February 18, 2015
Shockingly....
...There are stories of even greater import than the fact that it is snowing in parts of North America in February.
This piece in the Atlantic has been widely linked to and deservedly so. I strongly urge you to read the whole thing. It gives one of the best overviews on the motivations of ISIS. It also explains in layman's terms the rationale behind what to those of us on the outside seems to be bizarre and frankly crazy behavior. They are not crazy. They are completely rational and logical given the premises they operate from. Nor are they ignorant as the group is led mostly by highly literate eschatologists who are, like many of the greatest monsters of all time convinced that they are going to make the world a better place and bring about heaven on earth. This is hard for people to get their heads around because it is simply so alien. They genuinely consider themselves to be virtuous. This is really beyond our modern experience, save possibly for the NAZIs, though even they were sufficiently uncomfortable with their atrocities that they tried to conceal them rather than using them as recruiting tools. The piece defies excerpting and you really should read the whole thing, but if you absolutely must get the Cliff's notes version or simply want to review the piece in bullet point format, Suburban Banshee has got your back. Take particular note of point #1.
In other news, it seems that ISIS is even more active in North Africa than previously supposed, having secured territory in the festering hell-hole formerly known as Libya, where they demonstrated their ability to operate with impunity by beheading 30 Egyptian Christians in the open on the beach, in broad daylight. In addition to a display of confidence the location choice is sending another message as well. It would appear that the ISIS "Barqa Province" in Africa consists of two coastal enclaves the smaller of which includes the city of Derna, an austere seaport, with a depth of only 15 feet, but it is a rail hub and has the logistical benefits that ports have.
Egypt chose to express their displeasure at the bigoted butchering of their citizens with bombs, rockets and cannon fire rather than hashtags. As a result, when they asked for intel assistance from their nominal allies in the US Government, they were, like the Jordanians before them, rebuffed.
Perhaps more worrying in some ways is the fact that the ISIS takeover of Derna is not exactly breaking news. It happened in August of last year . AFD did an in depth post on that unhappy development at the time. It makes for sobering reading.
Hifter’s personal army and the Libyan military, as I noted in my earlier post, are being more or less crushed in Benghazi, representing eighty percent of all deaths (military, Islamist, and civilians) in Benghazi from mid-October to mid-November alone.
Hifter/ Haftar is a Libyan general leading an anti-islamist coalition.
This map is from Wikipedia and may be outdated, but it gives some idea of the mess that Libya has become. ISIS controlled areas are black and mainly cities, the grey areas are controlled by Ansar-El-Sharia, which is reportedly allied closely with ISIS (and given the eschatological underpinnings of ISIS, may be only nominally separate).
Click here for supah-size.
Do note that Derna, in addition to being a railway hub and small port has some disadvantages, should we as a nation, ever rediscover our resolve. Being on the coast it is inherently susceptible to an amphibious assault, and I'm sure that the USMC would not mind to revisit the place.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
09:41 PM
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February 14, 2015
Let Us Wish the Danes Good Hunting
Terrorists have shot up a Copenhagen cafe in an apparent attempt to assassinate cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has some blasphemous tendencies. There was another fatal shooting at a synagogue shortly thereafter.
There is not much to add at this time, but here is something suitably non-Halal:
May they catch the bastards quickly.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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February 08, 2015
Janissaries
Via Instapundit, this article is rather hard to read without putting down the keyboard and crawling under the bed.
It seems that ISIS has made some progress in governing their state. They have established a comprehensive and rapidly expanding a program of universal and compulsory education.
Specifically, after killing all the teachers, they are sending the kids to religious and military indoctrination camps. Kids to young or not yet ready to fight are transported with assault forces and serve in rear echelon as blood donors.
There is more here, and bit of that is touched on in this video from Vice, which, while not really graphic is nevertheless high octane nightmare fuel.
On the other hand, I was not aware that Turkey had turned off the Euphrates.
Note that Boko Haram, which has had some cooperation with ISIS despite the two groups distance has been doing more of this as well of late. Previously, they had been killing boys and abducting girls but that seems to have changed in recent months.
In the 1300s the Muslims created the Jannissaries; children abducted from non moselem families on raids who were trained using Spartan methods to be shock troops that would not only have great combat prowess, but give their enemies pause due to the fear that they might be fighting their own relatives. These are no such elite force but they are a dreadful problem that is likely to linger rather unpleasantly, and will be both worse and more persistent the longer we allow these vile groups to fester .
This began as the 21st century. In some ways it is looking more like the 12th.
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