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ISIS starting to crumble in Iraq and Syria

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Alma, Mar 26, 2016.

  1. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Why can't it be both?

    Peter denied Jesus three times the night of his arrest.

    Self preservation can trump religious zealotry.

    They also know it's a long war. You live to fight another day.

    Martyrdom is hard to accept. Even among zealots it's rare. And, the most expendable are often recruited for suicide missions.
     
  2. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    So Obama captured Bin Laden, and Isis has been decimated under his watch.

    Thanks, Obama!
     
  3. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Bin Laden was captured? I must have missed that. Where is/was he held? Did we get actionable information out of him?

    I'm also not sure the people of Paris, San Bernardino, or Brussels would agree that ISIS has been decimated.
     
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Leave it to Trump to sum things up succinctly:

     
  5. Mr. Sunshine

    Mr. Sunshine Well-Known Member

    LOL.
     
  6. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    The story is still developing and here's a Republican already scrambling to try to find a way to make this a negative for the Obama administration.
     
  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    They already have a leader:

    [​IMG]
     
    Batman and Mr. Sunshine like this.
  8. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    This sounds, more or less, the way things went in Afghanistan. Any time the Taliban tried to organize and fight, we kicked their ass. There are few forces in the world that can defeat the United States or one of the other half-dozen legitimate military superpowers in a straight-up campaign. If anything, we should hope to God or Allah that ISIS tries to stand its ground and fight a battle. As long as we have the resources in place, it'd be the equivalent of UConn's women's team playing a JV high school squad.
    Where we get hurt is when they slink back into the shadows, merge back into the population, roll out the occasional truck bomb and hit-and-run attack, and fight a guerrilla war. It's hard to destroy that type of enemy in the kind of limited engagement we're trying to fight.
    So for those who say ISIS wants a climactic battle? That's actually not a bad way to rid the world of their plague once and for all.
     
  9. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    They've already abandoned/altered that strategy. Sending the European recruits back home, which became policy late last year, is a tacit admission the conquer Arabia idea is dead. They're now hoping to turn the Muslim neighborhoods of European cities into zones of military/police occupation where they can become the resistance. That's a much less viable alternative.
     
  10. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    But what you're describing is geopolitical terror aims. If it were really about the religion - which it is not - they'd just stand their ground in the Middle East.

    They won't because, like most fascist terrorists, they're just wicked boys playing war. The religion is a false front.
     
  11. Mr. Sunshine

    Mr. Sunshine Well-Known Member

    #jewsfromohio
     
  12. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    If you want to claim they aren't "religious" in a true sense of the word, I'm happy to entertain further thoughts on the matter.

    But, regardless, Islam, as a religion, as a philosophy, as an ideology, as a belief system, as a code, is the inspiration, and the problem.

    The Mafia, or Mexican drug cartels may be better a better comparison. They can be just as brutal.

    But, in those instances, we acknowledge that to eradicate the problem, we need to eliminate the organization.

    We grant Islam the rights, protections, and respect accorded to other world religions.

    But, as a belief system, it's every bit as problematic as Naziism, Baathism, or the Apartheid regime of South Africa.
     
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