[abu_rashid]

Looks like the US is in for very stiff resistance. The battle for hearts and minds is not going to be easy, especially from hundreds of metres up in the sky.

“My business had never been this good under the local rebels, some of whom were my relatives,” said Abu Riad. “They brought law and order; they went after the criminals and bandits and cleaned up the town. Under the rebels, it was chaos and lawlessness. Now I can be sure my merchandise is safe and I can transport it safely as no one dares steal here anymore,” he added. Even more extraordinary is that some of Aleppo’s industrialists and factory owners opted to move their machinery from the Sheikh Najjar industrial zone into IS territory in Al-Bab, as they knew it would be safe from looting there.

Law and order aren’t the only advantages of being under IS rule. The group also provides many services, mostly free of charge. “They fixed roads and power lines; they gave out food to the needy. They have traffic police and free religious schools. The rebels never did that. All they did was steal and fight each other,” said Abu Raid. When I asked him about what hardships under the austere rule of IS, he said, “Yes, they have very strict laws, but they won’t harm or bother you unless you cross the red lines. For me, the only difficulty I had was not being able to smoke in public. The rest wasn’t too bad; we are a very conservative town, after all.”

Source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ru/originals/2014/09/syrians-support-islamic-state-refuse-us-strike.html

[wiseraphael]

Yeah....sounds like ISIL are really lovely people.
Of course, there was law and order and considerable social benefits in Nazi Germany.

[Rei Murasame]

The key element of this story which has once again been lost on everyone, is the fact that these people don't have very many significant differences with ISIL in the first place. Look at the man they've interviewed there. The only point of difference that he can find to comment on, is that ISIL bans public smoking of cigarettes.

When the only difference they can find is over cigarette laws, this leaves people with two options. [1]Wage a war for the liberation of the Syrian Sunnis so that they might smoke cigarettes more freely, or alternately, [2]accept that ISIL flourished in fertile ground among those most open to its existence.

Option 1 is absolutely stupid and should be ruled out immediately. Option 2 requires you to designate almost everyone in the region who has a political opinion as an enemy.

There is no battle for hearts and minds to be had, and this is what certain people (eg, me) have been saying from the start. After a while, you have to stop trying to win hearts and minds, and start trying to kill insurgents and subjugate populations.

[abu_rashid]

No, after a while you have to realise you need to keep to yourself and leave others alone. The world is a nasty place because some countries think it's in their interests to wreak havoc in everyone else's backyards.

Then they cry no end when it bites them in the posterior, lamenting how they weren't harsh enough and showed too much mercy.

Learn a simple rule to the way this world works... what goes around inevitably comes around.

[Rei Murasame]

You are desperate to try to install cowardice into the minds of your opponents, but there will always be a wonderful contingent of people who are born into the world who love nothing other than finding new and better ways of fighting. It's called the Will to Power.

I'll maybe consider* leaving people alone on the day that you put a bullet through my skull (good luck!), or fly a hijacked plane through the front of my workplace and into my office (good luck!), not before then. Life is competition, and it's really fantastic. Those who lament that too much mercy was shown to opponents, are those who did indeed show too much mercy.

*READ: I actually still would not consider it.

[KlassWar]

Bombing the Salafites back into the Stone Age is not intended as a hearts'n'minds effort. The goal is to soften up the jihadis to the point where they can be crushed and mercilessly exterminated by the regional powers.

[Heisenberg]

Why try to "win" hearts and minds when you can smear them across the desert instead?

[wiseraphael]

Bombing the Salafites back into the Stone Age is not intended as a hearts'n'minds effort. The goal is to soften up the jihadis to the point where they can be crushed and mercilessly exterminated by the regional powers.

Good!

Wasn't that what we did to the Nazis? What a terrible crime!!!

[Rei Murasame]

Nazi Germany.

Nazis?

Is it really necessary for you to paste Adolf Hitler's moustache on top of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's face in order to get westerners to attack him? I mean, semiotically speaking, this makes no sense.

Not only did the Second World War end 70 years ago, but on top of that, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi already has an 'enemy' appearance.

Al-Baghdadi is a guy with a round Semitic-looking face and gigantic nose, with some mixed Africanised-looking features. Wearing a fucking terrorist Caliph costume. And a massive Osama bin Laden style beard.

The man already looks like an enemy, he doesn't need the Jews to come along and paint a tiny little moustache onto him now. Especially since you lot already painted that moustache onto Bashar Al-Assad's face. How many different people are you going to try to paint the Hitler moustache onto in this conflict? Soon from now, everyone will be wearing one. Are you planning to do William Hague next? It is meaningless.

[Gletkin]

If al-Baghdadi is the next Adolf Hitler, this time around "the Soviets" and the west are telling each other to fuck off.

[wiseraphael]

Is it really necessary for you to paste Adolf Hitler's moustache on top of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's face in order to get westerners to attack him? I mean, semiotically speaking, this makes no sense.

Not only did the Second World War end 70 years ago, but on top of that, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi already has an 'enemy' appearance.

Al-Baghdadi is a guy with a round Semitic-looking face and gigantic nose, with some mixed Africanised-looking features. Wearing a fucking terrorist Caliph costume. And a massive Osama bin Laden style beard.

The man already looks like an enemy, he doesn't need the Jews to come along and paint a tiny little moustache onto him now. Especially since you lot already painted that moustache onto Bashar Al-Assad's face. How many different people are you going to try to paint the Hitler moustache onto in this conflict? Soon from now, everyone will be wearing one. Are you planning to do William Hague next? It is meaningless.

Nope.....don't give a damn what these animals look like, the fact is they act and think like the Nazis....racialist based, bigoted, murderous and genocidal.
If you can't see the connection, don't understand the dangers and have learnt nothing from history (although a mere 70 years is hardly history)...I'm sorry for you.
...and by the way no-one ever painted a Hitler moustache on Assad....a nasty vicious dictator but nevertheless
no Hitler. Perhaps you're not really aware of the difference.

[Rei Murasame]

If you can't see the connection, don't understand the dangers and have learnt nothing from history (although a mere 70 years is hardly history)...I'm sorry for you.

The reason that I'm opposed to ISIL has nothing to do with whether they resemble Hitler or not. I despise ISIL because I despise the people from that region of the world.

Just because Hitler is your bogeyman reference-frame, does not mean that he is mine.

My fight is against Islamists. This is the War on Terror. This is not the Second World War on repeat. I have no interest in fighting against Nazism, real or imagined.

racialist based,

Radical Muslims are some of the biggest mass-miscegenating race-mixers on the earth. One of the more disgusting things about Islam is that they don't know how to keep their dicks on their own side of the fence, because they have no respect for any other culture adjacent to theirs.

[ComradeTim]

Radical Muslims are some of the biggest mass-miscegenating race-mixers on the earth. One of the more disgusting things about Islam is that they don't know how to keep their dicks on their own side of the fence, because they have no respect for any other culture adjacent to theirs.

Are you saying that racially mixed people are inferior to the "racially pure", whatever that means?

[Rei Murasame]

No, I'm saying what I'm saying. Read what I wrote. Why do leftists suffer from an inability to just read what I wrote? I'm not talking about individuals. The 'mass' part in that statement is italicised for a reason. The whole statement is worded in the specific way that it is worded for a reason.

Stop trying to reword everything that I write. It means exactly what it says word for word.

[ComradeTim]

No, I'm saying what I'm saying. Read what I wrote. Why do leftists suffer from an inability to just read what I wrote? I'm not talking about individuals. The 'mass' part in that statement is italicised for a reason. The whole statement is worded in the specific way that it is worded for a reason.

Stop trying to reword everything that I write. It means exactly what it says word for word.

Every mass is made up of individuals. What applies to the mass must surely also apply to the individual? If you want them to, how did you so tactfully put it "keep their dicks on their own side of the fence", that means you want less racially mixed babies to be born. Why would you want this if they are not worse than racially pure babies?

[Stormsmith]

The battle for hearts and minds is not going to be easy, especially from hundreds of metres up in the sky.

Nobody's interested in their hearts and minds, and I suspect the view will be spectacular.

Bombing the Salafites back into the Stone Age is not intended as a hearts'n'minds effort. The goal is to soften up the jihadis to the point where they can be crushed and mercilessly exterminated by the regional powers.

QFT.

[Rei Murasame]

What applies to the mass must surely also apply to the individual?

That's not how alleles are counted within population groups though, as I am sure you well know. It's counted as 'child surrogates' which are a cross section of a virtual 'statistical average' child, and not of a real individual.

This means that I don't care if 0.1% of a population group is mixed or something. Whoever those persons are, I am not even looking for them because the 'outsider' alleles that they are carrying are statistically swamped by everything else.

If you want them to, how did you so tactfully put it "keep their dicks on their own side of the fence", that means you want less racially mixed babies to be born.

Yes, it means that I would like less of them to be born. This is different from the question that you initially asked me.

When Islamists, or leftists for that matter, claim that it is a moral good and an imperative that people should dissolve their ethnic groups en masse, such people should be opposed, not because individual mixed children are bad in and of themselves, but rather, because whoever preaches a doctrine that calls for the self-destruction of ethnic groups is an enemy who is seeking to perpetrate genocide against the group.

These two statements are not the same:

• 1. "There's neighbour I know who has a mixed child."
  
  
• 2. "We should - as an ethnic group - stop revering the ancestors and engage in massive unrestricted outbreeding and dissolve this ethnic group."

Statement #1 is not inherently bad. There will always be someone, and that is fine.

Statement #2 is disgusting, however.

There is also the issue of specific groups who people would like to see less of (ie, deliberately excluding particular people because of unwanted traits), but that's a whole different conversation.

But I know that you will 100% disagree with me on principle anyway, because you're a leftist. It is also completely off topic so I don't know why we are even discussing this.

[ComradeTim]

Hey, don't blame me, you started this.

Radical Muslims are some of the biggest mass-miscegenating race-mixers on the earth. One of the more disgusting things about Islam is that they don't know how to keep their dicks on their own side of the fence, because they have no respect for any other culture adjacent to theirs.

Anyway,

"We should - as an ethnic group - stop revering the ancestors and engage in massive unrestricted outbreeding and dissolve this ethnic group."
Statement #2 is disgusting, however.

Why?

[Rei Murasame]

Hey, don't blame me, you started this.

I stated something really obvious, and you are doing that usual leftist game where you pretend not to understand.

Why?

Because we say so. Because it is our will that we should exist. Because alleles are a productive force. Alleles are building blocks that when arranged in particular structures, do things. An ethnic group has no reason to accept change against itself without there being an enormous evolutionary pressure to do so.

Make your response short and quick, since you and I will never ever agree and moderators will accuse us both of going off topic if you drag this out.

[ComradeTim]

No need. I shall need to investigate the topic further before I make a hasty conclusion on your argument.