Penn -

(Don't mean to denigrate what you posted but,) bla bla bla...

Al-Qaeda is a belief in the boogyman himself. If you believe in the boogyman than he lives. We have been fighting the boogyman since 9/11/01.

ISIS/ISIL - IS is now much bigger and much more lethal than al-Qaeda. They are in my opinion very much like Nazi (Natzi) Germany under Hitler. While Hitler believed there was a supreme race, Islam and the current wannabe Caliphates believe there is a supreme religion.

While OBL thought and believed there was a trespass and violation through tolerance of religion by western and middle east powers, the current crop want to restore an absolute faith in Islam and death to anyone who feels there is room for tolerance.

To them there is no room for acceptance and tolerant views and much like Nazism there is no second place. Totalitarian acceptance or death of an impure culture.

As seen before this does not end well, but millions will die.

JMHO

I think the General is giving them too much credit. But in his defense, you cannot simply cut off the head and expect this to go away. This is a societal culture that will take a generation or two of understanding and education to prevail against. And, even then there will still be difference requiring strength and possible fighting to resolve.

I think this is as old as the Bible and will not simply be solved with firepower and death of the lessor equipped.

JMHO

I agree.

Without the war against their political, informational, and economic means at the same time, there is no viable military solution.

Without the national will to fight for our survival, there is no road to eventual victory.

With our own elected leadership ignoring the threat, if not actually sympathizing with them, I do not see how we can have a successful strategy, or a path to victory.

Maybe when the war comes to our shores, we will get serious about it. Until then, we are just pissing into the wind.

TR

We have to stop the countries that are funding ISIS. Guess who is the number 1 country that has been funding them?

If they do not stop double dealing as they always do nothing will improve.

...so are our leaders almost ready to discuss the possibility of talking openly about the remote chance that this all might actually be about radical islamo-fascism?

Or are we still content to say that terrorism is just international crime?

understand the enemy to defeat it
 

another good analysis taking into account the geopolitical and historical backdrops
http://mondediplo.com/2014/09/04islamicstate

Call me crazy, but as hard as it is to do, it is possible to empathize (not sympathize) with ISIS aka the Sunni's inferior/minority complex as driving factor

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them .... I destroy them-"
~Orson Scott Card, Ender Games

On a related note, AQ has made moves to counter ISIS claim as the champion of the caliphate cause....the next 12 months is bound to be interesting for sure (job security!)
http://news.yahoo.com/al-qaeda-decla...190808390.html
http://warontherocks.com/2014/09/zaw...ter-caliphate/

Marion and Uhl-Bien paper clearly describes AQ. They succinctly demonstrate that due to the organic nature of the AQ organization and its ability to function without top down C&C, but as independent units aligned in a common cause, strategic decapitation in fruitless. It disrupts, but does not defeat the movement, much like removing your hand from a bucket of water, it leaves no holes.

In my mind, unless we are willing to move to the same state of commitment that AQ and ISIS occupy: total war, we haven’t a chance in hell of containing, or winning the fight.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...-civilizations Foreign Affairs Summer issue 1993

My advocacy is for total war. Its the only sensible solution.

I think you are absolutely correct in that assessment. If you still hold to the naive notion that our elected leadership is a reflection of the will of the people (I think I still do), then to get out in front of this threat we need to do some serious education at home.

People are still naive as to the ISIS threat. But educating theme through social media seems to work. I have been trying an experiment here in a small social group (mostly liberals). There has been a change in perceptions since I started a couple of months ago. Not surprisingly, the first to get it were the Jewish members of the group. They have picked up the banner and are carrying forward.

A few lessons learned: messaging is everything, keep the message simple and educational, graphic violence can have a strong impact if couched properly within the message, selected subgroups are more receptive than others (Jewish population for instance) and they can carry the message to others.

Of great help in this effort has been the ISIS Study Group by Greg West and several other Brothers. Very thoughtful and informative blog IMHO.

I would think that if we each start posting to a small circle of our friends (the ones that are sleep walking) and wake them up, we might just have a chance at getting ahead of this threat and even achieving the public will to sustain the fight to the very end for once.

Of this I am certain, though, if we do not do the leg work to prep the battle space first, the outcome will be like every other conflict we have engaged in over the past 50 years.

Like this?

Holy War???
 

Although I detest these two words being used together as it is an obvious oxymoron, a Holy War seems to be what our enemy is declaring. I have been thinking a lot about that lately and exactly what it means and how it does, or even if it should affect a strategy for addressing ISIS? Here are some more or less random thoughts I think worthy of discussion in this forum.

To the best of my knowledge the coming conflict with ISIS will be the first war to be fought by our nation on fundamentally ideological grounds. Most if not all previous conflicts that led to war had at their roots the struggle for control of economic resources.

Much has been made of the ISIS manner and means of conducting war as compared to to that of the Nazis. A comparison to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis and ISIS is obvious, but is only superficial IMO.

The Nazi’s arose as a political party from a hyper-nationalistic fervor to achieve an economic end not an ideological end. Atrocities committed by the Nazis (crimes against humanity) were a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. ISIS, on the other hand, is driven purely by ideology and the manner and means ISIS uses to affect its stated goals are ends in and of themselves. That is to say that the brutal oppression is part of the desired end-state and not merely the manner and means for achieving the end-state.

It seems to me that this is a wholly unique challenge for us and the chosen strategy for dealing with ISIS cannot be predicated on how we have dealt with any other threat in the past. In other words, simply bombing ISIS with the belief that at some point they will cease is not realistic. You simply cannot kill an idea.

I certainly do not have the answer to what strategy will work, but I do know that if we do not clearly and completely understand the enemy and the root motivations that drive the enemy, we cannot truly defeat them. I also know that this is going to be a generational conflict and that if we do not properly understand that fact we will not be able to defeat them either.

My gut is telling me that we are about to enter a struggle like no other – one of good versus evil. Two of the axioms put forth by Sun Tzu are most important here. First, know ourselves. Our weakness is Tolerance. As Thomas Mann said, “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” We, as a culture, will need to embrace that.

Second is to know your enemy. By that he meant not just who he is, but what he is, how he thinks, and why he thinks what he thinks. Towards that end I have attached what I think is pretty insightful article into anthropological psychology of the Muslim culture.

As I said none of this provides an answer to the strategic questions, but it is a starting point towards developing a sustainable strategy.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news...al-nakba?all=1

De Oppresso Liber

OK, dog pile :D

Trapper John, it’s hard not to agree with you on the points you’re making, but I v/r submit that the conflict we are about to join is more similar to the one fought against organized crime in the 60’s and 70’s. If you lump all the Islam Extremists into one bowl (while the mantras vary wildly) you’ll find very little difference in one glaring aspect: they are competing with one another. Not just for recruits (while that is certainly one of the obvious tools), but more for market shares. They are making billions and billions of dollars in plain old neighborhood extortion. The spectrum of extreme Islam is less to do with ideology and more to do with money and the power associated with great sums of cash on hand (not stocks and bonds…cash). By posing as an ideology it makes the fighting of it appear more difficult. It's them wrapping their faces in black grease rags. If you see the fight as destroying their cash on hand and denying them additional cash the struggle will be less opaque. I agree that this conflict will be like nothing we have fought before on the battlefield, but that we need to recognize the goal of the enemy is to attain the greatest amount of cash for the ranking leaders and a goodly amount for the Capos. They have no passion for the fighters, for Islam, for Sunni, or Shia, or Allah, not for mosques, or even their families, or anything else, although they sure put on some good theater that theirs is wrapped in a noble ideal. I think this is the first step in “knowing our enemy”. Knowing ourselves surely includes acknowledging our weakness for “tolerance”, but also our “impatience”.

I damned sure don’t know the strategic approach to win this contest, but I’d love to get some of the Mafia family in a think tank and put the subject to them while Rudy Giuliani acts as the facilitator.

In the meantime, introduce a sudden change in the appearance of the Euro and dollar. Print up a bunch of new middle denomination bills. Turn what they have into worthless paper. They'd start trying to dump or exchange it and might just reveal themselves. Then we could smash them like the vermin they are. Just a thought admittedly based on nothing but wildassed notions and probably too much salt in my diet.

Larry, the mafia analogy is an interesting one. Although, probably correct in the competition between families as compared to factions and tribes in Islam, I don't think the mafia was interested in new converts. They just wanted to operate in the shadows and control their territory.

Of course there is an economic interest at play here - always is in human endeavor. It's just not the prime mover IMO. I still think that ideological factor is the prime driving force. These guys are true zealots and little that the say or do leads me to believe that they are rational actors. At least the mafia acted, reacted, and behaved in a rational manner.

But to use your analogy, maybe a better comparison would be with inner city gangs? Albeit a huge over simplification.

Know your enemy.
What monetary/power motivation exists in a suicide bomber?
What fiscal motivation is there for the young kids drawn to Syria/Iraq to participate in this endeavor?
This IS an ideologically motivated entity and to compare it to a western crime organization is dangerous and misleading.
Radical Islam does not exist...it is simply a literal reading of Islam's books.
This is a theologically driven world wide conflict that does not begin or end with ISIS.
As long as Islam is read/interpreted literally and practicing Islam equals sharia we will be in a state of conflict.
That is the problem and the enemy all in one......but no one presently in our Govt. has the balls to ID it.

Agree with PRB's observations above.

In anticipation of golf boy's address to the nation this evening I found a very short primer that might be of interest - at link below.

The Birth of a Jihadist Caliphate
By Daniel Atzori

http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery....021104&EXT=pdf