There is a romance, slick and cool factor that is attracting these kids to find purpose within the ranks of ISIS. It is very similar to the gang codes of inner cities or out here in the West with the Hell's Angels and the Dirty Dozen where the initiation often involves taking out another from the rival gang. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
Jamalrob asked: "Are Kurdish women equal to men because this was imposed on them by the West?"
I think they [Kurdish women] are. I wouldn't claim to know what that means in their culture though nor whether they aspire to "Western" equality in the first place. — Benkei
But then you make there in between the accusation of the moral bankruptcy in the West of those who don't show solidarity to those "in the Middle East who are fighting them".
OK, show then your moral support and solidarity to Hezbollah and Iran and Shiite militias loyal to it, the Assad regime and the Al Nusra front for starters then. — ssu
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently is a campaign launched by a group of non-violent activists in Raqqa to expose the atrocities committed by The regime of Bashar Al-Assad and terrorist extremist group ” the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS toward the civilian populations if the city. We shed light on the overlooking of these atrocities by all parties. We are a nonpartisan and independent news page. — raqqa-sl.com
So, why doesn't France invade America too, for bombing a hospital just days before the Paris incident? This is double standard nonsense people are spouting here. The reaction to American atrocities is: oh, please stop. But they never stop. Yet when brown people do it, you are so quick to support dropping freedom from the skies! Come on now, go sign that invade America petition. — discoii
So Benkei is the problem. Or people like him.I entered this discussion not to argue for Western intervention but to criticize the views of Western leftish liberals, which I believe contribute to a political, intellectual and moral climate that increasingly makes it more likely that similar terrorist attacks will take place, or at least makes it more difficult to fight against the most ambitious and viciously reactionary movement the world has seen for a long time. In other words, I think the Western left-liberal Islamophilic denigration of Enlightenment values is opening the space for fundamentalism and radicalization; it is the other side of the coin of the right-wing xenophobes. — jamalrob
Yet if we really want Muslim nations to commit here, we simply have to treat them as real allies, not handle them as our own proxies or mercenaries that we can issue orders.I think boots on the ground is the only way to defeat them and I think these boots must be Muslim led. Not any coalition, but a coalition of Muslims nations willing to fight to take back their honor. If this kind of coalition is possible, it should receive world wide support. — Cavacava
I am unsure about what will work, and how far bombing can be used without making the situation worse, although it seems to me indispensable at the moment, if used carefully — jamalrob
Sorry if I give that kind of impression, that wasn't what I intended.I don't really know why you're treating me as the foil for your lengthy criticisms of the War on Terror. — jamalrob
Why ISIS? Whence the international appeal of this kind of organization? And it's here that I think you have to look at the lack of alternatives, both the lack of secular alternatives in the Middle East--which discoii has already described--and the lack of strong liberal voices in the West arguing for values opposed to those of ISIS, i.e., the reluctance to stand up for the values that used to be fundamental among liberals and the left. And this goes back to my post above about radicalization. — jamalrob
It might make the discussion less acrimonious if we look at the findings of the anthropologist Scott Atran, who has investigated radicalization. Aside from all the stuff I vociferously disagree with in what you've said Benkei, you did have some interesting things to say about radicalization. Scott Atran suggests three conditions necessary to prevent the radicalization of the young:
1. The first condition: Offer youth something that makes them dream of a life of significance through struggle and sacrifice in comradeship.
2. The second condition: Offer youth a positive personal dream, with a concrete chance of realization.
3. A third condition: Offer youth the chance to create their own local initiatives.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-atran/violent-extremism-social-science_b_7142604.html
ISIS is winning in this area because it has a supreme confidence and idealism that is currently lacking amongst the liberal defenders of cultural diversity, freedom of speech, democracy, equality for women and gay people. That lack of confidence, if not outright scepticism and equivocation, is very apparent in this thread. — jamalrob
Suggesting "absolutely no reaction" to a terrorist action in which 129 (+/-) were killed, about 100 were critically wounded, and 200+ more sustained serious to moderate injuries (mostly from gunfire) and x number of near-by eye-witnesses were traumatized, is just not creditable. It doesn't make any difference whether such actions are in Paris, Nairobi, Madrid, London, Beirut, Bagdad, Mumbai, or Timbuktu. "Absolutely no reaction" would never be an appropriate or sensible reaction. — Bitter Crank
Just want to add too that what unites us on this thread is far more important than what divides us. No doubt all of us would like to see the end of ISIS, and no doubt all of us appreciate the fact that we don't live in the nightmare they have created in the Middle East and the one they want to spread across the world. Sickening stuff keeps happening here and over there and I think that's thrown us all off kilter. — Baden
ISIS is winning in this area because it has a supreme confidence and idealism that is currently lacking amongst the liberal defenders of cultural diversity, freedom of speech, democracy, equality for women and gay people. That lack of confidence, if not outright scepticism and equivocation, is very apparent in this thread. — jamalrob
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