. Let's call it 5 million all told on the low end. That's 1 in 14. And due to the fraction of this that were military, the resulting demographic distribution has some interesting features. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_12_31.png> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_1.... In particular, note the deep notch in the 30-35 demographic that would have been born during World War 1 and the large differences between numbers of males and females in all the 20-30 age group. So one difference is that a larger fraction of the population was dead, and a significantly larger fraction of the "young male" demographic that tends to do things like fight back against the occupier as opposed to going on with life. People were just _tired_ of fighting, effectively. Another difference was the massive aid/rebuilding program financed via the Marshall Plan. And I suspect a final difference was a much smaller feeling of "us vs them" or "we're fundamentally different", on both sides....

dragonwriter 11y ago

> He said that he learned their ultimate goal has nothing to do with our culture or freedom. They believe armageddon is coming, that it is literaly going to be a big battle in a particular town in Syria near the Turkish border, and that the West is the enemy (descendants of the Roman empire) that their Moslem army must defeat. While I don't doubt that that is what was revealed to him while he was captive, I will note that there are three potentially very different things that that could be, that can be very hard to distinguish: 1) The actual goals of the Daesh leadership, 2) The propaganda the Daesh leadership uses to motivate its foot soldiers, 3) Deliberate fabrications presented by captors to captives for propaganda, misinformation, or other purposes.