Read about this. More of a reason to move against ISIS on all fronts. Doubt we do anything about it though.
While I do not feel ok with supporting the American state in its military conflicts which have often been savage imperialist wars overseas, I think people should be slightly worried about the caliphate.
Islamic state want to have their caliphate stretch from Pakistan to turkey, both nations with Nuclear weapons.
Their Social media accounts have openly shown their goals when it comes to this and the problem is you have to take into account how much muslim hatred of the west over the last decade from the wars has pushed millions of muslims into a position where the support for IS which would not of been there in neighbouring countries a decade ago is now clearly there and problematic to say the least.
We do not have a crystal ball and expansion may very well fall flat as they try and expand, but with the climate, especially the one in Pakistan and specifically its mountain border area where the civilian “collateral damage” has been enormous, they might find their arrival welcomed.
The link to the live leak video. I think people owe it to take a reasoned approach to the situation.
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The wars have left anti Americanism in the entire region very high, even higher than before I should probable say. Not all of this is due to the U.S obviously but I think taking on board that the war in Iraq has played a huge part in the rise of Islamic extremism is essential.
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Supporting the U.S backed allies like the Kerds might not be in line with your political views as a libertarian, or a liberal or someone who is against a very reactionary Kurdish state, but a reactionary Kurdish state is the least worse option in the immediate fighting. Being realistic is important, for example supporting the S.U during the second world war was not something many people were comfortable with. But for non jewish, non polish or non German antifascists, civilians not on the front end of genocide our view on what opposition on what is supportable meant didly squat.
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Genocide is occurring and will occur on a large scale if IS has the momentum needed to overcome the initial challenges to its true foundation over the region. I think a good option would mean a heavy economic investment by the U.S and E.U, focusing on flooding all secular forces and militaries in the region with arms and U.S advisors and military personal and getting into the areas IS hopes to gain mass support in and deliver huge amounts of aid and medical facilities.
I think the U.S really only has a hope of defeating IS through a combination of direct and indirect military action and saturating the secular forces in the region with the military means to defend themselves along with a very real and costly program of basically trying give the people in the region enough aid where they think they are better off under U.S and E.U/U.N influence than IS.
This would end up costing an insane amount, but you have to take into account the impact of a caliphate, especially once the caliphate has considerable economic and military power, allied with Russia, China, and possibly even unifying with Saudi Arabia through some internal or external overthrow of the American puppet regime by Islamists. This would leave the west up shits creek.
One of the IS Social media accounts posting on the beheading.
The first caliphate.
The second caliphate.
The first caliphate, based on Mohammed’s original community, evolved into a second and third caliphates over the next centuries. The second caliphate begin in 661, after the first Muslim civil war, and lasted until 750 AD. It was the largest caliphate and the most successful, making it the height of the Islamic state. Its capital was in Damascus, which is today the capital of Syria this is part of why today’s caliphate-nostalgists love the idea of a reborn caliphate based in Syria.
The second caliphate (known as the Umayyad Caliphate) expanded way into Central Asia and into Spain:
he third caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, which lost Spain and part of North Africa but still ruled a pretty huge area from 750 to 1258. That was the last real caliphate, in that it could plausibly claim to include a unified community of Muslims.
The present-day Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in declaring himself a caliph and his terrorist mini-state a caliphate, is communicating that he believes he is fighting on behalf of all Muslims worldwide (he does not count Shia Muslims in this, only Sunnis) and that he is the representative of God on earth. He is also sort of suggesting a desire to continue ISIS’s advance until he has conquered all Muslim-majority lands, which is an aspiration that’s hinted at frequently in jihadist maps of a unified Islamic empire:
Wuh?
Has anyone watched the video?
[quote]maverick88 wrote:
Has anyone watched the video?[/quote]
Yes. I think it’s the most intense video I’ve ever seen. I think it’s important to watch if you can stomach it. The words and message were more intense for me than the actual beheading. I say important because it gives the viewer a real sense of who these people are and their worldview. In a way discussing it or reading about it cannot convey.
Candidly, it was powerful propaganda. Better than I thought they could come up with. I’ve seen other gruesome videos from Syria, but the people were acting like un-caged animals in those. This was very somber and chilling. You get a sense that both Foley and his executioner are speaking to directly you.
There’s no way to tell how cooperative Foley was in the scripted message. He gets a little choked up at points. I’d guess they threatened him with torture or killing others in captivity if he didn’t cooperate. I suppose it’s possible they brainwashed him but that’s not what I felt at the end.
It was still really intense, even when viewing it with eyes wide open (realizing its propaganda and that Foley was likely violently coerced into cooperation). It was crazy how dignified Foley was during the whole thing, up to his execution. I don’t think I would have been able to keep it together. Maybe he was ready to get out of his horrible situation as quickly as possible.
I was watching it last night and my girlfriend joined halfway through the Obama cut. I warned her what it was. She was crying and nauseous at the end. She didn’t want to watch it but it was so powerful it’s hard not to keep watching once it starts.
I think it’s obviously not appropriate for wide-spread consumption. It’s too gruesome for one. But even the beginning the propaganda is too powerful to widely release it and that would also be doing the IS a favor. But if you’re not a lemming, it’s worthwhile to watch it.
This needs to be a world effort. Go in and blaze them out ruthlessly. None of the PC do no harm BS, just huge overwhelming force. This is only going to get worse. It’s time we recognize radical Islam for what it is and stop beating around the bush. No jails no prisoners.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Wuh?[/quote]
I will just name one so as not to hijack the thread.
The invasion of the Philippines, which resulted in at least 200,000 dead civilians, thousands of them women and children who were executed and the torched earth policy officially practised there along with the “water cure”.
Soldiers letters home tell horrific stories comparable with the Nazi treatment of the Russians and Poles in the controlled areas of WW2.
Corporal Sam Gillis: â??We make everyone get into his house by seven p.m., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night. They tried to set the town on fire. If they fire a shot from the house we burn the house down and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now.â??
A soldier from New York: â??The town of Titatia was surrendered to us a few days ago, and two companies occupy the same. Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.â??
Then the other horrifyingly parallel situation of concentration camps
"Filipino villagers were forced into concentration camps called reconcentrados which were surrounded by free-fire zones, or in other words â??dead zones.â?? Furthermore, these camps were overcrowded and filled with disease, causing the death rate to be extremely high. Conditions in these â??reconcentradosâ?? are generally acknowledged to have been inhumane. Between January and April 1902, 8,350 prisoners of approximately 298,000 died. Some camps incurred death rates as high as 20 percent. “One camp was two miles by one mile (3.2 by 1.6 km) in area and ‘home’ to some 8,000 Filipinos. Men were rounded up for questioning, tortured, and summarily executed.”
In Batangas Province, where General Franklin Bell was responsible for setting up a concentration camp, a correspondent described the operation as â??relentless.â?? General Bell ordered that by December 25, 1901, the entire population of both Batangas Province and Laguna Province had to gather into small areas within the â??poblacionâ?? of their respective towns. Barrio families had to bring everything they could carry because anything left behindâ??including houses, gardens, carts, poultry and animalsâ??was to be burned by the U.S. Army. Anyone found outside the concentration camps was shot. General Bell insisted that he had built these camps to “protect friendly natives from the insurgents, assure them an adequate food supply” while teaching them “proper sanitary standards.” The commandant of one of the camps referred to them as the “suburbs of Hell.”
There are tonnes of other imperialist wars the U.S has been engaged in or has supported, like the Indonesian occupation of East Timor that is one of the most recent genocides in human history.
Anyway this will be my last post on it because I don’t want to derail the thread with this, I just wanted to give you a reply.
I m sure that whatever is done about this, the response will be “measured” and “proportional”. Nothing scares the Jihadi’s more than the possibility that the political winds could blow strong enough for the US to muster a measured and proportional response.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
I m sure that whatever is done about this, the response will be “measured” and “proportional”. Nothing scares the Jihadi’s more than the possibility that the political winds could blow strong enough for the US to muster a measured and proportional response. [/quote]
Well what can the U.S do? The country is in massive debt, has recently been in two very costly wars and is still propping up the very likely to collapse governments installed there with money and arms.
The U.S can not afford to go to war really and even if they did hatred of the U.S around the world is so strong right now that it could just make things worse.
I would love to see the U.S go in and smash IS but the problem is can they? What do they do if IS is defeated, there is a vacuum in that region after the U.S overthrew regimes, these will eventually be filled and it won’t be by a democrat or an independent, it will be by someone with views and laws we deem horrendous, the U.S can’t stay in that region forever without crippling itself economically.
On the other hand it eventually might need to. This is a very very hard topic and rashness and bravado won’t really help. The U.S has the greatest military power known to man, but its about what comes after the victory. You can’t and won’t defeat insurgencies that have popular backing. They just keep sprouting up.
It has been said many times on these boards before…Radical Islam will NEVER FUCKING STOP until all Christians and Jews are dead. Never.
Fuck this “last 10 years bullshit” there are 200 million muslims worldwide who want a fucking holy war, it’s time that the West and Europe see it for what it is.
[quote]UtahLama wrote:
It has been said many times on these boards before…Radical Islam will NEVER FUCKING STOP until all Christians and Jews are dead. Never.
Fuck this “last 10 years bullshit” there are 200 million muslims worldwide who want a fucking holy war, it’s time that the West and Europe see it for what it is.[/quote]
I understand your sentiment, but the last 10 years have added millions of muslims to that list. I also understand the idea of just going and killing the jihadist movements, but the problem is it is not that simple, otherwise we would have already done it.
Defeating enemies who want to destroy you is almost never done through direct and open all outwear in these times, it is impossible. Look at the soviet Union and the danger they posed to the U.S, far greater. But the key was being smart and being tactically sound.
All trying to smash water does is create waves and that is what the Islamist movement is, a guerrilla force, when you try and smash it it just creates more and more and more waves. You need t manipulate it, craft holes in the region and watch the water drain out.
There was a great book called the war of the flea about various guerrilla movements and another book on counter insurgencies I forget the name of and most of the counter insurgencies named in the book failed, but the ones that won were based on never directly attacking the insurgency but rather going after the economic, intra political and territory. I will try and find the book actually it had some great stuff in it probably applicable to the current situation.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Pearsy92 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Wuh?[/quote]
Whether we are talking about the invasion of the Philippines, which resulted in at least 200,000 dead civilians, thousands of them women and children who were executed and the torched earth policy officially practised there along with the “water cure”.
Soldiers letters home tell horrific stories comparable with the Nazi treatment of the Russians and Poles in the controlled areas of WW2.
Corporal Sam Gillis: �¢??We make everyone get into his house by seven p.m., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night. They tried to set the town on fire. If they fire a shot from the house we burn the house down and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now.�¢??
A soldier from New York: �¢??The town of Titatia was surrendered to us a few days ago, and two companies occupy the same. Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.�¢??
Then the other horrifyingly parallel situation of concentration camps
"Filipino villagers were forced into concentration camps called reconcentrados which were surrounded by free-fire zones, or in other words Ã?¢??dead zones.Ã?¢?? Furthermore, these camps were overcrowded and filled with disease, causing the death rate to be extremely high. Conditions in these Ã?¢??reconcentradosÃ?¢?? are generally acknowledged to have been inhumane. Between January and April 1902, 8,350 prisoners of approximately 298,000 died. Some camps incurred death rates as high as 20 percent. “One camp was two miles by one mile (3.2 by 1.6 km) in area and ‘home’ to some 8,000 Filipinos. Men were rounded up for questioning, tortured, and summarily executed.”
In Batangas Province, where General Franklin Bell was responsible for setting up a concentration camp, a correspondent described the operation as Ã?¢??relentless.Ã?¢?? General Bell ordered that by December 25, 1901, the entire population of both Batangas Province and Laguna Province had to gather into small areas within the Ã?¢??poblacionÃ?¢?? of their respective towns. Barrio families had to bring everything they could carry because anything left behindÃ?¢??including houses, gardens, carts, poultry and animalsÃ?¢??was to be burned by the U.S. Army. Anyone found outside the concentration camps was shot. General Bell insisted that he had built these camps to “protect friendly natives from the insurgents, assure them an adequate food supply” while teaching them “proper sanitary standards.” The commandant of one of the camps referred to them as the “suburbs of Hell.”
There are tonnes of other imperialist wars the U.S has been engaged in or has supported, like the Indonesian occupation of East Timor that is one of the most recent genocides in human history.
Anyway this will be my last post on it because I don’t want to derail the thread with this, I just wanted to give you a reply.[/quote]
Free tip: cite your sources when you quote something like this on an online forum like this one.
[/quote]
As I said I didn’t want to hijack this thread and turn it into another thread. You can do a quick google search for sources though, there are sources for everything on the military campaign in the Philippines.
If you want to discuss the issue DM me, please don’t ruin the thread by carrying this on in here.
Pearsy…
The DM function does not work, and if you are going to post 1000 word essays…some links to back them up would be appreciated.
And keep in mind, there are many highly educated folks on here, so your stuff may fly on Reddit…but not so much here.