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I didn’t emphasize enough how you should definitely read this piece in The Atlantic about the Islamic State. And when you’re done with that, you might want to read this piece from the Council on Foreign Relations. I’ve mostly skimmed the second piece. Haven’t quite digested it yet. What are your thoughts?
I didn’t emphasize enough how you should definitely read this piece in The Atlantic about the Islamic State.
And when you’re done with that, you might want to read this piece from the Council on Foreign Relations.
I’ve mostly skimmed the second piece. Haven’t quite digested it yet. What are your thoughts?
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I read the Atlantic article two days ago. Great stuff, very surprised to see it in a “left-of-center” magazine. Here is one of the great quotes (especially in light of yesterday’s comments by Obama):
“Western officials would probably do best to refrain from weighing in on matters of Islamic theological debate altogether. Barack Obama himself drifted into takfiri waters when he claimed that the Islamic State was “not Islamic”—the irony being that he, as the non-Muslim son of a Muslim, may himself be classified as an apostate, and yet is now practicing takfir against Muslims. Non-Muslims’ practicing takfir elicits chuckles from jihadists (“Like a pig covered in feces giving hygiene advice to others,” one tweeted).”
If the men chopping off heads and burning prisoners alive say they are following the tenets of Islam, we should probably take them at their word. Trying to argue and say that "No, they are mistaken, I REALLY know why they are doing that because I'm an educated Westerner" is futile. I don't seem to recall us trying to do the same thing with any previous ideology that we have come into conflict with (trying to argue, for instance, that the Soviet Union really wasn't motivated by Marxist-Leninism but by an acute lack of economic prosperity).
Unless our leaders accept the claims of the Islamic State as to what truly motivates them (and they should know their own motivations better than anyone else, I would think), I fear that we will never come up with a good strategy to fight them.
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The Atlantic article is a good one, and well worth reading. I’m not sure how to take the Foreign Affairs article, however.
The situation in Syria is a mess. Anything Zer0 has done has simply made the mess bigger. I hate to say it, but tearing Assad down is a bad move. The aid that was given to so called moderate rebels has appears to have ended up in the hands of ISIS, and as ISIS has risen, Syria has suffered for it.
If Zer0 suddenly wants to get pragmatic, he’d help Assad reassert himself throughout Syria. Assad at least protected the religious minorities and left you alone as long as you did not come across as a threat to the regime. He had also pretty much left Israel alone as he knew he could not take them.
I think the situation is so muddled over there, that choosing a wise path is going to be exceedingly hard. At the moment, it looks like we destroy ISIS and strengthen Iran, or we allow ISIS to exist to counter balance Iran. The house of Saud is playing with fire by helping an organization that looks forward to destroying them. Erdogan is playing with the same fire. Given my choice, I’d destroy ISIS, but I think that would mean keeping a substantial presence in the region for the foreseeable future.
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