The election 2015

i will freely admit that the prospect of an absolute total defeat of isis is hard to imagine. and there always will be jihadis . Jason Burke wrote a good piece on this in the observer last week and his point is that it has waxed and waned for decades in one form or another and in one environment or another. Of course the numbers are a small proportion but because of their actions the impact is out of proportion. However within Arab societies they invariably ultimately self destruct as Al queda did with the jordan bombings which revolted the Arab world and perhaps even now with the horrific killing of the Arab pilot, as one example


My pointnisnthat for the moment we have to knock them back as much as we can. I know you don't disgaree with that.
 
clivex said:
My pointnisnthat for the moment we have to knock them back as much as we can. I know you don't disgaree with that.
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I don't, but it returns us to a couple of key questions; how? and who? Temper led responses normally lead to poor decisions. Look at this stupid situation Turkey and Russia have got themselves into, which has undoubtedly been exacerbated by two ego driven demigods. A sultan and tsar was never going to be a particularly cordial cocktail

Leavign that aside, I'm just not convinced we're going at this the right way. I'd be a lot more convinced if the government could demonstrate two things

1: A credible on the ground ally who will seize territory resulting from aerial bombing
2: That we've got our own backdoor protected the best we can

Ironically that Huff Post survey (having slagged of market research) does highlight some quite important dynamics. It's possibly worth extracting a bit of it and modelling it for illustrative purposes in terms of how the threat we're facing could dramatically change
 
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Right using this Huff Post survey as an example

"Just 3% of Egyptian expressed a positive opinion of the IS, only 5% of Saudis, and under 1% of Lebanese respondents showed any support for the group. It does not mean, the researchers point out, that there is absolutely no support for IS in those countries as the small percentages add up to around 1.5 million people in Egypt, 500,000 in Saudi Arabia, and a few thousand in Lebanon".

Let's use Egypt. In the first case, I'd dispute their maths (I suspect that the Washington Institute have applied some cleaning mechanism to their sample field as I'm sure they wouldn't make the mistake of saying that the population of Egypt is 50m). Anyway, the CIA yearbook has the population of Egypt at 88,487,396 (which is what I'll use as it's only illustrative), which means 3% is approximately 2.6m (2,654,621 to be precise)

So we have 2,654,621 in a population who have identified as expressing "a positive opinion". Let's model 1% of these translating this positive opinion into a militant action. That equates to some 26,546 potential Jihadis.

Now let's say you introduce a controversial policy, and this results in 2% from this 2.6m finding themselves inclined to convert their sympathy into an action. 53,000 jihadis are suddenly lurking within your own borders. Frightening isn't it? Well maybe if you're Egyptian. Like I said (as we can probably relate to the IRA in terms of scale) they were about 300-400 strong. This is about 150 times bigger. The UK's standing army is only 80,000 strong.

"But the report is in stark contrast with an August poll on the same topic for ICM, which found that 7% of citizens responded favourably to IS in Britain. To put that result in context, just 5% of the British population are Muslim, meaning a vast number of those surveyed feeling either "very" or "somewhat" favourably towards IS were not Muslim."

Now I have to confess I'm more than just a bit sceptical about the assertion that 7% of the UK's population is sympathetic to ISIL. We're being asked to believe that the entire muslim population of Britain, plus 2% others are included, but let's model it anyway.

UK population is 64,088,222. The poll indicates 2% have a "very favourable" view of ISIL = 1,2817,764
If just 1% of this subsequently decides to engage in direct militant activity, it equates to some = 12,817

Again, apply the IRA benchmark of 300-400, and these are people who are much more driven by body count than the IRA were, and are prepared to martyr themselves presumably.

Dare we perform another calculation?

9 terrorists in Paris killed 130 victims. A ratio of 14 to 1. Now you can rightly say that we can't possibly extrapolate anything meaningful from this. You'd be right. But I'm only doing this for illustrative purposes rather than acting as a predictor. 12,817 terrorists achieving the same sort of kill rate is equivalent to some 179,000 victims (about 3 times the number of British civilians killed in WW2).

Now the dynamics of this is that they would expect to set off retalitory pre-emptive actions (well on that kind of kill ratio they will - I think we'd have accept that civil war had broken by now) so the 1% of those who are sympathetic could grow quite quickly as innocents get targeted. I'd also expect that we would have reverted to internment before we got that close however

Now all of this is borderline stupid in places you might say? I wouldn't completely disagree, but I think it goes to show the potential firestorm you start playing with if you lose an appreciation of the data and the sorts of actions it can translate into from motivated and driven minorities. How much use are 98% of the passive population to you now etc?

I've said for sometime that the armies of Europe are likely to be needed back home, and to this end we really ought to be looking for proxy's in the actual theatre itself as our prefered option of choice

I should say I used 1% for ease of calculation, and readily accept that 0.1% is more likely to be nearer the truth and my own alarmist figures are at least wrong by 10 fold. It's more a case of trying to illustrate how this thing could spin out of control if we lose it though
 
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OK, curiousity got the better of me and I decided to model 0.1% of the 2% identifying their view as "very favourable"

The poll indicates 2% of the UK Population have a "very favourable" view of ISIL = 1,2817,764
If 0.1% convert this favourable view into a consequential terrorist activity = 1,287 (still about 3 times bigger than the IRA)
If we halve the average kill ratio to 1 in 7 we get 9,014 casualties (that could be conservative, as the recent shift to marauding attacks in places like Tunisia, Paris and Mumbai all exceeded this)

Now you can say this is just guesswork - it is, yes. What it's helping me to firm up though is that our most effective method of defence is actually likely to be the boring passive preventive community outreach work that stops that 0.1% becoming 0.5% etc Sure it doesn't involve fast jets and expensive missiles with spectacular explosions. Neither does it give politicians the platform to pose and project their power from, but the chances are it's making a lot more valuable contribution than half a dozen Tornados

The other thing it's helping me crystalise is the importance of diluting the ISIL narrative of western led slaughter. It's becoming more and more apparent to me that we need arab allies to deliver some of this and to muddy the water. The more ISIL can convince 'those at risk' into believing that muslims die at the hands of a ruhtless UK amongst others, the more chance we have of that this 0.1% climbs to 0.2%, 0.3% etc

All this is pointing to an uncomfortable accommodation with Assad and working in direct support of his forces. It was this which Laurent Fabius hinted at yesterday. It's where we could have gone years ago as well

The end game probably doesn't lend itself to democratic elections for a new Syria anyway. The landscape and fabric of what's going to be left there will be shot to pieces and ripe for a second civil war. The better solution might very well be a partitioning and trying to draw a better map than that which was laid down in the 1920's.

You can see that the Turkmens will want to join Turkey. The Kurds will want their own state. Aleppo surprised everyone in the 1920's and voted to join the new Syria, but surely that's a busted flush now. It's difficult to see how the Alawite fits in other than being a stand alone state with Russian oversight and guarantee

Personally I'd like to try and see a wider strategic commitment to bomb in support of Assad (which the Russians are doing for us). I think my priority for the UK however would be to try and secure our own backdoor first. The idea that it's going to take us 10 years to create a 'rapid response force' is disturbing. We need this to be in place in about 10 days or weeks if we're going to escalate at a later date once other options have been tried. We undoubtedly need something more substantial than we have by way of an aggressive defence though, as passive preventative work will only take us so far

I'm struggling to believe the UK being at the head of the column is strategically sensible however unless we're involved in a substantive action. Tokenistic vanity bombing can't be the right answer because it's not addressing the correct question. Cameron simply hasn't laid out a strategy here other than 'whack a mole' and wait for the US to show a lead. For their part, they're still labouring under the delusion that everything is "contained" however (which broadly translates into - no attacks have taken place in America)
 
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... our most effective method of defence is actually likely to be the boring passive preventive community outreach work that stops that 0.1% becoming 0.5% etc Sure it doesn't involve fast jets and expensive missiles with spectacular explosions. Neither does it give politicians the platform to pose and project their power from, but the chances are it's making a lot more valuable contribution than half a dozen Tornadoes.
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Tokenistic vanity bombing isn't an answer because it's not addressing the core question. Cameron simply hasn't laid out a strategy here other than whack a mole and wait for the US to show a lead.
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Well said
 
Far too much to read and mostly doesn't get to the point but clearly

"preventative" outreach might be valuable. So what? What's that got to do with the tornados??.

you don't know where the bombing is targeted. You have no idea whatsoever. So comments like "tokenistic" and the even more tiresome "lobbing missile" are totally meaningless. Accept you have not th slightest clue what these missiles will hit you don't know and that's that

frankly it's just cameron this cameron that. The ldes thatmits preferable to do nothing than hit isis is just strange. The idea that you cannot attack without a "grand strategy" is nonsense. Time is of the essence and I don't think anyone wants every party to go and thrash out some "strategy" and maybe come back in two years time ffs

and it's impossible to build a plan whilst fighting? I don't think so

as I said before. Public sector mentality.. Do nothing... It will never work ..Let's form a committee..
 
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Warbler, re your "tokenistic bombing", please tell me in less than 100 words, what you think the Core Question is.

Don't tell me WHY you think it's the Core Question - just tell me what you think it is and we will take it from there.
 
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Grasshopper said:
Warbler, re your "tokenistic bombing", please tell me in less than 100 words, what you think the Core Question is.

Don't tell me WHY you think it's the Core Question - just tell me what you think it is and we will take it from there.
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How do we defeat ISIS in Syria?
Not
Shall we bomb or not?

The two questions I'd like to see them address beyond on that are How? and Who? (which are probably inter-linked)
 
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Oh dear. Disappointingly cameron has laid out a specific aim.

Of course this has nothing to do with " strategies" . I think we know full well if it was Sweden or China getting involved with fighter jets there would be no screaming at them to stay away.

its cameron this cameron that and "the Brits"
 
So its questions for the future whch frankly are almost certainly being addressed in some form

And no reason whatsoever to stop attacks in the present. None at all
 
To get back to the original point I was making, it would be completely daft for the Labour parliamentary party to go the wall on this issue. What would their campaign slogan be, "Blair was right"? Borrowing a phrase from Warbler, they could call themselves the Whackamoley Party, Mandelson would like that.

clivex, surely you don't think politics needs more people like Donald Trump.

The private sector does some things better but not everything. The range of interests to be considered by decision makers in the private sector is far narrower and the attitude to risk is different because of it. For situations which require accuracy and balanced thinking the public sector is better equipped.
 
No. Those are questions for the now actually Clive.

We've got to seize territory. Replicating the Iraq model which saw ISIL add Anbar province and Ramadi to their gains list in 2015 isn't screaming success at me. There are options, other than adding another six aircraft to the inventory. One thing we don't lack at the moment is aircraft
 
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So much misinformation on this thread. We keep hearing about how useless the tornados are. A us milltary expert in the observer states that britain has some of the very best precision weapons in the world . Perfect for targeting

I will chose the experts view.
 
The weapon isn't the plane. That's the platform. The weapon is the missile.

In this case the missile he's referring to is likely to be Brimstone which the US have considered purchasing themselves, but never did. We don't have an inexhaustable supply of them Clive, and recently sold £10m worth from our own MoD stockpile to Saudi Arabia. We took delivery of our 500th in 2012 (IIRC) having gone into productiion in 2005 and service in 2008. We have since placed an order for a future delivery worth £35m. A unit costs about £100,000 each, so you can take an estaimated guess at how many we have, and how long it takes to manufacture one and supply it (albeit the list price and price paid are likely to be different, and one would hope there is a difference between peacetime and wartime manufacturing speed). We might also assume that a majority of the 300 the RAF estimate to have killed in Iraq have come through this route, so its seems fair to assume we've fired getting on for 150 there in the last 18 months. They've successfully be trialed on Reaper drones which of course has the huge advantage of slow speed over a Tornado and being able to patrol over a target area for appreciably longer

They can be used against these flat bed vans (sometimes called 'technicals' - ususally in Africa) with devastating effect. The problem though is that there are tens of thousands of Mazdas, Subarus, and Nissans knocking around the region. Certainly a lot more than we have missiles.

I would tend to regard it as a start, but only if its used in conjunction with a ground offensive. Otherwise the advantage you gain is pretty well lost within 24 hours when the truck is replaced, albeit you can legitimately point to the fact that the heavy machine that usually sits on the flat bed has been destroyed and that this really amounts to the real gain
 
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Warbler said:
How do we defeat ISIS in Syria?
Not
Shall we bomb or not?

The two questions I'd like to see them address beyond on that are How? and Who? (which are probably inter-linked)
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Is it safe to infer from this that you recommend no bombing whatsoever, and that ground-troop deployment is the only way to defeat Daesh? If you do, wouldn't 'softening them up" through aerial bombardment in advance, be a core part of any deployment strategy anyway? In which case, if 6 UK Tornados means another six targets can be added to the daily list, then why is it "tokenistic" or a bad thing (as you appear to think)?
 
Grasshopper said:
Is it safe to infer from this that you recommend no bombing whatsoever, and that ground-troop deployment is the only way to defeat Daesh? If you do, wouldn't 'softening them up" through aerial bombardment in advance, be a core part of any deployment strategy anyway? In which case, if 6 UK Tornados means another six targets can be added to the daily list, then why is it "tokenistic" or a bad thing (as you appear to think)?
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No, it wouldn't be accurate to infer that I'm against all bombing, albeit you would be correct to make the connection with ground forces. I believe this will be critical, (I'm hardly alone on that one!) which really means picking a credible proxy (I should emphasise credible). Ideal scenario would be an arab force to deny ISIL the narrative

I'm not of the opinion that softening them up will make much difference though, (it hasn't to date) unless you're in a position to prosecute the immediate advantage you gain from the initial attack. Tactically speaking its akin to Blitzkrieg

Let's use the six target example to illustrate it.

If you knock out six Subarus driving around Raaqa about 300 miles behind the front line, you don't really achieve that much. In fact you might even argue that you've used up another precious six missiles. If you knock out six Subarus who were pinning down a ground assault on the frontline though, then you gain territory and start to eat into ISIL's legitimacy to exist according to the caliphate's doctrine.

At the moment, we aren't prepared to commit to an action that will support the Syrian army, although I do wonder if the French have tacitly done so after yesterday's slip of the tongue by Laurent Fabius coming so soon after Hollande met Putin. I'm yet to be convinced this latest American backed group are a completely forlorn proposition incidentally, but the evidence to date wouldn't see you rushing out to back them with confidence either

Ultimately, I'd be more persuaded by something which starts to

1: Seal off supply routes
2: Attacks money making infrastructure (and a diplomatic offesive against sponsors)
3: Directly supports ground action in the seizure of territory
4: Finally a training programme for fighting in urban areas (snipers, flame throwers etc)

I think there's a real danger if all we do is fly around for six months destroying some old Japanese auto engineering, but allow ISIL continue to replenish at a greater rate than they lose, whilst all the time leaving our own backdoor exposed at home. There's enough planes doing this already. We could make contributions elsewhere

Ultimately it comes back to how? and who? but it probably is correct to say that a few extra bombs and missiles will not transform the situation
 
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There is no reason why any of that cannot be done as well as the bombing . None at all. The idea that bombing makes no difference is ilogical. And based on wishful assumptions

This is about cameron not isis
 
marble said:
I hope the potential aerial campaign is more than just a token gesture on behalf of the U.K.
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I said this on the 27th November, since then all I've seen is other posters agreeing and regurgitating what I've said in their own terms, (e.g. my use of the term 'token'.

If we are going to have a fair debate it would be reasonable if posters actually attributed the original phrases and terms used by other posters instead of implying they originally used the term.

Thankyou.
 
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marble said:
I said this on the 27th November, since then all I've seen is other posters agreeing and regurgitating what I've said in their own terms, (e.g. my use of the term 'token'.

If we are going to have a fair debate it would be reasonable if posters actually attributed the original phrases and terms used by other posters instead of implying they originally used the term.

Thankyou.
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You read some contributions and you don't don't know whether to laugh or cry. Others you might find yourself wrestling whether or not to even dignify them with a response. Then you get the occasional gem like this that leaves you .... well ... I don't know ..... perhaps smiling and thinking that perhaps it is worthwhile after all.

Anyway, fwiw, I'll see your 27th of November Marb, and raise you, 21st November, #1483 on the ISIS thread

"We should frame any intervention based around substantive contributions of difference, and not what fills you with a warm inner glow but otherwise does FA

I'm particularly concerned about tokenistic bombing from a Tornado or two. But let's also not forget that Cameron didn't want to bomb ISIL did he? Cameron actually took a motion to parliament to bomb Assad. Can you not see the lunacy in that? I have no problem sneering at an intervention that strengthens ISIL and those of you who backed it should be deeply ashamed of your poor judgement"

And before I set off a lexicographical arms race, I'd be equally confident this isn't the first time that someone has used the same word or strong variant of (first one I stumbled into), but then I'm not claiming a copyright. Shall I feign mock indignation and demand a citation from Marb for his piece of 27th November? (until someone trumps me of course!)
 
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LOL just ignore me Warbler, I'm in a bad mood. I enjoy your contributions.

For what its worth I first truly used and discovered the term tokenism/tokenistic/token gesture in about 2010 and used it often since then. Am I contagious?
 
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