The Islamic State

[JHC]

JHC, simple misinterpretation on my part. A few hours of biking through the Alps and a few glasses of choice Whiskey shortly after with my father in-law and this is what you get, my apologies. As well sorry I did not reply sooner to your post, I have just been busy. My response was primarily due to the misinterpretation that you stated that the website link that you provided was somehow painting a different picture, I get rather heated about some of the Jihadist propaganda and quickly go from calm to raging maniac obviously not seeing and hearing everything after losing my temper. Message received now. Appreciate the PM and the post. Again my apologies for misinterpreting.

You mentioned ice cubes earlier and that was an important clue. Keep raging.

[JHC]

The difference between this IS deal and AQ is that the latter is just another group of hard liners. The IS, however, is much better on the marketing side then AQ ever was by associating themselves with being a revived Caliphate- as Apples quarterly statement proves, marketing drives behavior better then fear.

Which brings me to the next point. IS very well can conquer the US. Not with bullets or AKs, but with men in suits and meetings at liberal think tanks. If they market themselves as a leftist Islamic rights movement with a superior moral cause, they could make serious inroads on Western culture. Not anytime soon, mind, but in twenty years Iraq and Astan will be textbook fodder. If they play their cards right perception wise, we might see the day when an Islamic Party is elected into the White House.

And not a single shot will be fired.

I dunno. The "slow jihad" had been underway for decades with the quiet and generous funding of our Middle East studies programs at many/most major universities with M.E. oil money. This influenced the gradual conversion of perspective in academia, journalism and the State Department. (see Whalid Phares book "Future Jihad")

Bin Laden blew that up literally and figuratively ripping off the mask and now ISIS would have a heckuva time going business suit soft power with all their snuff films etc. But they could go far, I don't think you're about that. If they get a franchise that takes off in Pakistan, that's another recipe for WW3. That would probably flow down from an abandoned AFG or their border territories.

Reminds me of Richard Fernandez' (of Pajamas Media fame) theorem of "The Three Conjectures". It's pretty heavy in the IT systems analogies and even some math . . . but it boils down to Muslims need to hope that America wins the GWOT . . . or else sooner or later ISIS types across a broad caliphate will acquire nuclear weapons which if employed with enough confusion and deniability would leave America and what remained of the West with one last strategy: "total retaliatory extermination".

[1slow]

Victor Davis Hanson has written on: the nature of war throughout history and on the recent mid east wars in particular. It is a wonder he is still employed in liberal California.

[JHC]

Victor Davis Hanson has written on: the nature of war throughout history and on the recent mid east wars in particular. It is a wonder he is still employed in liberal California.

Employed by NR Online. Does he teach somewhere also? VDH is a treasure.

[SeriousStudent]

Employed by NR Online. Does he teach somewhere also? VDH is a treasure.

Here's a link to his personal page. He does work and teach at several organizations.

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?page_id=20

I own several of his books, and consider them quite interesting.

[Jeep]

I don't know what would have happened to us if a left-of-center big government technocrat were president on December 7th, 1941, but it would have been bad. :|

Well, FDR was many things--but a technocrat he was not. He was a full time politician. But you are right. December 7th was really bad. A clear warning order would have been nice.

[Palmguy]

I see the young kids and twenty-somethings in that video, and they talk about bringing the hate to here, and I feel a little sad and wish they'd go ask an 80-year old resident of Honshu how that works. You really don't want to poke the bear, kid, because we tend to overreact and break stuff. Scare us bad enough, and we'll make your cities glow until your grandkids are born with three heads. We talk a good game of peace and democracy, but push come to shove, we have visited wholesale indiscriminate horror and slaughter on lands that would have made Sennacherib shake in his sandals, and we did it within living memory. Sure, we'll help stack the bricks up again when we're done, but that's small consolation to the bodies buried under 'em.

Enough to make cities glow? Probably not...but they are getting more aggressive "poking the bear".

[Stephen]

In late September 1985, pro-Iranian Shiites put the snatch on four attaches from the Russian Embassy in Beirut and warned that the hostages would be executed, one by one, unless the Soviets persuaded pro-Syrian militiamen to stop shelling Hezbollah strongholds in the Lebanese port city of Tripoli... Only two days after the kidnappings, the body of one of the four hostages was found, shot through the head, on a Beirut trash dump... Having gotten the message, the Soviets decided to send one back. KGB agents ran the name of a prominent Hezbollah leader through their computers and came up with the name and address of one of his closest blood relatives. They then kidnapped the kinsman, castrated him, and sent his severed organs to the Hezbollah honcho. The package was accompanied by a terse cover note indicating that the KGB had the names of other close relatives and that Hezbollah could expect more such deliveries unless the three remaining hostages were freed forthwith...The three surviving hostages were dropped off only 150 yards from the Soviet Embassy from a late-model BMW that couldn't drive away fast enough... By not-so-remarkable coincidence, it was also the last time Hezbollah ever messed with any Soviets in Lebanon.

There aren't many things I'd want my country to copy from the Soviets, but I think foreign terrorists who kidnap and brutally murder Americans should be dealt with harshly.

[Palmguy]

A second reporter has apparently been kidnapped and threatened as well.

[Tamara]

"Soltoff Alive Or al-Baghdadi Dead"

It's a shame that the global community gets their noses all out of joint these days if you have the HMS Thunderer drop anchor off the coast and shell everybody's huts to flinders before debarking a company of Her Majesty's Royal Marines to finish things up with Gatling guns and Martini bayonets if the wogs don't hand over your man.