*
In the discussion of ISIS and its actions we need to clearly get a handle on what it is that ISIS is hoping to accomplish with the attacks in Paris and Beirut and Baghdad and the Russian airplane bombing. What they are doing is using terrorism, and even more so the responses to terrorism, to provide them with ways and means that they do NOT themselves have to achieve their ends. We need to recognize and accept that for ISIS terrorism is Psychological Operations (PSYOPs).
PSYOPs are defined as: “Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator’s objectives. Also called PSYOP.” Calls for closing mosques or special identification for Muslims or religious tests for refugees, let alone simply not accepting any, are all the result of ISIS being able to influence emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of the US government, American organizations and groups, and US citizens. Threats of reprisal and actual attacks on Muslims as reprisals, or those perceived to be Muslim, even more so.
“Life should resume fully,” Hollande told a gathering of the country’s mayors, who gave him a standing ovation. “What would France be without its museums, without its terraces, its concerts, its sports competitions?
“France should remain as it is. Our duty is to carry on our lives.”
In the same spirit, he added, “30,000 refugees will be welcomed over the next two years. Our country has the duty to respect this commitment,” explaining that they will undergo vigorous security checks.
Hollande noted that “some people say the tragic events of the last few days have sown doubts in their minds,” but called it a “humanitarian duty” to help those people … but one that will go hand in hand with “our duty to protect our people.”
“We have to reinforce our borders while remaining true to our values,” he said.
So far American news media, far too many politicians at all levels of US government, and far too many Americans have decided to provide ISIS the ways and means to achieve their ends. Ways and means that they do NOT actually have. We went down this rabbit hole after 9-11 into a land of demagoguery; fear; and paranoia. It got us two unsuccessful wars without declaring war, a mess of an economy, and no real good solutions for, or resolutions of, how to deal with the extremist, violent strain within Islam that is at war with Islam and the rest of the world. The question that has not been fully answered, though we are seeing hints and teasers of what the answer might be, is have we learned anything over the past fourteen years?
* Image found here.
Corner Stone
This website has been an unrelenting psyop by DougJ since its inception.
Gin & Tonic
I posted this in a dead thread downstairs, but in the words of a 90-year-old of my acquaintance who grew up in eastern Europe, lived through WWII and then emigrated to the US: “Americans don’t know terror.”
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Only what we do to ourselves!
redshirt
It’s remarkable how fear can be transmitted to people via mass media. Some redneck in Bumfuck, America is all a’skeered of ISIS and such, and will tell you so. Even though the odds he’ll experience an ISIS related terror event is like 0.0001%.
Propaganda’s a hell of a thing.
Mike in NC
The greatest gift we could give ISIS would be an aggressive, bonehead Republican president. Especially one named Bush.
Frankensteinbeck
Have minorities learned their place? While conservatives are scared that a brown person might be their boss, then they are going to be terrified and leap at the next excuse to justify their terror.
The rest of us learned our lesson pretty damn fast, or didn’t need to. That’s the other half of this. The American people is definitely not one unified group.
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: I won’t live in fear. Refuse. What “redshirt” said. I am far more likely to get killed by a person that doesn’t know how to use a gun then I am a terrorist.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy:
What if Cole asks you to do a site redesign in the future?
Also, in case you stopped looking, I left you a comment in the previous thread.
Emma
I spoke once to someone who had lived through the Blitz as a child and through part of the Troubles and he simply said that “one went on.”
We’ve lost that, if we ever had it.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s painfully obvious that not only was the “Global War on Terror” an utter failure (you can no more go to war with terror than you can go to war with a flanking maneuver) we’ve learned collectively NOTHING from the experience, because we’re on the same path again, if the GOP Klown Kar and Rethugs in Congress get their way.
Adam is absolutely, totally on target with this post. Don’t give Daesh what they want. Deny it to them. Defy them. Sing La Marseillaise with the defiance and resoluteness of those at Valmy…not to mention the soccer stadium in Paris six days ago. John Oliver’s marvelous rant from earlier in the week is PRECISELY the attitude to have, coupled with President Hollande’s wise words about carrying on, and giving a hearty va tu faire foutre to Daesh.
This country has to get back to being the “Home of the Brave” and not the home of the pants pissing cowards who are quaking in fear of damn preschoolers from Syria.
OT and BTW: HTML markup is not working in the comments right now.
redshirt
I took a playwriting class my senior year of college and I produced a piece called Myrmidon, and it was about two special force dudes involved in the invasion of Panama. Remember the rock n’ roll blasted at the Vatican Embassy? A big background of my play.
I should update it for today and run it off off off off off Broadway.
Tommy
@Adam L Silverman: I would say no thank you. I appreciate you asking me to do that, but not the guy for you here.
There is a phrase I joke about but true. I don’t lock my front door. Nobody is coming to harm me. Nobody is coming to steal from me. I don’t live in fear.
Villago Delenda Est
You mean like in Omaha?
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: Maybe Bismark.
HumboldtBlue
@Gin & Tonic:
“Americans don’t know terror.”
Black Americans do.
Native Americans do.
As for the rest of us Americans in this modern digital age, no we don’t know terror and we don’t know invasion, war-driven privation and mass displacement. That’s why what Deash does can be effective. This is the only way they can hit back. They don’t have the human or material or financial resources to effect change but they do have the ability to conduct a guerilla operation in an urban setting but with a far deadlier twist
They and those that came before them claiming allegiance to Islam have introduced the suicidal attacker and that’s something, other than the tail end of WW2, this nation and western nations have never had to face. That willingness to strap explosives around your waist and extinguish your own life while taking others is what causes the greatest anxiety. You can’t stop that with massive intelligence operations and human intelligence operations on the ground. It’s wholly unpredictable and while a conventional soldier who gives his life in a selfless act to kill the enemy while sacrificing his own life to save fellow soldiers is awarded a medal for heroism, the suicide bomber is considered foolish, fanatical and wrongly, cowardly. They certainly aren’t cowards for they have a purpose and are driven to fulfill that purpose and that’s not cowardice.
They target soft targets like theaters and nightclubs, houses of worship and government buildings because they aren’t a conventional force that can stand and do battle in conventional ways. Napoleon’s armies were attrited by the guerilleros in Spain and the ordenanza in Portugal and those irregular units were far more feared, despised and hated than any British regular army unit. The psychological toll they took on the French invader was a potent and extraordinarily effective tool in the defeat of Napoleon and the constant nagging fear, the danger the support units faced and the thousand independent strikes of the small guerilla bands eventually drove the French back home.
In this modern version there is no end game for Daesh. They won’t and can’t win. There aren’t enough western targets to attack in their neighborhoods and they can’t affect supply lines or military operations by western powers in the countries from where they come. The only chance they have to effect change is to instill fear and hope that western leaders and populaces give in to the fear of the unknown because the next attack could be tomorrow or next week and it could be a soccer match or a concert.
It worked for Bin Laden.
redshirt
@HumboldtBlue: Brilliant reply.
And it is the truth they have no power except what we give them. To fear them, to respond to them, is to give them power. The Republicans enable America’s enemies, quite literally.
Villago Delenda Est
@redshirt: Rethuglicans are giving our enemies aid and comfort.
That’s all there is to it.
They need to be dealt with as the Constitution provides for.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Is it ISIS using psy-ops or is it America’s permawar machine? I remember the German discotheque bombing in 1986, perpetrated by Muslim extremists. No one suggested then that we go to fight them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here. Fast forward to now and Paris is apparently America’s 51st state.
Mary G
Thank you, Adam. I have been waiting for you to weigh in with some sense after all the crap that’s gone on today. They only win if we run around like chickens with their heads cut off and do the things the Republicans want to do.
Can you comment on Hillary’s no-fly zone in Syria? What is that supposed to accomplish beside pissing off Putin, who isn’t the problem here?
Tommy
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: I run into something of a problem. Kind of a liberal here, so when I say what I am about to say it isn’t so liberal. There are some people you need to put a bullet in the back of their heads. Period.
Schlemazel
Put it into perspective, we use guns to kill more people every week here in the US than were killed in Paris. Whom shall I fear? We shoot to death 11 or 12 9/11s every year. Whom shall I fear? On average 1 child 3 or under has killed someone with a gun every week in the US, that will be nearly half the number killed in Paris . . . toddlers killed nearly half as many people in the US as ISIS killed in Paris. Whom shall I fear?
HumboldtBlue
@redshirt:
The French are also no newbies when it comes to terror attacks. They were a vicious occupier in North Africa and they have been the target of nationalistic and Islamic groups far more than the United States.
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
And remember, just three years earlier it was the Republican hero Ronald Reagan who, after watching 299 American and French military members die in the bombing of the barracks in Beirut, pulled up anchor and went home as fast as he fucking could. And he was correct to do so.
max
Also called PSYOP.”
Should be called ‘Maximum Extreme Ultra Trolling’. (By Ronco!)
@Mary G: Can you comment on Hillary’s no-fly zone in Syria? What is that supposed to accomplish beside pissing off Putin, who isn’t the problem here?
The no-fly zone has been a thing with people using humanitarian international polispeak since 1991, and it can mean anything. In this case, it means ‘the Turks are demanding we go to war with Assad, but will settle for destroying his air force and bombing his air fields so they don’t have to’.
Kremlinology-wise, she is making nice with Erdogan.
max
[‘The problem with Erdogan is that he IS the problem.’]
Villago Delenda Est
Here’s a nice diversion from all this idiocy:
https://youtu.be/eiHXASgRTcA
hellslittlestangel
“We went down this rabbit hole … “
Yeah, that’s where scared rabbits go.
Mary G
@max: That makes sense, thanks. I think we need to stop doing our allies’ work for them.
mike in dc
The GOP frontrunner today appeared to come out in favor of a registry and special ID badges for American Muslims. The color of the star and crescent to be sewed into Muslim attire was not discussed, however.
redshirt
@HumboldtBlue: Right. The only proper response to terrorist attacks is to mourn the dead, and then try and ensure such an attack doesn’t happen again, and make sure you prosecute the folks involved to the fullest.
Rinse and repeat.
Schlemazel
@HumboldtBlue:
St. Ronnie was dead wrong in leaving those Marines in the situation that got them killed. He ignored the advice of his generals who told him to leave them on ships off shore but that was not macho enough for Reagan. He left them hung out to dry.
Cacti
@mike in dc:
The Teabaggers are morphing from proto-fascist political movement into a fully fascist one.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: I was only kidding. And I have no authority to ask you to do anything on behalf of the site anyway…
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: And that’s a good and proper attitude. I may be wired funny or it may be the cumulative thirty years of martial arts training, but I’m not really scared of the physical threats. They just don’t seem to bother me.
Adam L Silverman
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Its a combination. One of the hallmarks of terrorism is that the targets are not necessarily the victims, especially if the victims are dead. The targets are everyone else that can be terrorized into changing their behavior and attitudes. The media is just a medium for transmission of the PSYOPs message. And because the media is corporate, and all about putting eyeballs on advertising, it is in their interest to be played this way.
p.a.
@HumboldtBlue: Not before he lobbed battleship rounds indiscriminately into Beirut, just because.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: The no fly zone is a bad idea. There are two reasons. One it is a de facto act of war, just like an embargo – even though we don’t commonly talk about these things this way. The other issue is its going to put us at odds with Russia as it will hamper their abilities to pursue their operational objectives. States don’t have friends, they have interests. Right now our interests and Russia’s interests, as well as Iran’s, all overlap, though not perfectly in Syria. If we’re going to back off the idea of removing Assad, which I think makes a lot of sense, then the smartest thing we can do is pursue our interests, in concert with the other states involved that actually want to fight both ISIS and al Nusra, as far as those interest align.
HumboldtBlue
@Schlemazel:
One of them was my cousin. I had taken the first of what would be two enlistment oaths just a month earlier.
Baud
Republicans aren’t scared because they’re scared of terrorism. They’re scared because they don’t have one of their own in the White House. When W. told them to go shopping, they didn’t hate him for not taking terrorism seriously. They went shopping, and they said, “Thank God George Bush is President.”
Thor Heyerdahl
The “Global War On Terror” should have been called the “Total War Against Terror” – since we were already calling neocons by the acronym anyway.
p.a.
Do we have a good handle on Daesh leaders? Are they true believers or ex-Baathists using theology to recruit and inspire? How hierarchical v how diffuse is command? And how do these answers (if we have them) influence our actions?
redshirt
@p.a.: I’m interested in these answers too. What is the Daesh leadership structure?
HumboldtBlue
@p.a.:
Here’s an overview from Al Jazeera from late last year
Schlemazel
@HumboldtBlue:
What he did was a crime and I am sorry for its impact on your family. I was one of those who felt half-hearted about Carter & regret not working harder to re-elect him. I was young & stupid, a mistake I have not made again.
slag
I don’t know. I had been heretofore mildly nostalgic for a good old-fashioned Republican pants wetting hootenanny. Now I’m supposed to think ahead to the day after hangover? Buzz kill.
Besides, David Brooks says that we liberals are the “if it feels good, do it” party, which is why we’re all like, “Yay! Torture!”. What would this world be coming to if David Brooks were wrong about something?
Baud
The woman on Lawrence right now has the most Frenchiest accent ever.
schrodinger's cat
We don’t even need terrorists to terrify ourselves, remember the Ebola scare before the last elections?
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
And the website redesign.
Adam L Silverman
@p.a.: @redshirt: We do. They’re not ex-Baathists. Those guys were the Sufi military folks in the Naqshbandi Order. They got done over hard after ISIS initially leveraged them last year.
The ISIS leadership is all hardline adherents of tawheed. I’ve read reporting on, and seen excerpts of, their informational and propaganda materials and other instruction manuals. Many are simply cut and paste jobs of the writing of Ibn Abd al Wahhab and his actual and clerical descendants. This is the real problem we’re facing and I’ve seen far too little attempts to specifically identify this as the root doctrinal/ideational cause. The closest I’ve seen is the Brookings Report from last Spring. Very, very well done, but even its author spends far too much time working in circles around this by burying it within the salafi-jihadi concept.
Corner Stone
Elise Labott is now in full retreat mode due to CNN being a fucking coward BS organization.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: So were we the terrorists or the terrorized in that one?
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Sufi? I thought Sufis were pacifists and much hated by the purists like Taliban. Indian Sufis sing qawwalis, dance, write and sing poems about Krishna too.
Or do you mean Salafi?
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat: He kind of has to mean Salafi, right?
ETA, I think he actually is talking about a militant Sufi order. That is fascinating.
redshirt
@Baud: Are you sure it’s not falafel?
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: Who knows, may be there are some crazy Sufi sects too. God knows I am no expert.
redshirt
I went to the Falafel King on Tuesday and he was as gracious as ever. Just straight up giving everyone a falefel ball dipped in hummus. That’s why he’s the King.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat: I always thought Sufis danced in the mountains of Colorado when they weren’t show jumping horses. Kell sooprise.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: Shrines to dargas (tombs) of Sufi saints like Salim Chisti are major pilgrimage centers for Indian Muslims and have many Hindu patrons as well. The other day I posted a link to the Qawwali version of Gandhi’s favorite bhajan. Then there was Kabir, who wrote about both Ram and Rahim.
Peale
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: we bombed Libya over that, killing Khadafi’s toddler?
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes and no. The Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order (of Iraq) or as is usually referred to just as The Naqshbandi Order, was made of a significant number of Sufi former members of the Iraqi military. The group centered around the al Douris. They fight and they fight very, very effectively. Most were also Baathists, because they served in Saddam Hussein’s military. They formed an early alliance with the ISIS guys and the most senior al Douri, the late Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, was the Naqshandi sheikh. He also provided some of the initial strategic, operational, and tactical expertise to ISIS as it was reemerging in late 2013 into early 2014. As many of us predicted the ISIS folks turned on the Naqshbandi folks, once they were no longer as necessary as a resource, because, of course, Sufism is takfir/apostasy.
Overall, yes, Sufis are non-violent Muslims who’s devotions can be both mystical and/or ecstatic. But these guys were serious fighters.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: 52nd. The 51st had Olympians attacked in Munich.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: I guess one can’t generalize. I didn’t know anything about Iraqi Sufis.
jl
And I think a terrorist victory is not just that Daesh wins in terms of inducing the rest of the democratic and human-rights-respecting peoples of world to give up it their values. I think Daesh benefits in tangible and practical ways from making the refugee crisis harder to solve, keeping more people in turmoil in the nations on its informal territorial borders, and remaining as displaced people in Syria. So it is a PSYOPs with much more than a psychological or symbolic payoff.
BTW, did the GOP include any provisions in the bill to help Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon with the millions of refugess those three countries have to deal with? Send them money to help the refugees? To tide them over while the new more onerous more lengthy process is put in place? I’m just wondering here. I certainly cannot believe the GOP would just say we ain’t taking them and not propose anything at all to deal with the problem, which is a real practical problem in resolving the crisis and defeating Daesh. That would irresponsible.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: No worries. My guess is few do. And not all Iraqi Sufis are militant or willing to be fighters. A lot are just Sufis like everywhere else. But remember, they still, as a community, had to survive under Saddam Hussein. So a significant portion joined the party and the military. Unfortunately, if there is going to be a Gestapo, it is far better to be a part of it than one of its targets…
Mike J
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
New Model Army
Adam L Silverman
@jl: That’s exactly right. I didn’t work it into the post, but everyone on the cable news I got glimpses of while at the gym this afternoon, were freaking because ISIL said in September they were going to infiltrate 4,000 terrorists into the refugee outflow. While I wouldn’t put it past them to try, and even to succeed with a small number, to be honest they don’t actually have to do anything. All they have to do is announce that’s what they’re doing and we’re going to tie ourselves into knots trying to find those 4,000 terrorists hiding as refugees. Even if there aren’t any. So we’ll spend money, we’ll panic over admitting refugees, we’ll jump at shadows, we’ll tie up personnel, we’ll probably kill some people by accident. Again: ISIL uses our reactions as the ways and means to achieve their ends.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I thought they needed those to pay for the increased military equipment budget that would be needed to bomb the fuck out of everyone not them. Which translated means that the MIC need the money to build better paid executives and useless weaponry so fuck humanity.
agorabum
We’ve had one party tell the people that the right thing to do in response to any terror attack or any threatened terror attack is abject panic, torture of suspects, the surrender of rights, and the fear of the other. People who may have learned to do the right thing have instead learned to be fearful, and that to alternatively lash out or cower is the right response.
Just another tragedy of the Bush presidency.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@p.a.:
According to a source on NPR yesterday, ISIS originated with Al Quaeda in Iraq with a new name.
The apocalyptic New Caliphate rhetoric came from a man who was basically a gangster, who was not a devout Muslim, but borrowed apocalyptic ideas from Christianity and other religions to demogogue his way to power. He was joined by a lot of ex-Baathists who resented their loss of power and enfluence. They have since been joined by a lot of True Believers, Like most right wing political movements, it is a combination of grifters and True Believers.
someguy
Worth noting the French security services can put lock down surveillance on pretty much anybody they want at any time, and they’ve never been terribly picky about how they get confessions. They’ve gotten one of the captured ISIS operatives to lay out the cells he was aware of already… There are already bans in place on traditional dress for Arab women including headscarves, hijabs and niqabs, speech isn’t really protected the way it is in the US…
So it’s not like they have a huge amount of civil liberties to lose. That said the French security apparatus is way smaller than the US equivalent so a lack of resources functions as a check on large scale abuse.
Humboldtblue
It appears that led to the cancellation of the Holland-Germany soccer match scheduled for Hanover on Tuesday.