There was an article linked to by someone on here the author tried to understand ISIS in their own context he argued they are a deliberate planned Death cult. Their horrific actions beheadings, burning alive, drowning throwing off tall buildings deliberately reference incidents in the historical account of the Koran. If so then they actually want to engage in a boots on the ground conventional war and the difficult bit is they expect and want to lose in a massive bloody and costly way as a necessary prerequisite for a resurgence of a “pure” Islam . The argument is that all their actions are provocations to bring about this Armageddon Prophesy .
If true not sure where that leaves our military might. Personally I would explore containing isolating and starving them of funding then let their state collapse economically and socially. To do that in an ethical way would necessitate us accepting and accommodating those who fled the region though.

You remember correctly. The excellent article is here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

My point is that innocent lives are taken in war by all sides with great disregard, I struggle to see isis beheading someone and bombs being drop form 30,000ft as something vastly different.

You really can’t see any difference between a fraction of a millisecond of white flash and being burnt alive in a cage? Seriously?

richc – Member
You really can’t see any difference between a fraction of a millisecond of white flash and being burnt alive in a cage? Seriously?

Aye, one it’s publicised widely, the other isn’t.

Syria Only “Weeks Away” From Bono Charity Single, Warns UN

a fraction of a millisecond of white flash

Bombs are rarely if ever that precise in the devastation they deliver.

zippykona – Member

http://www.panarabiaenquirer.com/wordpress/syria-only-weeks-away-from-bono-charity-single-warns-un/

Bono is a billionaire, apparently he sold some of his share on Facebok and now richest musician, so he can do whatever he likes …

May have been answered, but who confirms the kill, and that it is infact the intended target?

MSP
Bombs are rarely if ever that precise in the devastation they deliver.

Too true, which is why a 7.62mm or 12.7mm to the cranium is far better. Cost effective and, well, effective.

Murder is murder to me

Really? You don’t subscribe to the principle of justifiable homicide, such as in self defence?

ninfan – Member
Murder is murder to me
Really? You don’t subscribe to the principle of justifiable homicide, such as in self defence?

Of course I do, but I don’t consider the likes of setting off the chain of events that lead to the ISIS as justifiable homicide nor self defence. I’ve view that as a far worse crimes than ISIS, who, lets face it, are just the boogie men in a larger game. They’re just a very small part in the shit storm raging through the muslim world for god knows how long.

I view our leaders and those who do their bidding as culpable.

Too true, which is why a 7.62mm or 12.7mm to the cranium is far better. Cost effective and, well, effective.

It’s not politically cost effective because bullets need soldiers to fire them. Which costs you political points with a public unwilling to get involved – bombing makes us all feel like we are doing something when in reality the only way to make things better are lots and lots of foot soldiers but no one has the stomach for the body bags.

So things will go on as they are, we’ll carry on taking young men in as asylum seekers, whilst we lob the odd high explosive into Syria, we’ll wash our hands whilst watching the entire region turn into a gigantic uninhabitable blackhole by telling ourselves that all we could do was take people in and bomb a few people.

Meanwhile Germany is happy having all those young fit working men as it will help alleviate their declining population and help keep their historically artificially low wages, lower still. Helping to screw southern Europe even further. Like Miss “Multikulti ist tot” Merkel, actually wants to help asylum seekers for humanitarian reasons. AHHHHHHHAHAHAH.

“That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox . . .” – Solaris

If we actually cared, we’d be breaking out the amphibious assault ships.

we’ve done them a favor – they are now martyrs and are enjoying their 70 dark haired virgins.

It’s what they wanted, no need to feel guilty about it.

@Tom_W1987, indeed. Better to seem like we’re doing something, than actually doing something. 😆

“A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don’t talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don’t know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can’t see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you’ll be injured if you’re there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It’s the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot.”
— Noam Chomsky

May have been answered, but who confirms the kill, and that it is infact the intended target?

Frank Gardener was very interesting in Radio 4 today (may have said same on TV) he said that operations like this will have been running for a while with drones in the sky waiting for the right intelligence and situation, namely the target is confirmed by both communication intelligence (eg use of mobile phone) and on the ground sources (ie spies/infiltrators).

So my answer would be both those plus social media / mobile chatter immediately after

@kimbers so having seen Muslims tortured at Abu Gharib ISIS was formed so they could kill many more Muslims ? ISIS decided the shit smearing wasn’t sufficient they they went for behheading and throwing people off buildings ? Kind of we Muslims can out do you kafirs when it comes to killing Muslims ?

I haven’t had time to catch up on this whole thread yet but I heard on R4 that the father of the Cardiff boys who joined ISIS should not be targets for drone strikes as “they where not posing a direct threat to the UK”. I can see the distress that the father must be going through but the minute they signed up and went to Syria it was quite likely they’d end up dead, one way or another

“A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don’t talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don’t know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can’t see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you’ll be injured if you’re there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It’s the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot.”
— Noam Chomsky

I see your Chomsky quote and raise you a Hitchslap.

My quarrel with Chomsky goes back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where he more or less openly represented the “Serbian Socialist Party” (actually the national-socialist and expansionist dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic) as the victim. Many of us are proud of having helped organize to prevent the slaughter and deportation of Europe’s oldest and largest and most tolerant Muslim minority, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. But at that time, when they were real, Chomsky wasn’t apparently interested in Muslim grievances. He only became a voice for that when the Taliban and Al Qaeda needed to be represented in their turn as the victims of a “silent genocide” in Afghanistan. Let me put it like this, if a supposed scholar takes the Christian-Orthodox side when it is the aggressor, and then switches to taking the “Muslim” side when Muslims commit mass murder, I think that there is something very nasty going on. And yes, I don’t think it is exaggerated to describe that nastiness as “anti-American” when the power that stops and punishes both aggressions is the United States … In some awful way, his regard for the underdog has mutated into support for mad dogs. This is not at all like watching the implosion of an obvious huckster and jerk like Michael Moore, who would have made a perfectly good Brownshirt populist. The collapse of Chomsky feels to me more like tragedy.

– C. Hitchens

😀

“they where not posing a direct threat to the UK”. I can see the distress that the father must be going through but the minute they signed up and went to Syria it was quite likely they’d end up dead, one way or another

Who gives a ****, it strikes me as a bit racist to say they can kill Kurds but kill some Brits, oh that’s just crossing the line…..we can’t have that….savages should be allowed to kill each other…but Brits…nooo think about bombing Brits and we’ll bomb you! I bet his dad didn’t mind him killing some dirty kurds did he? I can’t even believe we have to use the excuse that they were a threat to the UK, to kill them.

And whilst I’m on a roll, screw Erdogan and Turkey as well.

close the thread, people are quoting hitchens ffs! 😆 😐

Finding them in Cardiff was always going to be a bit of an ask.

Is that bonkers climate nut hitchens?

Can’t believe that people want to send troops into the middle East again, after failing so spectacularly in Iraq why would it work this time?

Can’t believe that people want to send troops into the middle East again, after failing so spectacularly in Iraq why would it work this time?

Because ISIS’s whole doctrine requires physical land. They’re not an “idea” like Al Quaeda, they actually require a physical Caliphate. For this reason ISIS are unique amongst Islamists in that they really could be defeated in a conventionally military way, just by taking their land off them.

Of course another core belief of ISIS is that Rome (USA) will attack them in their Caliphate in a battle that ends the world. So attacking them on the ground would make that prophecy appear to come true.

Personally I’m strongly opposed to getting involved, but there is (for once) a rational case for it.

Is that bonkers climate nut hitchens?

Christopher was never a climate nut, not sure about is brother Peter though.

Can’t believe that people want to send troops into the middle East again, after failing so spectacularly in Iraq why would it work this time?

Because they’d have more support from the locals like they had in Kosovo and we have literally hundreds of thousands of male refugees, who’s hearts and minds we can win if we tell them that we’ll look after their families if they fight for us.

We could even run our own version of “Français par le sang versé” or citizenship after a set number of tours.

It would take far too much vision for the EU leaders to pull it off though.

And of course, some do-gooders would end up whining about how we were employing mercenaries and that the fighting was getting a bit nasty, there’d be dozens of long rambling Guardian articles by authors washing their hands of the situation – when the real thing to be worrying about is ISIS and their treatment of the locals and how an entire continent on the edge of Europe is turning to shit.

and how an entire continent on the edge of Europe is turning to shit.

To be fair, its never looked that clever since we stopped running the place. Some people might say that’s because we drew some random lines down a map, created a load of new countries, without any concern to the religions or cultures already there, and handed it over to puppet governments mainly consisting of brutal dictators.

But then that would be the lilly-livered, pinko Guardianista do-gooders view, so probably best not to mention it

We should probably invade and start killing people again. That always goes well….

That Noam Chomsky quote doesn’t make any sense to me, drones are just that drones, they are just a form of aircraft. Sure they can be a delivery platform for firing Hellfire missiles from but so can a variant of this:

Tom_W1987 – Member
how an entire continent on the edge of Europe is turning to shit.

haha! 😆 we’re not exactly blind to why that is happening, though you seem to wilfully ignore it.

dragon – Member

That Noam Chomsky quote doesn’t make any sense to me, drones are just that drones, they are just a form of aircraft. Sure they can be a delivery platform for firing Hellfire missiles from but so can a variant of this:

I like the look of that plane (King Air) … I like much! Just need a big parachute for added safety. 😛

Drones are computer games … 🙄

Middle East has rarely been stable through history see

Maps of War Middle East

In response to people earlier saying ISIS are more brutal etc. Are they really? War is brutal, but historically we have heard about it through newspapers or TV news reports that have been censored. This time though, ISIS have used technology to their advantage for their campaign and put their stuff on YouTube. So now,for the first time we are seeing for the for ourselves the true brutality of war. Also, uncensored people are using the internet to write their own reports.

Furthermore, beheadings have been used by the state in parts of the middle east for years and rape is used as a form of state punishent in parts of rural India…

edenvalleyboy – Member

In response to people earlier saying ISIS are more brutal etc. Are they really?

It is ISIS everyday in S.Arabia according to the female Egyptian journalist being interviewed by Jon Snow at Ch 4 last night … 😯 I think she was referring to head lopping, limbs chopping, stoning, etc but not rape.

People still seem to be missing the key point that the people who are really in charge of ISIS aren’t religious nut jobs at all. Very interesting article if anyone can be arsed to read it.

There is a simple reason why there is no mention in Bakr’s writings of prophecies relating to the establishment of an Islamic State allegedly ordained by God: He believed that fanatical religious convictions alone were not enough to achieve victory. But he did believe that the faith of others could be exploited.

In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later “caliph,” the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.

Bakr was “a nationalist, not an Islamist,” says Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, as he recalls the former career officer, who was stationed with Hashimi’s cousin at the Habbaniya Air Base. “Colonel Samir,” as Hashimi calls him, “was highly intelligent, firm and an excellent logistician.” But when Paul Bremer, then head of the US occupational authority in Baghdad, “dissolved the army by decree in May 2003, he was bitter and unemployed.”

Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

Al-Big Daddy is creating his new empire … (something to do with his gangster style name … )

haha! we’re not exactly blind to why that is happening, though you seem to wilfully ignore it.

Saudi backed extremism?

I’ve got plenty of Iraqi friends who don’t blame it on the Americans at all, or at least don’t blame the Americans for dismantling the Iraqi military after the initial invasion.

Besides, if we hadn’t have removed Saddam we’d have another dictator on the edge of Europe that was willing to gas entire villages and start wars that were fought in a manner of which hadn’t been seen since WW1.

I’m sure that would have worked out in the long run and it totally would have not led to huge swathes of refugees fleeing for Europe.

LOL.

We should probably invade and start killing people again. That always goes well….

Sebrenica went well didn’t it, you know that time when we chose not to get fully involved?

I bet if we’d let some Marines loose, the Guardian would have ended up whining that we’d made it worse, even if that accusation had no basis in reality.

People still seem to be missing the key point that the people who are really in charge of ISIS aren’t religious nut jobs at all. Very interesting article if anyone can be arsed to read it.

Although that is a bit besides the point, it morhphed into a Jihadi group. The secularism of it’s now dead leader doesn’t matter, it’s not pushing Baathist ideology.

The “legal” aspect is interesting, primarily because our “laws” are so far behind the times.

100 years ago a “war” was a highly defined situation. When politics broke down between two parties, each party formed a uniformed army, and within a set of rules (The Geneva Convention) were allowed to kill each other in pretty much any way possible until a “winner” emerged (of course, there is never actually a “winner” just a “not quite so much of a loser as the other poor b*st*rds”)

Now this was easy. Killing an opposing “soldier” was not difficult because they wore a uniform to tell you to whose allegiance they were sworn. If they took off that uniform and “surrendered” they became a prisoner of war. They were not killed but locked up till the end of the war. However, if they took that uniform off, but continued to fight for their side, then they were deemed to be a “spy” and killed without much of a trial.

The situation we have now is that wars are less about capturing territory and populations, and more about “war-ing” to gain power either politically or ideologically. Modern soldiers do not necessarily wear a uniform and as such are extremely difficult to capture or neutralise. In fact, even if you physically invade another country with your ground troops, the only way to “win” that war would be to kill everyone in that country. This modern gorilla warfare is a very difference situation, and in fact, the word “war” is not really necessarily applicable at all, and hence legally i’d suggest it’s a very grey area!

Although that is a bit besides the point, it morhphed into a Jihadi group. The secularism of it’s now dead leader doesn’t matter, it’s not pushing Baathist ideology.

I’m pretty sure I’ve read that all the people still pulling the strings are former Iraqi military and intelligence with no religious convictions. The fanatical stuff is a recruiting tool/smokescreen.

‘m pretty sure I’ve read that all the people still pulling the strings are former Iraqi military and intelligence with no religious convictions.

If you read the Atlantic article above you’ll see that people who know think these guys are 100pc sincere in their faith. Hard for us to get our heads round, and a great weakness for them, because they’re acting in accordance with a formula.

I could well believe that grums article is correct. People being manipulated by more intelligent types for personal gain isn’t exactly a stretch is it?

If you read the Atlantic article above you’ll see that people who know think these guys are 100pc sincere in their faith. Hard for us to get our heads round, and a great weakness for them, because they’re acting in accordance with a formula.

I’m not denying that lots of the people involved are 100pc sincere in their faith, but the people who created the movement and are probably still pulling the strings weren’t religiously motivated at all.