Inconvenient Truth: There is no simple military strategy to defeat ISIS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:You can't bomb and kill enough jihadists to stop terror. You can kill as many al Qaeda and ISIS members, and that will just birth new ones and new groups. Unless the root causes are analyzed and solutions provided for them, there will always be another insurgency. You can't bomb them into submission

I disagree that we need to analyze and solve the root problems, if by that you mean things like poverty and discontent with autocracy. Terrorism still thrives in places like the UK and France where there is no poverty, and human rights are as well respected as anywhere.

The fact is that the jihadists were controlled very effectively for many decades by the likes of Assad. What you need to control jihadists is a strong state with a strong intelligence service and army. That may mean supporting someone whose approach to human rights is very different from our own. But we manage to do that in Saudi, Egypt etc. without complaint. The fact is we should never have brought down Saddam, and we should never have brought down Gaddafi, and we should never have supported the opponents of Assad.

I must assume that you've never seen suburbs of French cities like Paris, Lyon and Marseilles. Please go Google the French word banlieues. Hint: it is where the French resettled the Maghrebis who emigrated from Northern Africa. Read about the rampant unemployment, the refusal of the Gendarmerie to intervene and stop drug dealing and other crime, rioting and civil unrest, etc. Then go inform yourself about the number of young Muslims sentenced to French prisons, where they are susceptible to becoming radicalized for no other reason than their own survival. And try to grasp a nuanced issue like how young Muslims try to find a sense of identity in a prosperous Western nation such as France where they are not accepted as genuinely French and yet they have no roots in North Africa like their parents. Your ignorance is shameful.

I have spent a lot of time in Paris, and even more in Egypt and Syria.

They have created a cess pit of their own devising. The fact is that the French provided social housing of a very high standard, free universal education, free healthcare, and very generous unemployment benefits etc.

Now, if you want to argue that the benefits were too generous, then we can have a discussion about how best to encourage labor force participation. But if you are arguing that the French made conditions so intolerable for these people that they had no choicd but to massacre hundreds of innocent people, then i suggest you spend less time in Paris and mor in Syria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:You can't bomb and kill enough jihadists to stop terror. You can kill as many al Qaeda and ISIS members, and that will just birth new ones and new groups. Unless the root causes are analyzed and solutions provided for them, there will always be another insurgency. You can't bomb them into submission

I disagree that we need to analyze and solve the root problems, if by that you mean things like poverty and discontent with autocracy. Terrorism still thrives in places like the UK and France where there is no poverty, and human rights are as well respected as anywhere.

The fact is that the jihadists were controlled very effectively for many decades by the likes of Assad. What you need to control jihadists is a strong state with a strong intelligence service and army. That may mean supporting someone whose approach to human rights is very different from our own. But we manage to do that in Saudi, Egypt etc. without complaint. The fact is we should never have brought down Saddam, and we should never have brought down Gaddafi, and we should never have supported the opponents of Assad.

The Arab Spring would have happened regardless. I think our error was stepping back once these regimes were dismantled and not wanting to exert our influence. I have a friend who works in Egypt for an NGO that is trying to establish democratic systems (although it was banned from Egypt about 2 years ago). One of her major complaints was the lack of aid and diplomacy the US provided to the new leaders.