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>Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world The reality for n

>Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world The reality for now is someone has to protect the pacifists. It is hard to believe that ISIS exists in the modern world. They are so depraved that they make the Nazis look like good guys.

theseatoms 11y ago
Yes, but we equally have to ensure that we do not needlessly incite more people to join/create similar organizations through our foreign policy.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  I agree but the depth of depravity exhibited by ISIS is too deep to be created by foreign policy alone, however convenient that idea may be.
  - reagency 11y ago
    Have you met Henry Kissinger? Adolf Hitler? Josef Stalin?
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Humans do two things unnaturally well: make communities and separate into tribes. ISIS hasn't done much the Japanese haven't done to China, the Hutsis haven't done to the Tutsis (or was it the other way around). ISIS is evil, but they are not unhuman.
- emil0r 11y ago
  I really wonder how this got to be the explanation behind IS and similar groups. They always reference the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah in everything they do. The US foreign policy was used as a convenient excuse and certainly wasn't helping at times, but the drive does not come from how they've been treated. The drive comes directly from the religious commands found in the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah. It's the teachings combined with the knowledge of them combined with a desire to follow them that is creating the current situation with IS and other groups.
  - simonh 11y ago
    If that was true all Muslims would support ISIS but they don't. The ones that do largely come from and are based in the section of Iraq that got most massively screwed over in the US lead invasion. You're telling me that's purely a co-incidence? There's no excuse for what ISIS does. No reason is strong enough for the kind of barbarity they practice, but characterising it as purely senseless and ignoring the actual reasons behind it doesn't help either. The actual reasons they do what they do may not be sufficient or reasonable relative to their actions, and may not actually align well with their rhetoric, but they do exist.
    - philh 11y ago
      > If that was true all Muslims would support ISIS but they don't. Different people react to things differently, interpret things differently, take ideas more or less seriously, and so on. I think the reasoning: "if ISIS was about religion, then all muslims would support ISIS", would approximately equally support: "if ISIS was about foreign policy, then all Iraqis would support ISIS". I don't think either of those if-thens holds as an if-then, regardless of the truth value of the "if" part.
  - gjm11 11y ago
    There are something like a billion Muslims who treat the Qur'an and the sunnah with equal reverence but somehow manage to get through their lives without beheading anyone or pillaging any cities. And there are plenty of people who have been screwed over by US foreign policy but who, again, somehow manage to refrain from committing atrocities. Terrorism generally seems to spring up where there is both a big political grievance and some kind of ideological foundation to hook it onto. That's not an absolute requirement (e.g., I don't believe the Tamil Tigers had any ideology beyond their nationalism; on a much smaller scale, the occasional cases of Christians blowing up abortion clinics aren't very political) but generally that partnership is what does it. And when that's the case, it's misleading to blame the terrorism exclusively on the ideology or exclusively on the political grievance. Groups like IS and al Qaeda, so far as I can tell, really truly do believe that what they are doing is justified by Islam; and they really truly do believe that what they are doing is a necessary response to US intervention in the Middle East.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
cmdrfred 11y ago
You have to see ISIS for what it is. They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones. If you legitimately fear them you are misguided. They exist to push you, you make you buy into the current status quo. Who are they up against? The most powerful and technologically advanced military ever in the history of the world. That military spends more than the next 5 largest ones combined. Its like Urkel vs Bruce Lee. They don't stand a chance. Sure they might blow up a shopping center or two, but the fact is law enforcement kills more people in than ISIS ever did. You want to end ISIS? Sorry there isn't a quick way to do so. Build a school for women in one of the countries they inhabit, protect it with drones and soldiers, build power plants, and give them internet connections. Change the culture, not at the end of a gun but with sandwiches for their hungry, water for their thirsty, and knowledge for their curious. Do this everywhere we are invited, and then do it in the places we are not. Then in a few generations took a look the world you have created, I promise you it will be a better one.
- simonh 11y ago
  > You have to see ISIS for what it is. They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones. Similar things were said about the Viet Cong, except for the cellphones. The Mijahideen defeated the Soviet Union and arguably lead to it's demise. The US got kicked out of Lebanon and Somalia. I happen to think that won't happen with ISIS, mainly due to the oil but also because the West has allies nearby in the region, or at least people we can work with such as the Kurds, Shia Iraqis and Turkey. Still, being high tech and spending big doesn't guarantee victory. ISIS may not be an existential threat to the USA, sure, but they're doing a lot of damage to a lot of people and it looks like they will continue to do so for quite some time to come.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    The VC were defending their homes, as were the Mujahideen for the most part. They work because they have some popular support. Women of the village make them dinner and clean their clothes. You have to put them in a untenable position. Make them attack solders around the UN truck handing out bottled water and medical care to children, then the power plant supplying the village, then the school. Be the good guy. Eventually the villagers supporting them will want a better life for their daughters and sons and will no longer do so. You will win their hearts and minds. A military or diplomatic victory isn't required, a cultural one is. Data like this puts the real threat of ISIS in perspective: http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terroris...
coldtea 11y ago
>* It is hard to believe that ISIS exists in the modern world. They are so depraved that they make the Nazis look like good guys.* You'd be surprised who's worse. Hint: they look like "good guys" and pretend they have the moral high ground. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis...
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  If you truly believe that the UK is worse than ISIS then you should join ISIS and meet your fate.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    First I wasn't talking about the UK. Did you even read TFA? It's about what the US did, it just happens to be on Guardian, a UK newspaper. Now, he who helped create ISIS, funded its operations, and enabled it to reign and kill people, in order to sell weapons and destabilize a region, is worse than ISIS. What exactly is controversial about this? That said, since you mentioned the UK: the UK had a billion people in Africa and Asia as slaves in its colonies just until 50 years ago. This, besides enslavement and resource-grabbing included countless executions, rapes, torture, aggression, war etc. ISIS has a lot of work to do to match up the numbers. Don't make the mistake that the villain with the suit and the clean shave is much better than the crude foreign-looking fundamendalist villain.
sneak 11y ago
...and these misguided, kill-or-be-killed beliefs are precisely what he was talking about. Turn off the news. It's just a ride, man. ISIS is irrelevant, like Goldstein. It's nothing but a farce to get you to start sentences with "The reality is for now..." Ignore them.
- sparkzilla 11y ago
  Tell that to the gay guys ISIS is throwing off buildings
grey-area 11y ago
The reality for now is someone has to protect the pacifists. ISIS was born amongst the chaos of the failed state of Iraq, and covert support and funding of rebel groups to topple Assad in Syria, out of warfare, not ex-nihilo. A far more conservative attitude to when to fight and when to supply arms might do the west no harm at all, and allow them to spend a lot of that money on something more productive.

theseatoms 11y ago

Yes, but we equally have to ensure that we do not needlessly incite more people to join/create similar organizations through our foreign policy.

happyscrappy 11y ago
I agree but the depth of depravity exhibited by ISIS is too deep to be created by foreign policy alone, however convenient that idea may be.
- reagency 11y ago
  Have you met Henry Kissinger? Adolf Hitler? Josef Stalin?
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Humans do two things unnaturally well: make communities and separate into tribes. ISIS hasn't done much the Japanese haven't done to China, the Hutsis haven't done to the Tutsis (or was it the other way around). ISIS is evil, but they are not unhuman.
emil0r 11y ago
I really wonder how this got to be the explanation behind IS and similar groups. They always reference the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah in everything they do. The US foreign policy was used as a convenient excuse and certainly wasn't helping at times, but the drive does not come from how they've been treated. The drive comes directly from the religious commands found in the Qu'ran, the hadiths and the sunnah. It's the teachings combined with the knowledge of them combined with a desire to follow them that is creating the current situation with IS and other groups.
- simonh 11y ago
  If that was true all Muslims would support ISIS but they don't. The ones that do largely come from and are based in the section of Iraq that got most massively screwed over in the US lead invasion. You're telling me that's purely a co-incidence? There's no excuse for what ISIS does. No reason is strong enough for the kind of barbarity they practice, but characterising it as purely senseless and ignoring the actual reasons behind it doesn't help either. The actual reasons they do what they do may not be sufficient or reasonable relative to their actions, and may not actually align well with their rhetoric, but they do exist.
  - philh 11y ago
    > If that was true all Muslims would support ISIS but they don't. Different people react to things differently, interpret things differently, take ideas more or less seriously, and so on. I think the reasoning: "if ISIS was about religion, then all muslims would support ISIS", would approximately equally support: "if ISIS was about foreign policy, then all Iraqis would support ISIS". I don't think either of those if-thens holds as an if-then, regardless of the truth value of the "if" part.
- gjm11 11y ago
  There are something like a billion Muslims who treat the Qur'an and the sunnah with equal reverence but somehow manage to get through their lives without beheading anyone or pillaging any cities. And there are plenty of people who have been screwed over by US foreign policy but who, again, somehow manage to refrain from committing atrocities. Terrorism generally seems to spring up where there is both a big political grievance and some kind of ideological foundation to hook it onto. That's not an absolute requirement (e.g., I don't believe the Tamil Tigers had any ideology beyond their nationalism; on a much smaller scale, the occasional cases of Christians blowing up abortion clinics aren't very political) but generally that partnership is what does it. And when that's the case, it's misleading to blame the terrorism exclusively on the ideology or exclusively on the political grievance. Groups like IS and al Qaeda, so far as I can tell, really truly do believe that what they are doing is justified by Islam; and they really truly do believe that what they are doing is a necessary response to US intervention in the Middle East.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

cmdrfred 11y ago

You have to see ISIS for what it is. They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones. If you legitimately fear them you are misguided. They exist to push you, you make you buy into the current status quo. Who are they up against? The most powerful and technologically advanced military ever in the history of the world. That military spends more than the next 5 largest ones combined. Its like Urkel vs Bruce Lee. They don't stand a chance. Sure they might blow up a shopping center or two, but the fact is law enforcement kills more people in than ISIS ever did. You want to end ISIS? Sorry there isn't a quick way to do so. Build a school for women in one of the countries they inhabit, protect it with drones and soldiers, build power plants, and give them internet connections. Change the culture, not at the end of a gun but with sandwiches for their hungry, water for their thirsty, and knowledge for their curious. Do this everywhere we are invited, and then do it in the places we are not. Then in a few generations took a look the world you have created, I promise you it will be a better one.

simonh 11y ago
> You have to see ISIS for what it is. They are teenagers in tin shacks and caves with yesterdays cell phones. Similar things were said about the Viet Cong, except for the cellphones. The Mijahideen defeated the Soviet Union and arguably lead to it's demise. The US got kicked out of Lebanon and Somalia. I happen to think that won't happen with ISIS, mainly due to the oil but also because the West has allies nearby in the region, or at least people we can work with such as the Kurds, Shia Iraqis and Turkey. Still, being high tech and spending big doesn't guarantee victory. ISIS may not be an existential threat to the USA, sure, but they're doing a lot of damage to a lot of people and it looks like they will continue to do so for quite some time to come.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  The VC were defending their homes, as were the Mujahideen for the most part. They work because they have some popular support. Women of the village make them dinner and clean their clothes. You have to put them in a untenable position. Make them attack solders around the UN truck handing out bottled water and medical care to children, then the power plant supplying the village, then the school. Be the good guy. Eventually the villagers supporting them will want a better life for their daughters and sons and will no longer do so. You will win their hearts and minds. A military or diplomatic victory isn't required, a cultural one is. Data like this puts the real threat of ISIS in perspective: http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terroris...

coldtea 11y ago

>* It is hard to believe that ISIS exists in the modern world. They are so depraved that they make the Nazis look like good guys.* You'd be surprised who's worse. Hint: they look like "good guys" and pretend they have the moral high ground. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis...

happyscrappy 11y ago
If you truly believe that the UK is worse than ISIS then you should join ISIS and meet your fate.
- coldtea 11y ago
  First I wasn't talking about the UK. Did you even read TFA? It's about what the US did, it just happens to be on Guardian, a UK newspaper. Now, he who helped create ISIS, funded its operations, and enabled it to reign and kill people, in order to sell weapons and destabilize a region, is worse than ISIS. What exactly is controversial about this? That said, since you mentioned the UK: the UK had a billion people in Africa and Asia as slaves in its colonies just until 50 years ago. This, besides enslavement and resource-grabbing included countless executions, rapes, torture, aggression, war etc. ISIS has a lot of work to do to match up the numbers. Don't make the mistake that the villain with the suit and the clean shave is much better than the crude foreign-looking fundamendalist villain.

sneak 11y ago

...and these misguided, kill-or-be-killed beliefs are precisely what he was talking about. Turn off the news. It's just a ride, man. ISIS is irrelevant, like Goldstein. It's nothing but a farce to get you to start sentences with "The reality is for now..." Ignore them.

sparkzilla 11y ago
Tell that to the gay guys ISIS is throwing off buildings

grey-area 11y ago

The reality for now is someone has to protect the pacifists. ISIS was born amongst the chaos of the failed state of Iraq, and covert support and funding of rebel groups to topple Assad in Syria, out of warfare, not ex-nihilo. A far more conservative attitude to when to fight and when to supply arms might do the west no harm at all, and allow them to spend a lot of that money on something more productive.