ISIS - Insurgants, Not Terrorists
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - ISIS - is a collection of the biggest assholes on the planet. As a Jewish man, I know they would torture me to death if they ever got their hands on me. I say that because the purpose of this post is in no way to defend these animals, but rather to define them.
Most media outlets would say so (too many to quote - ask the Great Gazoogle if you don't believe me). But that presupposes a definition of 'terrorism' that is politically convenient to the kinds of people who want to read your email to protect you from it. The Bush legacy of declaring war on a concept, and then defining that concept in ways (ever-changing) that gave him unlimited political power and made his robber-baron stewards even richer lives on. ISIS is a sponsor and instigator of terror outside the region they occupy, to be sure. And there can be little doubt that many of the locals living under their rule are terrified.
But let's define them by their successes. They have taken land and populations from Iraq and Syria (and attempted to take Kurdish lands and people. Terrorists don't do that. Al Qaeda doesn't plant flags, they plant bombs. ISIS is trying to create, enlarge, and maintain a state. They are revolutionaries.
The definition is important as President Obama has used the 2001 AUMF (before going to Congress for a blank cheque to use against ISIS specifically) to fight them. This is not a question of trying to frighten and outrage an enemy you are powerless against - terrorism. It's a battle to create a new country. It's a battle that is taking place because both Iraq and Syria and Failed States. Iraq in particular has been America's experiment in Middle Eastern democracy. The problem is that instead of employing the 'better angels of our nature' (Lincoln's term),we unleashed Team Bush and the F Students. Bloody, bloodless right-wing ideologues made the only thing they were capable of out of a defeated Iraq - a failed state.
It's been the needless American devastation of Iraq that created ISIS, and ongoing American drone and bombing atrocities that fuel them. The Bush-Obama Iraq is a story of creating a deadly mess and not having any idea how to clean it up. ISIS has an idea, though. With the Iraqi failed state on one side and the Syrian failed state on the other, their trained guerrilla fighters have become a cohesive recognizable uniformed force - an army.
You cannot deal with them as if they were terrorists because they're not. You can't treat a pandemic as if it was cancer. The root of their threat is the failure of the US to build a legitimate state in Iraq, not the amorphous non-specific hatred of 'terror.' ISIS is paying salaries, running a legal system (such as it is), and otherwise trying to govern. Stopping them will take more than victory on the battlefield. It will take a real legitimate government in the region. In Iraq, that's still America's bad. In Syria - well, nobody but the Assads are rooting for the Assads, but nobody really knows how much worse the opposition is (that's where ISIS came from).
At the end, the magic 'terror' word cannot keep driving us to more folly.
Most media outlets would say so (too many to quote - ask the Great Gazoogle if you don't believe me). But that presupposes a definition of 'terrorism' that is politically convenient to the kinds of people who want to read your email to protect you from it. The Bush legacy of declaring war on a concept, and then defining that concept in ways (ever-changing) that gave him unlimited political power and made his robber-baron stewards even richer lives on. ISIS is a sponsor and instigator of terror outside the region they occupy, to be sure. And there can be little doubt that many of the locals living under their rule are terrified.
But let's define them by their successes. They have taken land and populations from Iraq and Syria (and attempted to take Kurdish lands and people. Terrorists don't do that. Al Qaeda doesn't plant flags, they plant bombs. ISIS is trying to create, enlarge, and maintain a state. They are revolutionaries.
The definition is important as President Obama has used the 2001 AUMF (before going to Congress for a blank cheque to use against ISIS specifically) to fight them. This is not a question of trying to frighten and outrage an enemy you are powerless against - terrorism. It's a battle to create a new country. It's a battle that is taking place because both Iraq and Syria and Failed States. Iraq in particular has been America's experiment in Middle Eastern democracy. The problem is that instead of employing the 'better angels of our nature' (Lincoln's term),we unleashed Team Bush and the F Students. Bloody, bloodless right-wing ideologues made the only thing they were capable of out of a defeated Iraq - a failed state.
It's been the needless American devastation of Iraq that created ISIS, and ongoing American drone and bombing atrocities that fuel them. The Bush-Obama Iraq is a story of creating a deadly mess and not having any idea how to clean it up. ISIS has an idea, though. With the Iraqi failed state on one side and the Syrian failed state on the other, their trained guerrilla fighters have become a cohesive recognizable uniformed force - an army.
You cannot deal with them as if they were terrorists because they're not. You can't treat a pandemic as if it was cancer. The root of their threat is the failure of the US to build a legitimate state in Iraq, not the amorphous non-specific hatred of 'terror.' ISIS is paying salaries, running a legal system (such as it is), and otherwise trying to govern. Stopping them will take more than victory on the battlefield. It will take a real legitimate government in the region. In Iraq, that's still America's bad. In Syria - well, nobody but the Assads are rooting for the Assads, but nobody really knows how much worse the opposition is (that's where ISIS came from).
At the end, the magic 'terror' word cannot keep driving us to more folly.
posted by fiduciary at 5:48 PM
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