General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow (and when) will the ISIS situation be conclusively resolved?
I could put this into poll format, but there are too many possibilities. How do you think the ISIS situation will be conclusively resolved? Resolved could be anything including ISIS establishing their "state." That's one possible conclusion.
rug
(82,333 posts)When will it be resolved? Never. They know where it leads.
Renew Deal
(81,860 posts)I guess I don't know.
rug
(82,333 posts)Here's the conventional narrative: Saudi Arabia covertly backed al Qaeda. No one held them accountable for this. ISIS grew from al Qaeda. Mutated far more quickly than expected. ISIS has now spun out of their control. Meanwhile, the military and its suppliers are reaping great rewards and now shale oil doesn't look so bad.
There are millions flowing into ISIS. Find it and you'll stop it. But a lot of unsavory collusion will be aired in the process. The Saudis would rather build a wall than let that get out.
This group did not suddenly emerge from a vacuum. There is money and power to be harvested in the instability ISIS is sowing.
Widget2000
(32 posts)The one we created when we toppled Saddam.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)As is the case with these things.
Renew Deal
(81,860 posts)Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)When do you predict cockroaches will be extinct?
They won't call themselves ISIS anymore because the movement is universally abhorrent, but they will be around forever.
Renew Deal
(81,860 posts)Meaning that barbarians have been around for as long as humans and there is no end to barbarism?
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)They're evil, murdering bastards who justify amoral behavior through the perversion of religion tenets.
rainbobryte
(43 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)Will be through discussion and comprise. Money, of course, plays a huge role. But it's not the be all and end all when it comes to the why.
So, I think this will only end with many, many people dead.
Renew Deal
(81,860 posts)It will end with discussion and compromise after a lot of people die? Does that mean that some big wars will be fought?
marym625
(17,997 posts)It COULD end with discussion and compromise. But no side will put in the effort.
So, it won't end until there's more war and many, many more people die. Even then, there'll be the brewing of yet another insurgence.
WillowTree
(5,325 posts)Do we agree to let them just kill some of us? Or only maim, but then maim all of us? Do you suppose that either of those "compromises" would satisfy these savage murderers?
I suppose the whole "convert or die" thing could be disorted into a willingness to bend but.......gee.......I'm not really up for the whole burka thing.
Do you really see any indication of reason from them? Really??
marym625
(17,997 posts)I thought that's what you wanted. I do too, just not by us dropping bombs all over the middle east. (Re: the end of ISIS.)
There are always people in these groups that can be reasoned with. And even if blackmail is used or people bought off, it will be easier to destroy by them destroying themselves. We've done it before. Before we wanted our presence known in every conflict in the world. Whether we started it or not.
There are also groups and government's just as bad as ISIS. Why don't the people suffering at their hands deserve our help? Where's the outcry to bomb the shit out of them? I'm tired of us being a war mongering country.
I'm tired of hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying in my name. I'm sick of the war culture and the need to obliterate groups of people.
Who are we to call ISIS terrorists and not call ourselves the same. Children and families innocently living in a country we took arms against, burned alive by fire, napalm and white phosphorus. Innocent people tortured for a decade only to die and all in our name. Attacking a country for no other reason but money, using lies as an excuse while the perpetrators walk free and rich.
We are hypocrites. We created ISIS. Our continuation of tearing up the middle east will only breed more.
CK_John
(10,005 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Renew Deal
(81,860 posts)So were the US revolutionary and civil wars.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)The French re-assertion of colonial sovereignty in Vietnam led directly to that conflict, and Korea was likewise an immediate spinoff of the "conclusive resolution" of WWII.
The US had sole possession of the "ultimate weapon of peace" for, what? A couple of years?
When was WWII "conclusively resolved" for Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia where it started?
The various conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine are unfinished business from WWI. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the long festering structural problems there came to the fore. Even part of Ukraine was in the Habsburg Empire, and the Russians won't let go.
WWII essentially ended in a global standoff between the US and the Soviets, which was the biggest game in town for decades, and an island nation 90 miles from Florida remains off limits to Americans as a consequence.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)full war on ISIS, they will be history.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Yes, I think the Islamic State is Islamic, just a very distilled, twisted, extremely brutal form that most Muslims would reject. Middle eastern/Muslim countries have to stop it within their midst. We can help them (and we are), but the West can never fully end it on its own. Too much of a holy war thing that just fuels it further.
bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)I think that many Sunni's are conflicted. They hate Isis' tactics but they also see them as fellow Sunnis who study the same sacred texts that they do.
Just as a comparison, most Fundamentalist Christians would never bomb an abortion clinic but they feel some sympathy for those who do and perhaps even some guilt for not having the strength of their own convictions to do what their more violent offshoots do to stop what they believe in their hearts is murder.
Hopefully Isis's radicalism will alienate other Sunnis. When they see that Isis is killing Sunnis who do not meet their definition of piety just as merrily as they are killing Shiites, Allawites, Christians and Yazzidis they will turn against them.
Westerners can't do it. Other Muslim sects can't do it. Iran can't do it. Even the Kurds can't do it. It has to be Sunnis. That includes the money men in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and the regional military powers, particularly those who are majority Sunni. Hopefully the outrage in Jordan at the burning of that pilot and the reaction of the Egyptian government to the execution of Egyptian Christians in Libya are the beginning of the end for Isis.
The problem is, if that article in the Atlantic is right, that Isis wants this fight. They want what we call Armageddon. They want the war that will end the world and they are wiling to a man to die for it. They want the western powers drawn in.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)that is probably a decade or more away.
Takashi Zara
(34 posts)Iraqi militia under the aegis of Iranian General Qasim Sulaymani have made some of the more substantial (and generally unsung in US/Saudi-dominated media, for obvious reasons) progress against the khalifah group. However, the sectarian bent of the Shiite forces means that there is a limited threshold for success before further resistance develops. That being the case, the Iraqi/Syrian/Hizbu'llah forces can create more major losses for the takfiris in the meantime, far more than the efforts of the US and its pet dictatorships (Saudi/Jordan/whatever else) have made.
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)elements" of the current boogieman and the effort will have morphed to the next stage.
The biggest surprise is the name of the future new most evilist evah, radical barbarians that threaten global security and must be fought over there so we don't have to fight them here.
Takashi Zara
(34 posts)After all, we have always been at war with (fill in the preferred fad of the age here). In my lifetime, there has always been some eternally penultimate evil lurking just behind all headlines; this is a winning strategy for preserving business-as-usual, I don't expect it to change any time soon without a fairly revolutionary change in political dynamics.
I have a less facetious response, but maybe some other time.
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)Can't get rid of the latest global threat to mankind till we have a new global threat to mankind. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!!!!