Another dictatorship joins the war on ISIS

[TexasTowelie]

A dangerous new phase in the metastasizing war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began this month after the release of a video showing the grisly beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya on February 15.

Egypt's military regime responded with air strikes on the city of Derna in eastern Libya, where an Islamist militia announced last fall that it had joined ISIS. The air assault is the most dramatic sign yet of Egypt's growing involvement in the civil war that has engulfed Libya since 2011, when a NATO bombing campaign backed rebel forces that ousted the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The instability that followed the NATO intervention in Libya created the conditions for armed militias--Islamist extremist ones, in particular--to flourish, just as they have in the aftermath of the years of U.S. war and occupation in Iraq.

Last year, Barack Obama returned to the scene of multiple U.S. war crimes in Iraq when he ordered a new military intervention against ISIS forces. The U.S.-led bombing campaign--which also involves such democracy-loving Arab regimes as Jordan and Saudi Arabia--soon spread to Syria. Now, it threatens to jump to a new continent.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/02/19/a-new-dictator-in-the-war-on-isis

[Thinkingabout]

1. There does not appear to be any let up from this group. I have seen more than one

Article blaming the US for the beginnings of ISIS but it is time to step back and look at reality in the face. These are barbarians who want to create apocalypse and this is not their decision to be made. More and more countries are joining the fight against ISIS. If it takes the world so be it. They have established terror with everything they touch.

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. What ISIS Really Wants

What ISIS Really Wants
hat is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.

[Kaleva]

4. ISIS is itself not 100% unified

There is dissent amongst leaders as to the treatment of prisoners with some dissenters being brought to trial and executed. Desertions are on the rise. Ethnic groups within ISIS such as Syrians and North Africans are complaining that they are being used as cannon fodder and selected for suicide missions while other groups such as Iraqis, Gulf State Arabs and Chechens get favorable treatment and hold positions of power.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. Their leadership has been very effective at murder and recruitment.

They believe their end times rhetoric.

They are quite capable of controlling a good chunk of the region they inhabit.

Their ability to recruit poor and disaffected youth who will follow them to death mans they can and will continue to strike at regions far beyond their borders.

Personally, I think a war with them is inevitable. They will continue to goad Europe and the US to prove to themselves and their followers that the Judgment of Allah is at hand.

An attack within our borders of the type that have occurred in Europe, North Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq will light the match.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. Is Jordan Facilitating ISIS' Grand Strategy?

Is Jordan Facilitating ISIS' Grand Strategy?
BEIRUT -- Last September, I wrote that "Nothing that ISIS has done has been whimsical, rather it reflects serious planning and intentionality. A map of ISIS-intended conquest of territory with its oil wells all carefully marked out, dates back to 2006. Its strategy for taking Mosul was more than two years in its incubation." ISIS' horrific immolation of a caged Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, the Jordanian pilot, too, will have been done in full understanding of the emotional impact of the manner of his death on Jordanians and in the West: This was very deliberate -- not some spur-of-the-moment act of barbarism. It is important to understand what lies behind and beyond the event itself.

As I explained last year when I cited an article by the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar on the topic, a hadith (a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), asserts that the "long-awaited Hour (of Resurrection)" will not arrive for believers until after the Byzantines have landed in al-Amaq (Southern Turkey), or in Dabiq (a Syrian village located to the north of Aleppo). Indeed, there is a conviction that is widely held across disparate sects (including Christians) in the Middle East today that the foretold signs, prefiguring the coming of redemption, are evident in contemporary world events. ISIS' followers take their understanding of the Dabiq "saying" by the prophet to mean that the great battle will take place between the "Crusader West" and Islam -- and that this struggle has been made imminent by ISIS' declaration of the khilafah (caliphate).

For ISIS, the term "Byzantine" is held to stand for today's "Crusader West" and its acolytes. Islamic State fighters assert that this epic "War of the Cross" will unfold with a "crusader" strike on them inside Syria; but that ultimately, the forces of Islam will prevail -- as the prophecy foretells -- and that the coming of the redeemer will then ensue.

ISIS ALWAYS ACTS WITH INTENTION