Isis is turning us all into its recruiting sergeants (and Shia are carrying out massacres as bad)

[cali]

They are fleeing Latifiya – a city just outside Baghdad – in their thousands. A few months ago, it had a population of 200,000, but now only 50,000 remain. This is a town of horror. According to Human Rights Watch, Islamist militias are summarily executing civilians. People are being taken out of cars, ordered to kneel on the pavement, and then shot in the head. On 11 June, 137 men were seized from the town’s Um Weilha market. Thirty bodies have so far been recovered; the fate of the others remains a mystery.

More compelling evidence of the need for western air power to pummel these barbarians, you might think. But the persecutors here are not Islamic State (Isis). They are Shia fighters under the control of the former, western-backed prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose violent sectarianism did so much to fuel the rise of Isis. They are murdering and torturing Sunni Muslims, victims whose lives have been deemed to be of no significance. As Human Rights Watch points out, “their stories are falling on deaf ears”. No white westerners were forced to recite chilling messages in professionally made videos before being murdered, so no horror is expressed by western politicians. There aren’t ever louder and more irresistible calls to “do something”; there are no parallel denunciations of opponents of western intervention as deluded peaceniks or heartless isolationists.

None of this is to understate the barbarity of Isis. A confession: I’ve had nightmares about it and have spoken to friends who have too. It gets to you, Isis – it’s running what must be one of the most sophisticated programmes of psychological warfare mounted by a terrorist group in history. Partly through a social media campaign that is more advanced than those run by many corporations, it is transforming us into its recruiting sergeants.

We grow more terrified of it; we express our terror, and so help to spread it. Western media compete over inflammatory language to express the evil of Isis, and add to its almost otherworldly, terrifying mystique – a mystique Isis has depended on to conquer large swaths of Iraq and Syria, because its opponents are left too frightened to resist. Stills of its videos are plastered across the media, and vicious anti-Muslim diatribes are posted on Twitter – which must delight Isis: the more hatred of Muslims ratchets up, the better chance it has of winning support.

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/05/isis-islamic-state-bombing

[cali]

1. this is an excellent article- one of the best I've read on the subject

more:

So what can be done? At the moment, many Iraqi Sunni Muslims prefer Isis to the sectarian Shia militias. Until that is addressed through a process of national reconciliation and by integrating the Sunni minority – reversing the damage done by Maliki-style sectarianism – little will change. Jihadis have previously been turfed out by Sunni tribes, but there must be confidence in what replaces Isis.

Murderous Shia militias must be dismantled. Kurdish peshmerga must, undoubtedly, be properly armed. The western-backed dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar must be compelled to crack down on the funding networks that are helping to sustain Isis and other terrorists. As General Jonathan Shaw says, these western client states must stop exporting the Wahhabi/Salafist ideology that underpins jihadi terrorists everywhere. Economic sanctions – and certainly arms embargoes – must result from non-compliance. External military intervention in Iraq and Syria must be led by regional powers, not by western forces as Isis craves.

Will common sense prevail? Unlikely, given the more-than-understandable revulsion that has swept Britain and beyond since the brutality against Alan Henning. But that, of course, is what Isis intends.

We cannot bomb an ideology out of existence. One can only imagine the satisfaction among Isis’s ranks that we are following a script that it has written to the letter.

[cali]

3. I can't say I'm a fan of that sentiment

but I don't think that military intervention will reduce the violence that is ongoing.