The demoralizing truth about ISIS
Damon Linker
Illustrated | REUTERS/Stringer
Did you experience a surge of righteous satisfaction the moment you heard that France had begun bombing Raqqa, Syria, in retaliation for ISIS's brazen attack on central Paris? I sure did. But my satisfaction was mixed with foreboding.
To judge from their public statements, everyone from French President François Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama on down through the entire Republican and Democratic presidential fields appears to believe that there is a military solution to the problem of the Islamic State. But there isn’t.
Yes, the spectacular and bloody attack on a long-time friend and ally of the United States by a singularly repellant organization requires a military response. Yes, we can and must work hard to protect ourselves against future attacks — both through intelligence gathering and police work at home and abroad, and through targeted attacks on the terrorist organization's senior leadership. But we need to be honest with ourselves about the nature of the enemy and its capacity to withstand our best efforts to destroy it.
Such honesty appears to be in short supply.
Consider: My statement above, about the need to gather intelligence and use police and military force, could have been written about al Qaeda in the fall of 2001. Indeed, it was written, over and over again, and delivered by George W. Bush in his September 20, 2001 speech to Congress and the American people in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
What followed was more than a decade of precisely what just about everyone is calling for now. First we attacked al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Then we took the fight to other countries, using covert ops, guided missiles, and drone strikes. Then we invaded Iraq and overthrew its government, which gave al Qaeda a new base of operations and a chance to do battle with the American military directly.
This American occupying force, which (especially after Bush's troop surge) was vastly larger than what even the most hawkish commentators are advocating now for the escalating fight against ISIS, eventually degraded al Qaeda in Iraq, took out the broader organization's senior leadership, and wore down its ability to launch attacks in the West. Then, at long last, we managed to kill Osama bin Laden. By the time President Obama completed our withdrawal from Iraq, most analysts considered al Qaeda to be vastly weaker than it once was.
That is, until the rise of a new terrorist threat — the Islamic State — which grew out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war.
Honesty requires that we face facts, no matter how demoralizing those facts may be. And the singular fact of our historical moment is that the Greater Middle East is in the midst of a massive, civilizational convulsion. This convulsion is marked by intense instability and violence. The violence takes the form of both conventional and asymmetrical warfare — and the latter, in the form of jihadism, radiates outward, periodically striking the West and other regions of the world.
Al Qaeda was an early expression of this reality. ISIS is the latest. And we have no reason at all to suppose it will be the last. Which is why optimistic pronouncements about the Islamic State being contained and weakened, whether they come from the president, indefatigably naïve journalists, or perennial fans of military adventurism, miss the point entirely.
If ISIS really were an "Islamic State," if it controlled fixed territory with defined borders, then it might be possible to destroy it using military force. But ISIS isn't a state, at least not yet. It is an idea — an idea that is both a radically revisionist (and apocalyptic) form of Islam and an anti-colonialist program that seeks to erase the national borders drawn by Western imperial powers 100 years ago and substitute a transnational Islamic empire modeled on the caliphate established by the immediate successors to Prophet Muhammad 14 centuries ago.
Do I seriously believe that this idea will be realized? No, I don’t think that vast numbers of Muslims from around the globe will respond to ISIS's call for an ingathering of believers to avenge Islam's civilizational humiliation at the hands of the infidels and embrace a form of postmodern neo-medieval barbarism in the Mesopotamian desert.
But it doesn't much matter. Scholar Olivier Roy may be right that ISIS "recruits only at the margins," but those margins contain quite enough people to wreak an awful lot of havoc. It doesn't take many. Thanks to social media and other forms of 21st-century communication technologies, a virtual community of angry, disaffected Muslims living in Syria, the Parisian banlieues, immigrant neighborhoods of Belgium, and anywhere else on Earth can band together to plot and provide logistical support for bloody attacks that will supposedly advance the Islamist idea with nothing more sophisticated than a handful of rifles.
Ideas can only be vanquished on the battlefield when they are instantiated in a place with concrete institutions that can be decisively conquered and crushed. The idea that motivates jihadists from Raqqa and Tripoli to Brussels and beyond isn't like that. It lives mostly in the minds of those devoted to it, and so it can only be defeated by an alternative idea.
The Judeo-Christian and secular post-Christian West is singularly ill-suited to supply such an alternative idea to people consumed by visions of Islamic purity, grandeur, supremacy, and revenge. It will have to come from deep within Islamic civilization itself.
Does this mean that ISIS poses an "existential threat," as Republicans are so fond of putting it? Not at all. But that doesn't mean it won't inspire fear, drain blood and treasure, destabilize economies, undermine civil liberties, and provoke harmful right-wing reactions throughout the West for the foreseeable future.
And it’s not at all clear what we can do about it — beyond continuing to play the high-stakes game of Whac-A-Mole that's already consumed American foreign policy and its intelligence services for 14 years.
That’s called (barely) managing a problem, not solving it.
It means that at the moment the best we can reasonably hope for is to protect ourselves, however imperfectly.
And wait for the storm to pass.
In any war it is usually wise to enlarge the roster of one’s allies and reduce the roster of enemies. If ISIS is the implacable enemy and must be annihilated, we should welcome all volunteers.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest country in the Western World to buy an AK-47 is the USA.
ReplyDeleteWaiting for the storm to pass sounds good.
ReplyDeletesounds
DeleteHezbollah was considered to be the biggest terrorist threat to the USA until al queda came along.
ReplyDeleteJust because isis has our attention at this time does not mean that Hezbollah has stopped want to murder Americans.
Hezbollah has murdered scores and scores more Americans, on purpose, than ISIS
DeleteAipac talking points from the same crew that claimed the following:
DeleteBibi Netanyahu
I think the first question is, do you want to merely avenge September 11th or do you want to win the war on terror? If you want to stop with September 11th, go after al Qaeda.
…[T]here is no international terrorism of any kind — al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, you name them, all of them — there is no international terrorism if you take away the support of sovereign states. And the sovereign states are few. If you want to win this war, you just have to neutralize these states. In neutralizing them, you have two options. It’s like when kamikaze fighters are coming at you and bombing you. You can shoot one; you can shoot the other. But if you really want to stop it, you have to shoot down the aircraft carriers. There are only a handful of aircraft carriers. …So, I think if you want to win the broader war on terror, you have to get rid of these regimes.
And:
And the question of time [for taking preemptive action], I think the sooner the better. But now the question is when you choose a target, I think Iraq brings two things, a confluence of two things. One, it is sufficiently important in this network to have a tremendous effect. If it collapses, it will have a beneficial seismic effect…
And:
And today the United States must destroy the same regime because a nuclear-armed Saddam will place the security of our entire world at risk. And make no mistake about it — if and once Saddam has nuclear weapons, it is only a matter of time before those weapons will be used.
And:
If a preemptive action will be supported by a broad coalition of free countries in the United Nations, all the better. But if such support is not forthcoming, then the United States must be prepared to act without it.[Emphasis added.]
The Israeli Lobby, Israeli politicians, The Neocons and AIPAC have caused more death, suffering and destruction in the Middle East than Hezbollah. Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda are reactionary groups to having their lands invaded.
ReplyDeleteNow we have ISIS. Israel is demanding and the US Congress is capitulating to the Israeli design of the US going to war against Hezbollah who is on the line killing ISIS. There are no Israeli soldiers fighting anywhere for US interests and there never has been.
Israel invaded Lebanon and the US got involved, unwisely sent troops into Lebanon and Hezbollah killed Americans just as Americans would kill foreign invaders to our lands. Hezbollah is fighting ISIS today. ISIS is recognized by almost all countries as a threat.
Israel recognizes ISIS as an opportunity.
Interesting twist of history.
Delete.
DeleteInteresting twist of history?
This from the man who has proven that he knows little of modern history other than what he reads in the Jewish Virtual Library's Myths and Facts section.
You have proved you know little about the very country you purport to support and yet you would instruct us on the history of surrounding countries?
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DeleteLOL
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In any war it is usually wise to enlarge the roster of one’s allies and reduce the roster of enemies. If ISIS is the implacable enemy and must be annihilated, we should welcome all volunteers.
ReplyDeleteIs all you do is play checkers?
DeleteIsis sucks, Syria's Assad sucks, Hezbollah sucks, al queda sucks...
Iran sucks....
When Iran and Iraq were going at it?
both sides suck
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DeleteEvery country in the ME sucks. Every country.
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Once one get's one's mind grizzled to it enough to look away from the horror, ISIS fighting Hezbollah and Iran doesn't sound so bad.
ReplyDeleteg'nite
Cheers !
Vietnamese killed 55,000 US servicemen in Viet Nam. We had no business there and is anyone surprised that Viet Nam would resist a foreign invader? Is anyone surprised Iraqis would defend Iraq?
ReplyDelete“Do you realize what you have done?”
Do you realize what the Neocons have done?
What right did America have spying on Israel in 1967?
DeleteTo use your logic?
We had no business there and is anyone surprised that Israel would resist a foreign invader? Is anyone surprised Israel would defend Israel?
“Do you realize what you have done?”
Do you realize what the NSA/Arabists in the State department have done?
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DeleteWhat right did America have spying on Israel in 1967?
To use your logic?
The US spies on everybody. They were spying on everybody in the area in 1967. And they were in international waters while doing it.
Recently, Germany was pissed when they found out the NSA was spying on them. Brazil also. However, they didn't attack their ally, the US, in international waters. The US didn't attack Israel because Pollard was spying for them.
No, to was only Israel that in a surprise attack tried to sink a ship of their greatest ally in international waters.
Give it up. No one is buying your bullshit.
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If Israel was TRYING to sink a ship it could have.
DeleteIf Israel put a spy ship 25 miles off the coast of NYC while NYC was in active war? I dare say it would be attacked.
Why be intellectually dishonest with bullshit comparisons?
quirk: No, to was only Israel that in a surprise attack tried to sink a ship of their greatest ally in international waters.
DeleteDuring the run up to the Six-Day War, the Americans repeatedly rebuffed Israeli requests for military aid and approval for an Israeli preemptive attack on Egypt. The United States, bogged down in Vietnam and facing domestic opposition to that war, was loathe to become embroiled in a second front. Rather than get involved militarily, the Americans aggressively pursued diplomatic solutions and sought to cobble together an international regatta to challenge the Egyptian blockade on Israeli shipping in the Straits of Tiran, a campaign that ultimately failed. But while the U.S. continued to refuse to aid Israel militarily, the American opposition to unilateral Israeli action began to soften in the beginning of June 1967.
So in 1967 America was a weak, ball-less ally who would not lift a finger to help Israel.
Your revisionist history is shit..
as usual
try again tooth picker.
But as it is commonly accepted ALL US warships were ordered out of the area..
DeleteAnd yet?
The USS LIBERTY, under direct control of the NSA was doing some spying, which you admit...
In a war zone..
LOL
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DeleteIf Israel was TRYING to sink a ship it could have.
Bull. You merely try to excuse Israeli incompetence. The torpedo that finally blew a hole in the Liberty's hull was no doubt a warning shot. How stupid are you?
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DeleteIf Israel put a spy ship 25 miles off the coast of NYC while NYC was in active war? I dare say it would be attacked.
Not by the US. Not if it were clearly identified as an ally. And the US certainly wouldn't try to disguise our warplanes.
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DeleteDuring the run up to the Six-Day War, the Americans repeatedly rebuffed Israeli requests for military aid and approval for an Israeli preemptive attack on Egypt. The United States, bogged down in Vietnam and facing domestic opposition to that war, was loathe to become embroiled in a second front. Rather than get involved militarily, the Americans aggressively pursued diplomatic solutions and sought to cobble together an international regatta to challenge the Egyptian blockade on Israeli shipping in the Straits of Tiran, a campaign that ultimately failed. But while the U.S. continued to refuse to aid Israel militarily, the American opposition to unilateral Israeli action began to soften in the beginning of June 1967.
You post it yourself, the reasons the US was monitoring the situation in the ME, the reason the Liberty was there. the US was tied down in Vietnam. They were in the middle of the Cold War with Russia and looking to avoid another confrontation, perhaps nuclear. They were going out of their way to diffuse the crisis in the ME. And you call them a weak, ball-less ally.
In doing so, you show were your loyalties lie. Even if it were true, which is obviously absurd, the ranting of a diminished Israeli-firster, even if true its an astounding comment coming from some pissant country that even with the element of surprise couldn't sink a solitary, defenseless ship after hours of attacking it with torpedoes, weapons fire, and planes.
Only you could justify attacking a US ship in international waters, the ship of its greatest ally, of one of its few friends on the basis them not launching a new world war in order to help out Israel.
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Always an excuse for Hezbollah...
ReplyDelete.
DeleteAlways?
There is no excuse for Hezbollah attacks in Israel. However, ignoring the reason they came into being is self-serving and ignorant. Hezbollah was formed in the 80's in response to Israel's continued occupation of Lebanon.
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deuce: Israel invaded Lebanon and the US got involved, unwisely sent troops into Lebanon and Hezbollah killed Americans just as Americans would kill foreign invaders to our lands. Hezbollah is fighting ISIS today. ISIS is recognized by almost all countries as a threat.
ReplyDeleteSo you supported Hezbollah blowing up the Marine Barracks, our embassies and kidnapping our citizens for over a decade?
Did you cheer when Hezbollah hijacked TWA Flight 847 and executed Robert Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac?
Or did you just blame the Jews/Israelis?
It was a hotel. US marines had no business there.
DeleteIt was in Lebanon. What does the UDF do to foreign invaders? When you are in a hostile territory in wartime, you expect to be attacked. It's war not a foreign vacation.
DeleteIn 2005 Lebanese-based Hezbollah commandos invaded Israel where they both killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers, setting off a 34-day-long war. During that conflict, photographs of what were said to be Lebanese civilian victims were distributed around the world. But photographs of Hezbollah fighters, living or dead, were virtually impossible to find. That’s because Hezbollah fighters wore no uniforms and hid among Lebanon’s civilian population. These illegal practices were not extensively reported. For Western journalists in Lebanon, distinguishing between combatants and civilians would have been difficult. Many did not try, choosing instead to report what they were told by Hezbollah spokesmen.
ReplyDeleteRead more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/219445/hezbollahs-war-crimes-clifford-d-may
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
Delete.
DeleteHezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and was primarily formed to offer resistance to the Israeli occupation.[3]
What is clear is that there would likely be no Hezbollah now if not for the Israel invasion and continued occupation of Lebanon.
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Hezbollah is reputed to have been among the first Islamic resistance groups in the Middle East to use the tactics of suicide bombing, assassination, and capturing foreign soldiers,[20] as well as murders[55] and hijackings.[56] Hezbollah also employed more conventional military tactics and weaponry, notably Katyusha rockets and other missiles.[55][57] At the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, despite the Taif Agreement asking for the "disbanding of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias," Syria, which controlled Lebanon at that time, allowed Hezbollah to maintain their arsenal and control Shia areas along the border with Israel.[58]
ReplyDeleteSo against international law, Iran and Syria continued to help Hezbollah grow and increase it's arsenal.
Hmmmm
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DeleteAgainst international law?
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the killing of between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, by a militia close to the Kataeb Party, also called Phalange, a predominantly Christian Lebanese right-wing party in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. From approximately 6:00 pm 16 September to 8:00 am 18 September 1982, a widespread massacre was carried out by the militia virtually under the eyes of their Israeli allies.[4][5][6][7] The Phalanges, allies to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), were ordered by the IDF to clear out Sabra and Shatila from PLO fighters, as part of the IDF maneuvering into West Beirut. The IDF received reports of some of the Phalanges atrocities in Sabra and Shatila but failed to stop them.[8]
The massacre was presented as retaliation for the assassination of newly elected Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Kataeb Party. It was wrongly assumed that Palestinian militants had carried out the assassination...
Hmmmm.
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DeleteFrom Wiki...
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The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia was responsible for the massacres that occurred at the two Beirut-area refugee camps on September 16-17, 1982. Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition.
DeleteWhen Israeli soldiers ordered the Phalangists out, they found hundreds dead (estimates range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence). The dead, according to the Lebanese account, included 35 women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians and Algerians. The killings came on top of an estimated 95,000 deaths that had occurred during the civil war in Lebanon from 1975-1982.
The killings were perpetrated to avenge the murders of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel and 25 of his followers, killed in a bomb attack earlier that week.
Israel had allowed the Phalange to enter the camps as part of a plan to transfer authority to the Lebanese, and accepted responsibility for that decision. The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, formed by the Israeli government in response to public outrage and grief, found that Israel was indirectly responsible for not anticipating the possibility of Phalangist violence. Israel instituted the panel's recommendations, including the dismissal of Gen. Raful Eitan, the Army Chief of Staff. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned.
The Kahan Commission, declared former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, was "a great tribute to Israeli democracy....There are very few governments in the world that one can imagine making such a public investigation of such a difficult and shameful episode."
Ironically, while 300,000 Israelis demonstrated in Israel to protest the killings, little or no reaction occurred in the Arab world. Outside the Middle East, a major international outcry against Israel erupted over the massacres. The Phalangists, who perpetrated the crime, were spared the brunt of the condemnations for it.
By contrast, few voices were raised in May 1985, when Muslim militiamen attacked the Shatila and Burj-el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camps. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000, including many civilians, were reportedly killed. No outcry was directed at the PLO or the Syrians and their allies over the slaughter. International reaction was also muted in October 1990 when Syrian forces overran Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon. In the eight-hour clash, 700 Christians were killed-the worst single battle of Lebanon's Civil War.
The ideology of Hezbollah has been summarized as Shi'i radicalism;[76][77][78] Hezbollah follows the Islamic Shi'a theology developed by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.[79] Hezbollah was largely formed with the aid of the Ayatollah Khomeini's followers in the early 1980s in order to spread Islamic revolution[80] and follows a distinct version of Islamic Shi'a ideology (Valiyat al-faqih or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists) developed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the "Islamic Revolution" in Iran.[16][74] Although Hezbollah originally aimed to transform Lebanon into a formal Faqihi Islamic republic, this goal has been abandoned in favor of a more inclusive approach.[3]
ReplyDeleteHezbollah manifesto
On February 16, 1985, Sheik Ibrahim al-Amin issued Hezbollah's manifesto. Translated excerpts from Hezbollah's original 1985 manifesto read:
We are the sons of the umma (Muslim community) ...
... We are an ummah linked to the Muslims of the whole world by the solid doctrinal and religious connection of Islam, whose message God wanted to be fulfilled by the Seal of the Prophets, i.e., Prophet Muhammad. ... As for our culture, it is based on the Holy Quran, the Sunna and the legal rulings of the faqih who is our source of imitation ...[81]
manifesto state that "our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated".[81] According to Hezbollah's Deputy-General, Na'im Qasim, the struggle against Israel is a core belief of Hezbollah and the central rationale of Hezbollah's existence
ReplyDeleteHmmm nice guys..
Deuce, do you support Hezbollah's goal of the obliteration of the State of Israel?
Easy question there Deuce..
Let's see if you can be straightforward and be honest..
ReplyDeleteHemingway's Paris Memoir Flies Off Shelves in Show of Defiance
Andrew Roberts
November 19, 2015 — 5:08 AM PST
Hemingway
American writer Ernest Hemingway travelling with US soldiers, in his capacity as war correspondent, on their way to Normandy for the D-Day landings.
Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images
TV interview propels interest in book after terror attacks
Copies of `A Moveable Feast' laid at tribute sites in city
Ernest Hemingway’s memoir about the time he spent lounging in cafes and bars in 1920s Paris has become an unlikely totem of defiance against the terrorist attacks that claimed 129 lives in the City of Light last Friday.
Hemingway’s ‘‘A Moveable Feast,’’ or “Paris est une Fete” in French, is flying off the shelves at bookstores across the French capital and is the fastest-selling biography and foreign-language book at online retailer Amazon.fr. Daily orders of the memoir, first published in 1964, three years after the American author’s death, have risen 50-fold to 500 since Monday, according to publisher Folio.
Copies have been laid among the flowers and tributes at the sites of the massacres, and people are reading the book in bars and cafes, Folio spokesman David Ducreux said Thursday. Orders surged after a BFM television interview on Monday with a 77-year-old woman called Danielle, who urged people to read the memoir as she laid flowers for the dead. The video was shared hundreds of times on social media.
French sales of Voltaire’s “Traite sur la Tolerance,” or “Treatise on Tolerance,” also surged after 17 people were killed in January in a rampage by gunmen that started at the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine. Folio has sold 100,000 copies since then, according to Ducreux.
Parisians are mobilizing on social media with initiatives such as #tousaubistrot and #jesuisenterrasse, or “everyone to the bistrot” and “I’m on the terrace,” calling people to keep going out and enjoying the city’s cafes, bars and restaurants.
As Hemingway wrote in his memoir, “we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-19/hemingway-s-paris-memoir-flies-off-shelves-in-show-of-defiance
Mark Durie: Paris attacks not ‘nihilism’ but ‘sacred strategy’
ReplyDeleteNovember 18, 2015 4:00 am By Ralph Sidway 13 Comments
One of the most important Christian writers on Islam and the global Muslim persecution of Christians, Anglican pastor and theologian Mark Durie, weighs in on the struggle to accurately render the meta-narrative concerning the Paris Jihad Attacks.
For a variety of reasons, there are a great many policymakers, media analysts, elected officials and ordinary citizens who are having an extremely difficult time understanding what is happening (see John Kerry’s “legitimacy” comments). Mark Durie offers a practical corrective to the West’s epistemological blindness, and a sliver of a ray of hope that all is not yet lost.
“Paris attacks were not ‘nihilism’ but sacred strategy,” by Mark Durie, November 17, 2015:
LEADING commentator Janet Daley’s article in Saturday’s Telegraph ‘The West is at war with a death cult’ stands for everything that is woeful about European elites’ response to Islamic jihad.
It is a triumph of religious illiteracy.
The jihadist enemy, she asserts, is utterly unintelligible, so beyond encompassing in ‘coherent, systematic thought’ that no vocabulary can describe it: ‘This is just insanity’, she writes. Because the enemy is ‘hysterical’, lacking ‘rational demands’, ‘negotiable limits,’ or ‘intelligible objectives’ Daley claims it is pointless to subject its actions to any form of historical, social or theological analysis, for no-one should attempt to ‘impose logic on behaviour that is pathological’.
Despite this, Daley then ventures to offer analysis of and explanations for ISIS’ actions, but in doing so she relies upon her own conceptual categories, not those of ISIS.
Her explanations therefore fall wide of the mark.
‘Civilians’
Daley writes: ‘We face a violent and highly contagious madness that believes the killing of civilians is a moral act.’ Here she appeals to Western concepts of war, reflected, for example, in the Geneva Convention, which provides detailed principles for the ‘protection of civilian persons’.
Yet the first step in understanding a cultural system alien to one’s own, is to describe it in its own terms.
ISIS does not subscribe to the Geneva Convention. Its actions and strategies are based upon medieval Islamic laws of jihad, which make no use of the modern Western concept of ‘civilian’.
They do, however, refer to the category of disbelievers (mushrik or kafir).
ISIS believes that killing disbelievers is a moral act, in accordance, for example, with Sura 9:5 of the Qur’an, which states :‘Fight and kill the idolators (mushrik) wherever you find them’.
Not nihilism
Daley writes: ‘The enemy has stated explicitly that it does not revere life at all’ and ‘Civilians are not collateral damage in this campaign: their deaths are the whole point.’ She goes on to lament that the latest French attacks lack any purpose, but are ‘carried out for the sheer nihilistic thrill of it’.
The claim that ISIS does not ‘revere life’ seems to refer to any number of statements by Islamic radicals, including an ISIS militant who vowed to ‘fill the streets of Paris with dead bodies’, and boasted that ISIS ‘loves death like you love life’ (see here). This is a theological reference to a series of verses in the Qur’an in which Jews are criticised for desiring life (Sura 2:94-96, 62:6-8).
According to the Qur’an, loving life is a characteristic of infidels (Sura 3:14; 14:3; 75:20; 76:27) because it causes them to disregard the importance of the next life. The taunt much used by jihadis, ‘We love death like you love life’, implies that jihadis are bound for paradise while their enemies are hell-bound.
The point of these statements is that Muslims are willing to fight to the death, while their infidel enemies will turn back in battle. This is not about reverence for life, but about who has the will to win. This has nothing to do with nihilism, which is a belief that there are no values, nothing to be loyal to, and no purpose in living. In fact ISIS fighters have strong and clear loyalties and values, alien though they may be to those of Europe.
DeleteDaley’s claim that the deaths are ‘the whole point’ is also mistaken. While it is true that the jihadis consider killing infidels a meritorious act, potentially earning the killer a place in paradise (see here), and they consider being killed in battle against infidels a ticket to paradise, in fact the killings do serve a strategic purpose. This is to make infidels afraid, and thereby to weaken their will to resist Islamic dominance.
This strategy is commended by the Qur’an, for example in Sura 8:12, ‘I shall cast dread into the hearts of those who disbelieve. So strike above (their) necks and strike (off) all their fingers!’, as well as by the successful example of Muhammad in fighting the Jews of Medina, referred to in Sura 33:26-27, ‘He brought down from their fortifications those of the People of the Book who supported them, and cast dread into their hearts. You killed a group (of them), and took captive (another) group. And he caused you to inherit their land, their homes, and their wealth, and a land you had not set foot on.’ A similar passage is Sura 59:2, which ISIS has in fact been quoting in its celebrations of the Paris carnage.
It may seem to Daley that ISIS’ often-stated intention of defeating the West is fanciful, but the point is to understand ISIS, and as far as it is concerned, these deadly attacks are instrumental in weakening the will of infidels and hastening eventual victory.
Daley wonders what possible point these attacks could serve. She speculates: ‘… what is the alternative that is being demanded? Sharia law? The subjection of women? An end to liberal democracy? Are any of these things even within the bounds of consideration? What could be accomplished by national self-doubt or criticism at this point, when there is not even a reasonable basis for discussion with the enemy?’ It is hardly a secret that the ultimate goal of ISIS is to bring non-Muslims everywhere to convert to Islam or live under an Islamic caliphate as dhimmis. Sharia law and the subjection of women are part and parcel of this.
It is odd that Daley laments having no reasonable basis for negotiating with the enemy. ISIS is not playing by a Western-style negotiating rule book. It is following Muhammad’s instructions to his followers to offer three choices to infidels: conversion, surrender, or the sword. Bin Ladin has explained that the West’s rejection of this framework is the whole reason for its conflict with what he calls ‘the authority of Islam’:
“Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue; one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice, and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: [1] either willing submission [conversion]; or [2] payment of the jizya, through physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or [3] the sword, for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die.” (The Al Qaeda Reader)
It may seem unimaginable to European elites that ISIS is fighting for the goal of the surrender or conversion of Europe, but ISIS is thinking in time frames which extend to centuries, and their forebears conquered vast territories using such tactics. A final act of conquest can be preceded by decades, or even centuries, of military raids.
For example, Constantinople: targeted by Muslims from the days of Muhammad, it was laid siege to the first time by Islam mere decades after Muhammad’s death, and again a century or so later. Finally, after eight centuries of spasmodic warfare, territorial encroachment, and occasional setbacks, Islam defeated the capitol of Eastern Christendom.
DeleteWhile killing is currently the main mode of ISIS’ attacks inside the West, if they could they would use other tactics as well, such as taking booty and slaves or destroying infrastructure, as they have been doing in Syria and Iraq.
Grievances
Daley claims it is pointless to argue with people who have no reasonable grievances, for ‘the French people did not deserve this, just as Americans did not deserve 9/11’. However the important question is how ISIS sees its own motivations. Their ideology teaches them that infidels deserve death, simply by virtue of their unbelief. This has nothing to do with France’s history of colonialism or its treatment of Muslim minorities. ISIS needed no appeal to grievances to justify killing and enslaving Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, so why should they view the people of France any differently? Their objection to Europeans is that they are not Muslims, and their objection to European states is that they do not implement sharia law.
Irresponsible
It is irresponsible and dangerous to claim that a tenacious enemy is insane and incomprehensible. To refuse to acknowledge the ideology of ISIS, and to deny its relevance is tantamount to a death-wish.
Like so many other revivalist Islamic groups, ISIS believes that it will be successful if it stays faithful to its divinely-mandated goals and tactics. It believes the nations of Europe are morally corrupt, weak infidels who love life too much to fight a battle to the death with stern Muslim soldiers who have set their hearts on paradise. It believes Europe stands on the wrong side of history.
To combat this ideology it is necessary for Europe to prove ISIS wrong on all counts. It must show strength, not weakness. It must have confidence in its cultural and spiritual identity. It must be willing to fight for its survival. It must show that it believes in itself enough to fight for its future. It must defend its borders. It must act like someone who intends to win an interminably long war against an implacable foe.
There is a great deal Europe could have done to avert this catastrophe. It could, long ago, have challenged the Islamic view of history which idolised jihad and its intended outcome, the dhimma. It could have demanded that Islam renounce its love affair with conquest and dominance. It could have encouraged Muslims to follow a path of self-criticism leading to peace. This lost opportunity is what Bat Ye’or referred to in a prescient 1993 interview as the ‘relativization of religion, a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism’.
Instead the elites of Europe embarked on decades of religiously illiterate appeasement and denialism.
DeleteThere is still much that European states could do to defeat ISIS. They could, for example, inflict catastrophic military failure upon it as a powerful counter-argument to its theology of success. This will not deliver decisive, final victory against jihadism, but it will make the supremacist claims of ISIS less credible and hurt its recruitment. Islam’s laws of war allow Muslims to suspend their battle with infidels temporarily if there is no immediate prospect of victory and the risks to their cause are too great.
Europe also needs to act to suppress incitement of jihadi ideology by its clients, including the anti-Israeli jihadism of the Palestinian Authority. It must put more pressure on the militarily vulnerable Gulf states to stop funding Islamic radicalism throughout the Middle East and exporting jihad-revering versions of Islamic theology throughout the whole world.
One hope for Europe is that Islamic populations will get tired of the doctrine of jihad and all its bitter fruits. There are some signs that this is already happening, and many of the Muslims who are now seeking asylum in their hundreds of thousands will have come to this conclusion. However it seems likely that Muslim communities now established within Europe will be the last to reconsider their dogmas and their take on history, because they have not had to suffer first-hand the harsh realities of life under Islamic dystopias such as the ISIS ‘caliphate’ or Iran’s Islamic Revolution. A 2014 opinion poll found that among French 18-24 year olds, the Islamic State had an approval rating of 27%, which must include the overwhelming majority of young French Muslim men. For Europe, the challenge from within will be more enduring and intractable than the challenge from without.
Nevertheless, European states could still do much on their own turf. They could ban Saudi and other Middle Eastern funding to Islamic organisations, including mosques. They could stop appeasing Islamists in their midst. They could, even at this late hour, demand that the large and rapidly growing Muslim communities now well-established across Europe engage in constructive self-criticism of their religion, for the sake of peace.
This article first appeared in Lapido Media.
Mark Durie is the pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness. He is the author of The Third Choice – Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom, and of Which God? Jesus, Holy Spirit, God in Christianity and Islam.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/11/mark-durie-paris-attacks-not-nihilism-but-sacred-strategy
I thought this was a good article, which is, of course, why I put it up.
DeleteNovember 19, 2015
ReplyDeletePoll: By a wide margin, Americans oppose bringing Syrian refugees into the country
By Rick Moran
A new Bloomberg poll shows that a significant majority of Americans oppose bringing Syrian refugees into the U.S. By a 53-to-28 margin, Americans disagree with President Obama and many Democrats about admitting the refugees. Another 11% think that only Christian Syrians should be allowed in.
The poll also shows that terrorism and concerns about ISIS have risen to the top of American's concerns.............
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/poll_by_a_wide_margin_americans_oppose_bringing_syrian_refugees_into_the_country.html
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis citizen does not.
DeleteBy the way, this terrorism is making Trump's numbers go up considerably. Carson is fading.
I'm beginning to think Trump may be the Republican nominee.
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DeleteYou have been given my answer on this subject numerous times before.
That you bring it up again is clearly is another attempt to turn the conversation, a diversion, a distraction, your SOP.
The fact that I oppose ANY force that attacks another country, that I condemn ALL acts of terrorism has nothing to do with the fact that there would likely be no Hezbollah right now if not for the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
As for attacking another country and terrorist attacks, see my comments above about Sabra and Shatila.
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DeleteThe US should not be involved in the ME. They are ALL dicks.
As the IMA would say, it's the culture.
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Quirk: The fact that I oppose ANY force that attacks another country, that I condemn ALL acts of terrorism has nothing to do with the fact that there would likely be no Hezbollah right now if not for the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
DeleteWhy did Israel INVADE Lebanon in the 1st place?
Was it greed, imperialism?
No it was the use of southern lebanon as a staging ground for attacks on Israel.
The lebonese government refused to take sovereign control of it's lands..
Hey that is the same reason repeated wars have been fought there...
Arabs, Iranians and Palestinians attack from a land base across an international border...
Murdering Israeli civilians..
SO when Israel reacts?
It's the bad guy..
How quaint.
Any sane person has asked many times: "how in the hell did Hitler do it?"
ReplyDeleteWell, the Republicans are in the process of showing us.
And, the media is falling right inline, just like they did in Germany.
Delete.
DeleteIt's not just the Republicans. Dianne Feinstein is leading the charge, spreading the fear.
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Alas, it is a justified fear.
DeleteI cannot believe anyone would be so foolish as to want to bring moslem 'refugees' into our free country.
It is just trouble down the road.
See:
Idaho BobThu Nov 19, 10:37:00 AM EST
Mark Durie: Paris attacks not ‘nihilism’ but ‘sacred strategy’
Above
Even those slow of wit, like Quirk, ought to be able to take a look back at 1400 years of history and draw a conclusion not far from the mark.
DeleteRufus is one drunk hoot...
DeleteNow he is saying the republicans are going to put a hitler in office...
LOL
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
Delete“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Does that sound familiar?
Delete
ReplyDeleteQuirkThu Nov 19, 11:26:00 AM EST
The US should not be involved in the ME. They are ALL dicks.
As the IMA would say, it's the culture.
You really don't have much specificity with that broad brush there quirk.
I contend, as usual, that Israel is not a nation of "dicks" and that since you have never been there? You are in no position to judge.
But I would agree, that 899/900th of the middle east we can agree on, are full of dicks.
And yes, that pestering fact that israel is only 1/900th of the middle east comes forth, over and over again...
1/900th?
One Jewish state against dozens of others, it is a democracy, it is not perfect, but compared to the other dicks in the area? Its as good as perfect there is...
Might I suggest you answer the basic query once again...
Do you support Hezbollah's goal of the obliteration of Israel? (hezbollah being an international terrorist organization that Deuce and the Russians like)
Straight line query...
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DeleteYou stupid ass. Can't you read? How many times must I condemn ALL acts of terrorism? How many times must I condemn ALL invasions of another country's territories? How many times must I condemn ALL acts that are contrary to the Geneva conventions? What don't you get about the word ALL?
Again this is all diversion. SOP for the Lobby.
Specificity?
I was very specific. ALL is very specific.
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DeleteAnd if you are still too stupid to get it, Hezbollah is included in ALL.
As to the countries of the ME, I am talking about ALL countries in the ME.
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Interesting, you cannot simply say you do not support Hezbollah's goal of the obliteration of the Jewish State.
DeleteBTW, Hezbollah is not a state or country.
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DeleteOf course, I do not support Hezbollah's goal of the obliteration of Israel. Any fool would know that from my previous comments.
Sorry, not any fool, evidently.
Hezbollah is also a political party and holds seats in the Lebanese government.
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I see The Rufus is comparing The Donald to The Adolph.
ReplyDeleteNot a good comparison.
The Donald has a daughter, or is it his wife, that converted to Judaism.
QuirkThu Nov 19, 11:26:00 AM EST
ReplyDeleteThe US should not be involved in the ME. They are ALL dicks.
As the IMA would say, it's the culture.
Which is why I'm for no more moslem immigrants. They are ALL dicks.
Why bring the moslem mideast here ?
Because they are refugees fleeing the ravages of war that the US has some culpability for.
DeleteI have found Patrick Martin to be an astute observer of the Middle East:
ReplyDelete"Analysis
Strikes in Syria after Paris attacks miss core of Islamic State movement
Patrick Martin
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015 11:41AM EST
When France’s President François Hollande declared “war” on the extremist movement known as Islamic State, blamed for recent terror attacks on Paris, he sent French fighter aircraft to bomb targets in the city of Raqqa inside Syria. And when Russian President Vladimir Putin said he want to “punish” Islamic State for its apparent role in downing a Russian airliner in Sinai last month, he, too, sent forces to join the French in attacking IS positions in Syria.
But they may be missing the mark by several hundred kilometres. Raqqa is not the headquarters of the IS movement; the Iraqi city of Mosul is.
“Islamic State remains essentially an Iraqi phenomenon at core,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “To defeat it, you must defeat it at home, in Iraq.”
And that’s not going to be easy, said Mr. Sayigh, who specializes in conflict and state-building in Syria and Iraq. “Islamic State has learned its tactics from Saddam Hussein.”
All of which may make Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resolve to put more Canadian military boots on the ground in northern Iraq to help Kurdish forces defeat Islamic State a welcome approach.
Islamic State began life known as al-Qaeda of Iraq (AQI) in the early 2000s, morphed into Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2006, then took on another initial (L for Levant) when it moved its forces into eastern Syria in 2013. Under its current leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group declared itself a caliphate with the name Islamic State. In all configurations, the group has remained decidedly Iraqi in orientation.
Important decisions are not made in Raqqa or anywhere else in Syria, Mr. Sayigh said. They’re made in Mosul, the predominantly Sunni city in northern Iraq, captured almost overnight by the group in June, 2014. The organization’s governing council is “almost entirely Iraqi,” Mr. Sayigh said. “The Shura [advisory] Council is more representative of all the IS provinces, but it has little real power.”
Each province has a military and a political governor, he explained, but each one of them is “shadowed by a deputy who reports straight back to Mosul.”
As well, he added, there’s a parallel intelligence operation that keeps track of everyone.
The organization uses violence ruthlessly, “just as Saddam did,” Mr. Sayigh said – to shock the world, frighten its rivals and impress its following.
Islamic State employs video recordings of executions and the destruction of historic artifacts to display its brutality, just as Mr. Hussein used films showing him ordering the execution of some of his own revolutionary council and, reportedly, even carrying out some of the sentences.
“Islamic State has the same DNA as Saddam’s state,” Mr. Sayigh said. “They’ve learned how to construct and maintain power.”
DeleteHe draws a comparison between the way Islamic State attracts its various foreign followers by using Islamist ideology, with how Mr. Hussein used Baathism and the Palestinian cause to appeal to Arab masses.
And just like him, the IS leadership doesn’t care as much about what happens in those faraway places as it does about attracting recruits to support its state/caliphate project in Iraq and Syria, Mr. Sayigh says.
Islamic State also learned how to reward the people it governs. “They marshal their resources and deliver services,” he explained, including health care, housing and infrastructure in what he describes as a “corruption-free manner.”
“It may seem hard to believe,” said Mr. Sayigh, who previously was a professor at King’s College, London, “but a lot of Iraqi Sunnis are content under IS rule. They feel secure.”
Indeed, many Sunnis in Mosul and central Iraq helped Islamic State when it swept into the area in the summer of 2014. They were so fed up with the heavy-handed pro-Shia disposition of the government of Nouri al-Maliki that they were prepared to take a flyer with Islamic State. Former officers in the disbanded Iraqi army saw an opportunity, as Sunnis, to return to power.
As such, the IS administration will be difficult to dislodge, says Mr. Sayigh, as Iranian-supported Iraqi Shia militias have found. Their drive through central Iraq conquered a number of smaller IS communities last winter, but it has made slow progress since then.
Iraqi Kurds have had greater success recently in recapturing the once predominantly Yazidi town of Sinjar.
By all means, Islamic State should be confronted forcibly, Mr. Sayigh said. “But the real way to defeat them is through a combination of intelligent policing, community outreach, accountability to civilian authorities and more responsive government, not with blunt counter-insurgency tactics in a political vacuum.”":
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/strikes-in-syria-after-paris-attacks-miss-mark-of-islamic-state-core/article27318193/
SOUTHWEST ASIA, November 19, 2015 — U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
ReplyDeleteOfficials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted eight strikes in Syria:
-- Near Palmyra, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL checkpoint, an ISIL vehicle, and an ISIL crane.
-- Near Mar’a, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL mortar position and an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Hasakah, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed five ISIL buildings.
-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, one strike struck an ISIL gas and oil separation plant.
-- Near Raqqah, one strike struck an ISIL storage facility.
Strikes in Iraq
Bomber, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 19 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Kirkuk, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun and an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Kisik, six strikes struck five separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL weapons caches, 12 ISIL fighting positions, three ISIL vehicles, and an ISIL heavy machine gun.
-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL weapons cache and two ISIL fighting positions.
-- Near Ramadi, four strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL tactical vehicles, an ISIL tunnel, seven ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL- controlled bridge, an ISIL vehicle-borne bomb, an ISIL bed down location, an ISIL staging area, and cratered two ISIL roads.
-- Near Sinjar, four strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL tactical vehicle, and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.
Definition of a ‘Strike’
A strike, as defined in the CJTF releases, means one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect for that location.
So, the officials said, having a single aircraft deliver a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike. Multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, with the cumulative effect of making that facility [or facilities] harder or impossible to use is also considered a single strike, task force officials said.
Accordingly, CJTF-OIR does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in each strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.
DOD
QuirkThu Nov 19, 12:34:00 PM EST
ReplyDelete.
You stupid ass. Can't you read? How many times must I condemn ALL acts of terrorism?
All notice the qualifier.
"all acts of terrorism"
Again some would argue, such as deuce and rufus, that hamas and hezbollah do not do terrorist actions as they are in resistance to occupation.
Be clear, quirk.
Do you support the RIGHT for Israel to be a sovereign Jewish state?
Do you support Hamas or Hezbollah in their battles to obliterate that Jewish state?
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DeleteDo you support the RIGHT for Israel to be a sovereign Jewish state?
No. I support Israel as a sovereign state. That should be enough for any country. In a true democracy, it's up to the people of the state to determine the direction of that state.
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DeleteAll notice the qualifier.
"all acts of terrorism"
The qualifier?
Are you saying you support 'some' acts of terrorism?
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DeleteAgain some would argue, such as deuce and rufus, that hamas and hezbollah do not do terrorist actions as they are in resistance to occupation.
The term terrorism has become meaningless. Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. Only a hypocrite would deny it. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist group by the US; however, it has been removed from the 'active threat' list. the Taliban were terrorists too until it was politically expedient for us to call them a 'resistance movement'. The EU doesn't consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. It's all bullshit.
Thus, my comment that I condemn all terrorist. There are few out there whose hands are clean. Though some try to pretend otherwise.
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DeleteDo you support Hamas or Hezbollah in their battles to obliterate that Jewish state?
I answered above (numerous times).
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DeleteBe clear, quirk.
I have couched my response a number of different ways above. If you fail to understand it at this point, I would suggest you sign up for 'Reading Comprehension 101' or 'English as a Second Language' in one of the Adult Education classes over at your local high school.
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QuirkThu Nov 19, 02:07:00 PM EST
Delete.
Do you support Hamas or Hezbollah in their battles to obliterate that Jewish state?
I answered above (numerous times).
Actually you have not.
Be clear. Not evasive or non-responsive.
Immigration Reverse! More Mexicans Are Leaving U.S. Than Coming In
ReplyDeleteAPBy Elliot Spagat
SAN DIEGO (AP) — More Mexicans are leaving the United States than migrating into the country, marking a reversal of one of the most significant immigration trends in U.S. history.
A study published Thursday by the Pew Research Center said a desire to reunite families is the primary reason Mexicans go home. A sluggish U.S. recovery from the Great Recession also contributed. Meanwhile, tougher border enforcement has deterred some Mexicans from coming to the United States.
Pew found that slightly more than 1 million Mexicans and their families, including American-born children, left the U.S. for Mexico from 2009 to 2014. During the same time, 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S., resulting in a net flow to Mexico of 140,000.
A half-century of mass migration from Mexico is "at an end," said Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew's director of Hispanic research.
The finding follows a Pew study in 2012 that found net migration between the two countries was near zero, so this represents a turning point in one of the largest mass migrations in U.S. history. More than 16 million Mexicans moved to the United States from 1965 to 2015, more than from any other country.
"This is something that we've seen coming," Lopez said. "It's been almost 10 years that migration from Mexico has really slowed down."
The findings counter the narrative of an out-of-control border that has figured prominently in U.S. presidential campaigns, with Republican Donald Trump calling for Mexico pay for a fence to run the entire length of the 1,954-mile frontier. Pew said there were 11.7 million Mexicans living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of 12.8 million in 2007. That includes 5.6 million living in the U.S. illegally, down from 6.9 million in 2007.
n another first, the Border Patrol arrested . . . . . .
DeleteAnother Republican Meme Shot All To Hell
QuirkThu Nov 19, 01:55:00 PM EST
ReplyDelete.
Do you support the RIGHT for Israel to be a sovereign Jewish state?
No. I support Israel as a sovereign state. That should be enough for any country. In a true democracy, it's up to the people of the state to determine the direction of that state.
So your answer is NO.
You do not support the right for Israel to be a Jewish state. Fine asked and answered
Now, do you support Hezbollah and Hamas's attempt to obliterate it?
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DeleteGo away, WiO. I have answered you question a half a dozen times on this stream alone. I can't be bothered with a friggin moron who can't understand English. You waste my time.
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Getting touchy Quirk?
DeleteFor the energy and time it took for you to write that diatribe? You could have answered the simply question.
Now, do you support Hezbollah and Hamas's attempt to obliterate it?
Being that you are all about "words"...
Answer the question.
YES OR NO
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DeleteNo.
And I see complex positions seem beyond your understanding.
I have on a number of occasions said Israel has a right to be a Jewish state if it wants. That is what representative democracy (which Israel claims to be) is all about. The majority of people decide what their state will look like through their elected representatives.
However, I have also said I do not support is the idea of a ‘Jewish’ state. The idea is an anachronism like absolute monarchies and theocracies. I oppose it like I oppose the monarchy in Saudi Arabia or the numerous Islamic republics. While I do not deny any of these countries their right to exist as a state, I do not support the forms of government they have chosen. Western thought has moved beyond such arrangements.
And while Israel calls itself a democracy, it is a flawed democracy. Voting is not the only qualification required for a democracy. Israel’s is a bifurcated society divided between Jew and non-Jew where the most important determinate in society (who is a Jew) is decided by a religious tribunal.
So while I don’t support the Zionist ideal, I do support Israel’s right to exist. That should be all any country demands of its neighbors or other countries. To demand that others go beyond that, to demand that they recognize a ‘Jewish’ state, is imo arrogant.
My answers to the Hamas and Hezbollah questions flow logically from my position on Israel as I have just stated them.
However, since logic is obviously not your strong suit let me once again state them clearly. Hamas and Hezbollah should not attempt to obliterate Israel.
Now, since I have again taken the time to lay out my position please copy it and store it away so that a week from now (or tomorrow) you are not back here like some 90 year old Alzheimer patient asking the same questions.
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This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDelete:o)
What would a resident of WiO-World know about the real world?
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5 jews, (one American) murdered in Israel today just for being there.
DeleteIs that real enough for you?
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ReplyDeleteEven your screen name is a question.
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quirk: However, since logic is obviously not your strong suit let me once again state them clearly. Hamas and Hezbollah should not attempt to obliterate Israel.
DeleteWow only took you 6 tries.
But now that you have stated it. We shall frame it.
What is Occupation? is a question....
DeleteMaybe you'd think of answering it?
Okay, here it is:
ReplyDeleteHaving a Black Man in the White House has driven the Republicans completely, totally, bat-shit crazy.
Period. Full Stop.
It's not that he's black, it that he's a power hungry, narcist with imperial aspirations.
Deleteand at last check he's 1/2 white
Trump confirmed, tonight, that he would like to see a "National Database of Muslims."
ReplyDelete.
DeleteNext, as you walk down the street you will be asked to show your 'papers'.
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quirk: And while Israel calls itself a democracy, it is a flawed democracy. Voting is not the only qualification required for a democracy. Israel’s is a bifurcated society divided between Jew and non-Jew where the most important determinate in society (who is a Jew) is decided by a religious tribunal.
ReplyDeleteCould you name an "unflawed" democracy?
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DeleteEverything is relative. There are a number organizations that put out indices measuring democracy around the world. One of the more widely referenced is one put out annually by the Economist. It uses 60 questions across 5 or 6 broader categories for measuring the level of democracy in the various countries of the world. Based on the questions, they rank the countries on a scale from 1 - 10. They then divide them into four categories descending from full democracy to flawed democracies to hybrid democracies (like Turkey or Unkraine) and finally to authoritarian regimes.
As I recall, rankings from 8 - 10 are considered full democracies, 6 - 7 are seen as flawed, and on down.
When I called Israel a flawed democracy, I was merely using a frequently used reference category.
From you question, I assume you are asking 'are there any perfect democracies'. The answer is, of course, no. However, as I said, everything is relative. So using the Economist scale, the answer to your question, 'can you name an "unflawed" democracy' is, of course, yes.
As I recall, something like a fifth of the 160 or so countries measured fall into the 'full democracy' category. Most of the countries come from Europe, and Canada of course, and the US makes the cut.
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Out of 1,843 Syrian Refugees, not one has committed any sort of serious crime, much less as act of terrorism.
ReplyDeleteI just saw an interesting headline. 500 Foreign Legion Troops in Syria/Iraq.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know much about the Foreign Legion, look it up. They're a hoot.
All but one of the Paris bombers could have simply boarded an airplane, and flew to the U.S. under the visa waiver program.
ReplyDelete20,000,000 (yeah, that's right, 20 Million) people enter the U.S. every year without having to apply for a Visa.
flown
Deleteflown
DeleteI've had a wonderful A+ day.
ReplyDeleteHope you all are doing well too.
If there's a Hanukkah/Christmas/Holiday/New Year terror attack on some malls in USA, I'll on record as predicting The Donald will be the Republican nominee for President.
ReplyDeleteThe Holiday decorations are up at The Coeur d'Alene Resort already and it's not even Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteLooks wonderful though.
D.C. Refuses to Arm Persecuted Christians Fighting ISIS
ReplyDeleteTo still not know which “side” U.S. leadership is on is to be beyond naïve.
November 18, 2015
Raymond Ibrahim
50
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In recent months, Mideast Christians have been forming militias to fight the Islamic State (IS) and other jihadi groups in both Iraq and Syria—even as the Obama administration, which arms the “opposition,” refuses to arm them.
In Iraq, some of the few remaining Assyrian Christians have formed militias under the name Dwekh Nawsha (literally meaning “self-sacrifice” in Christ’s native tongue of Aramaic). Most of these fighters are from among those Christians displaced from the Ninevah Plain due to the atrocities committed by IS and are on the frontlines fighting the jihadis.
They were formed soon after the U.S.-supported Kurdish Peshmerga, who are leading the fight against IS in the region, retreated from many Christian villages without a fight last summer, declining to protect them from the IS advance which led to the usual atrocities.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Christians have taken up arms because they want to protect their own land, and many no longer trust the Kurds to do it for them.” Indeed, the Kurds, including the Peshmerga, have been known to abuse and even persecute Christians. Like IS, Kurds are Sunni Muslims too.
“We will stay here, and Christians will protect Christians. Not Arabs or Kurds protecting us, but Christians,” said local commander Fouad Masaoud Gorgees.
In neighboring Syria, approximately 500 Syriac Christian fighters recently assembled and managed to prevent the Islamic State from entering the ancient Christian settlement of Sadad. But on October 30, IS captured a town less than five miles away, leaving Sadad vulnerable to continued assaults.
Even the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church, Ignatius Aphrem II, traveled to Sadad to boost the morale of Christian defenders. Said Aphrem:
It was emotional but it was also very encouraging to see our young people determined to defend their land and stay in their homeland. To see them ready to fight and to sacrifice for their land, I think that’s what’s very meaningful, that made me very proud of them.
There’s a reason why Christians are frantically trying to save Sadad from the clutches of IS. As one Syriac Christian fighter put it, Sadad “is a symbolic place for us and we will not allow it to fall again.”
He is referring to the events of October 2013, when the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army—widely touted as moderate but in fact working with al-Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front—captured the town. They made a graphic video (with English subtitles) of those whom they killed, the “dogs of Assad”—“dog” being an ancient Islamic epithet for Christians—while shouting Islam’s victory-cry, “Allahu Akbar” (which John McCain equates to a Christian saying “thank God”) and praise for the Free Syrian Army.
DeleteDuring their one week occupation of Sadad, the moderate/radical coalition tortured, raped, and murdered 45 Christians; the bodies of six people from one family alone, ranging from ages 16 to 90, were found at the bottom of a well (an increasingly common fate for “subhuman” Christians).
At the time, Syriac Archbishop Selwanos Boutros called it Syria’s “largest massacre of Christians.” Even so, this massacre was wholly ignored by the Obama administration and so-called mainstream media in an effort to maintain the narrative that the Free Syrian Army was “moderate.”
Concerning the Sadad massacres, the archbishop had asked in 2013:
We have shouted aid to the world but no one has listened to us. Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers?
As persecuted Mideast Christians have well learned since, most Western governments—the Obama administration at their head—could care less about their fate. They care only about one thing: overthrowing Assad—at any cost, including by directly or indirectly arming the Islamic terrorists that persecute Christians in horrific ways, including slaughtering those who refuse to renounce Christ for Muhammad.
Yet truly “moderate” Christian militias fighting the Islamic State are denied arms from Washington: “Lobbyists in D.C. are blocking weapons and equipment from reaching Dwekh Nawsha, the Christian militia force that has been fighting ISIS in Iraq’s Assyrian Nineveh plains.”
Retired Lt. Col. Sargis Sangari, an Iraq war veteran who served 20 years in the army, says: “As much as you’re giving money to all these individuals who are killing each other [the “moderate” terrorists, Kurds, etc.], why don’t you try to give it to the Assyrians?”…. Currently, their [Christians’] lack of resources prevents them from launching an offensive.” U.S. funding, training, and equipment would allow these Christian militias to take the fight to IS, added Sangari.
Of course, all of this assumes that U.S. leadership actually wants the Islamic State and other “moderate” jihadis to be defeated in an offensive by anyone—a dubious assumption.
DeleteStill, persecuted Christian pleas have not totally fallen on deaf ears. A few Western Christians, mostly Americans, have traveled to the Middle East to help the indigenous Christians fight the jihadis.
Seeing their governments, which possess the military capability to annihilate the Islamic State, do next to nothing—not even help arm Christians—against IS, these Western Christians have decided to take it on themselves to fight the good fight on behalf of the weak and oppressed.
Brett Felton, a former American soldier who once served in Iraq, now sees himself as a “soldier of Christ” and has returned to help train Dwekh Nawsha against IS.
According to the 28-year-old, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But here we’re actually fighting for the freedom of the people … to be able to live without persecution, to keep the church bells ringing.”
U.S. vet Jordan Matson, who has the words “Christ is Lord” inscribed in his vest, said: “I decided that if our government wasn’t going to do anything about it, I would… We’re getting shot at [by IS/jihadis] on pretty much a daily basis…. We don’t have the technology that the United States military has to push our enemies away.”
First the Christians of Iraq and then Syria implored the West for help against the Islamic persecutors that the United States unleashed by overthrowing secular strongman Saddam Hussein and now against Bashar Assad.
Brutally persecuted Christians were totally ignored by both government and media.
Then they implored the Obama administration to simply stop arming their persecutors. When that too fell on deaf ears, vastly outnumbered and underequipped Christians gathered to fight the Islamic State head on, hoping the U.S., which showers the “opposition” with weapons, would help equip them against IS.
No such luck. As a result, a few Western Christians who believe in religious freedom are risking their personal lives to help their Mideast brothers against the scourge of “ISIS.”
In light of all this, to still fail to understand which “side” U.S. leadership is on—they currently claim to be on the side of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”—is to be beyond naïve.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260821/dc-refuses-arm-persecuted-christians-fighting-isis-raymond-ibrahim
Obama is a true turd, and the worst President in United States history.
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DeleteNational Security
Barack Obama: Worst. President. Ever.
Robert Tracinski
By Robert Tracinski
November 19, 2015
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I still remember a lot of people telling me in 2006 that George W. Bush was the “worst president ever.”
They had no idea what they were talking about. This is what the “worst president ever” looks like. In his response to the attacks in Paris, Barack Obama has shown us a leader who is not just inadequate to his core responsibilities, but contemptuous of them.
It started Friday night with his first statement about the attacks. He was perfunctory, devoid of content, and utterly listless. His delivery was flat and without affect — expressing neither outrage nor sorrow — giving the impression that he had no desire to be in front of the cameras or to make any comment at all.
I don’t demand much out of an early press conference like this. The president still knows too few facts about the case and has not had time to formulate a detailed response. But he should at least look as if he cares. If France is “our oldest ally” and “represents the timeless values of human progress,” shouldn’t Obama be very engaged with what happens there?
By contrast, here was his same-day reaction to a mass shooting in Oregon six weeks earlier.
See especially the part about four minutes in. It’s clear that the prospect of imposing gun control domestically gets Obama riled up. Fighting the enemies of America overseas does not. But the first of these goals is actually prohibited to him by the Constitution — while the second is mandated for him. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen a president whose personal priorities are so out of sync with the actual demands of his office.
The administration’s reaction has only gotten worse as it has had more days to respond. On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry let out the howler that the terrorist attack in France earlier this year — wiping out the headquarters of a satirical magazine that had offended radical Muslims — was kind of understandable.
There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of—not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people.
To be sure, this sentiment didn’t come from Obama himself. But he hired Kerry, who has a record of making horribly insensitive statements. He is the same guy who thought a James Taylor song was an appropriate response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre — and Obama apparently agreed that this would make up for skipping out on an international unity rally in support of France. So maybe we know now why the administration couldn’t really get mobilized to show support for Charlie Hebdo: deep down, they thought the magazine had it coming.
DeleteObama’s administration can’t even get the easy, symbolic stuff right. But the real problem is the substance of his response.
Obama can’t even get the easy, symbolic stuff right.
That brings us to Obama’s petty, peevish press conference on Monday. This is the president who infamously dismissed the Islamic State as the junior varsity squad and described it as “contained” just hours before the attacks in Paris. So naturally, he faced a flurry of questions challenging him on that. At which point, as Politico put it, “he appeared to lose patience with repeated questions about whether he underestimated the threat of the terror network.”
Even Democrats are concerned that “at times he was patronizing, at other times he seemed annoyed and almost dismissive.” Nothing was more dismissive than this comment:
If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisors are better than the Chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are actually on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate. But what I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning, or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people, and to protect people in the region who are getting killed, and to protect our allies and people like France. I’m too busy for that.
This was supposed to show that he doesn’t give a damn what his critics think, but it just shows that he doesn’t give a damn. This is the point inadvertently made by a blogger who praised him and put the issue in no uncertain terms, though I have bowdlerized it a bit to make it publishable on a family website.
We’ve kinda suspected it before, but President Obama genuinely gives no [damns] at this point. He is [damn] devoid. [Damn] deficient. [Damn] deprived. [Damn] destitute. His cupboard of [damns] is barren; his tank of [damns] has been depleted. You know how, on cloudy nights, you might look up into the vast and endless sky and not find any stars? The same thing would happen if you looked at Obama and searched for [damns]. And this, this total absence of [damns], is where pop off came from.”
This is supposed to make Obama “cool,” I guess, because it shows that he is defying the “haters” — those “haters” being his critics back home, not the guys shooting people on the streets of Paris. But it actually shows contempt for pretty much everybody. It’s contemptuous of some of his political allies, like Dianne Feinstein, who are concerned that the Islamic State is “not contained.” It’s contemptuous of the reporters who are asking him good, tough questions. And it’s contemptuous of the American people, who are suddenly concerned that attacks like the one in Paris are going to start happening in our own cities and who want some kind of reassurance that the president of the United States is on the job. They don’t want to be told that they are just “popping off,” or that the president isn’t taking their concerns seriously.
When Obama thinks of empty slogans, he thinks of ‘America winning.’
What they really want to hear is that America is leading and America is going to win. And Obama told us that he is above such petty concerns. Sure, he phrases it as opposition to empty sloganeering, but it’s revealing that when he thinks of empty slogans, he thinks of “America winning.”
ReplyDeleteSo was this also empty sloganeering?
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Because that’s the sort of thing we need our president to say — and not just to say it, but to mean it.
We’ve had presidents before who made big mistakes. I remember George W. Bush, who messed up the occupation of Iraq (but fought like hell to recover). We’ve had presidents who were incompetent and inadequate. I remember Jimmy Carter and Desert One, his bungled response to the Iran hostage crisis. But I don’t know that we’ve ever had a president who didn’t really care about America winning — and who announced it to the public.
To realize how seriously he takes this, consider the detail with which he describes his basic discomfort with the core responsibility of the commander-in-chief. In response to suggestions (which, in his typical style, he exaggerated) to increase our efforts against the Islamic State, he responded:
Let’s assume that we were to send 50,000 troops into Syria. What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then send more troops into there? Or Libya, perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else—in North Africa, or in Southeast Asia?
If I were Obama, by the way, I wouldn’t mention the idea of not sending troops to respond to a terrorist attack in Libya. Because he already did that, in Benghazi, and our ambassador and three other Americans died.
But the general point is a fair one. We can’t send troops everywhere. Does that mean we send them nowhere? Isn’t it his job to make those strategic allocations, to decide which threats are the most serious and require the most resources? And shouldn’t he consider that the threat from the Islamic State is getting a lot more serious? But he sees only the costs of action, not the costs of inaction, and he is paralyzed by it.
[E]very few months I go to Walter Reed, and I see a 25-year-old kid who’s paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle. And so I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others may.
This is patronizing to our service members, who signed up for the job of killing terrorists, not just to sit around on base. But in case we didn’t get the point, he added:
Delete[T]here are costs to the other side. I just want to remind people, this is not an abstraction. When we send troops in, those troops get injured, they get killed; they’re away from their families; our country spends hundreds of billions of dollars.
Obama’s outlook on national security is profoundly defeatist. He sees only the costs of action and regards victory as an illusion. Vox’s Matt Yglesias offers an essential explanation, from a sympathetic source, of how things look to Obama administration insiders.
Many senior administration officials at this point are part of the permanent national security apparatus, but the core group of real ‘Obama people’ has a surprisingly dovish self-conception, where they see themselves operating in a world in which demands for military intervention are constant and endless—from the media, from congressional Republicans, from foreign governments and their allies in Washington, and from the permanent security bureaucracy itself—but America’s actual ability to engage in non-counterproductive interventions is quite limited.
Thus, Yglesias concludes, “the hardest problem in US counterterrorism policy is in some ways as much a speechwriting challenge as anything else. The next time something goes wrong and an attack hits the United States, how do you sell the American people on the idea of not really doing anything about it?”
So the hardest problem in counter-terrorism is how to write speeches, or better yet, how to write speeches about doing nothing?
So the hardest problem in counter-terrorism is how to write speeches?
Well, I supposed that’s what we should expect from a president who got elected for his speeches and not for doing anything. And this, I suspect, is how he is going to end up being remembered as commander-in-chief: as the guy who, in a crisis, gave us petulant speeches about why he was doing nothing.
This is one of those moments when you almost appreciate the parliamentary system, which can hold a vote of no confidence in the chief executive. You want to talk about popping off? If Obama is traumatized and overwhelmed by the job of being commander-in-chief, he can pop off to the golf course and clear the way for someone else to do it.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/19/barack-obama-worst-president-ever/