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You can blame ISIS all you want, but aren't the 1M people who'll be affected by this basically supporters of ISIS? As you said, they're ISIS's own citizens. S

You can blame ISIS all you want, but aren't the 1M people who'll be affected by this basically supporters of ISIS? As you said, they're ISIS's own citizens. So basically they're being hoist by their own petard. Every nation gets the government it deserves.

seren 11y ago
> Every nation gets the government it deserves. This is a somewhat radical stance. When an armed group seizes the control of a city, the citizens don't always have the ability to fight back. There are plenty of people who are risking their lives and have lost it in ISIS control territory, telling them they "deserved" it is really rash. Let's reverse the point of view and let's take 1M of Americans. Do you think I will find 1M Obama supporter? You have basically the ISIS stance, if you are living in the West, Muslim or not, you are an enemy and thus you deserve to be blown up.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Do I think you'll find 1M people in America who support Obama's administration? Um, yes... He was elected by about half the population, after all. I can easily find 1M people who still prefer to have him as President. Heck, right now with our current frontrunners, there's people who'd like to have another 4 or 8 years of Obama rather than Trump or Hillary. Now with Mosul, we're talking about 1M people. That's far, far more than the number of active ISIS fighters and other staff in the city. Have you never heard of guerilla warfare? If a population revolts, there isn't much a poorly-led and ill-trained military force can do to stop them. The people there are not revolting, so they're either cowards or complicit (and likely both). The people always have the ability to fight back, even if it has to be done as a war of attrition (use makeshift weapons to ambush small numbers of ISIS troops). Even in Nazi Germany and occupied France, there were resistance efforts from the local populations. Ever hear of the Maquis? ISIS doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resources and training that the Wehrmacht had in occupied France.
  - leeleelee 11y ago
    FYI, he meant if there were 1M people in a random geographic area with a dam that was going to collapse, would all of those 1M people be Obama supporters? The answer is no, there would be a mix.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Ok, sorry if I misunderstood, I thought he was one of these anti-Obama people trying to claim that Obama was that unpopular. Anyway, sure, if 1M Americans were threatened by a failing dam, and Obama refused to fix the dam and instead took actions to prevent fixing it or worse, somehow aggravate the situation, then no, I doubt many of those 1M would be supporters of his. However, Obama is also not a religious leader. Throw fundamentalist religion in there and that changes the equation entirely. Just look at all the Americans who resolutely believe that climate change is a "hoax", or worse, that evolution is (and that the earth is 6000 years old), because their religious leaders tell them this. That's likely what's going on in ISIS-land. So we could try my leafleting campaign to educate the populace there as to the reality and direness of their situation, but I kinda doubt they'd believe it. Not only do you have a bunch of religious leaders telling them otherwise, but there's also a human tendency to circle wagons around their own people/leaders (no matter how awful) and fight against any outsiders.
  - dang 11y ago
    Commenters are required to post civilly and substantively, or not at all. It's bad enough that you are uncivil to your fellow users, and worse that you start religious flamewars. But blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning because you say they're Isis supporters (a ridiculous claim about a group known to terrorize the populations it rules over), and therefore have it coming to them, is far outside any civil discourse, even about politics. If you do it again you will forfeit the right to post here.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Nice that you don't allow different opinions around here. Maybe you should make a FAQ listing which opinions are OK and which aren't. And "religious flamewars"? All I did was point out the reality of religion. My post was civil enough, I called his comment stupid because I misunderstood it. Another poster, far more helpful than yourself, pointed out my error to me.
stellar678 11y ago
Do you seriously believe that an organization known for publicly beheading people, imposing arbitrary violent pseudo-Islamic rule, cultural genocide, etc... is supported by a significant part of the population of the territory they took over? The answer is - no, they are not basically supporters of ISIS. A few certainly are, but not many. They're people trapped under the tyrannical rule of strongmen who came to power in a vacuum because ... the people did not have the government they deserve.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  They may or may not have the government they want, but they certainly have the government they deserve. Every nation of people does. If you're not willing to stand up and fight when a tiny number of people is oppressing you, then why do you deserve anything better? Who else is supposed to liberate you? Do you think that you're entitled to having a bunch of foreigners come risk their lives to liberate you from your own people (ISIS is headed by people who are native to the area, they're not foreigners, though many of their fighters are). That sounds like a pretty big entitlement mentality to me. The power vacuum you talk of only existed because the people in that area allowed it to exist. And yes, I do believe that a significant part of the population of their territory supports their actions. And no, their ruls is not "pseudo-Islamic", it's Islamic in the truest sense. Go read the Islamic holy books: they're following them to the letter. They're doing Islam correctly, just like every fundamentalist does their religion correctly; everyone else just cherry-picks the parts they like and ignores or whitewashes the really horrible parts.
  - kzhahou 11y ago
    At some point, a government will have an insurmountable military advantage, against which any resistance by its population is futile.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > At some point, a government will have an insurmountable military advantage, against which any resistance by its population is futile. Most successful resistance by populations against the government have had the resisting part of the population overlapping the military. (Conversely, most popular resistance where this has not been the case has failed.) So this is, generally, already the case, but in a sense somewhat less significant than is implied. I suppose if you have an entirely automated and tamper-proof, self-maintaining and reproducing, military with the senior government decision makers as the only humans in the loop the situation becomes a bit different and there becomes a qualitative difference where popular resistance can no longer spread to include the military.
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217648 and marked it off-topic.

seren 11y ago

> Every nation gets the government it deserves. This is a somewhat radical stance. When an armed group seizes the control of a city, the citizens don't always have the ability to fight back. There are plenty of people who are risking their lives and have lost it in ISIS control territory, telling them they "deserved" it is really rash. Let's reverse the point of view and let's take 1M of Americans. Do you think I will find 1M Obama supporter? You have basically the ISIS stance, if you are living in the West, Muslim or not, you are an enemy and thus you deserve to be blown up.

Grishnakh 11y ago
Do I think you'll find 1M people in America who support Obama's administration? Um, yes... He was elected by about half the population, after all. I can easily find 1M people who still prefer to have him as President. Heck, right now with our current frontrunners, there's people who'd like to have another 4 or 8 years of Obama rather than Trump or Hillary. Now with Mosul, we're talking about 1M people. That's far, far more than the number of active ISIS fighters and other staff in the city. Have you never heard of guerilla warfare? If a population revolts, there isn't much a poorly-led and ill-trained military force can do to stop them. The people there are not revolting, so they're either cowards or complicit (and likely both). The people always have the ability to fight back, even if it has to be done as a war of attrition (use makeshift weapons to ambush small numbers of ISIS troops). Even in Nazi Germany and occupied France, there were resistance efforts from the local populations. Ever hear of the Maquis? ISIS doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resources and training that the Wehrmacht had in occupied France.
- leeleelee 11y ago
  FYI, he meant if there were 1M people in a random geographic area with a dam that was going to collapse, would all of those 1M people be Obama supporters? The answer is no, there would be a mix.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Ok, sorry if I misunderstood, I thought he was one of these anti-Obama people trying to claim that Obama was that unpopular. Anyway, sure, if 1M Americans were threatened by a failing dam, and Obama refused to fix the dam and instead took actions to prevent fixing it or worse, somehow aggravate the situation, then no, I doubt many of those 1M would be supporters of his. However, Obama is also not a religious leader. Throw fundamentalist religion in there and that changes the equation entirely. Just look at all the Americans who resolutely believe that climate change is a "hoax", or worse, that evolution is (and that the earth is 6000 years old), because their religious leaders tell them this. That's likely what's going on in ISIS-land. So we could try my leafleting campaign to educate the populace there as to the reality and direness of their situation, but I kinda doubt they'd believe it. Not only do you have a bunch of religious leaders telling them otherwise, but there's also a human tendency to circle wagons around their own people/leaders (no matter how awful) and fight against any outsiders.
- dang 11y ago
  Commenters are required to post civilly and substantively, or not at all. It's bad enough that you are uncivil to your fellow users, and worse that you start religious flamewars. But blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning because you say they're Isis supporters (a ridiculous claim about a group known to terrorize the populations it rules over), and therefore have it coming to them, is far outside any civil discourse, even about politics. If you do it again you will forfeit the right to post here.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Nice that you don't allow different opinions around here. Maybe you should make a FAQ listing which opinions are OK and which aren't. And "religious flamewars"? All I did was point out the reality of religion. My post was civil enough, I called his comment stupid because I misunderstood it. Another poster, far more helpful than yourself, pointed out my error to me.

stellar678 11y ago

Do you seriously believe that an organization known for publicly beheading people, imposing arbitrary violent pseudo-Islamic rule, cultural genocide, etc... is supported by a significant part of the population of the territory they took over? The answer is - no, they are not basically supporters of ISIS. A few certainly are, but not many. They're people trapped under the tyrannical rule of strongmen who came to power in a vacuum because ... the people did not have the government they deserve.

Grishnakh 11y ago
They may or may not have the government they want, but they certainly have the government they deserve. Every nation of people does. If you're not willing to stand up and fight when a tiny number of people is oppressing you, then why do you deserve anything better? Who else is supposed to liberate you? Do you think that you're entitled to having a bunch of foreigners come risk their lives to liberate you from your own people (ISIS is headed by people who are native to the area, they're not foreigners, though many of their fighters are). That sounds like a pretty big entitlement mentality to me. The power vacuum you talk of only existed because the people in that area allowed it to exist. And yes, I do believe that a significant part of the population of their territory supports their actions. And no, their ruls is not "pseudo-Islamic", it's Islamic in the truest sense. Go read the Islamic holy books: they're following them to the letter. They're doing Islam correctly, just like every fundamentalist does their religion correctly; everyone else just cherry-picks the parts they like and ignores or whitewashes the really horrible parts.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  At some point, a government will have an insurmountable military advantage, against which any resistance by its population is futile.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > At some point, a government will have an insurmountable military advantage, against which any resistance by its population is futile. Most successful resistance by populations against the government have had the resisting part of the population overlapping the military. (Conversely, most popular resistance where this has not been the case has failed.) So this is, generally, already the case, but in a sense somewhat less significant than is implied. I suppose if you have an entirely automated and tamper-proof, self-maintaining and reproducing, military with the senior government decision makers as the only humans in the loop the situation becomes a bit different and there becomes a qualitative difference where popular resistance can no longer spread to include the military.

dang 11y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217648 and marked it off-topic.