How should the world deal with ISIS?

[David]

[Pi]

One strategy that seems to be underutilized is supplying them with Booby trapped ammunition. Typically organisations like ISIS have to move around a lot so they usually they don�t always have complete control over the ammo they get nor do they usually have the skills to reliably manufacture it. It only needs to be simple stuff like dodgy primers in every third round, oval and bent cases even up to more sophisticated stuff like this.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/07/world/07atwar-exploding-ammunition.html
Cheap to do and who wants to be using a gun that might blow up and its only got to happen once or twice and slows them down.

[Tannin]

^ Great idea, but why stop there? How about we send them booby-trapped exploding suicide vests? Er ...

[Pi]

nah, we would have to import them from the middle east as they are the major supplier, low profit margins

[stui magpie]

[David]

Such shitty generalisations.

[stui magpie]

^

Would you run away and leave your wife and kid behind?

[Morrigu]

[David]

^ I repeat my post above.

Stui, I have absolutely no idea how I'd act in such a situation. At the end of the day, everybody fleeing a war zone leaves someone behind, whether it's their elderly parents, brothers and sisters or even (in a small number of cases) their wife and kids. I don't feel I'm in a position to judge people in a life or death situation, and I think if anyone in this thread had a dose of empathy or humility they'd admit the same.

[stui magpie]

I'll pay that answer because only a dickhead would say absolutely No to my question.

There are are number of valid situations and circumstances where it's in the best interests of all for the man to leave the family behind.

However the particular point being discussed was the large number of able bodied men of an age to be able to fight in a combat situation, seemingly abandoning their loved ones and not taking the hypothetical opportunity to go back and fight given training and weapons.

For them, I agree with the description of coward. How many of the men in question actually fit that category is a different discussion as none of us know their motives. It's all a hypothetical.

[Tannin]

Although I've used the word "coward", I suspect that it isn't as much pure cowardice as it is simple selfish bastardry. Why face danger and hardship to defend your home and family when you can just go to the west and have plenty of money?

(Whether or not you actually do make it to somewhere like France and do get plenty of money is another question, of course. But this caper of healthy young men sheltering in the west and expecting other people to risk their lives defending them has got balls on it.

[David]

I don't think not wanting to fight makes someone a coward. It's all rather WW1 and white feathers, isn't it? It could well be that some refugees have decided that Syria has gone to hell in a hand basket (or maybe they're from an ethnic minority who never felt like they belonged anyway) and that it's better to wipe the slate clean and start afresh elsewhere.

I think the important thing to remember in all this is that these are all ordinary people. A few may be cowards, relatively speaking (personally, I reckon you need a fair bit or intestinal fortitude to make it through the refugee experience at all), a few may be exceptionally brave and the rest are probably somewhere in-between. Whatever the case, I wouldn't want to judge a single one of them unless I knew what they'd been through and what had led to them making the decision they did.

[Morrigu]

^ and what do you say to the women and children they have left behind in a war zone in a refugee camp?????????????????

It takes money to pay smugglers to get to Europe - how much say do you think the women had in how the money was used?

[HAL]

Weren't we talking about YOU sit back in lala land with your caffe latte David everything's rosy mate roll ? I'm confused!

[David]