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| Iraq |
| Richard Fernandez: Fighting Entropy 1 |
| 2015-05-18 |
| Most of us have watched movies where a mysterious threat attacks an unsuspecting community. They may be vampires ravaging an Alaskan town or a blob-like being swallowing a town. Typically the defenders, at first confident, are rapidly dismayed when they find that police firearms have little effect against the creatures. With that realization the characters go from complacent to desperate in a few minutes of movie time until the hunted survivors are forced by desperation to try an outlandish theory from a crackpot who has a peculiar insight into the nature of the monsters. Sometimes real life resembles a horror movie, as in the present instance when Westphalian states find to their surprise that the state-killing bullets in their arsenal can't kill Islamic extremism. Perhaps the epitome of such weapons is the precision guided missile-firing drone or its equivalent, the special forces raiding team directed by the signals intelligence wizardry of the NSA. This targeted force is like Zeus' thunderbolt; it is inconceivably potent, almost unimaginably effective. Surely such a thing can destroy what the president of the United States aims it at. The United States has killed Saddam Hussein, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, and Osama bin Laden. It was instrumental in the death of Imad Mughniyah. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current head of ISIS, is probably lying crippled in some safe house never to walk again from the effects of a March 18, 2015 airstrike. And now a US special operations team has killed one of the next in line, the chief of ISIS' oil smuggling business, its "chief financial officer", a Tunisian with the nom de guerre Abu Sayyaf. ...Now that America has put a bullet through the body, head and wallet surely all that is left is to watch ISIS die. SECDEF Ashton Carter believes they've dealt it a serious blow. But others are not so sure. "Michael Weiss, author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," said Abu Sayyaf was largely unknown to close observers of the organization." Killing him won't hurt it any more than its been hurt before. ...But like the monster in the movie, it's taken "three billion electro-volts of energy and it's still coming on"! Why have none of the previous heavy blows slowed ISIS or any of the affiliated rebel groups down? Why is the jihadi organism inexplicably resistant to leadership disruptions, whether caused by drone strikes or the murderous work of rivals from other factions? How can it stand against the Olympian thunderbolt? This is an important question to answer. It's resistant because it is not a state. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2015-05-18 22:41 |
| #3 It may not be a state, but it's a landlocked entity surrounded by states that say they're enemies who somehow buy millions of dollars a day of oil from them. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2015-05-18 19:54 |
| #2 When you tie your own hands (and feet) behind your back, the other side usually gets a lot of run in the game. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-05-18 10:29 |
| #1 Lately, the state of Texas is showing surprising resilience dealing with both IS terrorism and "Mad Max" / "Big Slide" social breakdowns. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2015-05-18 09:02 |