ISIS...Islamic State Victims

Fall of Rome stuff is barmy. Stupid people and Cameron know full well that even within the European Muslim community far far more want to live in a western democracy than islamilic state . I don't think a lorry load of stupid teenagers from dewsbury will be running the country any time soon
 
Far far more wanted to live within Rome as well, but it was those living within the empire (principally the Visighoths) who overthrew it

David Cameron is a strategic bankrupt. He's actually a menace to this country. You only need look at how poorly he's handled the North Africa fiasco and doubtless would have blundered into Syria too had Miliband not saved him from himself
 
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clivex said:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/guardian-values-charlie-hebdo-cartoons-muhammad

no it didnt

and it refers to the images as "offensive" which neatly buys into the Islamist agenda
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Not at all, they could hardly go round inflaming and inciting, but felt they needed to make a gesture too. So they reproduced the front page which contained an image (as did Talking Horses) the daily Mail and cowardly right wing press could have done exactly the same, but they chose not to. Why? I'll tell you why (as Julia Hartley Brewer openly admitted on that week's QT) because they were too bloody scared for themselves
 
The guardian appeases Islam fundamentalism in a regular basis. The crowing comment pieces after 9/11. It's opposition to the Trojan horse enquiry. The endless blaming of "the west" for all islams worst aspects. The publication of a comment piece from a known aq operative (as reported in private eye) and so on

labelling the cartoons "offensive" as if it's a fact when frankly they were just silly in the opinion of countless non Muslims is typical appeasement
 
To some extent Clive, media comment is really designed to provoke a reaction. You might even argue that its all part of a smokescreen that exists in happy collusion and designed to cause a distraction to try and corrale the focus in areas away from where it needs to be.

Frankly opinion comment is nothing though when it sits alongside moronic analysis like this

"We simply can not have a situation where a failed pariah state festers on Europe's southern border. This would potentially threaten our security, push people across the Mediterranean, and create a more dangerous and uncertain world for Britain and for all our allies as well as for the people of Libya. That is why today we are backing our words with action...(bit of procedural waffle) .. and to do the right thing for the people of Libya who want greater freedoms, and above all for the UK's own national interest"

I'm afraid it simply isn't good enough to keep saying X happened in the past, we move on, or that Y is no longer in post, so it doesn't matter (albeit the person who made this statement to the house of commons is still very much in post). The bottom line is we're suffering at the hands of some frankly chronically poor strategic judgements rooted in heaven knows what prejudice (some kind of 1980's time warp). Just look at that statement, and you'll realise that none of it really applied to Libya at the time it was made. Today all of it applies. It's quite an acheivement is that. And in a remarkably short period of time too. All the conditions we were told represented a threat to us should they have come into being, have done so, and sadly we (or our idiot leaders) are the architects of our own danger. had we taken the sensible strategic decision (and it wasn't difficult to analyse and spot) none of this would have come to pass

When are we going to turn round and tell our decadent Roman emperors that they frankly aren't good enough and need to improve massively in their judgement?
 
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Such a shame. I was at that resort when I was 18. All the doctors and police helping were Muslims too. The good far outweigh the bad still.
 
If you think that the death of your blessed Gadafin had anything to do with this you are way out of line. We don't even know if it was Isis anyway l it could be aq

thus constant "it's our fault" is an insult to the dead

these people have had this warped ideology for decades
 
harry said:
Such a shame. I was at that resort when I was 18. All the doctors and police helping were Muslims too. The good far outweigh the bad still.
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Of course they do. It's a tragedy for them too and a threat to a nation that has taken the brave steps to a decent society based in freedom and representation
 
clivex said:
Fall of Rome stuff is barmy. Stupid people and Cameron know full well that even within the European Muslim community far far more want to live in a western democracy than islamilic state . I don't think a lorry load of stupid teenagers from dewsbury will be running the country any time soon
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I am curious as to what future terrible event might reverse your opinion about the nature and strategy of the current fundamentalist Islamic offensive.
Reading your recent posts, it seems that you are convinced that the various terrorist incidents are merely the work of individual psychopaths rather than the coordinated strategy of a centralised terror entity. You also seem to dismiss the military and organizational capability of Islamic State, if I am reading you correctly.

On today, exactly one year ago, the Caliphate was declared.
In the intervening twelve months Islamic State has grown rapidly both in strength and in territorial hold. It has well-organised administration, funding, and logistics systems in place. It has an army larger than half the nation-state members of the U.N. It has global reach to the world's 1.5 billion Muslim population and a message that appeals to a significant percentage of that. It proved yesterday that it is not confined to some desert region of the middle-east, but can strike at the holiday playgrounds of Western tourists at will. No mistake about it, Islamic State is a very powerful adversary

Warbler predicts that a war is coming. He's wrong; the war has already started -- it may be asymmetric warfare at the moment -- but it is a war nonethless. And Islamic State are winning it. They will probably win out overall, too; if I was betting on it that's how I would call it at the moment.
More than a decade ago, post-9/11, the War On Terror was declared. Not going too well is it.
 
Wrong on a number of accounts

i have never said it is just lone nutters. That's a convenient myth put about those that wish to defend Islam at all costs. It is coordinated. But doomsday nonsense about "the fall of Rome" and Isis controlling Western States is absurd. Fanatsy stuff from those that like to kid themselves that western democracy is all one big decadent mistake

no war on terror is complete but without doubt the number of attacks have been far less than anyone would have anticipated after 9 11 or 7 7. There has been considerable success both in intelligence and cutting off the leadership of
aq

I'm not even going to debate how Isis is going to be running France or Netherlands. It's bonkers. Nut job stuff frankly.

As as for the rather dim witted comparison with. Barbarians, has anyone ever considered how many insurgent groups and sects did not achieve their aims in overthrowing one state or civilisation or another?

and as for the size of its army it's probably worth also remembering that its Air Force is smaller than luxenbourgs and its navy the same size as Switzerland. And saying it has a global reach to 1.5 billon Muslims, are you including the Shias in that?
 
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Not underestimating any of this of course. We just don't really know in truth how this will develop
 
clivex said:
Not underestimating any of this of course. We just don't really know in truth how this will develop
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I disagree, I think there's some very strong clues.

There hasn't been a single incident yet in the post war Islamic world where the radicals have succeeded. I should perhaps qualify that by explaining that in the context of the societies we're talking about, pro-deomcracy campaigners are the radicals. These people are not so-called 'moderate muslims'. They're trying to introduce a model of governance that has no tradition or precendent in these societies. Most societies are intrinsically nervous of radical ideas, the Islamic world is little different.

I think there's an additional issue of just how democratic these movements were anyway. In Syria it embodied a lot of nationalism around reinstalling the old state of Aleppo. The catalyst in Libya was islamic, hence the original touchstone coming from a radical preacher on a Friday in Benghazi. Egypt quickly developed an islamic flavour too. Tunisia is currently supplying the single largest number of foreign fighters to ISIL per head of population in the world. No one else is close to their figures.

I don't see why this was so hard to foresee? The people who were pushing for radical solutions were middle class professionals, (as they were in Iran and Pakistan before). They're essentially older, numerically smaller, and to put it bluntly, less 'ard. Faced with this, the majority will fall back on theological conservatism, which is why groups broadly aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood prevailed, or in Iraq (which had separate issues) a group called Al Qaeda in Iraq gained traction (they weren't there previously).

These societies were essentially held together by dictators who had developed an interior policing structure specifically designed to prevent the spread of conservative Islam for fear of how it might develop. Can we really be surprised to learn what comes to fill the vacuum when you remove these structures? I think there's certainly evidence that a lot of people wanted an end to the dictators, but it was a massive leap of faith to think they'd embrace radical represntative democracy. It was inevitable that they'd fall back on a religious structure, and it was equally inevitable where this would lead

Wantonly removing your first line of defence might be a legitimate military tactic but I confess it's not one with which I'm familiar.

I'm actually flabberghasted that so many people (especially our own dear leaders) actually saw these reactionary movements as anything other than a threat. They were clearly concealing a groundswell of conservatism, something which the American's were very worried about in Libya in particular, until the British Intelligence played the Rwanda card on them (British Intelligence were subsequently found to be wrong incidentally).

You open up a power vacuum in these countries and what do you honestly expect to happen? To think there was going to be a head long march to bourgoise liberal democracy and a happy ever after scenario was naive at best, and arrogant at worst. I'm afraid it simply isn't good enough to now to indulge in distraction and deflection. Similarly, it's not sustainable to shrug your shoulders and pretend no one could reasonably have foreseen any of this.

Oh it's very easy to see how this will develop
 
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"Wrong yet again" - you're having a laugh aren't you?

If anyone has a catalogue of being wrong, wrong, and wrong again, it's been you for well over decade now. In fact, I don't think you've called a single outcome correct. All you do is just herocially follow George W Bush and more latterly David Cameron, blundering your way into all sorts of problems and creating a much more potent enemy than you would have done had you left the mechanisms in place that were dealing with them. Then you shrug your shoulders, look to deflect the responsibility, and say it's in the past so we better move on. I'm afraid this 'wash thy hands' approach isn't good enough, because it's storing up problems for us. We need to work on eliminating the errors in the first place

Sadly you haven't stopped to think (again) their definition of democracy is electing groups like the Muslim brotherhood or tribal factions as they did in Iraq. That is their democratic understanding and where do you think that leads? Can you not understand this? Can you not see how these states are going to evolve?. 'Democracy' is a word Clive, little more, it's the structures behind it that define the outcome. All you're doing is perpetuating the data led policy response. You are the Alistair Cook of strategic judgement. A stats man. Look behind the figures and peer into the societies concerned. Look at the history books and the precedents. Be deeply sceptical of academics with vested interests who creep out the woodwork of the London School of Oriental and African Studies. These people aren't saying they want democracy as you would understand it. What they're saying is that they want a mild theological government in preference to a dictatorship. They won't end up with that though, and then we get sucked in.

You might say "We just don't really know in truth how this will develop" - what you're really saying of course is that none of this developed in line with how you thought it would, but don't drag the rest of us down to your level by embracing the "we". A great many of us did foresee a lot of this. The record will atest to the fact that you weren't one of them, and continue to fail to do so today.

Which of the countries from the so-called Arab spring do you think isn't in danger of a lurch towards conservativism? Which ones do you think are palpably better off today? The best are no worse. The worse are significantly degraded. The uprising that failed of course was in Bahrain. Seen any rise in Islamic conservatism there recently? Any hotel shoot ups? any civil wars? any declaration of a caliphate?

And just to clarify, I've reversed my thinkign towards the corrupt Shiekdoms a little bit too as a result of this. Whereas I suspect some of them look both ways, I now realise that they're are second line of defence. Hezbollah and the Shia militias will be our third, provided it ever gets that far. There has to be a realistic chance that a second caliphate will eventually come to grow along the north African coast now, so perhaps they could by pass that phase.

Returning to Rome again, bear in mind it was overthrown from within, by tribes that the empire failed to integrate who were displaced by the advance of Mongol warlords in a wave of migration. They crossed the Danube to seek the protection of Rome. The biggest single thing that isn't at play is that the Romans took the Goths into their army and trained them how to fight. That's a paralell that doesn't exist.
 
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Don't know what your talking about as usual and your sinister admiration for dictators as a solution for everything blows apart any possibility of you considering the facts. and frankly I have heard enough of your Gadafin (the hero of the 80s far left) and Cameron obsession.

you imply that Arabs don't want democracy and it's something imposed upon them (they would of course prefer saddam etc) by the evil west

well lebanon is an Arab country and a democracy. It's one that took time and pain to achivee but it got there

so in the poll what % of Lebanese were strongly pro democratic governance. Did you bother to look?

83%
 
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Warbler said:

And just to clarify, I've reversed my thinkign towards the corrupt Shiekdoms a little bit too as a result of this. Whereas I suspect some of them look both ways, I now realise that they're are second line of defence.
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Am 100% rejecting that, and quite surprised that you are now taking a benign view of future war-partnership from the corrupt autocratic kingdoms.
They are not and will never be the cure for eradicating I.S. Rather they are a significant cause of I.S. growth by fact of their funding of Sunni extremist groups and their look-the-other-way attitude towards the progress of I.S. Because of American and European leadership's craven kowtowing to these sheikdoms due to oil concerns, the Western military response to I.S. is of a fight with one hand tied behind the back.

Oh for a leadership of Reagan and Thatcher at the present time. I was never a fan of either of them -- particularly their economic policies -- but tough times require tough hands at the tiller.
This could be Cameron's Falklands moment -- if he had the determination and the strength of will of a Margaret Thatcher. Rather than lipping platitudes about the "religion of peace being hijacked", if he said: "Fu*k you, Saudi's; and fu*k you Qatar" and then went and carpet-bombed Raqqa back to the stone age, I.S. might be neutered at source and emasculated. Then send in the thousand strong best special forces in the world -- SAS -- to mop up the remainder. He would have the support of a majority of decent people.
(Failing to do that -- just unleash the Israeli's). :)
 
I'm afraid warbler may be right on that element. We are where we are and Saudi has certainly fought aq hard and with some success. Yes there will be private sponsors which the authorities can do nothing about but the government there is a target of aq. Qatar I am less sure about in truth

i don't know what the ultimate solution is but th core of the problem is the religion itself.
 
clivex said:
We are where we are and Saudi has certainly fought aq hard and with some success.
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At this very moment, Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen in support of Al Qaeda who are fighting the Houthi administration in control of Sana'a. The richest Arab country is bombing the poorest Arab country with American logistical support -- in effect backing Al Qaeda because the logic runs ....................... Shia = Iran = Bad.
Two days ago, around Kobane, American fighter-bombers gave aerial support to Kurdish forces repelling an I.S. attack yet America lists the PKK as a terrorist organisation .............. because Sunni Turkey says so.

Bottom line is the western powers are in thrall to Saudi, Qatar and Turkey who are in effect only fairweather friends of the West, and who in part turn a blind eye to I.S.
 
icebreaker said:
Am 100% rejecting that, and quite surprised that you are now taking a benign view of future war-partnership from the corrupt autocratic kingdoms.
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You're right and I shouldn't have said "reversed my view" quite so unequivocally. It would probably be fairer to saying 'reversing' it.

My analysis is relatively straight forward though. The corrupt shiekdoms are much more conservative than the dictatorships. It seems to be a racing certainty to my mind that they'd spawn deeply theological regimes were they to fall. I see no evidence to make me think they'd go down a democratic path in anything other than name. What that means therefore is that they'd elect Islamist parties, provided of course they even went through this process.

It's not a sinister admiration for corrupt shiekdoms any more than it's a "sinister admiration for dictators". It's a simple acceptance of the pragmatism of the situation.

I always felt they were a part of the problem, and that we'd have been better off targeting our reform agenda on them for such time as the dictators could be relied on to manage their own conservatives. George Bush drew up an axis of evil based on his prejudices, his 1980's influences, and the cold war. The result is that from a strategic position at least, he ended up targeting his most natural allies and leaving those whose countries were supplying the money alone.

Having wiped out our own first line of defence now in one of the most foolish acts in the history of mankind, we've become the architects of our own peril. Where do the shiekdoms fit in now?
 
clivex said:
so in the poll what % of Lebanese were strongly pro democratic governance. Did you bother to look?

83%
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To be honest with you Clive, I don't tend to read your links. If however you take the time to write something in your own words, I will read it. In this case however, I did come back to flick at it rather than wade my way through about 2000 words at the point of posting. I can only conclude that you're guilty of wilfully selective misinterpretation of the data, as your conclusions regarding Lebanon are at odds with what I'd draw from it (unless of course I've totally misread the data sample - as I only gave it a cursory once over).

In the first case, 40.5% of the population of Lebanon are christians - just hold that figure for a moment in order to lend context to the rest of what you're telling us

17% of the population according to Pew want a government that strictly follows the Quran
35% of the population a government that follows the principles of the Quran
42% of the population (a figure within a couple of points of the christian population) want a government in which the Quran has no influence

It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that a big majority of this 42% are made up by christians, augmented by radical muslims (probably academics or professionals)

So lets look at the 59.5% of the population that are muslim and overlay that against the 17% of the population that want the Quran to be strictly observed in government (sharia in any other name). These figures indicate that about 2 in 7 muslims are in favour of it, and aren't too concerned if democracy is the vehicle to deliver it. The figure for Quranic influence in government is even more stark. The ratio is 35/59. This broadly equates to a Muslim brotherhood type of government as we've seen elected elsewhere.

The Pew report actually supports my hypothesis, that what you're interpreting as representative democracy, is a back door to islamic influences. What the people are saying in effect is that they don't want dictators, and that they'd like greater democracy, but they're then framing that democracy within the structures of Islamic theology. I think that's a slippery slope and without a strong leadership and structures (or a backstop in the case of the Egyptian army) it will slide into ever more radicalised conservative Islam as we've witnessed elsewhere. I think you really need to be careful about placing too much emphasis on this 83% figure being in favour of democracy therefore (its the blind stats led approach to policy making that distant FO policy wonks love so much). In order to make sense of it you need to look beyond that figure and forecast what that democracy would likely yield (and especially so if the christians weren't there to dilute the impact of Islamic influences)

I did read a very coegent argument months ago about this which was a response to the suggestion that the dictators were as good as it gets and to embrace them. It basically said that this world view was disappointing and lacked ambition etc (which it is) and went onto describe how a country had lifted itself out of dictatorship in the past to become a beacon of democracy and unity. Sadly that country was Germany. They've probably been repsponsible directly and indirectly for about 250M deaths as a result of their journey. What total would you say the world should be prepared to facilitate Iraq's journey? I don't think this kind of growing pain justifies the body count

I am however encouraged by your assertion that Lebanon is a role model as you continue to colour the map in of other candidates. A decade ago you expected Iraq to be the role model. Than you thought Libya would be, even 6 months ago you assured us Tunisia was. Now it seems you've landed on Lebanon. It's a remarkable transformation that given only about 6 years ago Hezbollah were using it as a base to attack Israel whilst the government sat back impotent to prevent it (or Fatah or the PLO before them).

The Lebanese government has long governed at the discretion of the militas. The breakthrough that you think they've achieved "It's one that took time and pain to achieve but it got there" (you are claiming victory in Lebanon aren't you?). This achievement is likely the result of Hezbollah heading north into Syria to fight ISIL. Also don't lose sight of the fact that about a milion Syrians have headed in the other direction. Your premature celebration of the success of Lebanon could come back and haunt you very soon (most of your predictions do) but I realise you're running out of candidates.

On the other note, I do think your description of "time and pain" needs context too. Lebanon is but a very small country. Just try and extrapolate what the implications would be for the world if the same growing pains that Lebanon went through were replicated all the way from Pakistan to Morroco. I'm pretty sure you'd end up with millions dead and quite probably a nuclear weapon being involved somewhere along the line too

In short I think you're completely off the mark to invoke a survey that says 83% of the Lebanese population favour democracy as some kind of crowning moment and arrival for a country that is more in danger of sliding back to whence they came in the longer term, then going forward as a model of best practise
 
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Warbler said:
To be honest with you Clive, I don't tend to read your links. If however you take the time write something in your own words, I will read it. In this case however, I did come back to flick at it rather than wade my way through about 2000 words at the point of posting. I can only conclude that you're guilty of wilfully selective misinterpretation of data, as your conclusions regarding Lebanon are at odds with what I'd draw from it (unles sof course I've totally misread the data sample - as I only gave it a cursory once over).

In the first case, 40.5% of the population of Lebanon are christians - just hold that figure for a moment in order to lend context to the rest of what you're telling us

17% of the population according to Pew want a government that strictly follows the Quran
35% of the population a government that follows the principles of the Quran
42% of the population (a figure within a couple of points of the christian population) want a government in which the Quran has no influence

It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that 40.5% of this 42% are made up of christians therefore, augmented with 1.5% of radical muslims (probably academics or professionals)

So lets look at the 59.5% of the population that are muslim and overlay that against the 17% of the population that want the Quran to be strictly observed in government (sharia in any other name). These figures indicate that about 2 in 7 muslims are in favour of it, and aren't too concerned if democracy is the vehicle to deliver it. The figure for Quranic influence in government is even more stark. The ratio is 35/59. This broadly equates to a Muslim brotherhood type of government as we've selected elsewhere.

The Pew report actually supports my hypothesis, that being that what you're interpreting as representative democracy, is a back door to islamic influences. What the people are saying in effect is that they don't want dictators, and that they'd like greater democracy, but they're then framing that democracy within the structures of Islamic theology. I think that's a slippery slope and without a strong leadership and structures (or a backstop in the case of the Egyptian army) it will slide into ever more radicalised conservative Islam as we've witnessed elsewhere. I think you really need to be careful about placing too much emphasis on this 83% figure being in favour of democracy therefore (its the blind stats led approach to policy making that distant FO policy wonks love so much). In order to make sense of it you need to look beyond that figure and forecast what that democracy would likely yield (and especially so if the christians weren't there to dilute the impact of Islamic influences)

I did read a very coegent argument months ago about this which was a response to the suggestion that the dictators were as good as it gets and to embrace them. It basically said that this world view was disappointing and lacked ambition etc (which it is) and went onto describe how a country had lifted itself out of dictatorship in the past to become a beacon of democracy and unity. Sadly that country was Germany. They've probably been repsponsible directly and indirectly for about 250M deaths as a result of their journey. What total would you say the world should be prepared to facilitate Iraq's journey? I don't think this kind of growing pain justifies the body count

I am however encouraged by your assertion that Lebanon is a role model as you continue to colour the map in of other candidates. A decade ago you expected Iraq to be the role model. Than you thought Libya would be, even 6 months ago you assured us Tunisia was. Now it seems you've landed on Lebanon. It's a remarkable transformation that given only about 6 years ago Hezbollah were using it as a base to attack Israel whilst the government sat back impotent to prevent it (or Fatah or the PLO before them).

The Lebanese government has long governed at the discretion of the militas. The breakthrough that you think they've achieved "It's one that took time and pain to achieve but it got there" (you are claiming victory in Lebanon aren't you?). This achievement is likely the result of Hezbollah heading north into Syria to fight ISIL. Also don't lose sight of the fact that about a milion Syrians have headed in the other direction. Your premature celebration of the success of Lebanon could come back and haunt you very soon (most of your predictions do) but I realise you're running out of candidates.

On the other note, I do think your description of "time and pain" needs context too. Lebanon is but a very small country. Just try and extrapolate what the implications would be for the world if the same growing pains that Lebanon went through were replicated all the way from Pakistan to Morroco. I'm pretty sure you'd end up with millions dead and quite probably a nuclear weapon being involved somewhere along the line too

In short I think you're completely off the mark to invoke a survey that says 83% of the Lebanese population favour democracy as some kind of crowning moment and arrival for a country that is more in danger of sliding back to whence they came in the longer term, then going forward as a model of best practise
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as ever when you struggle its one long torrent of drivel

you wont read the link but you drone for pages with waffle. I cant be bothered to read the above

lebanon was riven by factional wars. Eventually it sorted itself out to a degree and now has a democracy. Unfortunately for feeble minded far left dictator fetishists the poll suggests very very strongly that the population is very happy with that

your lie that arabs do not want demicracy us blown apart

Your lie that civil strife xan only be resolved by dictators is also blowj apart

that is that
 
And before I find better things to do than waste time here . I did pick up that lebanon is sopposedly a "small country"

Popilation is roughly three quarters of that of libya and jordan
 
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