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WaPo Blames Syria But U.S. Iraq Invasion Created The Islamic State
One Missy Ryan at the Washington Post wants her readers to swallow this nonsense:
While the Obama administration is expanding its effort against the Islamic State, it has resisted calls from some of its Middle Eastern allies to more directly pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose long civil conflict has created the conditions that gave birth to the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
The conflict in Syria, started by the U.S. and other international supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, had nothing to do with the "birth" of the "Islamic State and other extremist groups".
Academic accounts of the genesis of the Islamic State, Jabhad al-Nusra and others point to a much earlier creation of these groups:
A popular narrative holds that the surprising recent events in Iraq can be attributed mainly to the unraveling of Syria.
…
[This] is just part of a picture, one constructed by connecting the dots from events that we can observe, rather than from a careful analysis of the group known as the Islamic State. Consider another possibility: the Islamic State’s resurgence since 2010 in both Iraq and Syria is the result of a carefully crafted plan. The Islamic State counteroffensive in Iraq, conducted under the noses of a waning U.S. presence in the country, created conditions for the Islamic State to establish a new political coalition that remains intact to date. The high-level of military excellence achieved by the Islamic State in their campaign as much as any political factor, has influenced their return and creates a host of challenges for the military, intelligence, and diplomatic professionals tasked with their defeat.
The Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra were both part of AlQaida in Iraq (AQI). The were created in reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After having been temporarily defeated during the "surge" of U.S. troops AQI revived and fought an intense war against the Iraqi government. When the conflict in Syria started the war in iraq was again raging. A part of AQI transferred to Syria under the name of Jabhat al Nusra. It used the eastern part of Syria primarily as a retreat and training space. AQI split in two when the Iraqi part detached itself from AlQaida central in Pakistan as well as from Jabhat al-Nusra and transformed itself into the independent Islamic State.
The conflict in Iraq ignited by the United States is the creation point of these extremists group. The conflict in Syria allowed the growth of these groups into the geographically near eastern parts of Syria but the Syria conflict had no relation to those groups founding. Ahrar al-Shams and the Islamic Front, other extremist group in Syria, were also founded and led by senior AlQaeda members mostly from Iraq. Like the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra these groups do not originate in the Syrian conflict but in a wider and older context.
The origin of these groups lies in the the U.S. war on Iraq. To accuse the Syrian government for their creation is propagandistic nonsense.
so why do young males go off on jihad?
Sunday, November 09, 2014
I offer you struggle, danger and death
“Review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler” by George Orwell (March 1940) (note how much this is exactly like today’s United States, where the only two available jobs are prison guard or soldier):
“What he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250 million Germans with plenty of “living room” (i.e. stretching to Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder. How was it that he was able to put this monstrous decision across?”
and:
“. . . he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarized version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation “Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”
“The War Nerd: Crunching numbers on Kobane”:
“The rules of that war are very different. Imagine you’re a young guy sitting at a café in, say, Tunis.
There are no jobs in Tunis. There isn’t much that connects you to anyone, except Islam, which—in theory—unites all Muslims in friendship. It doesn’t work that way in practice, of course, as Muslims from poor countries find when they take jobs in the Gulf—and Lord, do they get mad!–but it’s still the only cheerful idea in your world, as you sit there nursing a coffee all day.
Imagine being that guy, and jihad doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea. You don’t even have to imagine being a Tunisian; I can give you an All-American example from the other side of the fight in Kobane. Jordan Matson, a 28-year old American, joined the YPG after getting out of the US Army and ending up doing night shifts in a meat-packing plant.
I’m not pretending that YPG and IS are morally equal. They’re not. YPG is a secular, gender-neutral local militia defending its home town against fucking monsters, and IS is the monster in question, one of the vilest groups around. But the life-story, the motives, the experiences, of Jordan Matson and the average Tunisian recruit aren’t that different. Jihad, on either side, beats graveyard shift in Wisconsin or unemployment in Tunis.
So if you’re that potential IS recruit in Tunis, you’re watching the news from Kobane, but you’re watching it your way. You don’t worry too much about the atrocity stories coming out about IS. Young men have a great tolerance, let us say, for such things. In fact, many of them have a great deal more than tolerance—something more like enthusiasm, and I speak from my own embarrassing experience of a celibate adolescence.
As for sex slavery, it can look very different, if you’re a celibate young man sitting in a Tunis café with no job, than it looks to a New York Times pundit. As William Butler Yeats said a century ago, noting the, er, unusual eagerness of young Irish Catholic males to get themselves killed fighting better-trained and –armed regulars, celibate young men raised in sex-segregated environments get very excited at the idea of war and martyrdom. My hand is the first to be raised here, my old bald head blushing. I’m not one of those old “bald heads forgetful of their sins” that Yeats described; I remember my sins all too well, even if they were mostly imagined. And the average young man in Tunis or Riyadh has been raised in an atmosphere every bit as devout and celibate as the one which forged the martyrs of Yeats’s Ireland.
If you really want to venture into this territory—and it’s very, very embarrassing territory, believe me—you should read an amazing book called Male Fantasies.
The author is an annoying German academic, and the writing is tedious as Hell, but the idea is amazing: A look at the fantasies about women that motivated the young men who joined the Freikorps, the volunteer military forces of Weimar-era Germany. The book argues, in its slow, earnest German way, that these fantasies are ordinary, but very creepy, male ideas leading direct from dumb-ass dreams about girls, to the fatal decision to march off with the Freikorps. And if you were to look for a 21st version of the Freikorps…Ladies and gents, may I present Islamic State?”
“ISIS and the Real Reason Why Young Muslim Men Join the Jihad”
http://xymphora.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/i-offer-you-struggle-danger-and-death.html
Posted by: brian | Nov 9 2014 21:42 utc | 23
ISIS and the Real Reason Why Young Muslim Men Join the JihadThe male warrior phenomenon
Published on September 20, 2014 by Mark van Vugt, Ph.D. in Naturally Selected
Almost every day new news stories and gruesome images appear of atrocities committed by ISIS (Islamic State), also referred to as IS. This does not seem to diminish the appeal of this terrorist movement, however. Recent figures show that there are more than 3000 Western jihadists who have joined to fight in Syria and Iraq, mostly young Muslim men from Britain, Australia, France, Germany and the US. The mortality rates are pretty high (of the 140 Dutch IS fighters 15 are known to have died; so more than 10%). So this begs the question why any rational human being would decide to fight there?
Analysts and politicians break their heads over the apparent popularity of IS among foreign fighters, and they come up with all sorts of explanations such as discrimination and prejudice at home, an aversion to Western culture, and the influence of the imams. I do believe that all these factors play a role, but they ignore a deeper underlying cause. For many young men engaging in warfare is just an adventurous journey. And for many it is a way to increase their status among their peers.
The American philosopher Jesse Glenn Gray fought in World War II and described his experiences as a member of a platoon in the memorable book The Warriors: “Many veterans who are honest with themselves will admit that the experience of communal effort in battle was a high point of their lives. Despite the horror, the weariness, and the grim hatred, participation with others in the chances of battle had its unforgettable side which they would not want to have missed. ”
Are the Western jihadists seeking such highlights? It could well be. We have done quite a bit of research on what we call “male warrior’ effect. This describes the strong fascination among men in particular with anything to do with warfare. We find significant differences between men and women in watching war movies, reading war books, and in their political support for armed conflict as a solution to international relations. Men also participate more in intergroup aggression, are more prejudiced, and like to wear the colors of their favorite tribes, for instance, the sports team, motorcycle club, and religious tribe. This warrior psychology is probably deeply ingrained in the biology of men. There are several indications.
In different places in the world archeologists have found the mass graves with the skulls and skeletons are of men, women, and children who are clearly the victims of organized violence. Some of these graves are several tens of thousands years old. In today’s hunter-gatherer tribes – such as the Yanomamo in the Amazon – we see that male warriors enjoy high standing. The more enemies a warrior slains the higher his status in the group. Status translates into reproductive success, because good warriors sire more children. In recent research, we have through scenarios looked at the attractiveness of soldiers. Historical research (yet unpublished) shows that American soldiers who had earned a Medal of Honor in World War II had more children on average than the average war veteran surviving WWII.
In our genetic relatives, the chimpanzee, we also find evidence for something that looks like warfare. Males of one community work together to guard the borders of their territory and if they see a male intruder then they grab him, pulling his limbs from his body and bite off his genitals. Female intruders tend to be left alone. It is a cowardly and sadistic spectacle reminiscent of some of the IS videos. Primatologists believe that the cause of these killings lies in weakening the other community so that the females choose to migrate to the stronger community. A recent study in Nature indeed shows that chimpanzee violence is not a result of human interference because it occurs even in areas in which there is no chimpanzee human interaction..
There may be several evolutionary advantages for young men to join a war party despite the chances of death. It gives young men a platform to acquire hero status for themselves and their family, and thus access to fame, women, and sex. The 72 virgins for Jihadis who are slain in battle is a metaphor of this reward. Sometimes however bride theft is a direct cause of warfare, think of the two hundred Nigerian girls were recently kidnapped by Boko Haram. Furthermore, participation in warfare ensures a memorable bonding experience with like-minded young men, similar perhaps to joining a street gang or a group of hooligans. Probably there is also a hefty dose of the “love” hormone oxytocin involved in the male bonding that occurs during fights. This mix of excitement, elevated status, and the surge of powerful hormones is the real reason why so many young Western men choose to join IS.
What should Western governments do about this? I have watched the anti-IS video of the American government showing clips of public executions by IS, and suicide bombs going off in mosques. The message is that you’re crazy if you’re going to fight fellow Muslims. But that’s not the solution, I believe. Muslim communities around the world should stand up and make clear that it is not cool to become a Jihadist fighter and that you are absolutely not a hero but a loser who is rejected by their local community, by the mosques, the imams and women if they join this war. Those young Muslim men who stay home should be considered the true heroes of this terrible story.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/naturally-selected/201409/isis-and-the-real-reason-why-young-muslim-men-join-the-jihad
Posted by: brian | Nov 9 2014 21:44 utc | 25
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