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Culprit 
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
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| Greenvale, once the domain of the Mafia is now firmly in the media spotlight. |
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Jezza 
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Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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From a couple of months back, but I don't think it's been posted here before:
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/bomb-islamic-state-is-that-our-only-strategy-20150305-13vj2p.html
| Quote: | Bomb Islamic State: is that our only strategy?
Waleed Aly
Death cult. There's a certain catharsis in saying it, isn't there? Somehow, when you're confronted with the jawdropping atrocities Islamic State churns out with gruesome frequency, "terrorist" seems puny, unsatisfactory. We're looking for something that distils our rage and drips with disdain. So, death cult: it implies a kind of unhinged violence directed to no rational purpose; a group beyond comprehension that appeals only to those on the limits of sanity. So, for instance, when three young Englishwomen skip the country to join, we have no explanation other than that they were brainwashed, or that their decision, in Julie Bishop's phrase, "defies logic". That, after all, is the nature of cults.
If only it were true. If only IS were a small, tightly controlled group under the command of a single charismatic leader on whom everything depends. If only it were destined to go the way of so many cults, burning destructively but briefly before disappearing with little trace in some tragic implosion. But it isn't. It's an expanding group forged in the collapsing politics of the Middle East. IS's plain barbarism shouldn't obscure this fact. Its existence is not harebrained. It is deeply political, and those who support, or even merely tolerate it, have political reasons for their decisions.
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But the bigger problem is that the approach remains a narrow military one. It has no obvious political dimension to it: no clearly explained account of why IS has grown so rapidly, how it took major Iraqi cities with so little resistance, and why it might prove so difficult to dislodge. But it is precisely these things that have the most to teach us.
It's easy to forget that IS is scarcely the unstoppable force of our nightmares. It spread through the Sunni areas of Syria and northern Iraq mainly because no one in those regions particularly wanted to stand in their way. That included the Iraqi military, whose Sunni representatives clearly had little fidelity to the Iraqi cause. In brief, IS succeeded because it carried more good will in the regions it conquered than the Iraqi state. Not because Iraqi Sunnis are blood-loving nihilists � indeed, it was the Iraqi Sunnis who had expelled IS's predecessor organisation, al-Qaeda in Iraq. It is rather a story of just how rent Iraq truly is; just how colossal a failure its reconstruction after we invaded it has been. And it is a story of monstrous Sunni resentment at the pro-Shiite excesses of the Iraqi state. |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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Bloody apologist do gooders.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I was going to post something similar, but I wanted to give the thread a chance to get on topic for once. 
Amazing, really, how much more interesting this thread could have been if we'd spend a tenth of the time actually talking about ISIS.
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Jezza
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Good article by Waleed Aly and thanks for posting it David.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Yes, good article, and basic common sense which ought not need iterating.
Unfortunately, reactionary psychology often confuses efforts to understand and resolve human dysfunction with efforts to justify it.
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Jezza
2023 PREMIERS!
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Thanks Jezza. Here's a useful map from that Guardian article for people (like me) who are unclear whether the Coalition-of-everybody-else is winning or losing the war against ISIS.
A decent amount of territory gained back from them in the northern parts of Iraq, but seems like a bit of an armwrestle, really.
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Jezza
2023 PREMIERS!
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No worries David! 
ISIS has lost some ground in Iraq with the loss of Tikrit at the start of April being the most prominent example of this but they've made some strides in Syria in recent months unfortunately especially with Assad being in a vulnerable state now and so-called moderate rebel groups making little to no progress in starving off the threat of ISIS and bringing down Assad in the process.
The defeat of Ramadi is a big loss for Iraqi forces as it signals the problems are still prevalent within the Iraqi armed forces to counter the ISIS threat. After all ISIS took a vast amount of land back in June last year due to the ineptness of Iraqi forces to be able to defend territory against them effectively.
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| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
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IF he is telling the truth? 
We should be driving people to the airport who wish to fight over there and they have to sign away their citizenship which means they can never to return. Abbott's on a Poll winner with this one as the a Age poll yesterday had it like 91% not to allow him or the other's back. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Culprit, where does it say he wanted to fight over there? He went to give medical relief. I know most Australians don't care about this stuff, but there's a slight humanitarian crisis over in Syria at the moment. 
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Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | Culprit, where does it say he wanted to fight over there? He went to give medical relief. I know most Australians don't care about this stuff, but there's a slight humanitarian crisis over in Syria at the moment. |
David, you stated IF he is telling the truth. He knew the rules before he departed on his unhumanitarian desire to join a force that kills unarmed men, women and children. If he wants to turn over a new leaf he can do it all from there as there is no need to come back. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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If you read the article, he didn't join ISIS. The town he was in got captured.
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