I really don’t know why these ISIS people think it is going to intimidate anyone other than journalists to cut off the heads of journalists. Okay, so I won’t be traveling to Syria anytime soon to try to cover the civil war there. I get it. It’s not safe. The media are considered fair game.
What this mainly accomplishes, however, is to make people recoil in horror and want to strike back. So, at a time when most Americans and Britons are tired of dealing the problems of the Middle East, this gives our governments additional public support for taking military action against ISIS.
In other words, if the idea is to make the West leave so they can create their caliphate, the idea is all backwards.
My deepest sympathies to the family of Steven Sotloff.
They want to defeat the “sole superpower” on their way to creating the caliphate. Whacking the hornets nest is an invitation to yet another quagmire.
The logic of this form of asymmetric warfare terror is pretty straightforward. But “tough on defense” Americans fall for it every time in the illusion of “counter-insurgency”.
There are times when not reacting is the smart thing to do. This is one of those times.
Yes, sympathies with the family of Steven Sotloff for raising a guy who would risk his life so that Americans could know the truth of what was going on in Syria.
And shame on the cowards in New York studios who are going to play this for all it is worth to their careers.
and the warmongers and PNAC dead enders in the media. and where does Hillary stand on this?
IS has specifically tied their beheading of the American journalists as “punishment” and retribution for the US airstrikes that are beginning to erode some of the IS military gains. They are also claiming to have IS operatives “on US streets”. A straightforward analysis is that they think these brutal executions and terror threats could somehow negatively influence our military intervention.
But one has to say that this seems a pretty hopeless and wrongheaded strategy for watchers of Western powers, especially the US. So is your idea that this hostage blackmail strategy is seen by IS as an even greater way to goad more Western intervention? But how does greater US involvement help IS consolidate its gains and its goal of creating an Islamic state?
I have to say I don’t think the ex-Saddam generals involved in running the IS ground game are looking to find ways to increase debilitating US air strikes on their (fairly small) ground forces and fortified positions, so this hostage beheading strategy seems kind of inexplicable to me. The IS brain trust just may not be the greatest group of strategists. One often has a tendency to overestimate the abilities and cleverness of one’s enemy—the CIA and Pentagon did it all the time with the Soviet Union.
Check out what Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has to say on your question:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2014/09/dexter-filkins-is-almost-right-in-new.html#links
So, at a time when most Americans and Britons are tired of dealing the problems of the Middle East, this gives our governments additional public support for taking military action against ISIS.
Is that really true? How high do most people think of journalism right now? It gives more opportunity for chumps like Brian Williams to push for the government to beat the war drums though.
BTW:
SITES Intelligence Group also involves Rita Katz.
not sure what you’re getting at here?
The US played a controlling and active role in the Homs protests. Ambassador Ford continued where the Bush administration initiated a process of regime change. See the front page story of susanhu in the year 2005.
○ NSC Chief Hadley asked Italy for a Bashar Replacement – October 2005
If Obama wanted the Turkey border closed for traveling jihadists to Syria, our NATO partner would have been compliant. Instead many NATO partners joined in intelligence gathering and stationed a number of Patriot anti-aircrfat batteries along the border. Not one missile has been fired.
US officials have asked the Islamic Front to return US equipment and vehicles taken from the warehouses. In the meantime, Ambassador Ford has met with Alloush to discuss the possibility of his going to Geneva.
Zahran Alloush is the military chief of the Islamic Front (الجبهة الإسلامية, al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah), the newly founded super militia that reportedly represents 45,000 fighters. As such, he could turn out to be the most powerful man in rebel held Syria.
* Alloush with Islamic Front terror groups just gained control of Quinetra, the border post on the Golan Heights. Where is Ambassador Ford?
○ The Syria “Gun-Running Program” coordinated by CIA and MI6
○ German Espionage Ship Off the Syrian Coast Is a War Act
If the Saudis are pulling the strings, this kind of emotional pressure furthers their stated interest in seeing us bleed more in Iraq.
A day after the president expressly called out Saudi Arabia and Turkey as regional powers that would have to solve this problem, the Saudi king warned the West that ISIL could be in the U.S. in a month so we (the U.S.) better do something right away.
Link to Sir Rupert & the Saudis’ FoxNews site: Saudi king warns jihadists could attack US, Europe within months
Obama is exactly right to stay out of this Sunni-Shia mess. It’s especially so since the ISIL commanders are reportedly former soldiers in Sadaam’s army. That makes ISIL an Iraqi-led Sunni force that fled Syria to attack Iraqi Sunni forces (who surrendered in droves to them), Iraqi Kurds, and Iraqi Shia forces. We have no role in that fight.
Let the Sunnis and Shia fight this out even if the House of Saud is finally exposed and has to put more than its money on the line.
Is his highness of Saudi threatening the U.S.? It surely seems like it. After 9/11 we should really take heed. Absolutely. He is not be toyed with. You know the big majority of the guys on the planes were Saudis. Yes they were. Maybe he’s bluffing. But one way or the other the U.S. needs to dump him and his country without delay. A big bunch of his neighbors need also to go. Give me Iran any day.
The king has a 200,000 man military armed with the most modern equipment oil money could buy. Turkey has a modern military force of almost 300,000. We so need to walk away. The next time any neocon is on the tube yelling for Obama to attack ISIS they need to be asked how this force of 500,000 could be used to control or exterminate ISIS.
Yes, the only problem is that these Sunni powers were behind the creation of IS. The Family Oil biznesses, er, nations, seem to have a penchant for stepping in the shit and then demanding that we clean it off their shoe.
Would the US have the time of day for these “nations” absent the ocean of oil they float on? To ask the question answers it.
well that’s the whole point of Obama getting these nations to ante up in a coalition against IS. they’re used to making us do all the heavy lifting while they sit back and complain about us
CNN terrorizes America. Somebody really does want their war on.
That is not “the idea,” Booman. “The idea”…bin Laden’s idea or whoever taught/ran/created him…is to in any way possible enmesh economic imperialist powers in unwinnable wars and then watch as they disintegrate economically and societally.
It worked with the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan and it worked on the U.S. with the 9/11 attacks. To some degree it also worked during the Viet Nam War. The U.S. is a much more formidable foe than was the U.S.S.R. during Afghanistan and the stakes are much higher now…an Islamic superpower in the making. The U.S. sociopolitical/economic system has not yet tanked to the level where the whole structure has to be rebuilt. But it’s well on the way to that point now. Whoever’s really running the ISIS show is just riffing on the Afghanistan/U.S.S.R. solution.
Bet on it.
And here we are, already locked, loaded and ready to make the same mistake all over again.
Solution?
An old vaudeville routine:
Don’t do dat, you dumb motherfuckers!!!
Does anyone in any position of power in this country remember what the U.S. was like before 9/11!!!???
Please.
Don’t do dat!!!
Let them shoot themselves in their own feet.
They will, y’know.
Life works that way.
It will take some time, but without a serious military threat from without, their power over the populace and the region will wane. Let ’em fuck up by themselves. They don’t need us to help them do that. Really.
Watch.
Maybe Obama is doing something right at long last…dragging his feet as he always seems to do in times of stress. Only this time it’s a good tactical decision.
Watch.
Only time will tell.
Watch.
But please, please, please don’t help pull the trigger of a gun that has quite purposefully been aimed at our own feet.
Please.
Later…
AG
Before 9/11?
Sharknado and Gary Condit…next question.
The middle and working classes were not nearly so heavily economically challenged than they are now. Remember? The economic collapse of the mid-2000s was directly connected to the ongoing collapse of the entire system due to the stresses of the Iraq War. Everything stopped working well, including the federal oversight that had at least to some degree controlled the depredations of the Wall St. class. That goes to the political collapse that we are now witnessing as well. Our next real military involvement in this mess will prove to be the last straw. Some form of military law is right around the corner. Ferguson was just the coming attractions for the next major production.
Watch.
AG
With your identification of the strategy to, “in any way possible enmesh economic imperialist powers in unwinnable wars and then watch as they disintegrate.”
This is a rake we can’t seem to learn not to step on.
Putin’s behind this? He does seem to have Napoleonic ambitions.
Interesting observation:
Obama is very, very unlikely to invade the Levant. But he might be willing to bomb the living shit out of anywhere that the Islamic State pops its head up.
Plus, Sotloff – may his family know peace – was their last US hostage. The logic of hostage taking is that you don’t kill them. ISIL is demonstrating an unsustainable instability.
At the moment, the Sunni majority from Anbar to Homs tolerate them, but that won’t last. It didn’t last in 2006, when the Sunni turned on AQI.
They’re scary as shit, but they aren’t a group that is likely to govern anything effectively.
They’ve been governing pretty effectively so far.
Where?
Raqqa.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/the-isis-guide-to-building-an-islamic-state
372769
I’m wondering how that story was sourced.
Quite frankly, the absence of local opinion makes it look pretty Potemkin in character.
Like some of the Vietnamese villages that the US military used to take the media to 46-47 years ago.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/world/middleeast/islamic-state-controls-raqqa-syria.html
This one may be more to your liking.
Last US hostage –> desperately seeking indiscriminate bombing to inflict civilian casualties so that ISIS is not the the “foreign forces”.
Force ISIS to govern what it’s already taken. Their sort of high-handedness never lasts long.
I think this might be a wiser strategy than giving them what they want and deploying ground forces who will be at a disadvantage. Perhaps we should let ISIS terrify KSA, Turkey, Iran, etc to the point where they will work together to destroy ISIS and its sources of funding instead of begging us to waste American lives and money there in fruitless effort.
Any Western journalists and citizens who are in Syria and Iraq should expect that they will be treated like this if captured by ISIS and the like. Go home. It’s not worth it.
Stalin lasted pretty long.
ISIS and Al Qaeda are playing the long game. By doing flashy terrorist actions they empower the warhawks and conservatives. Warhawks and conservatives thereafter use their renewed mandate and credibility to directly take bumbling, violent actions in the Middle East and/or push reluctant centrists and liberals to do the say. America completely fucks the campaign up and further discredits itself.
The ruthless democide exhibited in these images and videos are part of a very specific, and arguably cogent, military strategy; a doctrine really. It is a lot easier for Daish to govern where most of the non-Sunnis have already fled and the rest are cowed.
The underlying principle is basically set forth in the Quran:
The paying of the jizya was usually accompanied by a symbolic stroke to the nape of the non-Muslim’s neck. Seems to me Daish is attempting to establish their bona fides for this practice, among others.
You do realise that Saudi Arabia has beheaded nineteen people in August, right? For drug smuggling and ‘sorcery?’
There is nothing I see Daish doing along these lines which the Saudis haven’t done themselves for years, beyond skipping the trial, such as it is, and uploading the execution video to YouTube.
I don’t think we’re in a great position to criticize KSA for their favored method of applying the death penalty. I guess it shows how warped we have become that our sense of the barbaric is limited to beheadings.
That and the distinction that intoxicants and ‘sorcery’ are not a capital offence in any US states; but your point is made nonetheless.
My suggestion, however, is that we have turned a blind eye to this behaviour in Saudi Arabia for as long as I can remember. I agree that Daish is trolling us and Europe but it seems to me that they are more interested in performing (warning: disturbing image of dead person) executions from local security and pacification motives.
The flagrant execution of Westerners seems almost incidental, with all due respect to the victims.
Exactly. Barbaric neglect and indignity is supposed to push you into working and getting a house when there are not jobs that would hire you.
Or barbaric withdrawal of community mental health facilities ends with emptying of a cartridge worth of bullets into your body because you are holding a knife.
Or ….all less staged and theatric but chilling in their barbarity.
Beheading does seem to be quicker and possibly less painful than lethal injection.
When I was a kid they said one didn’t feel a bullet to the back of the head, but how could anyone know?