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Post 20

Thursday, October 16, 2014 - 10:02pmSanction this postReply
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I don't have all the answers. This is a very complicated situation, but my current thinking just doesn't see any way out of this mess. So you go take out regimes in hardline Islamic states...do you really think that is going to make Muslims quit? They are not Japan with a central state and strong national identity that falls in line from top-down managment. Islam is a deeply ingrained faith that persists, but yet is splintered across various tribes and factions. Its adherents are happy to disperse into the crowd and play the long game of violent resistance.

 

Any destruction of a regime would require an occupation or rebuilding. This is the phase in which jihadists thrive. In some cases, like Saudi Arabia, the new regime would be even worse than the current one. America can't afford the cost of blood and treasure to rebuild a Muslim country.

 

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think the massive military course is prudent.



Post 21

Friday, October 17, 2014 - 12:57amSanction this postReply
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Pete,

 

You are right that the massive military course would not succeed. And there is no justification for expending American lives and treasure to do nation building, not even if we could afford it, and not even if it would work - which it wouldn't. And you are right that the deeply ingrained faith would continue to exist in these splintered religious factions deeply entrenched in barbaric tribal cultures.

 

But it isn't hopeless. These primitive and dysfunctional societies couldn't succeed in taking over and keeping control of large areas without a steady flow of cash. Not just because terrorism is expensive, but because it is so far removed from any level of productivity that exceeds what existed in the middle ages. They are being funded by piracy out of somalia, poppy fields in Afghanistan, charities that are really fronts for terror organisations, oil fields nationalized by totalitarian regimes, Saudi royal family members, and those nations that fund terrorism.

 

Take away the money sources and terrorist go out of business. Instead of riding around in pickup trucks waving their weapons, they'd have to make a living. They might try robbery in small groups, but when they run out of ammunition, and fuel for their pick-up trucks, then the good people people around them will beat them to death with sticks. The middle men in the terrorist organizations will lose funds and lose the foot soldiers they send out to die. They too will have to get some kind of job.

 

The banks, the phoney charities, the key people in governments that support terrorism, the rich people that donate to terrorists, the people that supply terrorists with food, money, weapons, transportation, training area, etc. - those should be our primary targets. They don't want to die for their beliefs. They can be deterred. They are the head of the snake.  

 

We get a hopeless feeling when we realize that the fundamental Islamists will never quit.  But their persistence is only effective until they can't do anything because they don't have any money.

 

Cleaning up the few foot soldiers still making trouble after the organizations are mostly collapsed due to the absence of any money would be a military issue and it would be doable then. It is like three wars: The important one is against the funding/funders. The final war has to be ideological. The actual weapon wielders have to be met with force and that is proper for military. It just makes no sense to keep going after the foot soldiers without ever getting the source of the money.  As long as there is money, more idiots will come forward to wave their AK-47s.  (Small on-going military actions make sense even before the funding war is becoming successful, because it keeps them off balance and from gaining ground and reaching new levels of effectiveness.)

 

The final resolution has to come from a win of reason over the massive irrationality of fundamental Islam and that is something that will have to come out of future generations - since you won't change the minds those already committed to jihad. The loss of funding will help to reduce their propoganda efforts, dimish the reach of the Islam educational systems, and deny recruiting success, but the real end of fundamental Islam will take generations. Till then, taking away the money shrinks it down to where is no longer an issue.



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Post 22

Friday, October 17, 2014 - 1:06amSanction this postReply
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Well you can't exactly convert them.  The whole apostasy is punishable by death thing puts a big damper on that.

They don't go to church on Sunday and then go about day to day.  They pray 5 times a day reciting their mantras of absurdities over and over.  Talk about bypassing critical thinking and impregnating the mind with a form of self reinforcing patterns of brainwashing.  Strong faith?   Pretty much zealotry on steroids.

Their view that non muslims who do not convert are to be put to the sword?  People like us out in the open professing our atheism? Hell we would be target number one even above the Jews! They would know we are the enemy #1 of Islam because we are people with no faith and an insult to Allah....

Edit after reading Steve's post.

He is correct the way to fight them is not at this point in time a long military strategy.  You have to kill their money.

 

(Edited by Jules Troy on 10/17, 1:30am)



Post 23

Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - 6:55amSanction this postReply
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Steve:

 

These primitive and dysfunctional societies couldn't succeed in taking over and keeping control of large areas without a steady flow of cash. Not just because terrorism is expensive, but because it is so far removed from any level of productivity that exceeds what existed in the middle ages. They are being funded by piracy out of somalia, poppy fields in Afghanistan, charities that are really fronts for terror organisations, oil fields nationalized by totalitarian regimes, Saudi royal family members, and those nations that fund terrorism.

 

 

Look at that list again of sources of resources; at least half of it is -from- entities created/maintained by exactly their warlord tactics.   I think we understimate the nature of raw megapolitical power.   I think we also ignore the Paradox of Violence:  that, civilization ultimately defends civilization via the projection of superior violence.    It is the nature of power/force; it can't be unilatarally resisted without power/force except by fleeing, or conceding the conflict.    In this conflict, it the West with the most to lose by the conflict, and the terrorists with little to lose by the conflict.  

 

They are contesting for all of Iraq and some of Syria and much of the Middle East in general.  They are adding yet more area under the curve.   Tick tock.     This splintered amalgam of shitfighters from Hezbollastan (the mess North of Israel that used to be Lebanon before Lebanon was conceded by the free world) to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and whatever we want to call Iran continues to spread and control more resources exactly as you describe above.

 

Now consider the other half of that list, such as the Saudis; part of that calculus is looking at the behaviour of the West, not finding much credibility, and hedging their bets.   Trying to buy favor from  the throat slitting  warlords running loose in their 'hood, seasoned with just a little resentment for the way they've been treated like well paid lapdogs, not to mention their own religious fanatacism.     Looking back there is a very clear pattern:  weatherable brief spurts of credible action by the West followed by long unsightly periods of hand-wringing, apology, and propitiation.  Somalia so soon after the wake of Gulf War I.   We -can't- seriously believe we are establishing credibility with anyone except ourselves via this unsightly parade of on again off agian weaseldom, of service only to our own domestic political optics and campaign speeches.  Especially with that culture of hard-asses.

 

In the US, when a pedestrian is hit with an automobile, our tribe rushes in with amubulances and care and bandages and concern.   In much of the (poorer) Muslim world -- not the handful of tiny resortlike oil sheikdoms, where the barefoot robed descendents of bedouins are driving 120 mph down highways in the desert in new Mercedes with their feet on the dashboard between jetplane and palace(an actual memory), but the vast dusty streets of filth and hourly violence and brutality, a pedestrian hit with a vehicle is beset upon by the crowd and berated for blocking traffic, dragged to the side of the road from where, if lucky, a family member will eventually scrape them up and slap on some filthy bandages.   We don't understand the culture at the other side of this centuries long festering conflict; we can barely believe it even when we witness it.   We in the West largely visit 1% of the world -- the safe, westernized resort crust that we call 'overseas.'   The balance of it...the 99%... we've conceded to the warlords and shitfighters.   We take notice when occassionally the mayhem crosses over into that resort-like 1% of the world, and imagine that standoff between the dark ages and modernity can last forever; that 99% is enough, and we can live in a peaceful modernity singing millionaire John Lennon hits until we are blue in the face without defending freedom. 

 

Military action alone may not be sufficient at this point in the conflict, but then again, neither is wishful thinking about spanking a few billionaire Saudi sheiks with a slap on the wrist.   What is necessary is, convincing, credible military action, sufficient to convince the shitfighters that the West will credibly defend itself.  It is the absence of that which not only encourages them in this conflict, but actually enrages them.   (How can -this- weak assed thing barely defending itself be the most powerful nation on earth?)

 

There might have been a theory at one point; the vast sums of wealth poured into the oil nations would somehow spread out and Westernize the dark agers, nudging them slowly into the modern world; pacification via creation of a vast middle class of wealthy enough Muslims who would become fat and happy new consumers and join the party we call modernity.    But looking back, I don't think we were particularly concerned with the efficacy of that theory or its implementation; we were OK with creating a tiny handful of immensely wealthy oil sheiks and tyrants presiding over squalor in the former Ottoman colonies.   We let unfinished business from WWI and the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire fester for now a hundred years.   A hundred years has not been sufficient for a largely passive and war weary/averse West to clean out this last massive vestige of the dark ages, and its last remnants are not conceding the issue quietly or without an effort consistent with their warrior prophet religious traditions in a conflict with a West led by a nation more interested in the 35% off offers pouring out of Disneyland.



Post 24

Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - 4:42pmSanction this postReply
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Fred,

 

Mostly, I agree with what you wrote. But then you said this:

Military action alone may not be sufficient at this point in the conflict, but then again, neither is wishful thinking about spanking a few billionaire Saudi sheiks with a slap on the wrist.

You are misunderstanding me. Don't think that I mean less than a full out war against the money sources - all of them. I'm talking about publicized executions of large numbers of those funding terrorism.

 

And, if the only way to stop oil production sales from funding terrorists or just funding the preaching of Jihad, then those oil fields should be taken out of production. I don't care if they are made radioactive for the foreseeable future.

 

If the Afghanies insist on spending poppy field money on terrorism, well, we have long-lasting herbicides that can render those fields barren for decades.

 

I'd certainly admit that it is wishful thinking to imagine that our current politicians are willing to take the action needed. But, it is not wishful thinking to imagine that the money flow couldn't be turned into a tiny trickle - and in just weeks. It could.

------------

 

I'm in favor of strong military action, but not without the war on the money sources. If we don't stop the funding, then the war on ground, the active terrorism will never end. I'm in favor of the use of superior military force - and at dramatic levels. But if the funding will just grow more terrorists, putting us in a never-ending game of Whack-a-mole that our national treasure won't sustain, and which would be an unending source of maiming and killing of our young soldiers then it has to be seen as unworkable.



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