generalspeaking

Tackling ISIS

"ISIS has territories under its control, there is no question about that, and dislodging them will be a lot harder than preventing them from expanding."
"[Another reason for ISIS's success was that it was] operating militarily against the path of less resistance."
"When they got stopped going toward Baghdad, they turned toward Erbil [Kurdish regional capital]. When they got stopped going toward Erbil, they kind of turned back into Syria and tried to expand their control there. I think they are very opportunistic in that regard."
Gregory Gause, political science professor, Middle East specialist, University of Vermont

"[They're] better equipped, they're better manned, they're better resourced, they're better fighters, they're better trained than the Al-Qaeda in Iraq that our forces faced."
"It is a global expansionist, global jihadist organization. It is swollen with foreign fighters and suicide bombers [who will go] wherever the organization tells them to go."
Brett McGurk, deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state for Iraq and Iran

"[ISIS had] demonstrated remarkable strategic mobility and operational speed in a series of offensives."
"These apparently diffuse military efforts may be consistent parts of a well-planned next stage of ISIS's campaign."
James Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, analyst for Institute for Near East Policy, Washington

"The fact that the ISIS offensive appears to have been halted already (at least for the moment) and that Kurdish forces have been able to counterattack and retake Makhmur and Gawar, lends some weight to the notion that these three factors played a significant role in its initial success."
"Clearly, ISIS is pretty good, at least by the standards of the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars."
"ISIS fighters appear to be highly motivated and that is huge. It is especially important in light of infantry combat, and in civil wars where training, leadership and other military skills are often in short supply. In these kinds of fights, higher morale can often prove decisive."
"They appear confident in their abilities, and in part for those reasons, often intimidate their adversaries. It was a similar set of intangibles that enabled the Taliban to overrun Afghanistan in 1994 and easily crush most of the Afghan militias that had been waging their own civil war beforehand."
"It is important to remember that Saddam's army was itself a mediocrity and most of its officers were useless."
"It seems more likely that it is homegrown ISIS fighters, planners and commanders who have figured out how to take advantage of what ISIS brings to the table to mount these campaigns."
Kenneth Pollack, expert on Middle Eastern political military affairs, Brookings Institute

Believing that they do the work of Allah, and that the power of their incomparable deity supports their work on his behalf, they can do no wrong, since they are simply obeying the pillar of Islamic ideology by engaging in jihad, a duty of all pious Muslims. With god behind you, what need you fear, after all? Delusional they may be, ferociously psychotic, taking pleasure in committing atrocities absent a moral compass since there's no need to be concerned that anything they do might be wrong, they proceed with vigour to their task.

Not the least bit self-appointed, but instructed and appointed by the Koran, by the injunction to defend Islam from the unbelievers and the crusaders and the Jews, they are fearless in their conquest of lesser mortals whose own gods cringe before their own powerful one. If this isn't a throwback to the barbaric times of antiquity, then nothing is. But this is entirely consistent with jihad with its medieval concept of religious conversion by the scimitar. Surrender to Islam or surrender your life, a fairly even trade.

In this June 16, 2014 photo, demonstrators chant pro-Islamic State group slogans as they carry the group's flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul  AP Photo

Much recognition is being given to the Caliph of the Islamic State, the heretofore little-seen Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, fighting American forces since the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. He honed his battlefield skills, and his psychopathic hatred of Iraqi Shiites, alongside his rage against Western interlopers, and took his fight to Syria, earning the scorn of the al-Qaeda leadership for whom ISIS's brutality went a tad too surprisingly far.

But ISIS now surmounts al-Qaeda in its allure for Muslim men who flock to join its forces from all over the Muslim world -- including their perches in the Western world.

Before capturing Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, American intelligence estimated ISIS had at its command ten thousand fighters brought over from Syria. Since its capture of Mosul and its well-publicized through the media exploits of barbarism from crucifixions to beheadings, the killing of Christians and Yazidis, the expulsion of minority sects and ethnic groups to join the swelling ranks of the world's refugees, their reputation among young Muslim men has swelled and in their admiration for its uncompromising brutality, they eagerly join.

Labels: Atrocities, Iraq, ISIS, Islamism, Jihadis, Middle East, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 20, 2014