“Former ISIS hostage: they want us to retaliate”
Watch out for what you wish for, they’re going to get it in spades.
You get that that’s what they want though, right? This is very much a “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” type situation
The stronger and more indiscriminate the military reaction to Daesh (I think we’re not calling them Isis anymore), the more we create the world they want.
Editted to clarify: If you could identify Daesh members because they’re in a city inhabited only by other Daesh members, wearing an “I’m with Daesh” t-shirt, then they would already have been getting killed. So what does retaliation mean in this context? Hitting cities where Daesh operates? Reducing the threshold of certainty for knowing whether or not someone is a Daesh combatant before killing that person? How does one retaliate in any meaningful way without expanding the conflict? Daesh would like nothing better than a Muslims vs Everybody Else deathmatch, and I’d really like to avoid that
I think @Papasan gets that. I get that. I get that it is probably gonna happen whether or not it is the best thing to do. Stupid fucking humans.
If France really wanted to fuck with these clowns, they’d shut ISIS down in whatever method works, and then spend 50 years educating children and connecting them to the world. Good luck hitting critical mass with your radical ideology when everyone around you thinks you’re an idiot.
That’s what scares me.
Nobody is sending money to them for purposes of governance, nobody is joining them to fill their bureaucracy. Treat their “agents” like what they are: criminals, subject to the same laws and prosecution as any asshole who commits murder. Treat their “government” like what it is: a failed state to be pitied and otherwise ignored. Every detention center, every rendition, every drone-enabled assassination campaign provides this lunatic fringe with recruitment slogans, money for materiel, and cannon fodder.
It is common knowledge that they want a religious war. They are already fighting one. Of course they have no real idea what sort of destruction they could potentially unleash,because their grip on reality is affected by their religious beliefs. But we are unlikely to be able to stop their rampages with dialog or threats. Even the destruction of all of their forces in the lands they hold will do little. Their agents live among us, and are recruiting on every continent except possibly Antarctica. I would love for someone to come up with a humanitarian, long term solution. I hope our descendants do not look back on this post-WW2 period as one of peace and prosperity that our generation destroyed.
The author of the article states the following about ISIS, but the same could be written about just about any extremist movement:
It struck me forcefully how technologically connected they are; they follow the news obsessively, but everything they see goes through their own filter. They are totally indoctrinated, clinging to all manner of conspiracy theories, never acknowledging the contradictions.
Who are “us”, exactly?
ISIS fighters are “a bit pathetic,” “street kids drunk on ideology and power” – “more stupid than evil.”
So, more or less like other governments, then!
Unfortunately, hand-wringing news programs and revenge-driven military counterattacks are what our society is programmed to perform.
It’s exactly the opposite of what is needed: a willful ignoring of their antics. Treat the perpetrators of the crimes as any other perpetrator of a crime; no more, no less. Don’t acknowledge that there even IS a movement here. Don’t give them any publicity to gloat over, and don’t give them any retaliation to seek vengeance for.
They kill, they lie, THEY DIE.
They fear our unity more than our airstrikes
Oh I love this so much! Print a million T-shirts, bumper stickers, billboards, post it everywhere!
I would amend it, swapping “unity” for “integrity”. We’ve so much lacked of that.
I like where you are coming from, but I’m still going to go with the dude who got held hostage for 10 months, even if it means the words need the context of the article a bit.
The problem is that France has already been “retaliating” for over a year.
Consider this: As a response to the murders in Paris, politicians here made an explicit decision that increased bombing of Syria was an appropriate response. But France has been bombing Isis targets since last year, Isis targets in Syria since two months ago. Presumably then, any potential targets that French intelligence had deemed “confirmed” had already been hit. Therefore to meet increased bombing quotas the intelligence operatives and the air force have to go further down the target list, hitting probable targets instead of confirmed targets, likely instead of probable, possible instead of likely. The quality of targets degrades, and when you’re trying to hit as many targets as you can without properly vetting them then false positives become almost inevitable.
What I’m saying is, when faced with the killing of innocent civilians, it appears that in all likelihood France has responded in kind, killing further innocents. I’ve been living here in Paris for four years now, the way people here have responded has been amazing in all kinds of subtle ways but the French government can fuck right off with its silly bullshit.
Everyone has their slogans and simplistic answers at the moment. Especially here in Boing Boing.
If you are making a point it has unfortunately whizzed right over my head.
Whenever people say what “everybody” or “nobody” does, I become instantly skeptical that that matters are being oversimplified. It is almost as if some people reflexively polarize things which evidently do not exist at absolutes.
