The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Siege]

Obomber is trying to emulate Clinton?

[CountDeMoney]

Things are tough all over.  We can't keep creating vacuums.

Ignoring Syria is what created the vacuum for ISIS to metastasize.

I wish people would agree whether it was our evil imperialism that created ISIS or our insufficient interventionalism that did it.

It's both. You can go back to the U.S. adventure in Iraq to trace the genesis of ISIS but Syria was the incubator/nursery.

I blame the Russians in not supporting their client states properly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  So there.

[KRonn]

My fear is that US involvement in attacking ISIL in Syria will morph into a more active campaign to oust Assad because we're now more aggressively arming and training the Syrian Free Army with the idea of them being the ground soldiers who will go after ISIL. But their biggest aim is to topple the Assad regime, so US leaders will probably feel compelled to give them a lot more help on that, thereby getting the US heavily involved in the Syrian Civil War. That'll be a mess, a real quagmire that may make Iraq look tame, as the Syrian government is supported by Russia and Iran. So the US will be fighting a larger proxy war and it will get messy with unforeseen consequences with the other major players or Syrian groups of various kinds. Deja vu Iraq.

The biggest thing is that while the Assad regime is horrid, what's going to replace it in the failed state that Syria becomes in the aftermath, if the regime is actually toppled? Which version of ISIL  or AQ type groups? They'll likely be even worse. Just have to look at what ISIL does in Iraq. We were all gung-ho in toppling Ghadaffi and where did that lead to?  A failed state overrun with extremists, and the extremists there aren't even at the level of sophistication that ISIL has attained. Or will the US be expected to occupy Syria for more nation building to try and avoid the vacuum power chaos, similar to the mess, expense and casualties of Iraq? Iraq's aftermath hasn't gone well either.

I can go along with attacking ISIL sites, supplies and communications, in Syria as part of the fight in Iraq, but I can't go along with becoming so involved in Syria's civil war. And as for Iraq, I certainly don't want this to become a war that the US wants to win more than the Iraqis want to win. But the US broke Iraq and has responsibility there, to some extent anyway as the Iraqis will need to take on the issues themselves at some point. Then let them fight it and let the regional nations take these issues on more strongly, and the US needs to find ways to exit these inter-tribal and religious confilcts as much as possible. I agree with Obama on that.

[citizen k]

The biggest thing is that while the Hitler regime is horrid, what's going to replace it in the failed state that Germany becomes in the aftermath, if the regime is actually toppled?

Thank god that wasn't a talking point during WWII.

[Zanza]

The biggest thing is that while the Hitler regime is horrid, what's going to replace it in the failed state that Germany becomes in the aftermath, if the regime is actually toppled?

Thank god that wasn't a talking point during WWII.

Germany wasn't a failed state and it was already ruled by the most extremist regime imaginable during WW2, so it wouldn't have made sense to make either a talking point.

[The Brain]

The biggest thing is that while the Hitler regime is horrid, what's going to replace it in the failed state that Germany becomes in the aftermath, if the regime is actually toppled?

Thank god that wasn't a talking point during WWII.

Maybe it should have been. Hitler was replaced by an illiterate moran.

[KRonn]

WW2 was very different. The allies had good plans for the aftermath as those nations were western or a lot more amenable to major change, as we see the results. We don't have such good and workable plans for rebuilding mid east nations who don't want much of what the west is doing. We know what we get with mideast nation building, the factional, tribal and religious divides that are on going and have been for centuries. That isn't going to be solved by US military power or by US nation building. There was a time early in the Iraq conflict when I thought maybe it could happen but the US/west seems to want it more than the locals. IMO we need to be a lot more cautious and circumspect with how much the US gets involved, and especially if the US is carrying most of the military and financial freight.

[mongers]

Good news, it's reported five British jihadis have been killed in a US airstrike not on IS, but the Al-Nusra front in Iblib province.

[derspiess]

Well if there's one thing our air force is good at, it's bombing Brits.

[Zoupa]

French hostage beheaded by Algerian extremists

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/french-hostage-reportedly-beheaded-in-algeria/

RABAT, Morocco -- Algerian extremists allied with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have decapitated a French hostage after France ignored their demand to stop airstrikes in Iraq, according to a video obtained Wednesday by a U.S.-based terrorism watchdog.

A group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, had said they would kill French mountaineer Herve Gourdel after abducting him Sunday unless France ended its airstrikes against ISIS fighters in Iraq within 24 hours.

French President Francois Hollande confirmed Gourdel's killing Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters the hostage was cruelly "assassinated" because he was French and because his country was fighting terrorism and defending human liberty against barbarity.

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Obama on ISIS: World must "dismantle this network of death"

In the video, masked gunmen from the newly formed group that split away from al-Qaida's North Africa branch, pledged their allegiance to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said they were fighting his enemies. They criticized the French attacks in Iraq as well as its intervention against radical Islamists in Mali.

Terrorism watchdog SITE Intelligence Group said the video had been posted on social networking site Twitter.

The video resembled those showing the beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker in recent weeks, but instead of showing President Barack Obama, it showed French President Hollande.

Gourdel -- a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice -- was seized in the Djura Djura mountains of northern Algeria on Sunday during a hiking trip. His Algerian companions were released.

Algerian forces unleashed a massive search for him in the remote mountainous region that is one of the last strongholds of Islamic extremists in Algeria.

Reuters reported the group released a video Monday that appeared to show Gourdel, saying he had been kidnapped by an Algeria-based ISIS splinter group called the Caliphate Soldiers.

The man, who gave his name, age and date of birth, said he had arrived in Algeria on Sept. 20 and been taken on Sept. 21, Reuters reports.

"I am in the hands of Jund al-Khilifa, an Algerian armed group. This armed group is asking me to ask you (President Francois Hollande) to not intervene in Iraq. They are holding me as a hostage and I ask you Mr. President to do everything to get me out of this bad situation and I thank you," the man says in the video, according to Reuters.

France started airstrikes in Iraq on Friday, the first country to join the U.S. military campaign against ISIS fighters there.

"Our values are at stake," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday after hearing about the video. He would not comment further, but minutes earlier he insisted that France would continue fighting in Iraq as long as necessary.

Algeria has been fighting Islamic extremists since the 1990s and in recent years they had been largely confined to a few mountainous areas, where they have concentrated on attacking soldiers and police while leaving civilians alone.

The killing of a hostage represents a departure for radical Islamic groups in Algeria which in the past decade have made millions of ransoming hostages.

Time to go back in boys.

[Viking]

is it just me or are the fault lines in the sunni-shiite war beginning to look like the fault lines in the byzantine-sassanian war(s)?

[Syt]

So, is the Muslim Middle East now starting to go through its equivalent of the Thirty Years War?

[Duque de Bragança]

French hostage beheaded by Algerian extremists

Time to go back in boys.

L'argument-massu(e) ! 

[Viking]

So, is the Muslim Middle East now starting to go through its equivalent of the Thirty Years War?

no we are waiting for a new final prophet to show up and destroy both their houses. I vote for a prophet in the line of Darwin, Ingersol Green, Dawkins and Hitchens.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

So, is the Muslim Middle East now starting to go through its equivalent of the Thirty Years War?

no we are waiting for a new final prophet to show up and destroy both their houses. I vote for a prophet in the line of Darwin, Ingersol Green, Dawkins and Hitchens.

Sending in the Prophet Oppenheimer and it's many Saints would be a more permanent solution to the problem one might assume