WAR CRIMINAL at large dick cheney has been running his mouth about what the U.S. should do about isil. Progressives dismiss his ideas as more of his fascist warmongering. Fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us. But it seems in Washington, and in the editorial board rooms of the mainstream media those in positions of power are showing signs of swallowing the same kind of propaganda campaign for involvement in another Middle East war that got us in a war in Iraq. This time the targets of our (as well as the war profiteers) aggression are isil terrorist in Iraq and Syria. Obama's unveiling of his "strategy" on the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11 was a brilliant propaganda ploy that would have made goebbels proud. He played the nation's anger over the beheadings of James Foley and Steve Sotloff as well as memories of 9/11 and the anxiety of another terrorist strike against America as well as what we saw from the neocon cabal of the war criminal george w bush administration. Washington politicians, republicans tea-baggers and democrats alike, are jumping on the war pig band wagon to prove their patriotism in this election year. Mainstream media, for the most part, is mouthing the administration's line. It is up to the American people to stop this war, already started by Pres Obama, before it expands to a full fledged war costing the American people more killed, more horribly wounded (and neglected by the government back home) more of our tax dollars than these countries fighting deserve and that we can afford. We, the people, stopped this administration from getting more involved in the Syrian civil war last year. We the people can stop this administration and Congress from becoming more involved in the fight with isis in Iraq, a country who told us to get out in 2008 and we were out by 18 DEC 11. Just consider the tangled web of countries, rebels and terrorist groups involved in the current fighting as outlined by +Think Progress
Our "ally" saudi arabia (home of all but one of the 9/11 terrorist that attacked us) is directly involved in the Syrian civil war. We provide weapons to the saudis to defend the kingdom and troops for "training" saudi forces. The saudis are providing financial assistance as well as weapons and fighters to the Free Syrian Army as well as to the islamic front, both affiliated with al qaeda, the terrorist organization that attacked the US on 9/11 and with whom we are in direct conflict. Some of our other "allies" in the region, Qatar and Turkey (NATO member) are doing the same. This tangled web also includes Iran, Iraq, the assad government, hezbollah, jabat al nusra / al nusra front, isis /isil / islamic state, and the U.S. The warped logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is the justification used by many involved in the civil war in Syria and Iraq. None of the non government entities involved can be considered friends of the U.S., the governments involved are representing their own interest (as sovereign nations should) and should not be trusted or supported. American involvement in Syria's and Iraq's civil wars will only leave us more vulnerable at home and worldwide and cost us lives and money we can not afford to waste. Congress may vote next week whether or not to authorize increased American military involvement in these conflicts. Pres Obama may take action on his own no matter what, if anything, Congress decides. Democracy is not a spectator sport, we all have a responsibility to let our senators and representative and Pres Obama know our opinion on this issue. E mail your representative , your senators , and Pres Obama . I hope you will tell them we are tired of war and to stay out of the fight with isis in Syria and Iraq. From +Think Progress
What started as a crackdown against democratic protests three years
ago, has become a region-wide conflict that now has Iraq descending back
into chaos. The countries of the region — along with the United States
and various non-state actors — all have a hand in creating this moment,
as money, fighters, weapons, and a desire to control the Middle East
have come together to produce an extremely volatile and terrifying
situation.
What has made the Syrian conflict so difficult to respond to has been the fact that the situation has refused to be tied down as just a civil war. In addition to the top-line fighting between the Syrian government and rebels who’d like to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, there’s also a proxy war ongoing between Sunni-majority states in the Gulf and Shiite-majority Iran and its allies. There’s also struggles for dominance among the rebels, who fight each other almost as frequently as the Assad government these days. Add in disagreements between the countries united against Assad over just which of the Syrian rebels to finance, and the reason a simple solution for the conflict hasn’t been developed becomes more understandable.
And standing out among all of this now is the attempts of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — to establish its own state within the region. ISIS managed to takeover the city of Fallujah in January, hold it against Iraqi army efforts to dislodge it, and in the last few days take over both the major cities of Mosul and Tikrit. The former al Qaeda affiliate is literally fighting every other actor in Syria in the process, whether through direct fighting or through proxies, diplomatic battles, or other forms of conflict that don’t involve actually shooting at each other. The confusion inherent in this situation is mapped out, as best as possible, in the below chart from ThinkProgress:
As can be seen in the chart, ISIS is the most committed to taking on
every single other actor. Their single-minded focus on creating an
Islamic state in the “Greater Syria” region — which generally is
considered to include Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and parts of Jordan — has
led them to completely ignore the borders drawn between the modern
states that lie on the territory. As a demonstration of their commitment
to the metaphor, ISIS fighters on Tuesday symbolically bulldozed a wall between Iraq and Syria.
The spread of ISIS throughout Iraq has been enough to link up portions of the territory they now hold with the regions they control within Syria as one map that has spread across the internet since yesterday shows. “The conflict is one and the same as far as they’re concerned,” Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalisation, told Business Insider. “It’s about restoring Sunni dominance after what they regard as Shi’ite oppression, and resorting power to what they would regard as rightful Islam.”
ISIS’ assaults on Mosul and other areas have made things much easier for the terrorists to continue erasing the border between Iraq and Syria. Among the items that ISIS picked up from the fleeing Iraqi security forces — who American spent $20 billion training — are U.S.-made weapons and armored Humvees, along with aircraft from the airport it captured. ISIS fighters also freed all the detainees held in Mosul’s prisons, in a repeat of last year’s assault on Abu Ghraib, upping their numbers yet again. Reports also indicate that ISIS may have managed to loot as much as $400 million from the banks of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Slate’s Joshua Keating, citing terrorism experts, wrote that in capturing Mosul on Tuesday, ISIS may actually be on its way to completing its goal of establishing its own country.
In its fight against everyone else for the future of Syria, ISIS has definitely made itself some enemies. And in a conflict where actors are working together even as they try to kill each other, a common enemy is something that can be exploited. When consulting with CAP experts on the connections drawn in a rough draft of this chart, ThinkProgress was actually told that it needed to be more complex. In particular, the chart above is accurate in that the main groups within Syria fighting against Assad — Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic Front, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and ISIS — are all fighting against each other. But the FSA and the Islamic Front also are in direct communication with each other in planning attacks against ISIS, sharing a communications center to launch their strikes, even as just miles away members of the Front attack FSA fighters and take over warehouses of Free Syrian Army supplies.
As Iraq struggles to take back its cities from ISIS, the region — including countries not in the above chart such as Jordan and Lebanon — are desparetly attempting to determine how best to aid Baghdad. Iran is now calling for international support for Baghdad as the United States mulls its response. But solutions seem hard to come by given the impossibility of sealing the border between Iraq and Syria now as the civil war continues to attract arms, money, and fighters. “The disaster is that Iraqis are fighting on both sides of the Syria conflict,” said Maysoon al Damlouji, a secular Sunni politician, told the Financial Times on Wednesday. Iraq is now part of the struggle for Syria’s future, whether it wants to be or not.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to unveil a new plan to address the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) on Wednesday, speaking during primetime to outline how his administration will respond to the extremist group that continues to commit horrific atrocities throughout the war-torn region. But as the White House readies what will likely be a detailed account of military measures it can use to halt the advance of the militants, it is important to remember that ISIS leaders, although driven in part by a radical version of Salafi Islam, are also pragmatic tacticians in their own right. Several scholars now contend that ISIS’s methods — including the group’s penchant for horrific violence — are part of a calculated plan that has bounced around jihadist circles for years, one that may even be designed to provoke an American military response.
In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that ISIS’s overarching strategy is especially influenced by one book in particular — and no, it’s not the Qur’an.
In 2004, a PDF of a book entitled “The Management Of Savagery” was posted online and circulated among Sunni jihadist circles. Scholars soon noticed that the book, which was published by an unknown author writing under the pseudonym “Abu Bakr Naji,” had become popular among many extremist groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia, and was eventually translated into English for study in 2006 by William McCants, now the director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution. The book, McCants told ThinkProgress, was written as an alternative to the decentralized, “leaderless” approach to jihadism popular in the mid-2000s. Instead of using isolated attacks on super powers all over the globe, “The Management Of Savagery” offered an expansive plan for how a group of Muslim militants could violently seize land and establish their own self-governing Islamic state — much like ISIS is trying to do today.
“[The book] provides a roadmap for how to establish a caliphate,” McCants said. “It lays out how to create small pockets of territorial control … and how to move from there to a caliphate. It would not surprise me if the book were popular among the crew in Iraq [ISIS].”
McCants was quick to note that while “The Management of Savagery” is “the only text out there that really addresses the question of how [jihadists] can capture and hold territory,” the black-clad troopers in Iraq and Syria haven’t taken all of Naji’s advice to heart. ISIS has clearly ignored the author’s recommendation that fighters abide by traditional Islamic rules of engagement, such as refraining from violence against women or children. Among other horrors, reports abound of ISIS regularly using rape and sexual slavery as a weapon.
“The Islamic State stands apart from other [extremist] organizations,” McCants said. “They are not bound by the structures of traditional Islamic warfare.”
Nevertheless, other analysts, such as Lawrence Right of The New Yorker, former MI-6 agent Alastair Crooke, and Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post, have also observed echoes of the book in the actions of ISIS. They argue that while ISIS leaders haven’t openly acknowledged the influence of Naji’s writing, their machinations in the Middle East — especially how the group exploits destabilized regions and stokes intra-religious conflict — closely match several aspects of Naji’s plan. “The Management Of Savagery,” for instance, recommends inciting violence between Muslims and stretching the military forces of a target nation by temporarily laying claim to energy sources. This destabilization is supposed to create “regions of savagery” — or true chaos wrought by war — where shell-shocked inhabitants willingly submit to an invading force such as ISIS to end conflict. This, Naji argues, eventually leads to the establishment of an extremist version of a Sunni caliphate.
“The key idea in the book is that you need to carry out attacks on a local government and sensitive infrastructure — tourism and energy in particular,” McCants said. “That causes a local government to pull in security resources to protect that infrastructure that will open up pockets where there is no government — a security vacuum.”
ISIS has operated similarly in Iraq and Syria, using a divide-and-conquer approach to recruit followers and take cities. It has exploited the conflict between Sunnis and Shias in most of its land holdings, but especially in Iraq, where militants from both religious groups have been locked in various levels of armed conflict since the U.S. invaded in the early 2000s. ISIS has also targeted important power sources such as Iraq’s largest dam near Mosul, which their soldiers temporarily captured in August. Similar to Naji’s prediction, the move pressured the U.S. to launch airstrikes as Iraqi forces mustered their forces to reclaim the dam, a strategy that is being repeated now that ISIS has laid claim to the Haditha Dam near Baghdad.
ISIS’s grandiose use of violence is also foreshadowed in Naji’s writing. He dedicates an entire chapter to “Using Violence” in the book, explaining that it can be an effective tool for volunteer recruitment and instilling fear, noting, “Those who have not boldly entered wars during their lifetimes do not understand the role of violence and coarseness against the infidels in combat and media battles.” The author makes several references to the influence and power of media in general, adding that violent communication is crucial part of frightening an enemy.
“It behooves us to make [our enemies] think one thousand times before attacking us,” the book reads.
Fast forward to the ISIS of today, which has been widely recognized for both its death squad-like tactics and its unusually savvy use of media. Scholars such as Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy have argued that this combination is not coincidental, reasoning that broadcasting images of atrocities is part of how ISIS strikes fear into the hearts of its opponents — including Shia Muslims in Iraq. Similarly, Carool Kersten, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World at King’s College London, told ThinkProgress that ISIS’s slick media game — which makes heavy use of social media to distribute recruitment videos that depict the ruthless massacre of hundreds of soldiers captured by ISIS — is what sets it apart from other extremists in the war-weary region.
“They have turned ISIS into a franchise,” Kersten said. “Violence has turned into a political spectacle. Their ideas have been around for a while, but are being presented in a very new way, by carefully balancing the Islamic [religious elements] and their use of media. We’re looking at a new level of sophistication … It has pushed management of violence to new limits.”
There are other potential lessons to be gleaned from the book, especially considering the United States’ ongoing military response to ISIS. Naji, for example, writes in the book about how to deal with airstrikes from foreign powers, saying that countries should be made to “pay the price” — meaning some form of retribution — for bombing jihadists.
“As for the stage of ‘the administration of savagery,’ we will confront the problem of the aerial attacks of the enemy — crusader or apostate — on military training camps or residential regions in areas which we administer,” the book reads. “The policy of ‘paying the price’ in this situation will deter the enemy and make him think one thousand times before attacking regions managed by a regime of the administration of savagery because he knows that he will pay the price (for doing so), even if (the retribution) comes later. Thus, the enemy will be inclined toward reconciliation, which will enable the regions of savagery to catch their breath and progress. This reconciliation means a temporary stop to fighting without any kind of treaties and concessions. We do not believe in an armistice with the apostate enemy, even if it was brokered with the primary infidel.”
The recent beheading of American journalists by ISIS is a clear utilization of this “paying the price” tactic. Just as the book recommends, soldiers attempted to force the U.S. to stop airstrikes in the region by threatening to commit gruesome acts unless American planes stopped dropping bombs.
“What these guys do not like, to a man, is the US sitting back and using air power,” McCants said. “This is very damaging to them. It’s an ‘unmanly’ activity, and it doesn’t give them a huge propaganda bump. [So] you need to hit the United States hard right on the nose. You force it to either completely get out of the region, or you force it to stop acting through proxies and commit ground forces.”
Unfortunately, the “The Management Of Savagery” doesn’t predict the future, and McCants noted that there is currently debate among scholars about whether the recent beheadings were designed to be deterrents against U.S. intervention or an attempt to goad a foreign military into a ground war — a move which, Naji argues in his book, would only bolster ISIS’s cause. That debate matters as in the lead up to Obama’s Wednesday night speech, pundits and lawmakers have taken to the airways to decry the group. Recent polling also shows that Americans are primed for military intervention in the region: A CNN poll found that 76 percent of respondents favor additional airstrikes against ISIS, and a MSNBC survey found that 61 percent of American voters believe that attacking them is in the United States’ interest.
And while CNN reports that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending ground forces to Iraq to combat ISIS, lawmakers such as Rep. Steve King (R-NY) and Texas Governor Rick Perry have expressed openness to putting troops in the region.
Thus, Naji’s writings, even if only somewhat influential to ISIS’s thinking, offer a word of caution to the U.S.; ISIS’s tactics, although undoubtedly cold-hearted and brutish, are anything but random, and their methods appear to be rooted in a calculated plan that accounts for — and may be bolstered by — the possibility of U.S. military intervention. How the Obama administration responds could spell the difference between a United States that breaks ISIS, or becomes another player in their twisted game.
Our "ally" saudi arabia (home of all but one of the 9/11 terrorist that attacked us) is directly involved in the Syrian civil war. We provide weapons to the saudis to defend the kingdom and troops for "training" saudi forces. The saudis are providing financial assistance as well as weapons and fighters to the Free Syrian Army as well as to the islamic front, both affiliated with al qaeda, the terrorist organization that attacked the US on 9/11 and with whom we are in direct conflict. Some of our other "allies" in the region, Qatar and Turkey (NATO member) are doing the same. This tangled web also includes Iran, Iraq, the assad government, hezbollah, jabat al nusra / al nusra front, isis /isil / islamic state, and the U.S. The warped logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is the justification used by many involved in the civil war in Syria and Iraq. None of the non government entities involved can be considered friends of the U.S., the governments involved are representing their own interest (as sovereign nations should) and should not be trusted or supported. American involvement in Syria's and Iraq's civil wars will only leave us more vulnerable at home and worldwide and cost us lives and money we can not afford to waste. Congress may vote next week whether or not to authorize increased American military involvement in these conflicts. Pres Obama may take action on his own no matter what, if anything, Congress decides. Democracy is not a spectator sport, we all have a responsibility to let our senators and representative and Pres Obama know our opinion on this issue. E mail your representative , your senators , and Pres Obama . I hope you will tell them we are tired of war and to stay out of the fight with isis in Syria and Iraq. From +Think Progress
Why The Middle East Is Now A Giant Warzone, In One Terrifying Chart
by Hayes Brown
, Adam Peck Posted on
, Adam Peck Posted on
Shakir Waheib, a senior member of the al-Qaida
breakaway group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), left, next
to a burning police vehicle in Iraq’s Anbar Province
CREDIT: AP Photo via Militant Website, File
What has made the Syrian conflict so difficult to respond to has been the fact that the situation has refused to be tied down as just a civil war. In addition to the top-line fighting between the Syrian government and rebels who’d like to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, there’s also a proxy war ongoing between Sunni-majority states in the Gulf and Shiite-majority Iran and its allies. There’s also struggles for dominance among the rebels, who fight each other almost as frequently as the Assad government these days. Add in disagreements between the countries united against Assad over just which of the Syrian rebels to finance, and the reason a simple solution for the conflict hasn’t been developed becomes more understandable.
And standing out among all of this now is the attempts of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — to establish its own state within the region. ISIS managed to takeover the city of Fallujah in January, hold it against Iraqi army efforts to dislodge it, and in the last few days take over both the major cities of Mosul and Tikrit. The former al Qaeda affiliate is literally fighting every other actor in Syria in the process, whether through direct fighting or through proxies, diplomatic battles, or other forms of conflict that don’t involve actually shooting at each other. The confusion inherent in this situation is mapped out, as best as possible, in the below chart from ThinkProgress:
CREDIT: Adam Peck for ThinkProgress
The spread of ISIS throughout Iraq has been enough to link up portions of the territory they now hold with the regions they control within Syria as one map that has spread across the internet since yesterday shows. “The conflict is one and the same as far as they’re concerned,” Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalisation, told Business Insider. “It’s about restoring Sunni dominance after what they regard as Shi’ite oppression, and resorting power to what they would regard as rightful Islam.”
ISIS’ assaults on Mosul and other areas have made things much easier for the terrorists to continue erasing the border between Iraq and Syria. Among the items that ISIS picked up from the fleeing Iraqi security forces — who American spent $20 billion training — are U.S.-made weapons and armored Humvees, along with aircraft from the airport it captured. ISIS fighters also freed all the detainees held in Mosul’s prisons, in a repeat of last year’s assault on Abu Ghraib, upping their numbers yet again. Reports also indicate that ISIS may have managed to loot as much as $400 million from the banks of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Slate’s Joshua Keating, citing terrorism experts, wrote that in capturing Mosul on Tuesday, ISIS may actually be on its way to completing its goal of establishing its own country.
In its fight against everyone else for the future of Syria, ISIS has definitely made itself some enemies. And in a conflict where actors are working together even as they try to kill each other, a common enemy is something that can be exploited. When consulting with CAP experts on the connections drawn in a rough draft of this chart, ThinkProgress was actually told that it needed to be more complex. In particular, the chart above is accurate in that the main groups within Syria fighting against Assad — Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic Front, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and ISIS — are all fighting against each other. But the FSA and the Islamic Front also are in direct communication with each other in planning attacks against ISIS, sharing a communications center to launch their strikes, even as just miles away members of the Front attack FSA fighters and take over warehouses of Free Syrian Army supplies.
As Iraq struggles to take back its cities from ISIS, the region — including countries not in the above chart such as Jordan and Lebanon — are desparetly attempting to determine how best to aid Baghdad. Iran is now calling for international support for Baghdad as the United States mulls its response. But solutions seem hard to come by given the impossibility of sealing the border between Iraq and Syria now as the civil war continues to attract arms, money, and fighters. “The disaster is that Iraqis are fighting on both sides of the Syria conflict,” said Maysoon al Damlouji, a secular Sunni politician, told the Financial Times on Wednesday. Iraq is now part of the struggle for Syria’s future, whether it wants to be or not.
The Book That Really Explains ISIS (Hint: It’s Not The Qur’an)
by Jack Jenkins Posted on
Posted on President Barack Obama is scheduled to unveil a new plan to address the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) on Wednesday, speaking during primetime to outline how his administration will respond to the extremist group that continues to commit horrific atrocities throughout the war-torn region. But as the White House readies what will likely be a detailed account of military measures it can use to halt the advance of the militants, it is important to remember that ISIS leaders, although driven in part by a radical version of Salafi Islam, are also pragmatic tacticians in their own right. Several scholars now contend that ISIS’s methods — including the group’s penchant for horrific violence — are part of a calculated plan that has bounced around jihadist circles for years, one that may even be designed to provoke an American military response.
In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that ISIS’s overarching strategy is especially influenced by one book in particular — and no, it’s not the Qur’an.
In 2004, a PDF of a book entitled “The Management Of Savagery” was posted online and circulated among Sunni jihadist circles. Scholars soon noticed that the book, which was published by an unknown author writing under the pseudonym “Abu Bakr Naji,” had become popular among many extremist groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia, and was eventually translated into English for study in 2006 by William McCants, now the director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution. The book, McCants told ThinkProgress, was written as an alternative to the decentralized, “leaderless” approach to jihadism popular in the mid-2000s. Instead of using isolated attacks on super powers all over the globe, “The Management Of Savagery” offered an expansive plan for how a group of Muslim militants could violently seize land and establish their own self-governing Islamic state — much like ISIS is trying to do today.
“[The book] provides a roadmap for how to establish a caliphate,” McCants said. “It lays out how to create small pockets of territorial control … and how to move from there to a caliphate. It would not surprise me if the book were popular among the crew in Iraq [ISIS].”
McCants was quick to note that while “The Management of Savagery” is “the only text out there that really addresses the question of how [jihadists] can capture and hold territory,” the black-clad troopers in Iraq and Syria haven’t taken all of Naji’s advice to heart. ISIS has clearly ignored the author’s recommendation that fighters abide by traditional Islamic rules of engagement, such as refraining from violence against women or children. Among other horrors, reports abound of ISIS regularly using rape and sexual slavery as a weapon.
“The Islamic State stands apart from other [extremist] organizations,” McCants said. “They are not bound by the structures of traditional Islamic warfare.”
Nevertheless, other analysts, such as Lawrence Right of The New Yorker, former MI-6 agent Alastair Crooke, and Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post, have also observed echoes of the book in the actions of ISIS. They argue that while ISIS leaders haven’t openly acknowledged the influence of Naji’s writing, their machinations in the Middle East — especially how the group exploits destabilized regions and stokes intra-religious conflict — closely match several aspects of Naji’s plan. “The Management Of Savagery,” for instance, recommends inciting violence between Muslims and stretching the military forces of a target nation by temporarily laying claim to energy sources. This destabilization is supposed to create “regions of savagery” — or true chaos wrought by war — where shell-shocked inhabitants willingly submit to an invading force such as ISIS to end conflict. This, Naji argues, eventually leads to the establishment of an extremist version of a Sunni caliphate.
“The key idea in the book is that you need to carry out attacks on a local government and sensitive infrastructure — tourism and energy in particular,” McCants said. “That causes a local government to pull in security resources to protect that infrastructure that will open up pockets where there is no government — a security vacuum.”
ISIS has operated similarly in Iraq and Syria, using a divide-and-conquer approach to recruit followers and take cities. It has exploited the conflict between Sunnis and Shias in most of its land holdings, but especially in Iraq, where militants from both religious groups have been locked in various levels of armed conflict since the U.S. invaded in the early 2000s. ISIS has also targeted important power sources such as Iraq’s largest dam near Mosul, which their soldiers temporarily captured in August. Similar to Naji’s prediction, the move pressured the U.S. to launch airstrikes as Iraqi forces mustered their forces to reclaim the dam, a strategy that is being repeated now that ISIS has laid claim to the Haditha Dam near Baghdad.
ISIS’s grandiose use of violence is also foreshadowed in Naji’s writing. He dedicates an entire chapter to “Using Violence” in the book, explaining that it can be an effective tool for volunteer recruitment and instilling fear, noting, “Those who have not boldly entered wars during their lifetimes do not understand the role of violence and coarseness against the infidels in combat and media battles.” The author makes several references to the influence and power of media in general, adding that violent communication is crucial part of frightening an enemy.
“It behooves us to make [our enemies] think one thousand times before attacking us,” the book reads.
Fast forward to the ISIS of today, which has been widely recognized for both its death squad-like tactics and its unusually savvy use of media. Scholars such as Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy have argued that this combination is not coincidental, reasoning that broadcasting images of atrocities is part of how ISIS strikes fear into the hearts of its opponents — including Shia Muslims in Iraq. Similarly, Carool Kersten, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World at King’s College London, told ThinkProgress that ISIS’s slick media game — which makes heavy use of social media to distribute recruitment videos that depict the ruthless massacre of hundreds of soldiers captured by ISIS — is what sets it apart from other extremists in the war-weary region.
“They have turned ISIS into a franchise,” Kersten said. “Violence has turned into a political spectacle. Their ideas have been around for a while, but are being presented in a very new way, by carefully balancing the Islamic [religious elements] and their use of media. We’re looking at a new level of sophistication … It has pushed management of violence to new limits.”
There are other potential lessons to be gleaned from the book, especially considering the United States’ ongoing military response to ISIS. Naji, for example, writes in the book about how to deal with airstrikes from foreign powers, saying that countries should be made to “pay the price” — meaning some form of retribution — for bombing jihadists.
“As for the stage of ‘the administration of savagery,’ we will confront the problem of the aerial attacks of the enemy — crusader or apostate — on military training camps or residential regions in areas which we administer,” the book reads. “The policy of ‘paying the price’ in this situation will deter the enemy and make him think one thousand times before attacking regions managed by a regime of the administration of savagery because he knows that he will pay the price (for doing so), even if (the retribution) comes later. Thus, the enemy will be inclined toward reconciliation, which will enable the regions of savagery to catch their breath and progress. This reconciliation means a temporary stop to fighting without any kind of treaties and concessions. We do not believe in an armistice with the apostate enemy, even if it was brokered with the primary infidel.”
The recent beheading of American journalists by ISIS is a clear utilization of this “paying the price” tactic. Just as the book recommends, soldiers attempted to force the U.S. to stop airstrikes in the region by threatening to commit gruesome acts unless American planes stopped dropping bombs.
“What these guys do not like, to a man, is the US sitting back and using air power,” McCants said. “This is very damaging to them. It’s an ‘unmanly’ activity, and it doesn’t give them a huge propaganda bump. [So] you need to hit the United States hard right on the nose. You force it to either completely get out of the region, or you force it to stop acting through proxies and commit ground forces.”
Unfortunately, the “The Management Of Savagery” doesn’t predict the future, and McCants noted that there is currently debate among scholars about whether the recent beheadings were designed to be deterrents against U.S. intervention or an attempt to goad a foreign military into a ground war — a move which, Naji argues in his book, would only bolster ISIS’s cause. That debate matters as in the lead up to Obama’s Wednesday night speech, pundits and lawmakers have taken to the airways to decry the group. Recent polling also shows that Americans are primed for military intervention in the region: A CNN poll found that 76 percent of respondents favor additional airstrikes against ISIS, and a MSNBC survey found that 61 percent of American voters believe that attacking them is in the United States’ interest.
And while CNN reports that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending ground forces to Iraq to combat ISIS, lawmakers such as Rep. Steve King (R-NY) and Texas Governor Rick Perry have expressed openness to putting troops in the region.
Thus, Naji’s writings, even if only somewhat influential to ISIS’s thinking, offer a word of caution to the U.S.; ISIS’s tactics, although undoubtedly cold-hearted and brutish, are anything but random, and their methods appear to be rooted in a calculated plan that accounts for — and may be bolstered by — the possibility of U.S. military intervention. How the Obama administration responds could spell the difference between a United States that breaks ISIS, or becomes another player in their twisted game.
For Immediate Release
September 10, 2014
Statement by the President on ISIL
State Floor
9:01 P.M. EDT
My fellow Americans, tonight I want to speak to you about
what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade
and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.
As Commander-in-Chief, my highest priority is the security
of the American people. Over the last several years, we have
consistently taken the fight to terrorists who threaten our country. We
took out Osama bin Laden and much of al Qaeda’s leadership in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. We’ve targeted al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen,
and recently eliminated the top commander of its affiliate in Somalia.
We’ve done so while bringing more than 140,000 American troops home
from Iraq, and drawing down our forces in Afghanistan, where our combat
mission will end later this year. Thanks to our military and
counterterrorism professionals, America is safer.
Still, we continue to face a terrorist threat. We can’t
erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers
have the capacity to do great harm. That was the case before 9/11, and
that remains true today. And that’s why we must remain vigilant as
threats emerge. At this moment, the greatest threats come from the
Middle East and North Africa, where radical groups exploit grievances
for their own gain. And one of those groups is ISIL -- which calls
itself the “Islamic State.”
Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.”
No religion condones the killing of innocents. And the vast majority of
ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.
It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of
sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides
of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor by
the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and
simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand
in its way.
In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these
terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured
prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women
into marriage. They threatened a religious minority with genocide. And
in acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists
-- Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff.
So ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria,
and the broader Middle East -- including American citizens, personnel
and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a
growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States.
While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland,
ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies. Our Intelligence
Community believes that thousands of foreigners -– including Europeans
and some Americans –- have joined them in Syria and Iraq. Trained and
battle-hardened, these fighters could try to return to their home
countries and carry out deadly attacks.
I know many Americans are concerned about these threats.
Tonight, I want you to know that the United States of America is meeting
them with strength and resolve. Last month, I ordered our military to
take targeted action against ISIL to stop its advances. Since then,
we’ve conducted more than 150 successful airstrikes in Iraq. These
strikes have protected American personnel and facilities, killed ISIL
fighters, destroyed weapons, and given space for Iraqi and Kurdish
forces to reclaim key territory. These strikes have also helped save
the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
But this is not our fight alone. American power can make a
decisive difference, but we cannot do for Iraqis what they must do for
themselves, nor can we take the place of Arab partners in securing their
region. And that’s why I’ve insisted that additional U.S. action
depended upon Iraqis forming an inclusive government, which they have
now done in recent days. So tonight, with a new Iraqi government in
place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at
home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll
back this terrorist threat.
Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately
destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism
strategy.
First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes
against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will
expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian
missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on
offense. Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt down
terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I
will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as
Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten
America, you will find no safe haven.
Second, we will increase our support to forces fighting
these terrorists on the ground. In June, I deployed several hundred
American servicemembers to Iraq to assess how we can best support Iraqi
security forces. Now that those teams have completed their work –- and
Iraq has formed a government –- we will send an additional 475
servicemembers to Iraq. As I have said before, these American forces
will not have a combat mission –- we will not get dragged into another
ground war in Iraq. But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish
forces with training, intelligence and equipment. We’ll also support
Iraq’s efforts to stand up National Guard Units to help Sunni
communities secure their own freedom from ISIL’s control.
Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our
military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I call on
Congress again to give us additional authorities and resources to train
and equip these fighters. In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on
an Assad regime that terrorizes its own people -- a regime that will
never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen
the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while
pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once
and for all.
Third, we will continue to draw on our substantial
counterterrorism capabilities to prevent ISIL attacks. Working with our
partners, we will redouble our efforts to cut off its funding; improve
our intelligence; strengthen our defenses; counter its warped ideology;
and stem the flow of foreign fighters into and out of the Middle East.
And in two weeks, I will chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to
further mobilize the international community around this effort.
Fourth, we will continue to provide humanitarian
assistance to innocent civilians who have been displaced by this
terrorist organization. This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at
grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other
religious minorities. We cannot allow these communities to be driven
from their ancient homelands.
So this is our strategy. And in each of these four parts
of our strategy, America will be joined by a broad coalition of
partners. Already, allies are flying planes with us over Iraq; sending
arms and assistance to Iraqi security forces and the Syrian opposition;
sharing intelligence; and providing billions of dollars in humanitarian
aid. Secretary Kerry was in Iraq today meeting with the new government
and supporting their efforts to promote unity. And in the coming days
he will travel across the Middle East and Europe to enlist more partners
in this fight, especially Arab nations who can help mobilize Sunni
communities in Iraq and Syria, to drive these terrorists from their
lands. This is American leadership at its best: We stand with people
who fight for their own freedom, and we rally other nations on behalf of
our common security and common humanity.
My administration has also secured bipartisan support for
this approach here at home. I have the authority to address the threat
from ISIL, but I believe we are strongest as a nation when the President
and Congress work together. So I welcome congressional support for
this effort in order to show the world that Americans are united in
confronting this danger.
Now, it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL.
And any time we take military action, there are risks involved –-
especially to the servicemen and women who carry out these missions.
But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be
different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve
American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counterterrorism
campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out
ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for
partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists
who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one
that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years. And
it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use
force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to
mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to
international order.
My fellow Americans, we live in a time of great change.
Tomorrow marks 13 years since our country was attacked. Next week marks
six years since our economy suffered its worst setback since the Great
Depression. Yet despite these shocks, through the pain we have felt and
the grueling work required to bounce back, America is better positioned
today to seize the future than any other nation on Earth.
Our technology companies and universities are unmatched.
Our manufacturing and auto industries are thriving. Energy independence
is closer than it’s been in decades. For all the work that remains,
our businesses are in the longest uninterrupted stretch of job creation
in our history. Despite all the divisions and discord within our
democracy, I see the grit and determination and common goodness of the
American people every single day –- and that makes me more confident
than ever about our country’s future.
Abroad, American leadership is the one constant in an
uncertain world. It is America that has the capacity and the will to
mobilize the world against terrorists. It is America that has rallied
the world against Russian aggression, and in support of the Ukrainian
peoples’ right to determine their own destiny. It is America –- our
scientists, our doctors, our know-how –- that can help contain and cure
the outbreak of Ebola. It is America that helped remove and destroy
Syria’s declared chemical weapons so that they can’t pose a threat to
the Syrian people or the world again. And it is America that is helping
Muslim communities around the world not just in the fight against
terrorism, but in the fight for opportunity, and tolerance, and a more
hopeful future.
America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden.
But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe
to Asia, from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the
Middle East, we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are
values that have guided our nation since its founding.
Tonight, I ask for your support in carrying that
leadership forward. I do so as a Commander-in-Chief who could not be
prouder of our men and women in uniform –- pilots who bravely fly in the
face of danger above the Middle East, and servicemembers who support
our partners on the ground.
When we helped prevent the massacre of civilians trapped
on a distant mountain, here’s what one of them said: “We owe our
American friends our lives. Our children will always remember that
there was someone who felt our struggle and made a long journey to
protect innocent people.”
That is the difference we make in the world. And our own
safety, our own security, depends upon our willingness to do what it
takes to defend this nation and uphold the values that we stand for –-
timeless ideals that will endure long after those who offer only hate
and destruction have been vanquished from the Earth.
May God bless our troops, and may God bless the United States of America.
No comments:
Post a Comment