Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Islamism

46 Comments

At what point is the world going to recognize that this totalitarian ideology is at least as bad as Nazism?

By the way, for those who want to devalue the word “genocide,” does this count?

“We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,” he said

“Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar.”

But other than that, it’s totally a religion of peace. Good thing that these guys aren’t a real threat, like Al Qaeda. Like the president says, they’re just junior varsity.

46 thoughts on “Islamism”

  1. One of the arguments long advanced as to why the WW-II Germans along with the Cold War Russians posed an existential threat to which others have not even come close is that they had the power of a scientifically and industrially advanced culture. The later isms, not so much.

    You see on CNN some dudes “carving donuts” with a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I can’t see the Wehrmacht troops engaged in stupid celebrations when there was still a war to fight.

    Were we serious, I can’t see our air power not destroying their fixed emplacements along with all of the armored goodness they are having so much fun with. Apparently, supposedly the Serbs in Kosovo were pretty good in the deception department, getting NATO to blow up their inflatable tanks. But the Serbs benefited from years of Cold War Soviet doctrine let alone their own WW-II resistance against the Germans.

    Part of how this works is that these guys conduct a guerilla campaign, which means that they “embed” in the civlian populations which kinda, sorta sympathizes with them, giving them sanctuary. I somehow can’t see this happening among the Kurdish population in Northern Iraq. Give the Kurds ammo to fight from the ground, drop bombs from the sky, and this guys are finished.

    1. Mr. Obama seems to be following his usual practice of finding the “sour spot” in all this. By actually doing a few air strikes on ISIS he enrages his left-wing base without achieving anything decisive against the barbarian hordes. I see no signs Obama is prepared to do anything by way of providing significant arms or ammunition to the Kurds. The Kurds, I think, will quickly tire of Mr. Obama’s chronic indecision and denial and will reach an agreement with the Saudis for arms, ammo and even for the Royal Saudi Air Force to get some useful combat experience flying close air support missions.

      Properly equipped, the Kurds will grind ISIS to powder, first in Iraq, then in Syria. Personally, I’d be delighted if the Kurds continued on after ISIS is destroyed and took down Assad as well. I’d be even more delighted if they subsequently declared the independent state of Kurdistan comprising their own long-standing area of northern Iraq plus all additional Iraqi territory taken back from ISIS and all of Syria.

      1. So, you ‘properly equip’ the Kurds, so they can fight ISIS, who are apparently largely equipped with hardware the US government gave to the Iraqi army over the last few years to ensure they were ‘properly equipped’.

        What do you when those now ‘properly equipped’ Kurds then go on to attack Turkey, and Turkey calls on all other NATO members to assist them?

        1. It seems a lot more likely that Turkey would attack a newly declared independent Kurdistan than that Kurdistan would attack Turkey, but neither scenario seems especially likely to me. The Turks have largely abandoned their previously quite vigorous campaigns of cultural suppression anent the Kurds in eastern Turkey. The Turks might even welcome an independent Kurdistan in the hopes that a significant fraction of Turkey’s Kurdish population would soon emigrate there.

  2. Jihadism still a better name for a long list of reasons. Yes, they’re mostly “Squirrel!” types of reasons, but the dishonest people will always drive off in the total distraction direction.

    Or “Crusader” … because we speak English. That would certainly irritate the correct people.

  3. ISIS is a monster, nothing less. If anything, they make Nazis look warm and fuzzy.

    What I simply cannot understand is why Obama announced he’d approved airstrikes two days before they happened.

    What the heck is the reason for giving ISIS warning like that? For one thing, it allows them to use smaller convoys, and take more precautions.

    Why not keep quiet for 48 hours instead of throwing away tactical surprise for no reason?

      1. Rand, to be honest, the only answer I can come up with is; “Because the Obama is a narcissistic notwit (one step down from a nitwit) who values face time on TV more than tactical reality and putting our aircrews at greater risk.

        1. It is simple really. Obama’s latest vacation was about to begin, but the crisis required him to act. So he put out the order for the air strike before heading out the door. He knew it would take time to set up the logistics so he was magnanimous in giving the military an extra 48 hours to catch up. You have to understand CJ, to Obama, the military is slow, but this could be fixed if Congress would just cooperate with him and pass all his social measures, then Obama would give a little to the hawks to buy their wasteful bombs. But the Congress is nothing but haters, and Obama has a tee time. Oh and #bringbackourgirls.

          1. In this case, I’m not commenting on Obama, but rather, I’m musing about history. I grew up hearing about how the Japanese were dastardly for the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor. I also grew up hearing people complaining about how the US (and specifically, Congress) never formally declares war anymore. Sometimes wars were criticized as “undeclared wars”. In these cases, there seemed to be a desire for the announcement of hostility prior to an actual battle.

          3. A quote from one of my favorite SF books, JEM:

            Dalehouse responded with shocked disbelief. “That’s — that’s unprovoked aggression! A stab in the back!”
            “Wrong, Dalehouse. That’s preemption. The Greasies don’t have a choice, either. They just haven’t figured it out yet.”
            “Bullshit! It’s what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor all over again!”
            She opened her eyes wide. “Sure, why not? There was nothing wrong with Pearl Harbor, except they fucked it up. If they’d gone on to take out the carrier fleet and follow up with a landing, history would be a lot different. You’d be saying ‘Pearl Harbor’ the way you say ‘Normandy’ now, only you’d be saying it in Japanese.”

          5. No, you just seemed to be babbling.

            If you’re going to make a bad analogy, you should at least attempt to explain it, and not make us try to get into your head.

          8. Rand said;

            I’m sure that there is some “If we strike then without warning, the world will think we’re mean, and not like us” mentality going on.

            I really don’t want to believe that’s the case, but I suspect you’re right, because sadly, this administration is indeed capable of such profound stupidity.

  4. Well, on the bright side, Obama told them that we wouldn’t send in ground troops and the very limited air campaign will only last a couple of months, so they should be able to adjust their operations so they don’t suffer many casualties. As a humanitarian gesture, we should probably precede each air strike by dropping fliers warning ISIS jihadists of what we’re targeting, so they can get to a safe distance. All the Administration needs is video of stolen vehicles blowing up to satisfy the press. There’s no reason anyone needs to get hurt.

    And that’s probably how Operation Martha’s Vineyard will go down.

    1. That was funny. But as for ” we should probably precede each air strike by dropping fliers warning ISIS jihadists of what we’re targeting, so they can get to a safe distance”, that’s pretty much behavior we praised Israel for recently.

      1. Hamas is a group of cowards who hide behind civilians. It isn’t necessary to warn them any more than it wasn’t necessary for the US to warn Germany or Japan of attacks. Likewise, Israel does have the right not to notify them of their targets, but they have a superior moral code.

        With The Islamic State of Douchebags, they may or may not hide behind civilians. If they don’t, then you can’t equate IS with Israel.

        1. I’m equating the United States of America with Israel, two countries which have high moral standards. Israel warns. The USA warned.

          1. Israel warns because it is attempting to minimize civilian casualties that Hamas is using as shields. It is monumentally stupid for Obama to warn ISIS/ISIL that he is going to attack their military formations.

          2. Would it have been monumentally stupid for the Japanese to declare war on the USA before Pearl Harbor? (I have heard the story that they attempted to do so, but that’s irrelevant to my question.)

          3. You seem to have a pretty warped moral equivalence going on there. Were the ships in Pearl Harbor on the march beheading and crucifying people? If the US could have attacked the Japanese troops in Nanking without warning, should they have? Please mend my failed memory here.

          4. A warning to the Japanese prior to the USA attempting to save the people of Nanking would not have endangered the civilians, and might have saved some of them.

            Anyway, my point is that for decades, Americans have called the attack on Pearl Harbor a date that will live in infamy because it was a sneak attack. 9/11 was likened to Pearl Harbor because it was a sneak attack. Americans have, at least some of the time, taken a dim view of sneak attacks.

          6. Bob, if your goal is the destruction of enemy forces, you do not tell them how to simply void the attack by not being there at the appointed time, or lay a trap for the attackers. Thus, anyone who leaked word of the upcoming Normandy invasion would have been shot for treason. That didn’t make it a sneak attack like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 where the target was an unsuspecting innocent bystander, blissfully at peace. The Japanese weren’t ever going to tell us that they were about to attack Pearl Harbor because that would’ve been STUPID. What they had intended was to tell us that they were declaring war on us, with no particular place and time of an attack specified.

            The tactical “warn first” method is like trying to capture a fugitive by always giving him a 48-hour notice before the police raid his hotel. What the Israelis are doing is telling everyone else in the hotel to get out, knowing Hamas will also flee the area, because their target is the surface-to-surface missiles and weapon stockpiles, and their warning time is minutes, not days, so that Hamas doesn’t have enough time to remove any significant number of heavy weapons.

            That neither you nor Obama have figured this out speaks volumes.

          7. “They take a dim view of sneak attacks of nations at peace.”

            The problem with attaching conditions like “if they are at peace” is that the other side will likely come up with a justification for why their enemy wasn’t at peace.

            For example, look at the starts of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. In
            the 1967 case, Israel will argue, at length, why their pre-emptive attack was justified, why the blockade of the straits of Tiran was an act of war, etc. The Arabs will argue, in turn that the surprise attack in 1973 was justified because Israel was hardly a nation at peace as it occupied the Sinai….

            Similarly, both Japan and Al Queda have stories to tell themselves about why America was not a nation at peace. If you require the condition “nation at peace”, I think you can’t really expect to ever receive a fair warning, since modern enemies who need to justify aggression will never see you as peaceful.

          8. The problem with attaching conditions like “if they are at peace” is that the other side will likely come up with a justification for why their enemy wasn’t at peace.

            Who cares what monsters like ISIL tell themselves?

            Islamists believe that anyone not Muslim is at war. You’ve never heard of Dar Al Islam and Dar Al Harb?

          9. Bob-1 one now demonstrates the difference between adult and child reasoning.

            Yes you can argue… the point is, adults see what’s important and what is not.

            Most adults know that Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack on a nation at peace. That includes the Japanese which were hoping to make a strike out blow but missed the carriers and submarines.

            Childish thought, believing themselves to be lawyers of great discernment, bring up irrelevancies as if they changed reality. Reality is stubborn. More than any child.

      2. “………that’s pretty much behavior we praised Israel for recently.”

        Please tell us that you are not SO unutterably stupid to see the difference between the two situations.

        In case you are I’ll give you a hint:

        civilians

        1. You’re right about civilians, but consider this version of the analogy:

          Israel wanted the rockets to stop, but didn’t plan to eliminate Hamas. If a warning led Hamas to decide to stop, Israel is satisfied. The USA wants ISIS to stop before reaching the capital of Kurdistan, but doesn’t plan to eliminate them. If a warning led ISIS to stop, the USA would be satisfied.

          2. I was responding to George’s satirical Operation Martha’s Vinyard. A point of George’s ridicule was the idea that you’d warn before attacking. This didn’t seem ridiculous to me as we watched Israel effectively attack Hamas after warning them. Getting too wrapped up in where the analogy fails and where it doesn’t is going to cause frustration, since the starting point was George’s silliness. If George had started with a non-silly idea, it would be easier to be rigorous with our analogies. This is not a plea for George to stop being silly, it is plea for you to not get too serious when George’s silliness was the starting point.

        2. Well, it’s good to know that we don’t plan to eliminate ISIS, and that they can continue to rule over western Iraq and eastern Syria, decapitating all religious minorities, forcing all the women in the region to have their clits cut off, using their newfound revenue streams to buy anti-airliner missile systems, and expanding their murderous caliphate in all directions.

          1. I wonder if we could eliminate ISIS? The Israelis think they can’t eliminate Hamas, and that’s a much more geographically constrained problem.

        3. Wish I could find the link.

          The Liberal Project is not about any issue but about finding something to disagree with Conservatives and dispute everything we say. If we agreed with all of the talking points, they would go down the list and find something else to agitate with.

      3. Nope, it was stupid when Israel did it too. “Knock” bombing, or any similar warnings to the enemy, are idiotic and immoral.

      4. Bob-1, how about explaining your fave SF book, JEM?? I would love to know the ACTUAL TITLE.
        and Islam is a grave threat to civilization, sooner or later we will surrender or fight it to the death.
        “Rubble makes no trouble,” and no worries about women or children. as Gen. Phil Sheridan described his treatment of Indian villages, nits make lice.

    2. All the more reason Obama will do it as part of his “broader strategy”, which no doubt will include partnering with ISIS on issues where we can find common ground with them, such as combating childhood obesity.

      Time to pivot back to a demand for Congress to increase the minimum wage in 3, 2, 1…

  5. I guess Bob-1 thinks we should all convert to ISIS’s version of Islam because anything else is too much bother. Well, that might be taking it a step farther, Bob-1 just wants us to give up.

      1. Obama’s policy’s have been like fertilizer to the grass but he wont go mow the lawn because it is too hot out and sportscenter is on. It doesn’t matter that it is summer and will always be hot or that sportscenter is on all the time and he can watch later. He could even listen to ESPN on his iphone but it is just too much work and he would get sweaty.

  6. George Turner wrote:

    “Well, on the bright side, Obama told them that we wouldn’t send in ground troops….. ”

    Even that promise came with an expiration date…another 130 were sent.

    As a bit of Dark Humor in all this madness and mayhem:

    Obama is being Cloward-Pivened by world events.

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