Turning point?
During the almost two years that ISIS has been terrorizing, enslaving, and massacring the people of Iraq and Syria, most of the burden of fighting back against these religious maniacs has been borne by the peoples of the region -- the weak Iraqi state and its demoralized army, Syrian forces embroiled in a four-way civil war, and above all the Kurdish Peshmerga and PKK, with considerable support from Iran. The Western role has been mostly limited to air support, though this has helped substantially in some cases, as in this week's Kurdish attack which liberated the ISIS-held town of Sinjar.
That may be about to change. By murdering at least 128 people in Paris yesterday and 224 over the Sinai earlier this month, ISIS has demonstrated that it poses an intolerable threat to more distant and far more powerful nations -- and I don't mean only France and Russia, although obviously both of those can be expected to retaliate massively for the slaughter of their citizens. Does anyone imagine that those are the only infidel states these fanatics will target? They may already be planning attacks on Britain or Germany or Israel or our own country, or any number of others. An intelligent government will not simply wait to be attacked before taking action.
I suspect that in the days to come the war against ISIS will be broadened and escalated dramatically, and even these deranged nihilists will come to realize that they've made a deadly mistake.
posted by Infidel753 at 8:45 AM
6 Comments:
I think it was brilliant of Obama to talk Putin into attacking ISIS (I bet it's no coincidence that Russia got involved shortly after the two met in private) because ISIS had a goal of drawing the U.S. into their territory. Despite what we have committed to recently, they didn't goad us into making a big enough target to suit them. We humiliated them by not waging all-out war on their "califate," treating them more like an enclave of trouble-makers. They want to be a "nation."
Well, they've be driven back to an al-qaeda level now and this is what we get. They will suffer the same fate as al qaeda, with a true international smack-down rather than a war on the U.S. It's horrible for the victims in Paris and everywhere else they've slaughtered people, but if this is what it takes for the rest of the world to step up, let's hope it will be the beginning of the end.
Indeed. A massive and cooperative military alliance is necessary to root out these religious fiends. There is only so much that can be done with smart bombs and drones. Alas, it will mean sending in troops and accepting heavy loss. Unfortunately this the necessary price we have to pay for living as decent human beings in enlightened societies.
"I suspect that in the days to come the war against ISIS will be broadened and escalated dramatically, and even these deranged nihilists will come to realize that they've made a deadly mistake."
Count on it. France will NOT take this lying down. Those days will undoubtedly come soon, and the situation in the Levant will grow even more heated.
Lady A: Russia can be a formidable opponent, all right -- as the Germans found out some time ago.
Flaxen: We do need to expand the anti-ISIS alliance as much as we can, and that may mean working more closely with countries like Russia and Iran (something a Republican President would find almost impossible), but I wouldn't want to see Western ground troops. The Kurds and Arabs are playing that role, and trying to take it on ourselves would probably not end well.
Ahab: I hope you're right. They're hitting back pretty hard already.
This past spring, when ISIS was repulsed at Kobane and the Iraqi army recaptured Tirkit, it seemed that a turning point had been reached. I even predicted on Facebook that ISIS would be either destroyed or seriously diminished by the end of the year. Then followed their capture of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. I began to worry that my prediction would prove wildly off the mark. However, there have been a number of recent battlefield successes lately. ISIS was expelled from Sinjar and Baiji in Iraq and the Syrian Kurds have captured a fairly large chunk of territory in Syria previously held by ISIS. It also appears that the Iraqi army is finally starting to make some tangible progress in retaking Ramadi. Add Russia and France to the mix in response to terrorist attacks against them, and it appears there is a good chance that my prediction will come true after all. I don't think they will be completely destroyed before year's end, but I think there is a good chance they will no longer be a contiguous territorial state but rather they will be reduced to being besieged in the major cities they hold, such as Raqqa and Mosul.
They are certainly losing. Unfortunately it's a long, slow grind because we're trying to defeat them while minimizing harm to the civilian population under their rule which, by and large, doesn't support them. But I think it's well past the point where their eventual defeat has become inevitable.
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