JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,756
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When the Christian West came to dominate the Muslim world, the Umma, about a century ago, they saw it largely as a judgement by Allah against them, and that their weakness was due to their sin and failure to remain loyal to Allah and have full faith in Islam. The Western nations had the best technology, the best methods of governance, the West had the best trained and disciplined military and the best science with an accompanying philosophy that seemed to sweep away all need for mysticism and submission to Allah.
Then the West began to change in the Twentieth Century. First there was this cataclysmic First World War that the European nations fought against each other, a bitter murderous war whose ghastly violence and dreadful range of engagement was justified by the sole ends of victory and totally destroying the other. It concluded with the complete anihilaion of ancient empires and nations that had reigned for nearly a thousand years, in some cases more, at the hands of nations that had been allies only a few decades before. The Ummah's wonderment with the Christian European Empires was soon at an end.
Muslim nations felt morally superior to such mindlessly destructive regimes, and many of their intellectuals began to dream of a day when the West would be driven out of the Hejaz and the Middle East to conquer and manipulate them into servitude no more. They began to play one Empire against the other and rebelled first one place then another untill the European Empires were competing to see who could best meet the needs and demands of these Arabian sheiks and their minions. The Saudis were given the Arabian Peninsula with its Wahabiism. The Turks were driven out and the Persians hemmed into their own small corner, and the Arabian mind could run free and dream of a new Caliphate.
The post World War 2 era saw the Saudis recruited to lead the oil producing nations to demand payment for their oil in US dollars, which created a huge demand for our currency. In return, we keep the peace in the Middle East and defend the Saudis the best we can while trying to keep our ally Israel alive. But Israel is a religious theocracy that gives precedence to the Jewish religion over Muslim and Christian and everyone else, and this is a moral outrage in the Muslim mind, where no Muslim majority should ever be ruled by heathen people.
Today ISIS is only the latest heir of that Pan Arabian Muslim vision of a reestablished Caliphate. They have rivals that they compete with and sometimes war with like al Queda, but they all agree that the first priority is the ejection of the Western nations from the Middle East. While they have a long term view of their war that will in their minds last for decades if not centuries with the promise of martyrdom and Paradise, they view the West as too soft and indulgent to continue this war into multiple generations. They recognize that some of us are willing to fight for an indefinite length of time, but this is a minority of our population and by relying on a volunteer force, we are culling such brave souls from our own people. By attacking our morale, our financial and material resources, including people willing to fight, and intimidating our friends into desperate passivity and inertia, they think that they can make us all quit the fight and let them accomplish their goals unhindered. After they establish their Caliphate, they will be able to singly demand the dissolution of our western countries, defeat singly those who fight back, and impose a submission on Western nations that will amount to vassalage until the Muslims reach a majority and can then assert their control.
ISIS has conceived of the world as falling into three zones; One) the Hejaz and Middle East, Two) the Near Heathen of the Eastern hemisphere, and Three) the Distant Heathen of the Western hemisphere. They are currently striving to drive out all Western influence and military power in the First zone. At this stage they are forcing Muslim leaders to choose sides and establishing a logistical base for their foreign terror campaigns. They will fight a war of attrition on the ground, allowing territory to be taken and then recaptured through a wave of suicide attacks and raiding units that move very quickly through the desert at night. They then recruit the civilian population into militia that they use as canon fodder to fight a Fortress defense around the town itself in order to bleed their opponents of their resources and morale. They will then retake the city in their next operational season along with one or two other towns as well. Western air strikes against these suicide attack columns of trucks and other vehicles is critical to defeat ISIS from retaking lost territory.
While this ground warfare goes on in the Middle East, they try to demoralize the Western nations by conducting terror campaigns that compel the target nation to be less willing to put forces in the ME on full operational mode. If they don't pull them out entirely, ISIS wants them to be passive and not assist in counter attacks or offensive operations. The attacks on Spain in 2004 is an excellent example of this tactic and its success. By the relentless grind of Western funding, material and the suffering of parents who find unbearable the loss of their few children's lives, the Islamic Jihadists seek to make Western nations very reluctant to interfere in Muslim affairs or to take even defensive actions such as defensive alliances and honoring treaty commitments.
The organization of ISIS is centered around Salafi Jihadist Clergy who perform the logistical support functions in the heathen nations and use their mosques as safe harbors to bring down the nations that have given them shelter. This clergy is ISIS overseas, in essence. To destroy ISIS in the Levant area would be insufficient though still necessary to combat them as their presence and sympathy within the Salafist clergy would maintain a jihadist network if not ISIS itself.
To truly defeat ISIS, it must be exterminated in mind and heart as well as geographically and physically by waging social, economic and political warfare against the notion of a jihadist Salafi movement as well as its militant branches it may manifest anywhere in the world.
Then the West began to change in the Twentieth Century. First there was this cataclysmic First World War that the European nations fought against each other, a bitter murderous war whose ghastly violence and dreadful range of engagement was justified by the sole ends of victory and totally destroying the other. It concluded with the complete anihilaion of ancient empires and nations that had reigned for nearly a thousand years, in some cases more, at the hands of nations that had been allies only a few decades before. The Ummah's wonderment with the Christian European Empires was soon at an end.
Muslim nations felt morally superior to such mindlessly destructive regimes, and many of their intellectuals began to dream of a day when the West would be driven out of the Hejaz and the Middle East to conquer and manipulate them into servitude no more. They began to play one Empire against the other and rebelled first one place then another untill the European Empires were competing to see who could best meet the needs and demands of these Arabian sheiks and their minions. The Saudis were given the Arabian Peninsula with its Wahabiism. The Turks were driven out and the Persians hemmed into their own small corner, and the Arabian mind could run free and dream of a new Caliphate.
The post World War 2 era saw the Saudis recruited to lead the oil producing nations to demand payment for their oil in US dollars, which created a huge demand for our currency. In return, we keep the peace in the Middle East and defend the Saudis the best we can while trying to keep our ally Israel alive. But Israel is a religious theocracy that gives precedence to the Jewish religion over Muslim and Christian and everyone else, and this is a moral outrage in the Muslim mind, where no Muslim majority should ever be ruled by heathen people.
Today ISIS is only the latest heir of that Pan Arabian Muslim vision of a reestablished Caliphate. They have rivals that they compete with and sometimes war with like al Queda, but they all agree that the first priority is the ejection of the Western nations from the Middle East. While they have a long term view of their war that will in their minds last for decades if not centuries with the promise of martyrdom and Paradise, they view the West as too soft and indulgent to continue this war into multiple generations. They recognize that some of us are willing to fight for an indefinite length of time, but this is a minority of our population and by relying on a volunteer force, we are culling such brave souls from our own people. By attacking our morale, our financial and material resources, including people willing to fight, and intimidating our friends into desperate passivity and inertia, they think that they can make us all quit the fight and let them accomplish their goals unhindered. After they establish their Caliphate, they will be able to singly demand the dissolution of our western countries, defeat singly those who fight back, and impose a submission on Western nations that will amount to vassalage until the Muslims reach a majority and can then assert their control.
ISIS has conceived of the world as falling into three zones; One) the Hejaz and Middle East, Two) the Near Heathen of the Eastern hemisphere, and Three) the Distant Heathen of the Western hemisphere. They are currently striving to drive out all Western influence and military power in the First zone. At this stage they are forcing Muslim leaders to choose sides and establishing a logistical base for their foreign terror campaigns. They will fight a war of attrition on the ground, allowing territory to be taken and then recaptured through a wave of suicide attacks and raiding units that move very quickly through the desert at night. They then recruit the civilian population into militia that they use as canon fodder to fight a Fortress defense around the town itself in order to bleed their opponents of their resources and morale. They will then retake the city in their next operational season along with one or two other towns as well. Western air strikes against these suicide attack columns of trucks and other vehicles is critical to defeat ISIS from retaking lost territory.
While this ground warfare goes on in the Middle East, they try to demoralize the Western nations by conducting terror campaigns that compel the target nation to be less willing to put forces in the ME on full operational mode. If they don't pull them out entirely, ISIS wants them to be passive and not assist in counter attacks or offensive operations. The attacks on Spain in 2004 is an excellent example of this tactic and its success. By the relentless grind of Western funding, material and the suffering of parents who find unbearable the loss of their few children's lives, the Islamic Jihadists seek to make Western nations very reluctant to interfere in Muslim affairs or to take even defensive actions such as defensive alliances and honoring treaty commitments.
The organization of ISIS is centered around Salafi Jihadist Clergy who perform the logistical support functions in the heathen nations and use their mosques as safe harbors to bring down the nations that have given them shelter. This clergy is ISIS overseas, in essence. To destroy ISIS in the Levant area would be insufficient though still necessary to combat them as their presence and sympathy within the Salafist clergy would maintain a jihadist network if not ISIS itself.
To truly defeat ISIS, it must be exterminated in mind and heart as well as geographically and physically by waging social, economic and political warfare against the notion of a jihadist Salafi movement as well as its militant branches it may manifest anywhere in the world.
