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ISIS Has Brought the War to the U.S.

i know that you like to see things in black and white because that makes it easier to conduct an entire debate with one liners, but reality is much more nuanced.

Economy of expression is a good thing. My view is vastly more nuanced than yours, for example.
 
So, now what?

Boots on the ground?

Well, maybe it won't be the same as with the Taliban who now hold more territory in Absurdistan than they did in 2001.

Maybe not the same as with the erstwhile AQ now turned IS that now actually "owns" territory altogether.

Maybe there'll be, as a result, a state that isn't failed from the outset like Iraq.

Maybe there won't be one BIG brutal dictator replaced by a thousand small brutal dictators that, most inconveniently, just won't confine themselves to simply slaughtering each other. Like in Libya.

Did I leave something out?

Oh yeah, the sarcasm tag.
 
ISIS increased in power before they controlled any oil fields.

i'm sure that they went for the oil fields just so that they could build a hotel on them like in Monopoly.

what primary role should the regional powers play in solving this problem, and how can we help to push them in that direction?
 
i'm sure that they went for the oil fields just so that they could build a hotel on them like in Monopoly.

what primary role should the regional powers play in solving this problem, and how can we help to push them in that direction?

The regional powers are not the jihadists' main enemy.
 
It's simple to say but hard to do. They have to be killed. It will be the work of a full generation.
Taking into account the generations that grow from the killed?
 
I hope this ends the silly idea that we can simply withdraw from the Long War. It's here.

San Bernardino Attacker Pledged ISIS Allegiance
Michael Schmidt, New York Times

WASHINGTON — The woman who, with her husband, killed 14 people in San Bernardino pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post the day of the attack, officials said Friday, and the F.B.I. announced it was treating the massacre as an act of terrorism.

“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers, and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations,” the F.B.I. director, James Comey, said at a news conference here. But, he said: “so far we have no indication that these killers are part of an organized larger group, or form part of a cell. There’s no indication that they are part of a network.”


On ISIS, Barack Obama Is Baghdad Bob
Sean Davis, The Federalist

“ISIS is contained” is the new “American tanks are not in Baghdad” of 2015.

In the throes of a tight re-election campaign in October of 2012, President Barack Obama declared that al Qaeda was “on the run.” In one sense, he was right: al Qaeda was running into the arms of ISIS, which was running wild in the Middle East. But his intended implication–that his policies had routed the terrorists, rendered them incapable of hurting Americans, and as a result made America safer from the threat of terrorist attack–was demonstrably false.

I can easily envision this frocked babe sitting on her big butt on the Internet just surfing and pledging ad hoc.

Al Qaeda seems to be the more proximate footprint in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where these two shooters were from and travelled to.

Not ISIS/ISIL.

But either way, the FBI now has their work cut out for them tracing all the fiancée visas coming out of the Middle East.
 
I can easily envision this frocked babe sitting on her big butt on the Internet just surfing and pledging ad hoc.

Al Qaeda seems to be the more proximate footprint in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where these two shooters were from and travelled to.

Not ISIS/ISIL.

But either way, the FBI now has their work cut out for them tracing all the fiancée visas coming out of the Middle East.

For young people, AQ is passe.
 
ISIS increased in power before they controlled any oil fields.
But sustained itself AFTER.

It's not just oil anyway (they're capacity is way down), it's being able to control territory in which to exist pretty much untrammelled and which to suck dry. It's hostages, toll duties, import duties, taxation, control of banking facilities all the way to inside Syria, being tolerated by Assad and being locally supported by those that see alternatives (Assad, Turkey, Baghdad Shia etc.) as even more dire.
 
The Long War is a science fiction novel. Maybe you are confusing it with something.

[h=3]The Long War Journal | A Project of the Foundation for ...[/h]www.longwarjournal.org/


Long War Journal


The Islamic State's West Africa Province continues to kill at an alarming rate in Chad and Cameroon by employing women and young girls in 75 coordinated.


[h=3]Threat Matrix[/h]After overrunning the Abu Duhour airbase in Idlib province in ...



[h=3]Pakistan Strikes[/h]Yemen Strikes Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, ...



[h=3]Islamic State[/h]Islamic State claims suicide attack on presidential guards in ...



[h=3]About[/h]About The Long War Journal. Mission: The Long War Journal ...



[h=3]Read More[/h]The Taliban released two statements denying that Mullah ...



[h=3]Al Qaeda appears 'moderate'[/h]... 'moderate' compared to Islamic State, veteran jihadist says.


 
But sustained itself AFTER.

It's not just oil anyway (they're capacity is way down), it's being able to control territory in which to exist pretty much untrammelled and which to suck dry. It's hostages, toll duties, import duties, taxation, control of banking facilities all the way to inside Syria, being tolerated by Assad and being locally supported by those that see alternatives (Assad, Turkey, Baghdad Shia etc.) as even more dire.

Yes, it's the Caliphate.
 
Yes, it's the Caliphate.
So we'd have something defined to attack but what then?

Even after having crushed the designated geographicals, i.e. annihilated anyone involved in running it, turned it over to whoever (Syria, Iraq, the Kurds, Turkey or the UN for all I care), how do you kill the idea, insane as we may find it.

Those derps in S. Bernardo weren't a special ops bunch sent from there, nor were the Oct-13 shooters in Paris nor the Charlie ones of earlier nor the London bombers or the Madrid ones.

So how do you propose, as you say, killing them all?

Take over Libya, the Yemen, any place else?
 
So we'd have something defined to attack but what then?

Even after having crushed the designated geographicals, i.e. annihilated anyone involved in running it, turned it over to whoever (Syria, Iraq, the Kurds, Turkey or the UN for all I care), how do you kill the idea, insane as we may find it.

Those derps in S. Bernardo weren't a special ops bunch sent from there, nor were the Oct-13 shooters in Paris nor the Charlie ones of earlier nor the London bombers or the Madrid ones.

So how do you propose, as you say, killing them all?

Take over Libya, the Yemen, any place else?

. . . until they are destroyed or dissuaded.
 
random violent idiots will shoot us anyway.
True. Yet, we should not just sit back and wag our finger at them when they do (not that you are suggesting such).
if we carpet bomb and occupy the Middle East, even more of them will do it, as has been the case so far.
I'm not nor have I ever advocated anything close. We screwed up by believing that the people of the Middle East could live peacefully in a free democracy. Maybe they can in a few generations, but not now, not given the prevailing culture of both Sunni and Shi'a sectarianism.

fact of the matter is that even if you could wave a wand and occupy Syria tomorrow,
Assad was the only thing holding that country together. Even Jordan, which has an outward appearance of western style freedoms, is a harsh and unforgiving autocracy. Assad just found himself surrounded by a bunch of well meaning rebels in one group of smaller groups, and a bunch of ill meaning terrorist groups trying to create a Caliphate that eventually gelled into ISIS, that were all spawned by the Arab Spring and took advantage of a vacuum being created by the pull out of US forces, since we were the only stabilizing force left in the region (sad thought isn't it).
another group of violent assholes would pop up in Saudi Arabia's back yard.
That's the one I'm waiting on showing their hand. They already exist, IMO, they just haven't gone public yet. When they do, hell will paid by the entire world. Backed by the Saud family's Trillions of dollars, they will make bin Laden, al Baghdadi and the rest of the past and current players actually look like the JV team that Obama called them.
it's not the role of the US to be Saudi Arabia's attack dog.
We support the Saudis because it's still in our economic and national security interest to do so. When that stops, you can bet your bottom dollar... so will the "love."
if you really want to make a dent in terrorism, replace oil as our primary transportation fuel.
You have a great point here. That would definitely reduce their cash flow, but the emerging economies like India, will be buying fossil fuels for the next 100 to 150 years because of it's low cost relative to new technologies, so even if the US went cold turkey from oil, the terrorists in the Middle East would still have their income streams. What we CAN do, is become as energy independent as possible to at least reduce the amount of money we send to the Saudis and all the other ME countries to prevent financing our own deaths.
that's what funds a lot of it.
That's what funds most of it. But with China, India, other parts of Eastern Asia that are emerging economies, African countries that are just now beginning to industrialize, we are not going to be able to cut off the flow of oil coming from the ME without creating famine, genocide, and unrelenting civil war across the third world of the likes we have never seen.
 
The wife "swore allegiance", possibly in pencil on a notepad. No record has been found of any actual contact with Daesh by either party.
 
The regional powers are not the jihadists' main enemy.

because they are abdicating responsibility when it comes to fighting their own regional cancer. and yes, IS is an immediate problem to Saudi Arabia, but one that they don't have to take the lead role in addressing.
 
because they are abdicating responsibility when it comes to fighting their own regional cancer. and yes, IS is an immediate problem to Saudi Arabia, but one that they don't have to take the lead role in addressing.

What makes you think the Saudis aren't fighting ISIS already?
 
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