US Politics & ISIS: Hope for the Best or Natural Selection?

[WhatIsGravity]

I spent much of last year in Iraq (Kurdistan), and most of this year in Saudi, mainly spending my time hanging out in remote places; little villages. From what I saw and heard and experienced, ISIS wants the US to get more involved... cause that means more radical recruits- on both sides.

Bring it all to a head, and let the chips fall where they may- natural selection? Or hope for the best, like Obama seems wanting to do.

Any thoughts?

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

ISIS is a functionally fascist ideology. It presents the idea that everyone must purify themselves (avoid shirk) and avoid placing any aspect of life near the importance of God. Thus petty ideas such as democracy are rejected.

This stands in stark contrast to mundane life. Family, business and science all need to subjugate themselves to the state, which they refer to as jihad. (Other Muslims mean different things by jihad.) Complacency is their main enemy.

So yes, they seek conflict wherever they can get it. They seek to reduce the world to a binary set. Do what they say is right, or die.

The problem is, there will be shirkers, defined "as anyone less holy than me". They will and must kill until only the most devout person is left.

The willingness to use terror on the village level has always been an effective political strategy and difficult to deal with. It's hard to act justly against fear and intimidation, and any injustice will be used to justify their actions. When added to the inherent injustice of Western politics it becomes nearly unbeatable.

The best defense is strong historical political education. Previous Muslim fascist regimes should be expounded. It's important that people know how previous "utopias" ended. The deliberate dumbing down of our education system has to stop.

And it wouldn't hurt if we cleaned up our own political corruption. The less ammunition we give them, the better.

Unfortunately we are becoming ignorant for powerful reasons. Corruption works, at least for the corrupt. I'm not optimistic.

 

[jw6661]

HBO recently had a documentary on ISIS. Pretty interesting heavy stuff. If you are still active on this forum/topic I would venture to seek it out.

 

[Derek Francis]

I think there are two causes to these problems. The first is hyper-masculinity. I think the muslims that join ISIS are creating a Fight Club-like situation for themselves. Also, American culture puts an emphasis on strength, guns and militarism too.

The actions of ISIS are deplorable and they need to be defeated. But the United States also has some human rights questions that it needs to answer. Yes, radical muslims bomb innocent people in the west, but how many children in the middle east have we bombed? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

 

[nsaspook]

The actions of ISIS are deplorable and they need to be defeated. But the United States also has some human rights questions that it needs to answer. Yes, radical muslims bomb innocent people in the west, but how many children in the middle east have we bombed? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

The actions of Daesh are deplorable but their apocalyptic death cult ideology means they don't care 'how many children in the middle east have we bombed'. They expect to lose the great apostate/infidel war and are desperately attempting with these terrorist acts to make us commit mass atrocities to that end.

 

[einswine]

They expect to lose the great apostate/infidel war and are desperately attempting with these terrorist acts to make us commit mass atrocities to that end.

From what I've read they do expect to win. They do want the West to attack them as you describe because they want a world religious war. They believe that once civilization is thus destroyed they will be in the best position to take over the world because they believe they can stand up to the hardships and we are to weak. But I can't find my source for that and hope someone can affirm this or disabuse me of my delusion.

 

[Evo]

but how many children in the middle east have we bombed? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

But we didn't seek out children to bomb and this is a necropost, so it is closed.