How responsible is the US for the rise of ISIS?

[Hobbes' Choice]

There is no military solution to the ISIS problem, short of turning the entire Gulf into a radioactive sheet of glass.
I'd not want to live in that world.
For a 100 years (and more) western forces, mostly France and the UK, but more recently the USA have interfered in a range of different ways in the politics of the Middle East. At each and every step this has led to an increase in violence and increase in terrorism and problems at home with the lowering of freedoms, more "security", and fractured communities.

At the ideological heart of the problem is Saudi Arabia, which has been ignored.

Hey Hobbes.

I’ve heard that living conditions for the populace were better in Iran under the Shaw, who held power due to the auspices of the United States. After the Shaw, living conditions for Iranians deteriorated because of well-deserved world sanctions led by the interests of world leaders, and those interests were an aversion to being the victims of terrorism.

But I wasn’t there, I’m not a historian, and I wasn’t always paying attention, so would you say this is accurate, and that under the past 100 years there have been good times in Iran due to US benevolence, and that the bad times of suffering in Iran have not been the result of U.S. involvement, but rather the bad times are the effects of a fundamentalist theocracy holding a strategy of terrorism as a significant component of foreign policy?

When you say "Shaw" I assume you mean Shah Rezi Pahlavi?
You are asking the wrong question. The democratically elected government was deposed by British and American interests, and the Shah was imposed, who ran the country as a dictatorship, with secret police, mysterious disappearances, and no elections.
You can't really compare living standards with the post revolutionary government under western imposed sanctions.
I don't know what you have been looking at, but living in Iran has been shite since the 1950s. The west's role in that is the coup, the support for the dictatorship of the Shah, and then sanctions.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Since Saudi Arabia is mentioned, this news piece that just came out talks about the country becoming more transparent, among other things:

http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-ar ... ty-2015-11

PhilX

Croc of shit, like most of your brain dead propaganda links, from capitalist morons.

[Walker]

When you say "Shaw" I assume you mean Shah Rezi Pahlavi?
You are asking the wrong question. The democratically elected government was deposed by British and American interests, and the Shah was imposed, who ran the country as a dictatorship, with secret police, mysterious disappearances, and no elections.
You can't really compare living standards with the post revolutionary government under western imposed sanctions.
I don't know what you have been looking at, but living in Iran has been shite since the 1950s. The west's role in that is the coup, the support for the dictatorship of the Shah, and then sanctions.

You sent me to the google and what you say has some merit according to this article. I’ll share. I haven’t researched the authors other than what they say about themselves.

http://people.opposingviews.com/culture ... -9240.html

The article has some good things to say about Persian education.

Education has been identified by WHO as the single most significant factor to lift a population out of poverty, and WHO would know.

[Hobbes' Choice]

When you say "Shaw" I assume you mean Shah Rezi Pahlavi?
You are asking the wrong question. The democratically elected government was deposed by British and American interests, and the Shah was imposed, who ran the country as a dictatorship, with secret police, mysterious disappearances, and no elections.
You can't really compare living standards with the post revolutionary government under western imposed sanctions.
I don't know what you have been looking at, but living in Iran has been shite since the 1950s. The west's role in that is the coup, the support for the dictatorship of the Shah, and then sanctions.

You sent me to the google and what you say has some merit according to this article. I’ll share. I haven’t researched the authors other than what they say about themselves.

http://people.opposingviews.com/culture ... -9240.html

The article has some good things to say about Persian education.

Education has been identified by WHO as the single most significant factor to lift a population out of poverty, and WHO would know.

As well as being a vicious dictator, the Shah was a moderniser. Sadly he did this without the democratic will of the people. This was damaging to the world westernising and modernising project, because western values become associated with the knock on the door in the middle of the night, and imprisonment without trial.
This inevitably led to the Islamic revolution.

Had Mohammad Mosaddegh not been deposed in 1953, and democracy would have been allowed to thrive, who knows where we would be now?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

When you say "Shaw" I assume you mean Shah Rezi Pahlavi?
You are asking the wrong question. The democratically elected government was deposed by British and American interests, and the Shah was imposed, who ran the country as a dictatorship, with secret police, mysterious disappearances, and no elections.
You can't really compare living standards with the post revolutionary government under western imposed sanctions.
I don't know what you have been looking at, but living in Iran has been shite since the 1950s. The west's role in that is the coup, the support for the dictatorship of the Shah, and then sanctions.

You sent me to the google and what you say has some merit according to this article. I’ll share. I haven’t researched the authors other than what they say about themselves.

http://people.opposingviews.com/culture ... -9240.html

The article has some good things to say about Persian education.

Education has been identified by WHO as the single most significant factor to lift a population out of poverty, and WHO would know.

As well as being a vicious dictator, the Shah was a moderniser. Sadly he did this without the democratic will of the people. This was damaging to the world westernising and modernising project, because western values become associated with the knock on the door in the middle of the night, and imprisonment without trial.
This inevitably led to the Islamic revolution.

Had Mohammad Mosaddegh not been deposed in 1953, and democracy would have been allowed to thrive, who knows where we would be now?

Fuck. And over oil even then.

[Pluto]

How does isis get it's Toyota trucks, etc

http://reverbpress.com/news/internation ... s-weapons/

[marjoram_blues]

'How responsible is the US for the rise of ISIS ?'

Before anyone can begin to address this question, don't we need to be clear what 'ISIS' is ?
This is an article which might help:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ts/384980/

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

[henry quirk]

Some years ago, when I lived near New Orleans, I was in the French Quarter. It was a Sunday, it was a nice day. I was just enjoying walkin' around.

Without notice, a guy - big - stepped out of the moving crowd and wanged me, close-fisted, right in my noggin. I got pissed, fast, and hit him back. Luckily my wang was superior to his wang and he stumbled back, shaken. I followed and wanged him upside his head a few more times till he was down.

Then I got the hell out of there. Wasn't interested in spending the afternoon in a police station and, potentially, in lock up.

Now, when this guy wanged me, I didn't pause and wonder 'why'...the 'why' didn't matter...what mattered is this guy wanted to do me injury.

Now, it's possible this guy was just a nutjob, or that he mistook me for someone who'd done him wrong, or even that he was completely just in his attack (I'm not always a nice person). None of that mattered at the time, though.

What mattered: I didn't want to be hurt (or worse).

So, yeah, 'know thy enemy, name thy enemy', but - more importantly - 'if wanged, wang back, then, if possible, ask questions'. If you offended first, then, yeah, make it right, but only after the guy has been rendered peacable (hard to make compensation when some one's hands are on your throat).


Finally (cuz sometimes there is no choice): If you know (not guess or suspect) some one is coming to kill you, get up early and go kill them first.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Some years ago, when I lived near New Orleans, I was in the French Quarter. It was a Sunday, it was a nice day. I was just enjoying walkin' around.

Without notice, a guy - big - stepped out of the moving crowd and wanged me, close-fisted, right in my noggin. I got pissed, fast, and hit him back. Luckily my wang was superior to his wang and he stumbled back, shaken. I followed and wanged him upside his head a few more times till he was down.

Then I got the hell out of there. Wasn't interested in spending the afternoon in a police station and, potentially, in lock up.

Now, when this guy wanged me, I didn't pause and wonder 'why'...the 'why' didn't matter...what mattered is this guy wanted to do me injury.

Now, it's possible this guy was just a nutjob, or that he mistook me for someone who'd done him wrong, or even that he was completely just in his attack (I'm not always a nice person). None of that mattered at the time, though.

What mattered: I didn't want to be hurt (or worse).

So, yeah, 'know thy enemy, name thy enemy', but - more importantly - 'if wanged, wang back, then, if possible, ask questions'. If you offended first, then, yeah, make it right, but only after the guy has been rendered peacable (hard to make compensation when some one's hands are on your throat).


Finally (cuz sometimes there is no choice): If you know (not guess or suspect) some one is coming to kill you, get up early and go kill them first.

'Slightly' flawed analogy. A better one would be 'the guy 'wanged' me, so I went to his street and blew up all the houses, along with every person in each house, including the pets.'
Actually it's full of stupid flaws. I'll leave you to work out the rest, with your simplistic little American brain. No wonder Hobbes left.
Correction. 'I went to a random neighbourhood that looked like an easy target and vented my rage at the 'wanger' by blowing up all the houses....I didn't want to blow up the 'wangers' house because it had some useful stuff in it, and some armed guards.'

[henry quirk]

"your simplistic little American brain"

Damn straight...a nation of violent primitives...as soon as we boot out the pussy in the white house mebbe we'll show all you evolved types just how violent and primitive we can be, cuz you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

[henry quirk]

"I went to his street and blew up all the houses, along with every person in each house, including the pets.'"

At the time, if I coulda, I woulda.

[henry quirk]

http://articles.philly.com/1986-01-15/n ... ganization


Hostages? No Problem Soviets Offer 'How-to' Lesson In Kidnapping

BY JACK MCKINNEY
POSTED: January 15, 1986
Are you among those frustrated Americans who have wondered how the Soviet Union's only hostage crisis in Lebanon was resolved in just a month, while the plight of the six U.S. hostages held there continues to drag on without any break in sight?

Well, according to the Jerusalem Post, the Soviets turned the trick by forgoing diplomacy in favor of a brutally more direct approach to the problem.

Simply put, they presented the kidnappers with chilling proof that terror can cut both ways. Literally!

The crisis began last Sept. 30, you might recall, when four attaches from the Soviet Embassy were kidnapped in Beirut by Muslim extremists. Western news agencies received individual photos of the four men that same night, each with an automatic pistol pressed against his head.

The photos were accompanied by a note from a hitherto unknown group calling itself the Islamic Liberation Organization. The message warned that the four Soviet captives would be executed, one by one, unless Moscow pressured pro- Syrian militiamen to cease shelling positions held by the pro-Iranian fundamentalist militia in Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli.

Although the Soviets attempted to open some channel for negotiations with the kidnappers, there was no immediate let-up in the shelling at Tripoli.

Only two days after the kidnappings, the body of one of the four kidnapped men, a 30-year-old consular secretary named Arkady Katov, was found, shot through the head, on a Beirut trash dump.

Apparently, that's when the Soviets dropped the idea of sweet talk and turned the matter over to the KGB.

Less than four weeks later, the three remaining hostages were freed on foot only 150 yards from the Soviet Embassy.

The pro-Syrian daily Al Sharq credited their release to the clandestine efforts of Brig. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of intelligence for Syrian forces in Lebanon.

Western journalists reported that the kidnappers were forced to free the hostages because a block-to-block search by pro-Syrian militiamen was closing in on them.

But it wasn't until last week that Jerusalem Post diplomatic correspondent Benny Morris uncovered the most compelling reason why the three Soviets were released, emaciated and tired, but otherwise unharmed.

According to Morris, the KBG determined the kidnapping to be the work of the Shiite Muslim group known as Hezbollah, or Party of God. This was the same radical pro-Iranian faction that figured so belligerently in the mass hostage-taking from the TWA airliner at Beirut Airport last June.

Unlike the approach the United States used to resolve the TWA crisis, however, the Soviets did not bother negotiating with Hezbollah through Nabih Berri, Lebanon's justice minister and leader of the Shiite Amal militia.

Instead, the KGB kidnapped a man they knew to be a close relative of a prominent Hezbollah leader. They then castrated him and sent the severed organs to the Hezbollah official, before dispatching the unfortunate kinsman with a bullet in the brain.

In addition to presenting him with this grisly proof of their seriousness, the KGB operatives also advised the Hezbollah leader that they knew the indentities of other close relatives of his, and that he could expect more such packages if the three Soviet diplomats were not freed immediately.

The message was a lot more extreme than Ronald Reagan's vague allusions to using "Rambo next time," but the swift release of the three remaining hostages indicated that the Hezbollah big shot couldn't handle having terror shoved back in his face.

Post reporter Morris quoted unidentified observers in Jerusalem as noting:

"This is the way the Soviets operate. They do things - they don't talk.

"And this is the language the Hezbollah understand."

[Hobbes' Choice]

The US is responsible for the start up money for ISIS, but the worst crime is the continued negligent support of Saudi Arabia who has continually for 70 years supplied the funding for the Taliban producing Universities spreading the doctrine of Wahabism, where ISIS take their ideological basis, as well as the more obvious supply of weapons indirectly to ISIS to promote the Sunni/Wahhabist attack on Syria and Iraq which is antithetical to SA.
The US remains silent in criticising SA because of the rich source of petro-dollars, and lucrative arms sales.

You have to be an ignorant moron to support your own country's bombing of Syria.

[Obvious Leo]

You have to be an ignorant moron to support your own country's bombing of Syria.

Apart from a few UN-brokered peace-keeping operations I've never supported my country's involvement in any foreign conflicts. However entangling ourselves in the complex geo-political web that is the middle east must surely rank at the forefront in terms of its breathtaking stupidity.

[Arising_uk]

I think we need to tread carefully about Saudi Arabia as mental as it seems the House of Saud is actually the modernising and moderate wing in Saudi Arabia, hence the goatees and taches. Depose them and a real shit-storm will arise from the cleric led madrassas.