As the USA is bombing ISIS in Iraq but helping ISIS in Syria Ns Yemen
It is safe to say ISIS is not the bogeyman we are sometimes led to believe
The real bogeyman is a lot closer to home

Hi Yebiga,

In what ways is the US helping ISIS in Syria ? By not bombing it ? Clearly, the US is focussing on clearing ISIS out of Iraq, and leaving the Assad dictatorship and Iran to deal with ISIS in Syria. Eminently sensible, in my view: Iraq is crucial to the US strategy of, to the extent it can, keeping Iran and the Saudis apart. Now that Yemen has blown up, that strategy is undergoing some stress.

Back to article: as ISIS finds itself having to take on temporal or secular or everyday responsibilities for managing a state, it will find itself in a similar position to earlier caliphates, of muddying the 'purity' of brutal religious war with the necessity to oversee the hum-drum everyday issues of the real world which they now control. I don't know how the Koran can give much guidance on the maintenance of phone towers and water supplies and sewerage systems, and the issue of dog licences and vehicle registration. At least the earlier caliphates didn't have to deal with some of those issues. Yet look what happened to them.

If ISIS has now lost Tikrit, and the territory to the east and south of it, it may not be the success story that the extreme Right (i.e. the Salafists) and the opportunist Left (i.e. the Trots, Watermelons, etc.) hoped for. It may still attract psychotics and sociopaths from all corners of the earth, since, after all, ISIS needs drivers of suicide trucks, but it's a fair bet that not too many of that opportunist Left will join them there.

Joe

What is truly grotesque here is not the fantasy drawn by the author, but his complete ignorance of what is actually happening in the Middle East. The utter stupidity and ignorance of media comment was captured by Gregg Carlstrom on 26 March 2015. He was referring to Yemen but the comment applies equally to the insanity of US/Australian policy generally. He said

"US praises US ally for bombing US equipped militia aligned with US foe who is partnering with US to fight another US equipped militia."

It makes Tony Abbott's bizarre "death cult" obsession seem almost coherent in comparison.

"The caliphate is not just a future dream; it is real and now. It has all of the trappings of a modern state." What an absolute load of crap; over running one city and holding it for a few months is a far cry from setting up a legitimate government. The author is mad.

James, can you please explain WTF this stupid quote is supposed to mean? "US praises US ally for bombing US equipped militia aligned with US foe who is partnering with US to fight another US equipped militia." For us simpletons, please explain who is supposed to be who in that offering.

CH: I can go one better than try to explain what I thought was quite a neat encapsulation. I suggest you read an article Another Week, Another War. chis-floyd.com 27 March 2015. Better value there than the sorry BS of the article we are commenting on.

Hi James,

Wouldn't it be nice if we could put all the bad people in one group and all the good people in another: A or B ? Why does it have to be so complicated ?

Well, it is. Is there any one 'good' side in Syria ? or in the Yemen ? Yes, there are plenty of 'bad' sides, and, given a need to make choices, trying to sort out which may be the very worst, which may be the second worst, etc., and in which particular REAL circumstances, makes that real world - particularly in the Middle East at the moment - extremely complicated.

So we can either curse the lot of it and withdraw to our mountain cave, James, or we can try to make some sense out of it all, and which situations are most urgent and make judgements about what should be done, and by whom.

Maybe some basic principles could be identified: that it's undeniably wrong that innocent people should be beheaded, or women and children raped and enslaved, or more broadly, aggression should be condemned. Ultimately, we have to decide if it is okay to question and discuss principles, or blindly accept what was written down in a tribal society thirteen hundred years ago, and kill off anybody who disagrees.

As for the caliphate, ISIS now controls territory the size of Britain. Boko Haram and al-Shabaab each control swathes of territory. So do the Talibans in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Islamists in Libya and southern Algeria. They are not going to just fade away. To the extent that Islam is a 'religion' of war and conquest, its dynamic is to keep conquering. That broad region may be a long way away, and in a part of the world in which we have little interest, but it's still a major force.

Then there are the conflicts between various Islamic sects, between a plethora of ethnic groups, and between secular dictatorships and Islamist movements.

Sorry for the bad news :)

Joe