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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I had a similar thought when writing my comment. ISIS is clearly a shock and awe reply to shock and awe. And the economic argument is compelling given the lack of jobs for uneducated young men in that region.
But as ISIS grew and became a quasi-govt, it morphed into a death cult. The rapes, rampant beheadings for frivolous violations of religious edicts, and brutal subjugation of fellow Muslims is intended to terrorize their own people, not scare foreign fighters.
It was a mix of various aims, but I think in the end it turned into a poor man’s Nazi SS, with a touch of Gehngis Khan and Idi Amin.
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If you're looking at body counts in Syria, ISIS is in second place by a country mile. If you're looking at torture and enslavement, well, then they're contenders; part of the success they had in Syria was that they were a viable alternative to Assad who wasn't much better and arguably worse for many. Why do we react less strongly to Assad's crimes? Syria will now return to its regularly scheduled mass killings.
More importantly, why can't Americans see that Lebanon or Jordan, next door, are completely different environments with massively different attitudes, thought processes, and ways of dealing with and fighting this? Jordanian pilots flew a ton of missions into ISIS territory, yet are never mentioned as our allies. And Lebanon was home to over 1.5 million refugees, critical to winning those battles, in probably the greatest humanitarian effort by any one country since the post-WWII days.
And why weren't Americans prepared to provide any meaningful support to the Arab Spring?
