Islamic State

[Diablo]

The current situation has changed the game in the ME. This is threat to the whole region, and potentially some Western nations including Britain. The only way that anything can be done is to stabilise Iraq and Syria.

Iraq may be getting there, now that Maliki is gone. If the next government can be all-inclusive and buy-in the Sunnis with Western help - more than currently on offer - then IS can be pushed from that direction.

Fixing Syria requires that the West reverse its current stand and actively supports Assad. That would allow defeat of the opposition, the moderate ones unfortunately as well as IS, and close with the forces in Iraq.

Fairly unpalatable for the West, but the aid could force concessions from Assad towards a better government, more representation etc.

Anyone got any better ideas?

[DramaQueen]

Nuke mecca.
Muahahahahahahhaha

But seriously I can't think of anything other than stability and education (real education not the propaganda)

[Cato]

This topic is really starting to enrage me. People are right to condemn ISIL, but what is said of Saudi Arabia beheading people for non-violent crimes, including sorcery. Our reaction to SA; buy oil and sell them military equipment. The entire region is filled with barbaric religious lunatics. What to do?

You recommend supporting Assad, but our disastrous track record of supporting different regimes gives me concern about supporting anyone. I know this will sound inhumane, but I think we should totally walk away from the region. Let them wipe each other off the face of the Earth.

[DramaQueen]

What would happen if al-Hejaz and al-Hassa get independence?

[Anomalocaris]

The west should never have turned its back on Assad in the first place. That was a transparent, clumsy, and short sighted attempt to opportunistically lever out Russian influence in Syria and install a pro-western government there, mainly by the US. It blew back and Putin is probably laughing his ass off.

I don't think the Obama administration will now turn back and do the smart thing by helping Assad win the civil war and root out ISIS. first this would open him to more opportunistic sniping domestically. Second this would go against powerful neoconservative fraction in the state department who can not stomach admitting that letting a Russian puppet regain preeminence had been the smart thing to do all along.

Instead, I think neoconservatives would argue for the insane course of attacking both Assad and ISIS with boots on the ground. Obama will likely take the course of insane lite by bombing both Assad and ISIS rather than sending troops there.

It appears in every mainly US sponsored color revolutions since 2003, the so called forces for democracy have turned out to have been liars, incompetents, extremists, and fools. Where as so called forces of oppression have been telling what was closer to the truth.

[Brakeman]

The obvious problem that Americans consciously dance around is the problem of Islam and its entrenchment within primitive, and soon-to-be primitive cultures. There is no god, no allah, no angels to visit a horrible muhammad.
It is all a lie and con that is very dangerous to our world. America's love feast with our own set of imaginary gods puts us in a fix to address the core issue.

Dropping leaflets over Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia that explain why Islam is a silly myth and that no gods exist would infuriate the world, but some of it might stick. In the end, only rational anti-islam education will finally end the scourge.

[Anomalocaris]

The obvious problem that Americans consciously dance around is the problem of Islam and its entrenchment within primitive, and soon-to-be primitive cultures. There is no god, no allah, no angels to visit a horrible muhammad.
It is all a lie and con that is very dangerous to our world. America's love feast with our own set of imaginary gods puts us in a fix to address the core issue.

Dropping leaflets over Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia that explain why Islam is a silly myth and that no gods exist would infuriate the world, but some of it might stick. In the end, only rational anti-islam education will finally end the scourge.

We can't do that. We would be calling ourselves out for the silly myths that dominate our own public course.

They are barbarians with RPGS and hatchets. We are not far from barbarians at all and we have nuclear weapons and a stranglehold on much of the world's mass communication.

[DramaQueen]

The obvious problem that Americans consciously dance around is the problem of Islam and its entrenchment within primitive, and soon-to-be primitive cultures. There is no god, no allah, no angels to visit a horrible muhammad.
It is all a lie and con that is very dangerous to our world. America's love feast with our own set of imaginary gods puts us in a fix to address the core issue.

Dropping leaflets over Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia that explain why Islam is a silly myth and that no gods exist would infuriate the world, but some of it might stick. In the end, only rational anti-islam education will finally end the scourge.

You're just going to confirm the conspiracy theories.
We should do it implicitly so they wouldn't get their children out of schools (teach them how not what to think)
That's my opinion.

[Diablo]

This topic is really starting to enrage me. People are right to condemn ISIL, but what is said of Saudi Arabia beheading people for non-violent crimes, including sorcery. Our reaction to SA; buy oil and sell them military equipment. The entire region is filled with barbaric religious lunatics. What to do?

You recommend supporting Assad, but our disastrous track record of supporting different regimes gives me concern about supporting anyone. I know this will sound inhumane, but I think we should totally walk away from the region. Let them wipe each other off the face of the Earth.

I agree about SA, it's a disgrace, but it is at least stable. I don't think we should sell military equipment to them, though.

The problem with doing nothing is that there's a real risk of the thing spreading. What if IS establishes a viable state across Syria and Iraq? It would threaten Western trade and security, suppose it obtained WMDs? Then there's the risk of exporting that idealogy back to Britain and other Western counties - there are plenty of foreign fighters there now.

[Anomalocaris]

This topic is really starting to enrage me. People are right to condemn ISIL, but what is said of Saudi Arabia beheading people for non-violent crimes, including sorcery. Our reaction to SA; buy oil and sell them military equipment. The entire region is filled with barbaric religious lunatics. What to do?

You recommend supporting Assad, but our disastrous track record of supporting different regimes gives me concern about supporting anyone. I know this will sound inhumane, but I think we should totally walk away from the region. Let them wipe each other off the face of the Earth.

We don't want to impose an regime of unfettered evolution by violent selection upon the Middle East, and at the end find ourselves facing the fittest that emerges. In fact that had been the single unifying theme of the whole western policy towards the Middle East since 1918. Break up the Arab world in such a way that secular sphere of influence clashes with ethnoreligious spheres of influence, and then beat down whichever appear to gain ascendancy over the other. Inserting a Jewish state into the middle can be seen as part of this effort.

One might argue a dominate theme of internal political development of Arab world had been to push back on the arbitrary division of Arab world along conflict inducing lines, and unify the Arab world into a power block on the world stage. First it was the secular panarabism, of which Baathist parties of Syria, Egypt and Iraq were the champions. They were discredited by their failure to root out Israel. Now it's the turn of ethnoreligious forces to try to redraw Arab world along ethnoreligious lines.

I doubt that would change now.