Asymmetric warfare at its finest.

They have little to nothing in the way of high tech weaponry and their logistic train could not sustain such tools for long if they did possess them. Their numbers are comparatively few compared to either the local populations or the populations of the various nation-states who oppose ISIS. In any conventional conflict in the style of Iraq 2003 they will lose.

So why the hyper violent acts?

A demonstration of will. If they demonstrate that there is no level to which they would be unwilling to resort, it forces any and all potential opposition to recognize that ISIS can make their soldiers and civilians bleed and die. Some will look at the whole thing and say "____ it, the whole area is just not worth it."

That is how asymmetric warfare works. You hit the soft, doable target and create a sense of unease or terror on the part of the opposing forces. If you can keep it up long enough, the opposition force quits the field in disgust or war weariness. At which point you have won, regardless of the resources you started with.

Into the balance, such televised atrocities appeal to the radicalized or near radicalized persons who are ripe for induction into ISIS service. So it also functions as a "The Few, The Proud, The Marines" recruiting advertisement at the same time. One action generating payoffs in two categories for a little film time focused on gore.

We will see more of this. After ISIS it will be the next group of fringers. This is the contrapuntal harmony to the music of human history. Oh brave new world....

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They don't need to do these acts to prove that their land isn't worth it. The fact that they live in it is proof that their land isn't worth it. My only wish is to make it possible to dump our nuts there as well so we don't have to live with them.

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Yeah, as the mayor of Rotterdam said (muslim himself):If you don't like it here just go, but never come back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNcOEOXH9cU

Had a chat with him once he's a really nice guy. More of these please. Or should I say PLEASE!

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I admit that having whackoids self-identify and initiate separation from the rest of us carries a certain appeal....

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I don't know man, it doesn't really seem fair to me to let millions of people live under a theocratic version of North Korea just so Europe can have a place to send its angsty muslim youths...

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I'm not sure whether they will keep millions alive given how they kill people every day for the smallest of reasons. I'm also not sure whether this comparison is fair towards North Korea, so far they don't seem to go out of their way to make people suffer and they haven't revealed expansion plans for the entire planet either.

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It's entirely fair for us to let anything happen. It's not us actively making these things happen, so why should we be held accountable for things that other people do? If we do go out of our way to make the world a better place, then we should be praised for it, but we shouldn't be expected to do it. And if those people are hating us for doing that, then I see no point in doing so, and they can have their own dump of a place to rule. No skin off my nose if they decide to have their own hellhole on earth, as long as they don't interfere with my life.

And after our wonderful efforts to topple the brutal dictator in Libya, that place is now awash with Islamists chopping the heads of Christians. I wish Saddam and Qaddafi were still in power to keep these nutters down, and thank goodness Assad managed to hang on despite the best efforts of our wonderful Liberal Democratic evangelists.

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If Islamic State manages to survive the civil war and establish itself as a fully fledged nation than it will resemble North Korea in a lot of ways. Both IS and North Korea are ruled by ideologically based regimes which allow very little human rights and punish dissent with death.

IS is interested in governance as well as jihad. It's establishing courts and civil institutions, coining money, and it even gives welfare to the poor. According to its propaganda housing and healthcare in the caliphate are free. If you are Sunni and you follow their laws ISIS will not kill you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUjH...6pcHZ&index=10

https://ia802704.us.archive.org/17/i...5FullEbook.pdf

I'm sorry it was late and that post wasn't written very well. I didn't mean to suggest we need to intervene in Iraq and Syria to stop ISIS, I just strongly disagree with the notion that most Iraqis and Syrians want or deserve to live under ISIS rule, which your post seemed to imply.

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That's a joke, right? North Korea is a country that was established where there was already a country and it wants to stay that way. The caliphate was established where no comparable country was before and it plans to integrate the entire world into the "country". North Korea does not want to come here and kill me for not being Sunni, the caliphate does. The difference is almost an entire planet. That ISIS is interested in government makes it as much similar to North Korea as it makes it similar to Belgium. The major difference is in who they want to subdue/kill. Belgium comes out ahead in that comparison by the way.

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This is a non sequitur.

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So, at the end of the day, you see little alternative to a series of brutal thugs clamping a lid on things?

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For the time being, yeah that would be better for the people there. Living in a dictatorship must be horrible but what we see now is the new Heart of Darkness. Better to keep your head down than having it cut off.

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“So, at the end of the day, you see little alternative to a series of brutal thugs clamping a lid on things?” We could have helped if, prior our military intervention, we didn’t help the dictators to get rid of their opposition.
We trained the dictators’ police against the “Communists” (I use communists in a broad sense, as communists were from farmers protesting against the land grabbing, unionists asking for pay rise to real communists, even if democratically elected), we helped all the wars against movement requesting little autonomy from Central government from Indonesia to Guatemala. We invaded without any thinking any country that didn’t line-up with our policy, or resisted against our interests. In the name of anti-communism, we forgot that the 1st enemy of communism are Nazism and fascism.
So, the only way, path, road for protest in dictatorships was the one we didn’t see as dangerous: religious. We thought that Islam could melt in democracy as Christianity did, like the good Social Democrats Parties in Europe.
In clamping the wheel of democracy by fear of unwanted political developments, we just created a monster, and as the Dr Frankenstein, we don’t know how to stop our creature.

"The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies" Maximilien Robespierre, 2 January 1792, opposing the Revolutionary Wars in order to free the rest of Europe from Tyranny.

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Given that a liberal democracy installed by us isn't a practical option, a dictatorship of their own kind is preferable in all aspects, most importantly for us. At least the neocons had the excuse of pipedreams prior to Iraq. However, those who wanted interventions in the same region post-Iraq ignored the clear example set by Iraq. What's that definition of madness again?

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I got a nice thought for ya, what if the guys who died in Syria aren't really dead but just declared dead, and among te numerous amount of refugees the EU wants us to let in. Can somebody explain to me why that is a really stupid thing to say.

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