Morning Mithros, Maybe there is a 'vast difference' in what YOU do and what YOU say, but don't project that shortfall on me....I try keeping my word. It's called integrity. Concerning ISIS, it seems that they are doing exactly what they say they will. In fact, that's the whole problem with this whole thing. In some respects we have projected our values onto our enemies, and instead of listening to what their stated goals are. They are telling us what they want, we just don't listen.
Aw, here we go....Now we are going to play word salad, trying too hard by half in figuring out what to do about these pieces of trash. We are losing this from our current approach of leading from behind. Nothing less. Plus the fact that none of these governments over there are willing to step up and take on the problem themselves...At some point we have to take this on seriously in our interests.
And our response is to let it happen? You see that as a good thing?
Sticking our heads in the sand is not going to make it go away...As for it being false, I am not so sure it is...Islam after all is a religion built on murder, and conquest. They are in effect a sort of anti religion.
Morning!
Just to again point out, I don't think that we should stick our head in the sand. I think that we need to fight ISIS with every available weapon. And our greatest weapon is to drive a clear wedge between Islam and ISIS. By doing that, we provide the political cover to the Islamic powers in the region to also fight ISIS.
As to the point about Islam being a religion based on murder and conquest, sure it's been that. It's also been the center of culture, tolerance, and intellectualism. Islam is a Canaanite religion; hence the violence and xenophobia. This is where we get the parts of the Bible we generally ignore now; eg the genocide of the Ammonites (Deut 3:24), the murder of everyone in a city if worshippers of another god are found there (Deut 13:15) and many many more.
It's pretty easy to go back through Jewish, Islamic, and Christian history and find all sorts of terrible things done in the name of those religions. It's also possible to find all sorts of amazing things that have been done in the name of that religion. Take Christianity. On one hand we have the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, hundreds of years of wars between Catholics and Protestants, etc.. On the other hand we have Trappist ales. So on the whole..Christianity is probably a net win.
The point is that declaring war on a religion doesn't work. It's like putting water on an oil fire. Force doesn't convince people that their way is wrong, it reinforces their resolve to fight. This isn't about ISIS, it's about the rest of the Islamic world. ISIS is going to fight to the death, and the Administration is working to oblige.
Only a fool fights more people than they have to. This is about the people who are sympathetic to ISIS, but don't approve of their methods. And there are a TON of them. If we drive them towards ISIS then we will create a permanent Islamic Extremist base in the region. If we accept them and encourage the voices of moderation then we will cut off ISIS's source of recruits. We can then purge their cancer from the region.