
The War ISIS Wants - pmcpinto
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attacks-isis-strategy-chaos/?mod=e2this
======
blisterpeanuts
The article is a nuanced view of the present situation, but doesn't go into
the historical perspective. Contemporary radical Islam is a response to
Western modernity and perceived decadence and has been brewing for decades if
not centuries. It is an outgrowth of Salafi Islam, a severely literal
interpretation of the Koran that has become widespread over the past 70 years
thanks to trillions of petrodollars that fund thousands of fundamentalist
madrassas and other cultural dissemination centers all over the world,
including in the United States and Western Europe.

It's important to note that ISIS, al Qaeda, al nusra etc. are Sunni movements
and are bitterly opposed to Shi'ism. The rise of Shi'a political power, led by
Iran since 1980, poses a huge ideological threat.

What we're seeing today is a tiny group of very clever, highly motivated
people, patiently watching for opportunities to sow chaos because they believe
it will tip the scales eventually toward a Caliphate. They are hugely aided by
technology and by the West's earnest desire to integrate the East.

However, I believe the ISIS is doomed to failure. There are only so many young
people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife
fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in
other words, aren't that stupid. ISIS is siphoning off a certain kind of
malcontents who make good fodder for the cannons, but history has shown that
this approach is not sustainable. The Muslim world is already showing signs of
backlash against the constant images of extreme violence, and reformists
continue to call for tolerance and dialogue as the only true solution to
territorial and ideological differences.

Whether the Levant succumbs to unending civil war for the next few decades, or
is ultimately dominated by a set of secular dictatorships that suppress the
jihadists, or can they achieve peaceful multiplayer democracy--these are
questions to which no one has the answers.

~~~
RobertoG
I find your comment very relevant and I agree with all of it but I miss some
references to the influence of not Levant nations in all this mess.

To your comments I would like to add: the Russians invading Afghanistan, the
CIA arming and training of all kind of "rebels", the invasion of Irak, the
protection of the House of Saud by the EUA, the interest of Israel in being
the only strong nation in the area, the support of dictatorial regimens (and
their removal) by the "western powers", etc..

It's almost impossible to solve a problem without understanding it. And this
is not a simple problem.

~~~
rdtsc
Also the funding of the Syrian rebels by Obama and other Western nations. ISIS
was just one of the groups in the Syrian civil war, a bunch brutal and crazy
idiots, that would have never amounted to anything.

At the same time CIA wanted to destabilize the region, to kick the currently
Russia-friendly government out (and as a consequence kick Russia out of its
pretty much only naval base in the region). So they kept funneling funds,
training and weapons to the "moderate" rebels.

Of course all those weapons (along with many left behind in Iraq), and all
those "moderate" rebels switched to ISIS. Now you can either say CIA is stupid
or malicious. Stupid because despite the $100B in funding, they couldn't
foresee it and it was a surprise, or it was pretty much the plan.

One can say, at the end of the day what are they (and many other military and
intelligence) branches will do if is there is no new threat to worry about.
"No drones or SIGINT targets, no promotions and paychecks". Both for military
industrial complex and the government employees alike.

Either way I find it interesting how this was spun as a surprise to the media:
"We had no idea why ISIS grew so fast, and managed to occupy so much
territory. Not really sure how they got those modern tank killer missiles they
keep making videos with...".

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Source for "all those "moderate" rebels switched to ISIS"? Source for "$100B
in funding"? This smacks of conspiracy claptrap that adds nothing of substance
to the discussion.

~~~
rdtsc
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#cite_note-12)

"Defense Intelligence $80.1 billion[12] 3.3% Because of classified nature,
budget is an estimate and may not be the actual figure"

Something makes me doubt another $20B into the intelligence budget would have
changed the outcome for the better.

More sauce:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11882195/US-
trained-Division-30-rebels-betrayed-US-and-hand-weapons-over-to-al-Qaedas-
affiliate-in-Syria.html)

[https://en.zamanalwsl.net/readNews.php?id=5696](https://en.zamanalwsl.net/readNews.php?id=5696)
(translated)

[http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/u-s-backed-syrian-group-joins-
isl...](http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/u-s-backed-syrian-group-joins-islamist-
fighters/)

> This smacks of conspiracy claptrap that adds nothing of substance to the
> discussion.

Well, did you have anything to discuss, or just wanted sauce? Because I am not
sure "src pls!" replies add much to the discussion.

~~~
linkregister
I disagree that a request for sources is unwarranted in this situation. Your
language assumed the reader agreed with your viewpoint based off of not-
commonly-known facts: "of course... stupid because..."

I understand your decision to reply with snark to a snarky comment, but in
this instance, "src pls!" does in fact add to the discussion.

~~~
rdtsc
I think if they are interested in the conversation it is worth throwing more
than a drive-by "srs pls" comment into it.

For example it could have been "Well I think the budget is a bit off, CIA
itself doesn't get that money, did you mean the total intelligence budget".

Or "Agreed, do you have any sources for the fighters who switched side? that
would be interesting to see".

Imagine you are sitting by the fire and discussing something, and someone just
chimes with "src pls", "srs pls", I wouldn't consider them contributing to the
discussion, rather derailing it.

So I agree, source would help here, did provide sources but responded snarky
to give the person asking for them a hint (not so subtle, perhaps) that in
general that is not a constructive way to hold a conversation.

------
liotier
Want to know what ISIS is up to ? Just take it from their official magazine -
it is right there, explicit. The strategy is called "The extinction of the
gray zone" \- it is about polarizing western society by eliciting
islamophobia: "Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven
to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders
increase persecution against Muslims living in Western land. [..] Eventually,
the gray zone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls
and movements. There will only be the camp of īmān versus the camp of kufr".
So, if you want to counter ISIS influence in our society, you know what to do:
love each other... Turning to epidermic identity politics won't help a bit.
Even ISIS remarks that our "response is often violently reactionary instead of
forward-thinking" \- and that is just the way they want it.

Source: [http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-
state/islamic-...](http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-
state/islamic-state-dabiq-magazine-issue-7-from-hypocrisy-to-apostasy.pdf) \-
(WARNING: shocking images, including severed heads - on top of the shocking
text)

~~~
Torgo
Their definition of an apostate Muslim is basically identical to our
definition of an assimilated Muslim. Simply being more tolerant may avoid one
horn, but gets you gored by the other. They are not dumb, their strategy is
more complex than what they lay out in their official publication. Their goal
is to put the West into an unwinnable situation no matter what we do. When you
say "erase identity politics" well this applies to a massive chunk of non-
radical Western Muslims as well, you are in effect talking about eliminating
the gray zone also. That is why their strategy is so threatening, there is no
winning move for the West as long as the West holds on to its ideological
contradictions.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Their goal is to put the West into an unwinnable situation no matter what we
> do.

No, their goal is to place Muslims in a situation where the fear of hatred
from the West against Muslims (which Daesh kindles by provocative attacks on
the West designed to get the West to blame, and retaliate against, Muslims
generally) and fear of the consequences of defying Daesh (which Daesh creates
by violent attacks on those Muslims who defy them) leave Muslims to perceive
accepting the dominion of Daesh as the least bad option open to them. That's
how the Caliphate is formed and grows.

------
blfr
_The fact that the EU’s replacement rate is 1.59 children per couple and the
continent needs substantial levels of immigration to maintain a productive
workforce_

The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is
shoehorn enough to keep the economy going. Beyond the complete lack of
humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong.
If this was the case, the entire world would already look like Europe and
there would be no waves of migration.

It's also bizarrely narcissistic to think that ISIS care about how Europeans
feel about Islam or how Muslims are treated since according to OP they will be
replacing locals anyway.

~~~
Amezarak
> Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels
> of brent, it's simply wrong.

Indeed. And there seems, to me, to be something nihilistic in the idea that
Europeans should simply let immigrants replace them. Maybe instead, European
nations should look into instituting domestic policies that encourage the
population to maintain a healthy replacement rate.

The article appears to be implying that Western nations should not make war
against Daesh because "that's what they want." Well, the status quo of
surveillance, arrests, and half-hearted airstrikes isn't stopping them. There
seems something _profoundly_ suciidally nihilistic in the idea that Europe
should simply do nothing different and simply be more and more welcoming as
attacks happen in an attempt to appease extremists until at last Europe is no
longer populated by Europeans.

On the timescale of centuries and millenia, it's amazing how little has
changed in the past thousand years. This could be just another couple chapters
in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Which, for those who don't know,
covers mostly in later chapters the European nations and the various Muslim
empires.)

~~~
kuschku
> Maybe instead, European nations should look into instituting domestic
> policies that encourage the population to maintain a healthy replacement
> rate.

So, 18 months maternity/paternity leave, 180€ per month per child you have,
plus tax breaks, plus better credit rating, plus 12 more sick days a year,
plus subsidized kindergarten and daycare (with guaranteed daycare place from
age 3 on), cheap whole-day school for children, and after-school care for
them, is not enough?

What else are we supposed to do? Seriously? We have all this, and still birth
rates below 1.2 children in Germany. Seriously.

~~~
Riesling
I can only speak from a German perspective but the real problem from my point
of view is that in todays world everything seems as if it is going down slope.

Todays generation has less job security than the generation before.

Todays generation does not have a secured pension (like the generation before
had).

It is expected of todays generation to be a life-long learner (if you are not,
your economic value drops immediately and if your job gets terminated you fall
back to the same support someone receives, who has never worked in their life
before).

Affordable housing has decreased.

It is expected of both parents to work (tell me again why I should have
children, if I rarely see them?).

Pressure on children has increased as there is less time at school and less
time at Uni to learn the same things (do I really want to do this to my
possible future children?).

Especially for women having a child still is very bad for your career. Also if
you have a fixed-term contract (which there is an increasing number of, your
maternity employment protection is severely limited).

Of course this is just an anecdote, but at least in my circle of friends,
those with secured government jobs are the ones having the most children. I
would love to see some large-scale data on this subject.

~~~
Scarblac
The few generations before were the only generations ever to have job
security. I suspect it was because Europe was so devastated by the war (and so
many of the previous generation were dead), that the economy couldn't help but
grow.

------
littletimmy
Have you read George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf? I think it gets to the
heart of why ISIS is so popular.

"Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life.
Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive"
thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease,
security and avoidance of pain... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels
it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort,
safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common
sense, they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice,
not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades... Whereas Socialism, and even
capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good
time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and
as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."

Replace Hitler with ISIS, and the point still stands. In fact, it is made even
emotionally stronger now that it is religious. Is there an alternative? Can
capitalist democracy provide any greater meaning in life?

~~~
Spearchucker
The missing context of Orwell's review is what Hitler had on offer isn't what
he sold. Hitler _sold_ the promise of a better life for a then-struggling,
repressed Germany. There is irony in that.

------
carlob
My girlfriend taught in the Parisian banlieue for a year. In her experience
most of what is said in this article is very much true. In this areas (which
would correspond pretty much to inner cities in the US) the draw of radical
Islam is very strong, starting with high school kids. After all what else is
there to do? Deal drugs?

On the other hand I would like to see this study that shows that increase in
the level of education and occupation doesn't do much. I suspect the issue is
more subtle: in that many immigrants coming from the former colonies of France
don't really identify as French (even after a couple generations) and don't
fully accept the so-called 'republican values'.

The fact that many of Portuguese origin are converting to radical Islam seems
to me as a further symptom that the power of Jihadism actually stems from
socio-economical marginalization.

~~~
return0
What numbers are we talking about here? It seems that an extremely tiny
percentage are radicalized, and they don't seem to come from a specific social
class. In other words, is it not a gathering of nutjobs?

~~~
carlob
Read the article, up to 25% of the youth in these areas show some form of
support for ISIS.

~~~
return0
Showing "Some support" is very very very far from being part of such an
extreme organization. Or else we would all be dead .

~~~
carlob
But that's the problem: yes there are a few really crazy ones that are ready
to kill, but there are a lot of kids that are fascinated by the killers, that
say they understand them, that won't do a minute of silence for the Charlie
Hébdo victims, because "they were looking for it".

Imagine if 25% of American kids said they could relate to the Sandy Hook
shooter, wouldn't that be worrying? Regardless of whether they'd be out to
kill as well.

------
omginternets
It's not that I disagree with the points brought up by this article (how could
I! We've known these things to be true for years!), but I'm worried about the
leap that people make, namely that military action isn't necessary.

It's hard to imagine any effective strategy that doesn't involve killing
people in Syria. It's disgusting, necessary, and -- I willingly admit -- not
sufficient.

~~~
asgard1024
> It's hard to imagine any effective strategy that doesn't involve killing
> people

I disagree, one is actually described in the article:

"[For] the youth of the nation are closer to the innate nature [of humans] on
account of the rebelliousness within them."

Do you think capitalism/democracy/whatever mix we have in the West does a good
job of preventing these people fighting for "Jihad"?

We don't really give young people (say ages 15-25, before males are fully
emotionally developed) a chance to "rebel safely". We don't even have a
definition of what it could be! I'll just leave it here, there are many
options where to go from there, I think.

It actually reminds of "drug education" we had in high school. The guy was a
social worker who worked with people on drugs, gave them clean syringes, put
them on methadone, etc. His idea basically was, it's perfectly cool if you
want to try it, but it's better to understand the risks and wait a little bit,
until you grow older. I think it was very sane approach (and very counter-
intuitive to people who support war on drugs and "say no" and similar things).
Maybe the same should be done with weapons and war, and if someone still wants
to try the war, send him as a journalist to war zone.

Recently I had another related weird idea: Someone should write a sci-fi story
about a society which puts its youths through a very strict, military like
institution. It would then be revealed that the whole purpose of the
institution is to make young people rebel against authority, in a safe
environment. That would be akin to a successful graduation exam, because the
society would believe that those people who do that are going to be the best
citizens.

(You can also read my earlier comment on the topic here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572797))

~~~
pythonlion
what you said its all true but there are out there already some fanatics who
wants to kill you, they can. and they did, and i don't know how many more life
should be letting to "statistic danger", in the various places of the world.
its really hard to calculate, really.. i don't know.

~~~
icebraining
Just for perspective, more people die on the roads of France _every two weeks_
than have died in this attack.

(By the way, if you think I'm diminishing the tragedy of these deaths, aren't
_you_ diminishing the tragedy that are road fatalities?)

~~~
pythonlion
drone technology will solve that too.

------
kefka
So, it seems that the only way to fight this was is to change their minds by
asking assistance from the peaceful Muslim groups.

We can discriminate Daesh and Muslims, and that only shows the monsters they
say we are. We can bomb Daesh, which only encourages more to join their cause.
Worst case, we can nuke the whole area of Iraq and Syria where Daesh has
power, and that would only show every Muslim in the world that we are
intolerant of Islam.

This is a war of ideology, and that war cannot be fought with guns and bombs.
It has to start from the ground, with 'militant moderate Muslims' willing to
show people another way; one that does not involve in slavery, beheadings,
suicide bombings, and crucifixion. Weaponry has its place to keep the borders
of that state in its place, given that we know their religious orders are of
limitless expansion and no regard for state boundaries.

~~~
hedgew
I disagree. The last time we tried that went horribly wrong; we watched and
negotiated and "waged the war of ideology" too patiently while Hitler grew in
power, until ultimately the Nazis had to be fought and slaughtered and
condemned without mercy.

If history repeated itself, we would be wise to intervene faster instead of
twiddling our thumbs on the sidelines. And we'd know that waging any kind of
ideological war would be futile. It's almost certainly too late to solve the
problem with anything other than military action.

~~~
carlob
But how long did it take for the whole of Europe to mend the damage of WWII,
both physical and political? Germany has been left effectively occupied and
divided for 45 years after the end of the war. We're talking about an
industrialized country, which shared a very similar culture for the most part
with the occupying powers. How do you think the post-WWIII would go in the
Middle East? Do you think Syria will meekly accept foreign occupation, write a
new constitution and rebuild itself in just 45 years?

~~~
Margh
West Germany had a similar culture to their occupant, the east not so much.
Germany also became the centrepiece for a US vs. Russia proxy war, Syria would
likely become the same and is arguably already in that state.

In any case it would depend on whether a post WWIII and independent(ish)
Syria, much like the post WWII Germany, makes the prudent decision to outlaw
and taboo the fanaticism that got it into that situation in the first place.

~~~
carlob
> West Germany had a similar culture to their occupant, the east not so much.
> Germany also became the centrepiece for a US vs. Russia proxy war, Syria
> would likely become the same and is arguably already in that state.

That why I said _mostly_. However I still think Russia/East Germany is way
closer than France or US/Syria or Iraq.

Other than that Germany was not the only European power that kept suffering
the consequences of WWII well into the '80s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio)

------
natvod
Here's a very relevant article about how French youth get radicalized:
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-
franc...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-other-france)

Major points:

Unless you have the right connections, go to the right schools, have the right
French names, it's very difficult to get a good job. Even more so if you come
from banlieues. With no job prospects and isolation from mainstream society,
some Muslim youths retreat to religion and out of those, some discover and/or
led to radical ideologies.

If you read the article, you'll see that there are some Muslims who are trying
to rescue these youths. I feel this could be part of an actually solution.
Since Muslim youth won't trust outsiders at all, the government can provide
Muslim community leaders some resources to intervene in the lives of youths
that are going down the wrong paths from crime to radicalization.

Also, they can consider setting up programs for parents to identify the signs
of radicalization and educate them about how to intervene and de-escalate.
Apparently, a father of one of the Paris attackers even went all the way to
Syria to persuade his son to come home. Even after offering him a plan where
he didn't have to go to prison but could resettle in Algeria and try to
rebuild his life, the son refused. After a certain point in the radicalization
process, there seems to be a point of no return.

Clearly, just bombing ISIS is not going to work when the majority of these
terrorists lived in Europe.

------
macspoofing
... and they _hope_ that this war results in the outcome they envision - which
is some utopia that the Muslim world unites against the crusading threat and a
caliphate is established? But they are human and they are perfectly fallible.
And maybe force is necessary. In an ideal world, this is when a multi-national
force under the UN banner is actually warranted.

By the way this is the exact situation that American after 9/11 swore would
never happen again - a safe haven for global terrorism to be planned and
launched from. That one is on Obama, though with Iraq Bush made that option
incredibly difficult.

~~~
Borogravia
>That one is on Obama

Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn
this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have
actually made the world a safer place.

Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not
only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and
pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and
creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish.

The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube
doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up
the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.

~~~
enlightenedfool
So, are you saying that what Bush started is incorrigible? Perhaps not. If
only the politicians have a will to take the right path. Obama clearly doesn't
have it.

~~~
csours
See also: The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency. [1]

This is not a get out of jail free card for inaction, but a reminder that just
pushing an issue does not create positive action by itself. At this point any
action that Obama takes will be resisted by US politicians, perhaps leading to
a worse outcome than the status quo.

1\. [http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-
theor...](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-
the-presidency-explained)

------
cheez
> This is a strategy that has enabled it to confound far superior
> international forces

Are superior entities typically confounded by inferior entities in high-stakes
games? I ask this having been humbled myself thinking myself superior once
upon a time.

Or is it that the superior entities are pretending to be confounded to achieve
domestic goals? If I were a megalomaniac, I know what I'd do.

------
ck2
TL;DR "ISIS" (or merely the concept of ISIS because it will be replaced by
something worse when it is "defeated") wants to make the west attack muslims
and islam itself so that muslims take their side and go to war for them,
because they are only 30k right now and would love 300k or 3M

Conclusively, most religion is moronic and extreme religion is extremely
moronic. It's going to get much worse before it gets better and probably not
better in our lifetimes or at least this decade.

If Paris was horrible, imagine what they could do in the USA where guns are
super easy to collect. They could wipe out entire malls in an afternoon.

~~~
logfromblammo
It depends on the mall, but the nearest 80s-style enclosed mall to me has
quite a few vacancies in it. The parking lot has tumbleweeds blowing across
it, and they don't even grow here.

And on the other side of the equation, American cops are trigger happy, their
SWAT-team-equivalents are swimming in drug war forfeiture slush, combined with
military surplus purchase programs, and the citizenry itself has a decent
quantity of concealed pistol carriers.

Shooters on foot could kill a lot of people in that first 30 minutes, but
after that, the easy targets are all gone, and the retaliation force is on its
way to "arrest" your shooters. It doesn't take all afternoon to
[opportunistically grab some unpaid merchandise and] scramble for the exits.

Making Americans fear _shopping malls_ is a tactical wrong move. We have
already turned against them, mostly. You have to know the culture better. You
have to make us fear our own cars and roads. If we stop driving on a daily
basis, the whole country collapses.

But with over 30k highway deaths per year occurring already, in the absence of
any malice, that's a steep uphill battle. It'd be like putting additional
poisons in a carton of tobacco cigarettes.

------
kaz1
Anders Behring Breivik had a long manifesto that was meant to provide
conceptual landscape behind his killing of 77 people. Unsurprising is the
appearance of Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes et al. in there, but
its remarkably instructive that the likes of the respected George Orwell are
also cited. Part of his worldview (and not necessarily his course of action)
is shared by a substantive part of the people coming from ethnic-European
origin. Much of the less-than-graceful themes in the manifesto were from the
doctrinal elements that contributed to the unprecedented carnage across Europe
during the WWII, particularly symbolized by the horrific sufferings of the
hapless humans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (There are similar aspects
pertaining to the thoughts of Dylann Roof et.al). I wonder whether these
affairs and the associated ideological terrains have been examined as widely
and with as much interests.

The recent horrific criminal acts in Paris have connections with France's
colonial past with Algeria ([https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-
recent-pari...](https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-paris-
massacre-and-zionism/)). And Daesh, the brutal group implicated, has its
genesis in other brutalities, not unlike other similar affairs in the past
([http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-
anything...](http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-
that-flies-on-everything-that-moves)). In different settings with reduced
level of invasions and imposed/incited sufferings, such as in Malaysia, things
have remained at least as decent as any other.

------
jordanpg
How could it be that there are people in the world who, on the one hand, post
videos on YouTube, and on the other, believe things about the universe that
are manifestly and self-evidently false? (Yes, I'm referring to all religions
here.)

Religion -- all religion -- is so obviously nonsense, and yet the human race
goes on and on and on, having endless tortured discussions about the earthly
consequences of religious tenets, with a straight face.

How can we even begin to address these problems when all religious viewpoints
are considered with an air of seriousness and profundity? On what ground do we
(non-"holy warriors") stand when we say their viewpoint is wrong? None, so
long as _any_ religious viewpoint is taken seriously.

 _There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that
I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible._

Let us stop playing games and acknowledge that so long as grownups are
considering religious viewpoints alongside secular ones when making important
decisions, we will get absolutely nowhere.

~~~
enlightenedfool
"There is only one proper response to this and that is to make damn sure that
I laugh religious people out of the room whenever possible." That approach has
proven to not work. Didn't you realize that the "religious people" would do
the same to you? Their reality is different from yours.

~~~
jordanpg
Proven not to work by who? By what?

The point is, "their reality" is manifestly, obviously wrong.

~~~
csours
So you have ferreted all the gods out of all the gaps in human knowledge? That
is an amazing accomplishment!

Bases for belief are weird, even when they are not based on religion. Many
mentalities are based on absolutes, it seems you have replaced god with no-
god.

I don't think the anti-theist mindset is particularly useful. You cannot use
facts to change someone's mind, especially where facts were not used in the
first place.

Religion is a largely emotional experience to most people; denying them that
experience is just hurtful, not constructive.

~~~
jordanpg
There are plenty of grey areas in the world, yes.

Supernatural claims made by religions are not among those. Those are just
self-evidently false.

I'm not denying anyone anything. I'm just saying that the supernatural claims
made by religions are obviously false. I don't really care if anyone's
feelings are hurt by that.

------
vlehto
ISIS recruiting seems to live from making things black and white.

I think the best course of actin would be to leave ISIS alone from military
perspective.

Then airdrop food, water and medical supplies to the area. Not discriminating
between fighters and civilians. Smother them.

Then give the civilians living in that area a way to voice their grievances.
So that Muslim people in Egypt and France could feel sympathy for ordinary
human beings trapped in that area. "How can you treat our fellow Muslims so
bad?"

Now ISIS should be busy stopping people from messaging the outer world. And
stopping people from drinking filthy crusader water. They would have to spend
their energy enforcing a totalitarian state. It's difficult for them to
explain how there is holy war when the enemy is being so nice.

------
vlehto
>To be effective, attacks should be launched against soft targets that cannot
possibly be defended to any appreciable degree, leading to a debilitating
security state:

> "If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronize…is hit, all of the tourist
> resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the
> work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary amount, and a huge
> increase in spending."

That is huge misunderstanding by the author. That is absolutely standard
military tactic at least as old as Sun Tzu art of war. The idea is to force
enemy to spend more money than you are spending. Security state is just
meaningless side effect for ISIS point of view.

------
throwaway_user
I am a regular HN user and sometimes commentator. I am Muslim, both by
background and choice. I am glad that HN is having a conversation a 100 times
more serious and intellectual than I am seeing on popular Western and Muslim
media.

First of all Daesh are a bunch of psychopaths and a far greater threat and
problem to people like me. Their every move has been against not just non-
Muslims or moderate Muslims but also and even more so against mainstream and
all major currents of Sunni Islam. If people are interested, I can provide
specific sources to support this assertion.

From the Muslim world side, we have a huge mess. I wanted to put in my two
cents for Westerners trying to understand WTH is going on with the Muslim
world. Basically, the Assad regime, nominally "secular, progressive" tyrants
such as the Egyptian and Algerian militaries or Kurdish marxist armies,
numerous "radical" Sunni and Shia groups have all been at fault since they
could not agree on a set of principles on which disagreeing parties could come
to peace. The long Iraqi civil war brutalised already damaged societies. This
produced the sort of psychopaths such as Zarqawi and Baghdadi and numerous
others. Also, even otherwise somewhat moderate Sunnis have been driven into
ISIS's arms and somewhat moderate Nusayrites and Shi'ites have been driven
into Ass'ads arms because they don't see another option. The biggest problem
now is that while many people are disgusted by all this, there is so much
blame to go around that one can be completely justified in blaming everyone
else. So the problem is that people sympathetic to Assad (old-style
socialists, Shi'ites etc.) sit there blaming the Saudis, Turks and the "West"
for the supporting rebels who they say are all Daesh. On the other hand, Assad
has killed and driven out many times more refugees than Daesh, and many
Syrians and Sunnis find it hypocritical and self-serving to support Assad like
Putin is doing while neglecting the plight of the Syrian population being
hammered both from Assad and Daesh. The conspiracy theorist streak finds it
easy to blame the US, without trying to eliminate the local actors who are
instruments of said conspiracy, if they really believe there is one.

Unless all sides are brave enough to not only fight for their principles but
more importantly admit their own mistakes it is hard to fix this. But this
requires some trust, which only gets harder to find the more precarious your
own situation becomes.

------
amelius
I'm wondering how this all will affect the debate on online privacy and mass
surveillance, since the threat is now coming from among us.

~~~
neuronic
Adding to this, has anybody else noticed just how much encryption is being
mentioned in news articles and talk shows about Paris? In articles and
discussions on TV it's always in a fear-mongering tone: "They communicated
with encrypted messages!"

I mean yes, that poses a problem. But the solution isn't to antagonize
encryption. Should we all send our letters without envelopes? Why are people
ready and willing to do that online and not offline when the same information
is FAR more likely to be intercepted by crazy criminals? How much _potential_
exposure does your data get via snail mail versus Internet transmission?

Ignoring any sort of conspiracy theories I think despite the subtlety it is
still blatantly obvious that politicians are immediately taking advantage of
the situation, associating negativity (terrorism) with encryption.

It is a VERY dangerous time because emotions of people can be swayed in any
direction now. It is the same phenomenon observed when the Patriot Act was
enacted.

Discussions and discourse are discouraged because it isn't considered moral to
talk about these things less than a week after these horrifying attacks. NOW
is the time to stab the pro-encryption arguments right in the heart, charged
with emotion, in a subtle and covert way.

------
AnimalMuppet
These people are looking for something that the western civilization is not
giving them. For some, it's just to be treated like human beings rather than
something less.

But others are looking for something else. They look at the materialist view
(where all we are is a collection of atoms created by random chance, obeying
the laws of physics and biochemistry and neurology, and where it's very
difficult to find any real (non-arbitrary) meaning in life), and they find it
empty - empty in a way that more material prosperity won't fix.

And they look at Christianity in Europe, and too often they find it to be dead
- full of unreality and dust.

Their cry is in essence the same as the hippies in the 1960s: "Your society
isn't giving us adequate answers. It's not enough to satisfy our hearts."

------
benjaminmhaley
It's an old strategy. I was reading Grimm's Fairy tales to my wife this
morning and the brave little tailor used the same clever approach.

* * *

Leaping into the woods, he looked to the left and to the right. He soon saw
the two giants. They were lying asleep under a tree, snoring until the
branches bent up and down. The little tailor, not lazy, filled both pockets
with stones and climbed the tree. Once in the middle of the tree, he slid out
on a branch until he was seated right above the sleepers. Then he dropped one
stone after another onto one of the giant's chest. For a long time the giant
did not feel anything, but finally he woke up, shoved his companion, and said,
"Why are you hitting me?"

"You are dreaming," said the other one. "I am not hitting you."

They fell asleep again, and the tailor threw a stone at the second one.

"What is this?" said the other one. "Why are you throwing things at me?"

"I am not throwing anything at you," answered the first one, grumbling.

They quarreled for a while, but because they were tired, they made peace, and
they both closed their eyes again. Then the little tailor began his game
again. Choosing his largest stone, he threw it at the first giant with all his
strength, hitting him in the chest.

"That is too mean!" shouted the giant, then jumped up like a madman and pushed
his companion against the tree, until it shook. The other one paid him back in
kind, and they became so angry that they pulled up trees and struck at each
other until finally, at the same time, they both fell to the ground dead.

Then the little tailor jumped down. "It is fortunate," he said, "that they did
not pull up the tree where I was sitting, or I would have had to jump into
another one like a squirrel. But people like me are nimble."

Drawing his sword, he gave each one a few good blows to the chest, then went
back to the horsemen and said, "The work is done. I finished off both of them,
but it was hard.

* * *

 _From The Brave Little Tailor by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm_

------
endymi0n
So if declaring war on ISIS is the wrong thing, what's the alternative? Giving
in and taking terror for granted?

~~~
danieldk
No. Recognize that the terrorists were from Europe. Recognize that
integration, investing in suburbs, and improvement of basic living conditions
has failed for decades. Then start solving these problems.

~~~
happyscrappy
People don't spray random other people with automatic weapons because of the
marginal level of welfare benefits. The fact that you can even entertain that
opinion is mind boggling.

------
kbart
"A July 2014 poll by ICM Research suggested that more than _one in four French
youth of all creeds between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have a
favorable or very favorable opinion of ISIS_. Even if these estimates are
high, in our own interviews with young people in the vast and soulless housing
projects of the Paris banlieues _we found surprisingly wide tolerance or
support for ISIS among young people_ "

Despite these astonishing numbers, it still has nothing to do with religion,
right? Downvote me to hell, but if a quarter of certain group openly supports
mass-killers, I have a very serious reason to be afraid of them and avoid at
all cost.

EDIT: formatting

~~~
brohee
That poll was a joke. It actually polled people about ISIS, using that word,
while ISIS isn't used in French at all...

We use EI, EIIL or more recently Daesh.

The only people who had any idea of what was talked about where those reading
the English language media.

My guess is that people aither thought about something else, or not wanting to
be caught being ignorant stated a random opinion.

~~~
soared
Source?

~~~
brohee
[http://www.ami-oimc.org/news/un-sondage-affirme-
que-15%25-de...](http://www.ami-oimc.org/news/un-sondage-affirme-
que-15%25-des-fran%C3%A7ais-ont-une-'opinion-positive'-de-l'etat-islamique/)

Basically the question used two denomination for Daesh, none of which being
widely used by the media... Add to that people too proud to admit their
ignorance, and you have the recipe for a totally worthless poll...

------
graycat
Interesting article.

Here's why the ISIS plans won't work as the article describes how ISIS is
planning:

ISIS has basically five things going for them:

(1) A lot of oil money, (2) a lot of desert no one wants to try to live in,
(3) a lot of young men without much to do except live off the oil money, (4) a
totally, world-class, grand-champion, one of a kind wacko leader -- calling
that guy a wacko is an insult to all the ordinary wackos there have ever been,
and (5) by far the most important of the 5, the humanitarian desire of the
Western countries to avoid civilian casualties.

But ISIS doesn't "avoid civilian casualties", and the Western countries have a
very long and/or significant history of not avoiding civilian casualties. That
is, still, now, if the West wants, then it can also quit avoiding civilian
casualties.

E.g., the US military fought hard and brilliantly, and took casualties and
deaths, fighting in Fallujah, but there was a much faster, safer, cheaper, and
easier way -- just level Fallujah from the air. The US could easily have done
that in time from a day, an afternoon, an hour, or a millisecond -- literally.
Why not? Avoid civilian casualties.

Mean? ISIS mean? In the list of world class mean countries, if want to call
ISIS a country, ISIS isn't mean. ISIS is crude, medieval, stupid.

For world class mean, the all time, unique, unchallenged grand champion, and
may I have the envelope, please, yes, here it is, the US. Way, way back in
honorable mention is a four way tie -- Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist
Russia, and Mao's China.

Why US #1 on _mean_? The bomb, the atom bomb, used over Japan. Setting that
aside, the B-29 and the fire bombing of Japanese cities. Setting that aside,
the B-17 and the bombing of German cities including the _fire storms_ where
much of the civilian population was converted into burning torches -- shortest
way to put it. Horror that can only be tolerated from 20,000 feet up or
higher. The best thing those German people had going for them was that they
could die only once and, on a night of a fire storm, hopefully, likely
quickly. One of the worst horrors in the history of the planet.

For more, and more recently, in a 6 week air campaign and a 100 hour ground
campaign, General Schwarzkopf brought to unconditional surrender Saddam's
army, the fourth largest army in the world, with 7 million men under arms.
_Mean_? IIRC the US had more casualties (but not deaths) from recreation,
e.g., softball, than from enemy action. Soon the Iraqi air force got the
message that it was not smart to fly at all (US AWACS could see them and send
in F-15s) so would fly just to get away, low, slow, and to ditch in Iran.

 _Mean_? General Schwarzkopf was asked what happened to the hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the desert next to Saudi Arabia. The answer:
"They are still there."

 _Mean_? When a US A-10 flew over the Iraqi troops, they rushed out with white
flags. What one or a few A-10s did to the escaping Iraqi troops on the road
from Kuwait City back to Iraq -- turned the whole crowded road into teeth,
hair, eyes, blood, guts, big pieces made into small ones, and fires, all in
just a few A-10 passes -- so shocked the world that Bush 41 rushed to stop
such actions. The A-10 is one mean machine -- reduce really big pieces of
metal to small ones in a few seconds. And the A-10 is long out of date -- the
US has much meaner machines now.

In Gulf War I, it went on this way, our tanks against theirs, our planes
against theirs, and especially our F-117 stealth bomber against their radar
and anti-aircraft artillery and missiles -- the F-117 flew through Saddam's
exploding defenses, bright enough to light up the night sky, and literally
never got even a single scratch. Why? The sky is a really big place; shooting
blind gives really small chance of hitting anything; and against the F-117
Iraq was shooting blind. The F-117? From the Lockheed Skunk Works -- bright
guys out there.

We, here in the US, have GPS, surveillance satellites, smart bombs, cruise
missiles, drones, the B-2, the F-22, the M1-A1 tank, aircraft carriers (so
difficult to do well the US has about all there are in the world), submarines,
both attack and missile firing, etc.

 _Mean_? The US is mean, unique, world-class mean.

Net, without (5), that is, the determination of the US to avoid civilian
casualties, the US could "wipe the desert clean" (from an _Indiana Jones_
movie?) of ISIS in a day, much faster if we were in a hurry. E.g., all within
about 30 minutes of the ISIS areas, several US SSBNs, each with about 16
missiles, each missile with several warheads, each warhead with, IIRC,
ballpark 330 KT of exploding fusion energy.

The US has been willing to kill enemy civilians in the past and can be again
in the future. So far, the US is still being a nice guy -- we just blew up
some ISIS oil trucks, but first we dropped leaflets telling the civilians to
get out of the way.

France? "They are a funny race", but they are no joke: Great wine, cheese,
bread, food, really pretty, world class feminine young women, great art, and
more. And, in pure and applied mathematics, both physical and medical science,
philosophy, etc. France has a very long history of world-class excellence.
Since WWII, some of the best mathematicians have been French -- e.g.,
Bourbaki. My favorite is J. Neveu.

In technical excellence, the French are no joke. They are darned good at
making both airplanes and working with nuclear materials, both the electricity
generating kind and the exploding kind.

Net, anytime France wants to be "merciless" to ISIS, France can wipe the
desert clean of ISIS in an hour.

France is a member of NATO. Maybe that old organization looks like a comedy
act, but without firing a single serious shot it's kept the peace in Europe
since 1945 or so. Other members include Germany and England and, of course,
the US.

Basically, ISIS attacked NATO; definitely a Darwin award on the way. As from
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping
tiger and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yup.

If NATO were a country, then it would be by a wide margin the meanest in the
solar system.

ISIS can't make glass or matches but attacked NATO? Did I mention wacko?

As soon as, as in no more than a day, the West is willing to kill ISIS
civilians, there will be no more ISIS -- in the ISIS areas no more buildings,
oil infrastructure, vehicles, tents, camels, flocks, or people. None. The
desert wiped clean. The West has killed plenty of civilians before and can do
it again, especially against an enemy eager to kill civilians.

For me, IIRC ISIS has said that they intend to get a nuke bomb and explode it
against the US. They would likely aim for Wall Street, and I'm just 70 miles
north of there. They could hurt me. 'Nuff for me -- wipe the desert clean.

~~~
woah
So you feel that genocide is the way to go?

~~~
smegger001
How do you respond to openly barbaric group that wants to commit genocide
against you in a civilized fashion?

You can try to negotiate and they will kill your ambassadors. You can try to
ignore them and they will slaughter your innocent civilians. You can try to
attack them and they will hide amongst their civilians.

What do you do.

When they openly tell you they want to nuke you out of existence, it is a
matter of survival for not just you but for your civilization what do you do?

You have a button to kill the threat now or you can wait for them to get the
button to kill you and you know they will have no hesitation to press it.

