Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [5]

[bungobaggins]

I really can't take Anonymous seriously anymore. And that Guy Fawkes mask just makes me cringe when I see people wear it IRL. They might get a few ISIS twitter accounts banned, but that will probably be it. What we need are bombs, lots and lots of bombs.

[Pettytyrant101]

What we need are bombs, lots and lots of bombs.- Bungo

That hasnt exactly worked out well so far.
And who do you bomb?
All you can do is hit ammo dumps, command centres- so what? Once they go they go back to being more underground and hidden within existing populations and they can still carry out these sort of atrocities- then you've not only got no one to bomb, but chances are you've actually increased their numbers because one consistent thing about bombing is it always hits the wrong people at some point, making more people enemies who would not otherwise be and giving free recruitment propaganda to the enemy.
Indiscriminate bombing such as we saw in Iraq is the sort of thing that got us to this awful stage we are at now.

[bungobaggins]

Oh, yes, Petty. I have all the answers and know exact locations that we should bomb. And of course, all the things I say here will be enacted by the US government and military. Fookin' A I'm just venting my frustration and anger about the situation.

[Mrs Figg]

The French and Anonymous are going to wipe the floor with them.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3005475/cyberattacks/anonymous-just-might-make-all-the-difference-in-attacking-isis.html

[Pettytyrant101]

Fookin' A I'm just venting my frustration and anger about the situation.- Bungo

I know. My instinctive reaction to these horrors was no different than yours- the urge for revenge to smash some heads in.

But if humans have any point at all its the ability to over-right the instinct reaction with one of reason. Its the only thing that separates from the rest of the animals.

Sadly I see no evidence of that happening. Today David Cameron went back to his plan to hold another vote to authorise bombing in Syria- because you know thats going to help, what Syria needs is more combatants throwing armaments at each other!

We need a far more comprehensive strategy here than just lashing out in retaliation every time this sort of thing happens, as it just keeps making it happen it seems.

[Mrs Figg]

no we just need Cameron to grow some balls. We need Russia, US, Europe and Arab states to just say right that's enough fuckers, go in, kill the lot of them, because this is the only solution, and then get the heck out leaving the provisional gvts of the area to get on with it. You cant deal with murderers with a death wish, you cant negotiate, you cant lock them all up, you cant stop them from doing what they are determined at all costs to do, ie blow themselves up, you have to exterminate the lot of them. sorry but you do. no amount of diplomacy or hand wringing or fine moral high grounds is going to alter the fact that these people hate our guts and want us dead.

[Pettytyrant101]

you cant stop them from doing what they are determined at all costs to do, ie blow themselves up, you have to exterminate the lot of them. sorry but you do. no amount of diplomacy or hand wringing or fine moral high grounds is going to alter the fact that these people hate our guts and want us dead.- Figg

I dont agree with your premise- you are associating all levels of terrorist organisations with their front line idiots who they con into blowing themselves up for the cause.
At its upper levels ISIS is banking, producing and selling oil, providing infrastructure to local people (as the Taliban before them did in Afghanistan and as Hammas still do in the West Bank for the Palestinians).
At these levels we are not dealing with psychotic crazy people who want nothing but death. We are dealing with psychotic crazy people who want stuff.
And when you have folk who want stuff you have room for negotiation.

Thats not to say all you can do is talk- force is an effective means to get them to the table. But its not good just to knee jerk reacting with 'bomb them all!' as the whole and only solution- it wont work and will probably continue to make matters worse as that strategy has done repeatedly since 9/11.

It might even be that a sustained bombing seems to work- how may time snow has the West declared terrorism defeated? Or contained?
And yet here we are again.

Because when they do what they have done time and time before when faced with overwhelming fire power, and disperse among civilian populations- you going to bomb those?

Did the UK government indiscriminately bomb catholic housing estates in NI to get some IRA soldiers? No of course not because they knew it would only be an escalation and morally indefensible.
And you think the IRA footsoldiers didn't hate us just as much?

[David H]

you cant negotiate, you cant lock them all up, you cant stop them from doing what they are determined at all costs to do, ie blow themselves up, you have to exterminate the lot of them. sorry but you do.

Oh Mrs Figg, I don't have words...


This is exactly what they say about us, and what we said about the Japanese and the American Indians, and it's exactly what British loyalists said about American revolutionaries and vice versa, despite all that we've tried to do to whitewash our revolution and drape it in a mantle of heroism.  It's the logic of all genocides.  It's often phrased as "You can't reason with them. They're animals, and they need to be exterminated like animals" or some such.

These kids that are going over and joining IS are exactly the same as George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War: they're idealistic young men who don't see a future for themselves and decide to go out of this world fighting injustice no matter what the cost. Idealistic young men can do horrible violent things when they realize that the world is horribly unjust, and they always have.

But you can't kill all the idealistic young men and women in this world. You'll just create a greater injustice and less hope for the future, and that creates more idealistic young men and women with nothing to live for.

[halfwise]

Though I agree with every thing you've said, Dave, a large part of the ISIS allure is they appear to keep winning. I think they are attracting a different sort of person than who goes out to support an underdog.

The best strategy is to fix Iraq and Syria, but I don't think we know how to do that. If we do engage ISIS in combat it's important that we be seen to be on the right side. It will take time to construct the right side our of all the shifting shades of gray factions out there. Unfortunately I don't know if any leadership force in the area can put together what's needed.

I definitely feel sympathy for the idea of just going in and blasting them to smithereens, but all it will do is make us feel good in the short term. In the long term we may be creating more monsters. It's a hard nut to crack.

[David H]

I'd go a few steps farther and say the best strategy is to fix the whole Middle East, and by fix I mean 1) the rest of the world should stop thinking of the region as a chessboard on which we all fight our proxy wars among our respective "allies in the region" as we have for the last hundred years.  This includes not continuing to dump unimaginable amounts of weaponry into the armories of ...well... pretty much everybody for their defense against the aggressor of the moment.
Then 2) encouraging some real alliances within the region that would include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, etc.  so that regional strategies could be implemented to fix some of the shit we broke during the Iraq wars. Eventually Palestine might even get sorted out.

But like you say, that's probably not going to happen. Today on the radio I heard John Kerry saying "We can fight them there, or we can fight them here."  (I personally think he's still talking about the Soviets )  That's the old chessboard view of the world that will keep inspiring new terrorist organizations among the people unlucky enough to have been born as pawns for the foreseeable future.

[Mrs Figg]

As far as I am concerned there are tens of thousands of Jihadi Johns who will murder men women and children. We have a choice do we let them kill the peoples of western democracies or do we exterminate the evil. its too late to go on about what Blair and Bush did, its far too late. this is WW3 and what would have happened if men like Churchill let the Nazis invade and cause genocide? what about the genocide of the peoples of Iraq and Syria NOW? do we roll over and get all lets all hug the poor ickle misunderstood suicide bomber. fuck that shit! I don't want to see soldiers getting beheaded on English streets and aid workers getting their throats slit on Youfuckingtube. just fuck that shit to hell!

[halfwise]

I want to take them out as much as you. But we've been here before: if not done in well built coalition with middle eastern forces, the results just get worse. Unfortunately we handed all the Iraqi powers to ISIS by disbanding all that had a whiff of Ba'athist about them, and Syria is a maelstrom. Everyone else there is afraid of Iran. I don't think any of the other countries have a military worth speaking of, unless Egypt can pull itself together. They nearly have, but I don't think they are there yet.

[Mrs Figg]

while we dither and hold meetings, there is a biblical exodus going on. I don't want an IS caliphate to establish itself and heaven forbid we have to treat with it. You don't make deals with murderers in ordinary life, why would negotiating with them be acceptable? how could you sit down and talk with that. how can anyone legitimise that through the use of bargains, deals, diplomacy? it would be a betrayal of all those dead kids in Paris, those dead kids on the Russian airline, of the dead kids of the Tunisian beach. repulsive.

[Mrs Figg]

I don't call killing children 'idealistic'. if that's idealism, idealism is overrated.

[David H]

We have a choice do we let them kill the peoples of western democracies or do we exterminate the evil.

Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against preemptively killing people who are planning to kill me, whether I deserve it or not. The "choice" you're talking about doesn't exist, though. It's propaganda. Remember Bush's deck of "52 Most-Wanted Evil Iraqis" playing cards? It seemed all we needed to do was execute just these 52 evil people and the world would be safe and peaceful again. Who could object to that?

The only problem was that when we exterminated the evil, 100's of thousands of more innocent people went on dying horrible deaths. It's a false choice. It never works.

Trying to exterminate evil is like a kitten chasing the beam of a flashlight. As hard as we try, we'll never catch it and we'll never kill it. If we want to stop that damn little spot of light, sooner or later we've got to stop chasing it and try to figure out who's holding the flashlight and f***ing with us.

[David H]

I don't call killing children 'idealistic'. if that's idealism, idealism is overrated.

Indeed. Have you read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia"?  

My father was combat infantry at the front in the advance across northern Europe during WWII. He killed many, many children and it haunted him till his death. He didn't talk about it until much later, but he'd sometimes have to turn off a movie in the middle when it tried to get too self-righteous about just wars and such. He'd say such things as "They were just little kids, 8, 10, 12...didn't even know how to hold a gun...they didn't want to be there anymore than I did...they were just trying to defend their homes....I'd have done the same....but we killed them because we had to....those were the orders...."

My father didn't believe in idealistic wars or just wars. That wasn't his experience.

Please forgive me if I'm being a bit heavy, but I've just finished harvesting the family farm, and I'm missing my father and feeling his presence right now. He was not a man to mince words, and this was a topic he felt very strongly about.

[Mrs Figg]

I am just angry and sad at the moment. It brings out my belligerent tendencies.

[David H]

Me too. I completely understand.

[Lancebloke]

This seems to me to be another problem we have created ourselves. I can't remember where I read it but someone (top intelligence/military bod) summed it up for me when he said the public become war weary too quickly. A bit like football managers having a bad run (which will inevitably happen) and being fired. New person comes in with new strategy, works for a while then they have a bad run... cycle continues.

Whoever he was said that we had decimated the leadership and capabilities of the various extremist groups in the area. 80-90% of their senior and experienced people were gone... but we got weary too quickly. The public demanded troops to pull out, new leaders in the west were duly elected and the troops came out.

Now that last 10-20% have had years to replenish numbers  and experience. A lot of what was lost has been rebuilt in a new guise and we are experiencing a resurgence of various older groups (e.g. the Taliban) and re badged groups (e.g. IS).

If we are going to do something, we need to see it through right to the end. If public get fed up of seeing coffins at Wootton Bassett then they need to suck it up until the job is done, otherwise we will eventually see more dead people on our streets and then more coffins being repatriated.

We didn't get to the border of Germany and go 'right... too many dead so let's stop here.' We got the bloody job done. And that included an occupation that lasted a very long time as Europe rebuilt.

Lastly, we need to stop fucking about playing politics with other big powers. Hopefully these talks with Russia and Iran are the start of the West seeing that. We need to stop being so bloody arrogant and thinking our way is the only way.

[azriel]

I agree with Lance !! Ive been reading this conversation about Isil etc, havent said anything up till now, Ive been mulling it over but, I feel Lance may have something ? Its no doubt that this is fooking tricky, its not just separating two boys having a punch up in the playground, but, its no good passing responsibility like its a "pass the parcel" game. Someone has got to have the guts to say "Right, thats IT!"

[Mrs Figg]

absolutely. I can understand the gvt being skittish about boots on the ground, politically Cameron is hedging his bets until the time is right, but do we have to experience a Paris in London before we do something? The IRA was bad enough and that was settled by diplomacy in the end, but the IRA are boy scouts in comparison to this lot.

[halfwise]

A sobering military assessment. I don't just how much of an expert this guy is, but his thoughts rings true.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/589362/col-jack-jacobs-explains-stephen-colbert-why-isnt-destroying-isis

[Mrs Figg]

10 years seems a bit much.

[halfwise]

Not.  You have to stay there until a whole new government system integrated with society grows up.  For all our desire to get our troops out of Iraq, Obama did the wrong thing by pulling them out too early.  That's part of why we have ISIS: going into Iraq in the first place takes first blame, not following all the way through is a close second. Of course we were bungling the follow up anyway.

Europe after WWII was easier.  Europeans don't see Americans as foriegners in quite the way the middle east would view any westerners.

[David H]

 That's part of why we have ISIS: going into Iraq in the first place takes first blame, not following all the way through is a close second.  Of course we were bungling the follow up anyway.  

If I were counting up the blame, I'd count to 3.  1) invading, 2) systematically dismantling the existing bureaucracy, 3)pulling out with no established power structure in place, leaving social media, weapons and a military culture behind.  It's a recipe for anarchy in 3 easy steps.

Europe after WWII was easier.  Europeans don't see Americans as foriegners in quite the way the middle east would view any westerners.

Don't forget that 70 years after WWII we still have something like 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, or that NATO was an occupying force that's still in existence 70 years later.  I think 10 to 20 years is overly optimistic. It really takes a couple generations to rebuild trust between cultures.