What Should Be Done About ISIS? And Who Should Do It?

[Comrade Grumpy]

I think we can probably get general agreement that ISIS is just horrible. And we wish we could eradicate it.

But there don't seem to be very many good options. Here's the ones I can come up with:

1. Full-scale US military intervention. We're talking invasion, tens or hundreds of thousands of US troops, probably thousands of US military casualties, countless Syrian and Iraqi casualties. The US military probably could defeat ISIS, take control of its territories, and impose new rulers. But there seems to be no will at all for that in the US.

2. Continue with the coalition. This strategy seems to have accomplished a draw. ISIS is pretty much stopped from expanding, but remains in control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria. This involves the US military bombing a lot of stuff, but no American combat forces (yet). If the goal is to defeat ISIS, this has not worked so far. Our coalition partners also seem pretty half-hearted.

3. Do nothing. Withdraw from the coalition. Leave it to the people and governments of the region to sort out. This option at best would lead to years of war and conflict; at worst, it would lead to a stronger, more powerful ISIS.

4. Give the Iranians a free hand. Iran is already key to supporting the anti-ISIS governments in Baghdad and Damascus. If we don't want to send in the US Army, about the Revolutionary Guard? This could cause problems with our Sunni Arab "allies."

Any other ideas? This seems like a really intractable problem.

[onehandle]

1. 1. Build a time machine, 2. Go back 15 years.

3. Put these people in Gitmo:

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[Comrade Grumpy]

2. That may be the most workable solution.

[FrodosPet]

8. The backwards time machine still hasn't arrived yet.

I heard it is on back order.

[Alittleliberal]

28. If we ignore the FACT that this conflict is 1000s of years old

Saddam was a temporary stop and we'd still be talking about this issue if it happened 20 years from now and we had nothing to do with it.

[lostnfound]

30. Jesus is that the Munsters?

What a crew. Vader makes it unnervingly munsterlike.

[leveymg]

3. Follow the money and cut it off. KSA, UAE and Qatar

The same funding sources as al-Qaeda. But we didn't do it after 9/11 and we won't now.

[Comrade Grumpy]

25. There's a lot of blood on the hands of the Saudis and the Gulf States.

They destroyed Syria by financing an armed uprising. And we helped.

They finance that Salafist shit all over the place.

I think we'd be better off making a tectonic shift in our regional alliance and going with the Iranians.

[moondust]

4. Containment and attrition?

Possibly lasting decades?

Much may depend on how successful the Muslim community is at deprogramming their youth, preserving the good parts of their religion, teaching tolerance and condemning the radical nonsense and those who spread it.

[delrem]

5. Formally end the "War on Terror".

End arms shipments to the belligerents, which obviously include the US allied states like Saudi Arabia, because those arms end up in the hands of ISIS.
End all direct and indirect mercenary operations, because again all that ends up in the hands of ISIS.
Formally put an end to all "regime change" operations in Syria.
Require all countries which contract with the USA to abide by international law, and begin a process that ends with the US also submitting to international law regarding international affairs.
End sanctions on Iran, which in all this havoc is relatively innocent, especially w.r.t. the charges brought against it.

Begin a process of peaceful negotiation with all countries in the world, and quit the threats of coups and mayhem from "The USA, the World Police".

[davidn3600]

6. There are problems with all your solutions...

1. No one wants to fight another war in the mid-east.

2. ISIS isn't under control at all by the coalition. They are expanding influence into other places like Afghanistan now.

3. Doing nothing will result in ISIS getting bigger and eventually committing terrorist attacks on us and others.

4. Iranians in Northern Iraq is going to be problematic to Iraqis (remember they fought a war with Iran in the 1980s that got very, very ugly). We also can't trust Iran as they are funding rebels in Yemen who are causing trouble there. The Saudis will also be pissed.


I think more than likely we are going to end up going with #3. And it will end up being like Al-queda. They will continue to grow and gain support. They will start committing terrorist attacks. And we'll have another 9/11. Then we will end up with war anyway.

[WDIM]

10. "Doing nothing..eventually committing terrorist acts on us"

I think that was Bush's justification for going to war too. We see how well that has worked out for the region.

Cutting off funding and supply and heavily sanctioning Any country that does supply funding and then withdrawing from hostilities and promiting peace and unity is exactly the strategy we need.

[stevenleser]

12. You're comparing Saddam Hussein to ISIS? A lie to a group that has promised to attack us? Really?

Let's list the problems with your analysis.

1. Saddam Hussein & Iraq was contained. The coalition had no fly zones over 2/3rds of Iraq that were constantly patrolled.
ISIS is not contained and is constantly fighting to gain more territory.

2. Saddam Hussein & Iraq never engaged in a terrorist attack on the US and never threatened to do so.
ISIS has repeatedly threatened to do so.

3. Saddam Hussein & Iraq weren't going about arresting and beheading foreign journalists. Far from it, foreign journalists were reporting from Baghdad even in the middle of the Iraq war.
ISIS is even beheading Japanese journalists when Japan has a Constitution explicitly prohibiting Japan from becoming involved in external military conflicts.

4. Bush claimed Iraq had WMD and that was a reason for war. By March 10, 2003 with the UN Weapons inspectors reports, we all knew that was not true. He invaded anyway based on a lie.
The case against ISIS is not a lie.

[WDIM]

17. No I was comparing the posters rationale for war with Bush's rati

We either go over there and fight them or they come over here and attack us that is the analysis that was given.

And i was talking about the entire war on terror not just Iraq war.

[davidn3600]

16. You are confusing Iraq and Afghanistan

Al-Queda DID in fact attack us, didn't they? Unless you are a truther, Al-Queda did commit an attack on this country. Now there are arguments that our policies over the previous 30 years lead up to it. But very few people view the Afghanistan war as unjustified.

The justification for war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had WMDs....which obviously he didn't have and was based on lies.

[WDIM]

18. I know Saudi nationals attacked us on 9-11-01

We did not go to war with Saudi Arabia. No afghani or Iraqi ever attacked this country that i know of.

We went to war in these two countries for many reasons least of which was the attack on 9-11 or Al-Queda or terrorism.

[davidn3600]

19. The Taliban was harboring Al-Queda

We demanded the Taliban hand over Al-Queda's leadership and stop allowing them to use their country as a training ground.

They refused.

[WDIM]

22. Thats the official story.

I believe very little of the official Bush Regime story.

Afghanistan has vast resources of precious metals and minerals. Not to mention the drug trade.

[WDIM]

7. Cut off the funding and supply.

War is not cheap and it makes war profiteers rich. taking the money out of war will end war.

For example how does ISIL sell oil? Who are they selling it to? When the media reports they sell oil to fund their operation something is not holding up to logic. They are well funded and well supplied because the war profiteers are funding both side. Just like they did with Hitler and Japan in WWII they fund both sides because either way they profit.

[stevenleser]

13. No one should take that suggestions seriously until you research it and explain how. For instance...

you yourself say you don't understand how they are selling oil. I do because I have read about it. The information is out there. It would not be easy to stop. I suggest you research how that is happening and then come back and tell us how to stop it.

ISIS has plenty of money from not only sale of the oil, but they overran lots of Iraqi banks during their overrun of Iraqi territory and they promptly took all of the hard currency and anything else in the banks.

You can't cut off that money because they physically have it, to the tune of between $875 million to $2 Billion.

[WDIM]

21. There is no way.

They picked up that much money from selling oil on the black market to untraceable recipients and robbing Iraqi banks.

Then the supplies the weapons the fancy black pajamas and head covers the vehicles. No this war is being outside funded from all sides and there is not two sides there are multisides and multigroups and multiple agendas. Even if we send supplies, we dont truly know where it is going to end up and which side we are truly funding. The best move in this madness is not to play.

[saturnsring]

9. develop renewable energy and turn our backs on the entire oil despotic regions

[cheapdate]

11. There is a battle for political control

in Iraq and Syria. Iraqis and Syrians must determine the outcome. The answer can't come from the outside. Iraq is a sovereign nation and has a responsibility to protect its people, its values, and its territory. They are not a nation without the means to do so. The historical part that the U.S. played in the events that facilitated the rise of IS neither obligates nor justifies another aggressive war in Iraq.

Its true that those with great power have an obligation to protect the weak and defenseless. But there are conditions for violating a nation's sovereignty and territory to intervene to protect the weak or to stop atrocities. Those conditions aren't met in Iraq.

On the other hand, ISIS isn't an ordinary political and military group. In an ordinary conflict, there might be crimes and transgressions by both sides, but after one side or the other wins life generally returns to a semblance of normal. ISIS doesn't appear to be like that. Their crimes are especially shocking (systematic officially sanctioned rape) and there's not much reason to expect the atrocities would end with the cessation of hostilities. ISIS is a kind of evil on par with the Nazis -- a complete nullification of normal human values. It might be that they need to be destroyed for the good of mankind.

How that can be done militarily -- against an irregular enemy that recognizes no rules or conventions of war -- is beyond me. The territory they occupy is vast and populated by hundreds of thousands of civilians.

[stevenleser]

14. Is ISIS an occupier or is this a civil war? I think they are occupiers.

A civil war is best left alone. An occupation is another matter.

[Comrade Grumpy]

26. I'm afraid it may not be as clear cut as you suggest.

ISIS seems to be hooked up with former Baathist military elements in Iraq, and has the support, or at least the acquiescence, of some of the Sunni tribes.

I don't know much about its support in Syria.

I know it has thousands of foreign fighters in its ranks, but it certainly has thousands of locals as well.

And the people in major cities it controls, like Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi, haven't exactly risen up to drive them off. How much is fear and how much is sympathy?

-----

We might see some redrawing of borders. A shrunken Shia Iraq, an enlarged Kurdish proto-state in their parts of Syria and Iraq, a Sunni state in Anbar and eastern Syria, a shrunken Alawite rump state in Syria.

Maybe then those Syriac-Iraqi Sunnis can figure out what to do with ISIS.

[cheapdate]

27. The arguments for intervention in the case of a civil war,

and counter-intervention in the case of a foreign occupation are indeed different. Which of these applies here is murky. ISIS is neither unambiguously a foreign power nor a local political community. If ISIS is considered as a foreign power, then the case for counter-intervention by other foreign powers becomes easier, although violating the prohibition against crossing boundaries is never something to be taken lightly.

In either case, the utmost respect must be given to the country's right of self determination. Intervention should never be undertaken in an attempt to fulfill foreign objectives. The outcome of a civil war should reflect the local alignment of forces and not the relative strengths of intervening states.

I think an appropriate response from the U.S. might be to continue with proportional engagement.

[chowder66]

15. This might be more of a fantasy but here goes....

Isis should be overpowered by those that are being oppressed by them or threatened by that oppression. Isis doesn't really have "power". No one respects them other than the other murderers, rapists, molesters that are joining them in their "fight". They are essentially a gang of despicable people. Nothing more.

The true power is in the hands of those who do not join them and who instead provoke change through education, tradition, politics for the good of the many.

Lives will be lost but those lives will have respect which is real power, especially if they seek a better outcome that encompasses tolerance and peace.

This goes for any CEO or executive or politician or authority that "thinks" they have power by using force or by looking at others as "less than". They don't have real power either because respect is earned.... not bought or forced upon others.

[ericson00]

20. continue with the coalition

its the best option, maybe sent a small amount of troops there to reinforce it, and also invest more in training/arming Iraqi non-ISIS security forces

[former9thward]

23. Destroy their oil fields.

That is one thing Trump is correct about. Without oil they have no money. Air strikes , no ground forces.

[Facility Inspector]

24. We broke it, we bought it

Endless war.

Generations upon generations of young men over there will fight us.

Mission Accomplished.

[Igel]

29. (3) and (4) are really the same.

And that's my choice at the present. Suck it up and take the blame (or scapegoat whoever we need to to be able to continue our claims to messiah-hood) and let the pathology burn itself out.

I'd note that the first IS threat came *after* the US formally became a belligerent against IS.

Otherwise, it's mostly homegrown. It's the unreconstructed somewhat educated poor versus the more educated reconstructed not-poor, with a lot of the slacker educated seeking "authenticity" and a "return to their roots" to find a way of resisting assimilation to a reconstucted culture, one that rejects their "authentic" and "unique" past and adopts many Western ways of being and thinking. While the fight is about the present failings of their society, it takes the form of vengeance and compensation over perceived grievances, sometimes completely biased and one-sided in presentation, over slights from decades or hundreds of years ago.

"The reason I had to go to Germany for my engineering degree and can't get a job is because Westerners oppressed my great-great-great uncle in 1860" or "because Andalusia". To find absolution from such vicariously relished and lamented humiliation and the sin of not being true to 715's style Islam, they have to fight and restore their past glory, much of which *is* entirely constructed out of whole cloth. It's those feeling powerless assigning blame through history and seeking to claim power that, really, they don't have a claim to and would misuse if they got it. Not that they couldn't do better than those in power, but, seriously, that's not the way the data are piling up.

There's a lot of that going on.

[Comrade Grumpy]

32. The London Review of Books has an interesting piece on British jihadis.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n16/owen-bennett-jones/we-and-you

<snip>

Pantucci’s description of the jihadi plots that have been hatched in the UK concentrates on the question of what causes radicalisation in the first place. With the usual caveat that no single explanation seems adequate, he offers the analogy of a fruit machine. A jihadist recruiter looking for a new volunteer hits the jackpot when three drivers – ideology, grievance and mobilisation – all come together at the same time.

<snip>

On Pantucci’s fruit machine the ideological underpinning of violent jihad has to be aligned with a second driver: grievance. It is tempting to describe violent jihadism as an act of rebellion motivated by socio-economic factors. After all, British Pakistanis – like Muslims in much of the Middle East and North Africa – tend to be at the wrong end of poverty, education and health indicators. Pakistani and Afghan Taliban recruits could be seen as revolutionaries trying to overthrow a corrupt and entrenched feudal leadership. But Pantucci downplays socio-economic considerations, pointing out that many poor people with legitimate grievances do not engage in violent campaigns. Explanations of radicalisation that rely on economic exclusion also fail to explain why many jihadis come from relatively well-off families. To take three British examples: Omar Sheikh, one of those responsible for the murder of the Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, went to the London School of Economics; Ramzi Yousef, who organised the failed World Trade Center attack of 1993, studied electrical engineering in Swansea; and the would-be underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was a student at University College London.

*

Pantucci is more convinced by another oft-cited source of grievance: Western foreign policy. The US, Israel, the UK and France, the argument goes, face violent attacks because, for all their talk of human rights, they cause or allow the oppression of Muslims, whether in Iraq or Gaza. Their soldiers invade ‘Muslim lands’ and their drones kill innocent Muslim civilians. The complaints are not just about military action but extend to other aspects of Western conduct, from secretly reading people’s emails to torturing them. But the cause and effect isn’t as clear as many argue. Until 2012, for example, drone strikes in Pakistan were frequently cited as the main cause of Taliban anger and more broadly as the biggest single reason for the radicalisation of Pakistani society. Yet when the US suspended drone strikes for most of 2013, there was no sign that the jihadis were suddenly short of recruits or that anti-Americanism diminished.

‘We Love Death as You Love Life’ pays insufficient attention to the underlying factor that helps explain radicalisation: identity. The most instructive passage in the book quotes a bunch of 14-year-olds in Rotherham.

‘Do you like being called British Asian?’ Shakeel asks a group of friends. ‘I like Paki better. I’m a Paki. What do you think?’

Kiran replies: ‘I think of myself as a British Asian Muslim.’

Samina says: ‘I am a Muslim. I believe in Islam.’

And Shazad: ‘I don’t think of myself as a Muslim and I don’t think of myself as a Pakistani … I may be a Muslim but I don’t think of myself as a Muslim. I think of myself as a British Asian, that is what I think of myself.’

Pantucci interprets this exchange as a demonstration of the teenagers’ confidence in blending their various identities. To me, it shows their bewilderment. The mix of Islam, Pakistan, India, Asia and Britain leaves many uncertain where they belong. Faith schools, sensationalist media coverage, housing segregation and the visibility of the English Defence League add to the confusion. Strikingly frequent stories about the corpses of British jihadis bearing tattoos of English football clubs suggest unsuccessful attempts to resolve these issues. One of the most popular radical Islamist groups in the UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir, has been successful precisely because it offers a resolution of these questions by promoting an internationalist vision of political Islam, with nation-states abolished in favour of a caliphate.

<snip>

[lostnfound]

31. Hormone bombs? Something in the water supply?

They are using the rape and sexual abuse of captive women to entice recruits. Threaten them where it hurts, by making them fear losing their masculinity?

Yeah, I know, it's probably immoral, and couldn't be controlled.

[Lurks Often]

33. You forgot who actually has the capability to do something

It doesn't much matter how willing a country is or is not to intervene, but that even if they are willing to intervene, do they have the capability to make a significant difference.

In other words, even if the UN decided that military intervention was necessary and legal and if such a motion made it through the Security Council without a veto from one of the permanent members, what country is going to end up supplying most of the troops and doing most of the work?

I can count on one hand the countries that MIGHT be capable and MIGHT be willing of deploying a divisional or larger size force to combat IS in the Syria/Iraq region: U.S., Turkey and maybe the British, French or Iranians.