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-ISIS. At their peak they had a sizeable chunk of land, a flag, a capital, civic functions like a court system, an oil industry, handed out passports, were figh

-ISIS. At their peak they had a sizeable chunk of land, a flag, a capital, civic functions like a court system, an oil industry, handed out passports, were fighting a conventional land war using conventional (not terrorist/guerilla) tactics, had a uniformed army, and the word "state" was right there in the name. But don't you dare call them a state lest someone mistake you for a terrorist sympathizer. That's playing a bit fast and loose with the facts there. ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism.

jdoliner 7y ago
> That's playing a bit fast and loose with the facts there. ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism. To me that just sounds like textbook nationhood. The defining feature of the state is having the monopoly on violence within its borders.
- jlokier 7y ago
  I think the question of treating ISIS territory as an independent state, with all the international law that would imply about respecting its independence and autonomy, treating it as a peer at the UN, etc., is a textbook case of why (international-legal) legitimacy is a status not granted automatically in the basis of territory and control alone, and should not be. The things ISIS members did to subpopulations people within that territory were almost universally condemned across the world as large-scale serious human abuse, and the territories were obtained through quite recent violence from other nations whose administrative borders had not stopped being recognised internationally. So I think it was widely regarded that ISIS should not be granted the international respect and autonomy of legal recognition, nor should it keep any power it had of a monopoly on violence within its borders (or any borders). That's not to say there aren't widely condemned things going on in other countries. But there is a kind of collective, sometimes grudging, but systematised respect for the autonomy of countries as nations, which I think was widely regarded as not something that would be right to grant to ISIS (or take away from the nations that ISIS had taken territory from).
  - IIAOPSW 7y ago
    >as an independent state, with all the international law that would imply about respecting its independence and autonomy. The UN absolutely has provisions in its charter for approved wars. The Korean war was UN approved. A regime that is violent against civilians and outwardly genocidal towards religious minorities like ISIS is exactly the situation UN approved intervention was made for (designed with the Nazi's in mind). I reject the premise that calling them a state would entail granting them anything.
voldacar 7y ago
> ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. you mean things which "recognized" states do all the time?
IIAOPSW 7y ago
Was the Roman Empire a country?
- busterarm 7y ago
  Thankfully many international treaties have been made in the last few thousand years and civilized nations wage war differently now. I was expressly disputing the parent poster's claim that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics, which is a statement I find difficult for anyone to really take issue with.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    While I think it's clear that ISIS was/is evil, I'm not sure that its as clear that those actions (or at least all of them) were terrorism. I'd define terrorism as something along the lines of "using guerrilla tactics against civilian targets in order to achieve political ends". I would differentiate that from atrocities committed against a state's own people in order to keep them in line (for example Stalin's purges), human rights violations (e.g. witch trials or killing homosexuals), ethnic/religious cleansing, or guerrilla attacks against targets with legitimate strategic value. My understanding, although I am definitely not super informed on this, is that ISIS's atrocities were mostly keeping people in line, human rights abuse, and religious cleansing. Therefore I would not consider those acts to be terrorism. However, that doesn't make them any less evil.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Whether a state uses terrorist tactics is orthogonal to the issue of it being a state. Was the Russian shooting down of MH-17 not a terrorist act undertaken by a state? How about the bombing of the Beirut barracks? How about any number of acts by Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, or Imperial Japan?
    - busterarm 7y ago
      Sure, I won't even dispute that. What I'm disputing is that the parent poster said that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics. That is blatantly a false statement. I can't believe the negative reaction towards pointing that out.
opportune 7y ago
Saudi Arabia also does all of the things you listed, except perhaps desecration of cultural sites. Just because a country does things you don’t like doesn’t make it not a country
- busterarm 7y ago
  I wasn't arguing that, I was just calling out the parent for saying ISIS didn't use terrorism as a tactic. Nice whataboutism there though.
  - opportune 7y ago
    How is it whataboutism? Your criteria for being a country also apply to Saudi Arabia, which anybody would generally accept to be a country. If I say a square is any four sided object with equal sides, is a rhombus whataboutism?
  - dkersten 7y ago
    > I was just calling out the parent for saying ISIS didn't use terrorism as a tactic. Where did they say this? I don't see anything about ISIS not using terrorism as a tactic, just that if you recognize ISIS as a state, you get called a terrorist sympathizer. Besides, plenty of countries use terrorist tactics when at war, unfortunately.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
all2 7y ago
You've just described the Roman Empire to a <T>. (Is that generic type notation?)
kerkeslager 7y ago
> ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism. The US has done all of these except crucifixions. Arguably, we've done all of them (except crucifixion) within the last decade. I'm not sure we can claim "not crucifying" as moral high ground when Americans did things like the following (warning: what follows is horrifying): "He was chained by his neck and dragged out of the county court by observers. He was then paraded through the street, all while being stabbed and beaten, before being held down and castrated. He was then lynched in front of Waco's city hall." "Over 10,000 spectators, including city officials and police, gathered to watch the attack. There was a celebratory atmosphere among whites at the spectacle murder, and many children attended during their lunch hour. Members of the mob cut off his fingers, and hung him over a bonfire after saturating him with coal oil. He was repeatedly lowered and raised over the fire for about two hours. After the fire was extinguished, his charred torso was dragged through the town and parts of his body were sold as souvenirs. A professional photographer took pictures as the event unfolded, providing rare imagery of a lynching in progress. The pictures were printed and sold as postcards in Waco."[1] This happened in 1916--most would consider the US to have been a nation for over a century by this point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington

jdoliner 7y ago

> That's playing a bit fast and loose with the facts there. ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism. To me that just sounds like textbook nationhood. The defining feature of the state is having the monopoly on violence within its borders.

jlokier 7y ago
I think the question of treating ISIS territory as an independent state, with all the international law that would imply about respecting its independence and autonomy, treating it as a peer at the UN, etc., is a textbook case of why (international-legal) legitimacy is a status not granted automatically in the basis of territory and control alone, and should not be. The things ISIS members did to subpopulations people within that territory were almost universally condemned across the world as large-scale serious human abuse, and the territories were obtained through quite recent violence from other nations whose administrative borders had not stopped being recognised internationally. So I think it was widely regarded that ISIS should not be granted the international respect and autonomy of legal recognition, nor should it keep any power it had of a monopoly on violence within its borders (or any borders). That's not to say there aren't widely condemned things going on in other countries. But there is a kind of collective, sometimes grudging, but systematised respect for the autonomy of countries as nations, which I think was widely regarded as not something that would be right to grant to ISIS (or take away from the nations that ISIS had taken territory from).
- IIAOPSW 7y ago
  >as an independent state, with all the international law that would imply about respecting its independence and autonomy. The UN absolutely has provisions in its charter for approved wars. The Korean war was UN approved. A regime that is violent against civilians and outwardly genocidal towards religious minorities like ISIS is exactly the situation UN approved intervention was made for (designed with the Nazi's in mind). I reject the premise that calling them a state would entail granting them anything.

voldacar 7y ago

> ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. you mean things which "recognized" states do all the time?

IIAOPSW 7y ago

Was the Roman Empire a country?

busterarm 7y ago
Thankfully many international treaties have been made in the last few thousand years and civilized nations wage war differently now. I was expressly disputing the parent poster's claim that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics, which is a statement I find difficult for anyone to really take issue with.
- harimau777 7y ago
  While I think it's clear that ISIS was/is evil, I'm not sure that its as clear that those actions (or at least all of them) were terrorism. I'd define terrorism as something along the lines of "using guerrilla tactics against civilian targets in order to achieve political ends". I would differentiate that from atrocities committed against a state's own people in order to keep them in line (for example Stalin's purges), human rights violations (e.g. witch trials or killing homosexuals), ethnic/religious cleansing, or guerrilla attacks against targets with legitimate strategic value. My understanding, although I am definitely not super informed on this, is that ISIS's atrocities were mostly keeping people in line, human rights abuse, and religious cleansing. Therefore I would not consider those acts to be terrorism. However, that doesn't make them any less evil.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Whether a state uses terrorist tactics is orthogonal to the issue of it being a state. Was the Russian shooting down of MH-17 not a terrorist act undertaken by a state? How about the bombing of the Beirut barracks? How about any number of acts by Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, or Imperial Japan?
  - busterarm 7y ago
    Sure, I won't even dispute that. What I'm disputing is that the parent poster said that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics. That is blatantly a false statement. I can't believe the negative reaction towards pointing that out.

opportune 7y ago

Saudi Arabia also does all of the things you listed, except perhaps desecration of cultural sites. Just because a country does things you don’t like doesn’t make it not a country

busterarm 7y ago
I wasn't arguing that, I was just calling out the parent for saying ISIS didn't use terrorism as a tactic. Nice whataboutism there though.
- opportune 7y ago
  How is it whataboutism? Your criteria for being a country also apply to Saudi Arabia, which anybody would generally accept to be a country. If I say a square is any four sided object with equal sides, is a rhombus whataboutism?
- dkersten 7y ago
  > I was just calling out the parent for saying ISIS didn't use terrorism as a tactic. Where did they say this? I don't see anything about ISIS not using terrorism as a tactic, just that if you recognize ISIS as a state, you get called a terrorist sympathizer. Besides, plenty of countries use terrorist tactics when at war, unfortunately.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

all2 7y ago

You've just described the Roman Empire to a <T>. (Is that generic type notation?)

kerkeslager 7y ago

> ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism. The US has done all of these except crucifixions. Arguably, we've done all of them (except crucifixion) within the last decade. I'm not sure we can claim "not crucifying" as moral high ground when Americans did things like the following (warning: what follows is horrifying): "He was chained by his neck and dragged out of the county court by observers. He was then paraded through the street, all while being stabbed and beaten, before being held down and castrated. He was then lynched in front of Waco's city hall." "Over 10,000 spectators, including city officials and police, gathered to watch the attack. There was a celebratory atmosphere among whites at the spectacle murder, and many children attended during their lunch hour. Members of the mob cut off his fingers, and hung him over a bonfire after saturating him with coal oil. He was repeatedly lowered and raised over the fire for about two hours. After the fire was extinguished, his charred torso was dragged through the town and parts of his body were sold as souvenirs. A professional photographer took pictures as the event unfolded, providing rare imagery of a lynching in progress. The pictures were printed and sold as postcards in Waco."[1] This happened in 1916--most would consider the US to have been a nation for over a century by this point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington