ISIS destroyed Jonah's tomb and other historical sites

[Simon_Jester]

You know... I really wish I could get these people together in a room and ask them just what the FUCK. They hope to accomplish...
Are they doing this for "Allah" ?
Do they think history is going to "thank" them for this?
Do think it's existence has some how spread evil and wickedness?
I mean wtf !!!

[Starglider's answer, while perhaps accurate, was trite and did not really address the question]

I'd bet money that, stripped to their essentials, their answers would be "yes, who cares, and yes."

They DO think that Allah's prohibitions on idol-worshipping are profoundly important, and that all worship should be directed toward the one, the unique, the all-powerful, the ineffable and intangible God. Worshipping any other, inferior and lesser thing, any thing of merely mortal nature, is a crime. A sin, because it is a religious crime, but more generally a crime.

They DO think that the very existence of physical sites where the relics of merely-mortal religious figures are kept is at best a temptation to idolatry. That depicting human beings (especially religious figures) is likewise a temptation to idolatry. That bad things happen to people's souls in places where that goes on. That nothing good can come of such places, any more than anything good can come of a crack house.

So if they see enough people visiting a shrine to some merely-mortal figure, they'll blow it up, the same way they would blow up a high-traffic crack house.

So they'll look at you like an ignorant heathen. They would view your questions the same way you would look at someone who asked you "why do the police bother to do anything about that crack house full of criminals and drug pushers? Why not just let it be open?"

[Even if you favor drug legalization, I doubt you think that crack houses as they exist in America are in ANY way a positive influence on the community]

...

Now, do they think history will thank them for this? I don't know. I don't think they care; they are living very much in the now, the only really important history to them is whatever happened in living memory (which is fact) plus whatever happened in the days of the Prophet and his immediate successors (which is sacred legend).

It is, therefore, the Year Zero for them as far as 'modern' Islamic culture is concerned. Everything has to be torn down and rebuilt along lines better aligned with the proper, God-given ways of running a civilization.

And that includes the past.

Funny thing is that Jonah's tomb is a holy spot for all Abrahamic religions including Islam. So they're destroying their own cultural monuments because they don't like the people who come to worship at them.

Actually ISIS are iconoclasts. They intend to wipe out all shrines and monuments

They've even stated that they intend to destroy the Kaaba as it has now become an idol distracting from God.

Okay, now that's nutty and will probably be a limiting factor on their spread.

Saudi Arabia engages in a lot of archeological destruction as well, basically everything that speaks against the official history is destroyed or neglected (like the many very old christian churches that in some cases get bulldozed). Really, nobody really cares about history in that part of the world unless it can be used for politics. The only examples outside of that are Jordan and Israel (Egypt and surprisingly Iran to some degree as well). But that is about it, every other state doesn't really care.

I'm not surprised by Iran's attitude; they are Persian nationalists as well as being Shia fundamentalists. Moreover, Shia Islam is very heavily tied up with a historical grounding, because it originated with what were essentially loyalists supporting a particular lineage as successors to the first caliphs.

Sunni Islam can function in recognizable form even if you erase all the history between the days of Muhammed and the present, because it's essentially just a body of laws and customs motivated by divine mandate. Shia Islam does not, it's a sect with a strong, historically motivated sense of religious identity that cannot be erased and Year Zeroed away unless you want to remove the Shia sect's reason for existing as a distinct religious minority.

You know... I really wish I could get these people together in a room and ask them just what the FUCK. They hope to accomplish...
Are they doing this for "Allah" ?
Do they think history is going to "thank" them for this?
Do think it's existence has some how spread evil and wickedness?
I mean wtf !!!

ISIS is a rampaging horde of what can best be called animals in human form. Conversing with them is pointless, as it'a debatable if they're even capable of the higher brain functions generally associated with being a human being. Would you ask a rabid dog why it bites people? The same situation, and the same response to it, apply here.

No, that is not the case. They are people who think very differently from you, but they are not brainless animals.

You're on a science fiction forum, we regularly talk about actual aliens, and the best working definition I've ever heard of for 'alien' is "something that thinks at least as well as you do, but differently." By that standard, ISIS zealots are aliens to you. They do not think the way you do, they do not value what you value. They value something else instead. This does not make them animals; don't mistake different priorities for brainlessness, because not all people with brains decide on the same course of action in the same situation.

They have serious delusions of grandeur, with the goal of establishing a pan-Arab Islamic state/Caliphate, and ultimately... "taking over the world", beginning with Rome. Seriously.

I guess London and New York aren't good enough for them.

At a guess, they think God will buoy them up, as He did in the days of the first four prophets.

Look at the rapid spread of Islam in the first 50-100 years after the founding of the religion, and tell me there isn't a precedent for the idea that it could spread massively farther outward in an immense surge. It may be delusional, but it is, again, something that at least makes sense within their frame of reference. Even if it's probably overambitious even within that frame of reference.

---

It's really discouraging that the Iraqi military is having so much trouble with these idiots.

The Iraqi military is what we have made of them: a bunch of demoralized men with no esprit d'corps, run by a bunch of lickspittles and toadies who we mainly backed because they lacked the moral courage to stand up to us in any particular.

Nation building is hard, especially if you're not willing to take "no" for an answer from the nation you intend to build. This is what happens when you get it wrong: you 'build' a nation that cannot stand up under its own power, even when the enemy attacking it is pitifully weak in objective terms.

I bet Saddam Hussein's armies would have had a better chance against ISIS than this, because at least some of them had some semblance of discipline, and a willingness to fight for the regime.

Your lack of faith in Iraqi nationalism is debatable. Yeah, Iraq is ultimately an arbitrary British creation, but it's fostered a sense of solid nationalism in the intervening decades. Just look at how Iraqis reacted to their football team doing well during the summer Olympics. The association with ancient Mesopotamia and cosmopolitan Baghdad also helps create a sense of nationalistic pride. Anecdotally, most Iraqi nationals express affection for their country, before the US fucked it up via sanctions and war. And I'm not only talking about people who lived in Baghdad, but also people from Basra and Mosul.

Basra is in southern Iraq, and frankly the strip of Iraq from Baghdad to Mosul would all be one of those "three major fragments" Irbis was talking about. It's not surprising that people in that stretch of the country all feel the same way about an Iraq they think of as "their country."

The catch is that the Basra/Baghdad people's idea of "their country" differs from the ideas of people farther north. And even if that wasn't entirely true in 2004 (back before the worst of the violence associated with the US occupation and 'nation-building'), it's more true today... because said occupation and the associated elections gave rise to a government that was very decidedly not religiously or ethnically neutral, and was biased against the northern Sunni minority.

Whereas Hussein had been neutral or friendly toward this minority, in the usual way of dictators that establish themselves in power by creating a minority group which can't rely on anyone except them for survival.

[Block]

The Iraqi military is what we have made of them: a bunch of demoralized men with no esprit d'corps, run by a bunch of lickspittles and toadies who we mainly backed because they lacked the moral courage to stand up to us in any particular.

Nation building is hard, especially if you're not willing to take "no" for an answer from the nation you intend to build. This is what happens when you get it wrong: you 'build' a nation that cannot stand up under its own power, even when the enemy attacking it is pitifully weak in objective terms.

I bet Saddam Hussein's armies would have had a better chance against ISIS than this, because at least some of them had some semblance of discipline, and a willingness to fight for the regime.

A lot of this is wrong. The INA is what it is because of the damage done after we left. They weren't in great shape for a western army when we left, but compared to their status just before this started, it's day and night. Al'Maliki spent two full years fucking up the fighting spirit of the Iraqi army, forcing out competent Kurdish and Sunni officers and officials, and just generally making life miserable for anyone who wasn't Shia. The toadies and lickspittles aren't ours, they're his, unless you think the US fixed all the elections after it pulled out. As for Saddam's army, a lot of them are fighting alongside ISIS at the moment, so yes, they'd probably give a better showing than the current Iraqi army, as even the Peshmurga are having trouble in fights with even numbers.

[madd0ct0r]

Your lack of faith in Iraqi nationalism is debatable. Yeah, Iraq is ultimately an arbitrary British creation, but it's fostered a sense of solid nationalism in the intervening decades. Just look at how Iraqis reacted to their football team doing well during the summer Olympics. The association with ancient Mesopotamia and cosmopolitan Baghdad also helps create a sense of nationalistic pride. Anecdotally, most Iraqi nationals express affection for their country, before the US fucked it up via sanctions and war. And I'm not only talking about people who lived in Baghdad, but also people from Basra and Mosul.

Of the three Iraqis I work with daily, two introduced themselves to me as Kurds. They want peace and stability above all else, and reckon an independent homeland is their best bet.

[Guardsman Bass]

I think the iconoclasm is a more recent thing, coming out of the hard-core Wahhabism that Saudi Arabia did its damnedest to spread to other muslim countries. There are tons of historical portraits of Mohammed in the Arab World, for example.

[Simon_Jester]

The Iraqi military is what we have made of them: a bunch of demoralized men with no esprit d'corps, run by a bunch of lickspittles and toadies who we mainly backed because they lacked the moral courage to stand up to us in any particular.

Nation building is hard, especially if you're not willing to take "no" for an answer from the nation you intend to build. This is what happens when you get it wrong: you 'build' a nation that cannot stand up under its own power, even when the enemy attacking it is pitifully weak in objective terms.

I bet Saddam Hussein's armies would have had a better chance against ISIS than this, because at least some of them had some semblance of discipline, and a willingness to fight for the regime.

A lot of this is wrong. The INA is what it is because of the damage done after we left. They weren't in great shape for a western army when we left, but compared to their status just before this started, it's day and night. Al'Maliki spent two full years fucking up the fighting spirit of the Iraqi army, forcing out competent Kurdish and Sunni officers and officials, and just generally making life miserable for anyone who wasn't Shia. The toadies and lickspittles aren't ours, they're his, unless you think the US fixed all the elections after it pulled out. As for Saddam's army, a lot of them are fighting alongside ISIS at the moment, so yes, they'd probably give a better showing than the current Iraqi army, as even the Peshmurga are having trouble in fights with even numbers.

OK. Let me think over what you've told me.

To be fair, that's in line with most of what I remember from prior to the US pullout.

Let me switch to asking questions:

In your opinion, to what extent did Maliki's effort to take and hold power hinge on him ingratiating himself to the US during the latter phase of the occupation?

[Channel72]

Your lack of faith in Iraqi nationalism is debatable. Yeah, Iraq is ultimately an arbitrary British creation, but it's fostered a sense of solid nationalism in the intervening decades. Just look at how Iraqis reacted to their football team doing well during the summer Olympics. The association with ancient Mesopotamia and cosmopolitan Baghdad also helps create a sense of nationalistic pride. Anecdotally, most Iraqi nationals express affection for their country, before the US fucked it up via sanctions and war. And I'm not only talking about people who lived in Baghdad, but also people from Basra and Mosul.

Of the three Iraqis I work with daily, two introduced themselves to me as Kurds. They want peace and stability above all else, and reckon an independent homeland is their best bet.

Obviously, the Kurds are a different story. They have identified themselves as Kurds first, Iraqis second, since the days of Saddam. But there is definitely a sense of Iraqi nationalism south of Erbil, you know.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's less than century old arbitrary line on the map written by ignorant British cricket player who didn't gave a damn about religious or ethnical divides. No one thinks of it as their state outside of Baghdad.

Where are you getting the cricket player part from? Mark Sykes, to my knowledge, while certainly ignorant and generally a devious human being, wasn't a cricket player. He was a career politician for the most part.

Anyway, I think you are overstating things a little bit. While it's true that the British were pretty arbitrary about the way they divided things up, Iraq wasn't completely new. The borders given to Iraq more or less followed the borders of the old Mamluk dynasty, which dated back to 1704, and wasn't that far off from following the borders of the Safavids (excluding, of course, Persia/Iran). Not trying to defend the British at all, but Iraq as a geographical unit did previously exist.

[Simon_Jester]

At the same time, though, the Mamluk and Safavid rulers were foreign to Iraq.

What it comes down to is that following the borders of existing territories when creating a nation, if those territories were old imperial provinces or the historical borders of a now-defunct monarchy, doesn't automatically create a sense of national identity for the new nation.

Then again, this sounds like one of those "you're screwed no matter what" situations, because there is NO way to sit down at a conference table and draw borders that will reliably give the inhabitants of the land a sense of national identity that means something. The only way to do that with confidence is to let borders 'evolve naturally,' which is code phrase for 'have a civil war fought over them.' And even then, there will be patches of land contested by both sides to serve as a sticking point for future debates.

[Ziggy Stardust]

At the same time, though, the Mamluk and Safavid rulers were foreign to Iraq.

Fair enough. And certainly the British (and, more importantly, the French) did their absolute damndest to make the situation worse. But it still stands that technically speaking there was SOME precedent for the borders they drew in Iraq, even if it was a terrible one.

[Channel72]

The borders of modern Iraq also correspond roughly with the Babylonian/Assyrian empires, just as Iran corresponds roughly with old Achaemenid Persian territory.

[madd0ct0r]

Your lack of faith in Iraqi nationalism is debatable. Yeah, Iraq is ultimately an arbitrary British creation, but it's fostered a sense of solid nationalism in the intervening decades. Just look at how Iraqis reacted to their football team doing well during the summer Olympics. The association with ancient Mesopotamia and cosmopolitan Baghdad also helps create a sense of nationalistic pride. Anecdotally, most Iraqi nationals express affection for their country, before the US fucked it up via sanctions and war. And I'm not only talking about people who lived in Baghdad, but also people from Basra and Mosul.

Of the three Iraqis I work with daily, two introduced themselves to me as Kurds. They want peace and stability above all else, and reckon an independent homeland is their best bet.

Obviously, the Kurds are a different story. They have identified themselves as Kurds first, Iraqis second, since the days of Saddam. But there is definitely a sense of Iraqi nationalism south of Erbil, you know.

Does a sizable minority wanting to break off the country not undermine the nationalists a little?

[Lolpah]

Does a sizable minority wanting to break off the country not undermine the nationalists a little?

Perhaps, but there have been other cases where there is a strong national feeling with the majority of the population even though an ethnically distinct part wants to break away (e.g. Serbia). Not sure whether that's the case in Iraq, just pointing out.

Besides, there are varying degrees of nationalism, ranging from "none" to "sure the whole nation thing is nice if those other people stop screwing us over" to "ALL HAIL OUR GLORIOUS COUNTRY!". I'd imagine that if Iraqi nationalism exists in large scale in the general population it'd be on the middle of that scale.

[xerex]

update.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... FU20140803

Islamic State fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping through the region in June.

Capture of the Mosul Dam after an offensive of barely 24 hours could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities, sharply raising the stakes in their bid to topple Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government.

Islamic State, which sees Iraq's majority Shi'ites as apostates who deserve to be killed, also seized the Ain Zalah oil field, adding to four others already under their control, and three towns.

They faced strong Kurdish resistance only at the start of their latest offensive when taking the town of Zumar. The Islamists then hoisted their black flags there, a ritual that usually precedes mass executions of their captured opponents and the imposition of an ideology even al-Qaeda finds excessive.

[Highlord Laan]

I have to wonder why we're not bombing these vermin into paste by now. They've done us the favor of gathering together and making it easier to kill them all.

[madd0ct0r]

dear god, does the size of your balls not get in the way of your keyboard, oh scary warrior?

Some of my friend's have family in those towns, so pipe down pipsqueak.

[Highlord Laan]

And they have to cross open territory to get from city to city.

[Simon_Jester]

This is, for all practical purposes, an Iraqi civil war. If a loosely defined "we" choose to intervene, will we then agree to re-enter the position of occupying Iraq for another decade? If not, who the hell is going to stop ISIS or something like it from reforming the minute the bombing runs stop?

[K. A. Pital]

All American intervention in the Middle East so far had injured the secular forces there, brought them to oblivion. Another round of shelling will just make a better, more hardcore Taliban. Or something like it.

[Simon_Jester]

That is exactly what ISIS appears to be, on the face of it.

[Channel72]

All American intervention in the Middle East so far had injured the secular forces there, brought them to oblivion. Another round of shelling will just make a better, more hardcore Taliban. Or something like it.

What's the alternative? Let ISIS take control of Baghdad, giving us an extremist Iraq (until Iran decides to nuke them or something.)

The US absolutely sucks at stabilizing the Middle East, I agree. Ironically, the Middle East was relatively stable under Saddam, after the Iraq/Iran war died down (with the exception of the usual Israel/Hezbollah crap).

I still think the best solution is to simply provide the resources necessary to help the Maliki government defeat these idiots. Resources like intel, targeted air strikes, and on-the-ground assistance. Another invasion/occupation is out of the question, politically.

That is exactly what ISIS appears to be, on the face of it.

ISIS is worse than the Taliban, proving that the linear gradient of Islamic extremism has no known boundaries.

[Channel72]

We're also potentially looking at a genocidal situation here with ISIS. They will ruthlessly wipe out the Shia population if they take control of central/southern Iraq. Really, an ISIS-controlled Iraq is too depressing and tragic to contemplate.

[K. A. Pital]

Maybe you should, um... help Iran stabilize the situation? I know the US hates Iran, but they are the only force that is reasonably interested in the ISIS' downfall and at the same time being nearby and having manpower and weapons to support combat if necessary.

[Highlord Laan]

I actually agree with Stas. It's long past time the US choked down some realpolitik.

[Simon_Jester]

That's not quite the same mindset as "bomb these vermin into paste."

Maybe you could try again with a bit less flaming racism, dismissal, and failure to comprehend why a bunch of foreigners turned into extremists?

[Grumman]

That's not quite the same mindset as "bomb these vermin into paste."

Maybe you could try again with a bit less flaming racism, dismissal, and failure to comprehend why a bunch of foreigners turned into extremists?

Is it racist to hate violent bigots now? If the Ku Klux Klan was actively waging war against the United States and executing African-Americans in the cities they captured, wouldn't he be saying the same thing?