October 30, 2017

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH ISLAMOPHOBIA...:

The Islamic State and the Limitations of Cruelty (Victor Davis Hanson, October 26, 2017, IBD)

In recent years, ISIS has horrified global audiences with video clips of unspeakable atrocities. What sort of humans could behead, incinerate, drown, torture and blow up innocent civilians, mock and record such horror, and then narrate their macabre videos for a world audience?


How could such pre-modern psychopaths ever be defeated, given that in a matter of months ISIS had managed to overrun vast swaths of Iraq and Syria? [...]

But recently, the entire Islamic State project began going up in smoke almost as abruptly as it was born. It turned out that squadrons of American bombers were not impressed by ISIS threats and bombed to smithereens its command centers and headquarters.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis relaxed the rules of U.S. engagement and made it a veritable open season on Islamic State jihadists, while American forces trained entire new cadres of anti-ISIS fighters. Specialized drones and GPS-guided Western munitions made it almost impossible for ISIS leaders to escape constant attack.

Their past horrors had earned Islamic State jihadists only ill will. Tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian victims volunteered to fight ISIS with a ferocity that they had rarely exhibited in the past.

The net result is now mass ISIS surrenders. Half-starved jihadists in rags and in tears beg their captors for forgiveness -- and not to show them the same savagery that had so often had fueled ISIS slaughtering.

The fate of ISIS reminds us that throughout history those who posed as superhuman savages, without any limitations to their cruelty, were often bullies who could not stand up to the determined payback of their finally aroused and outraged victims.


..is that it doesn't occur to you until well after the fact that ISIS was fatally flawed by their desire to impose an anti-Islamic regime. Apocalypitic Islamic thought requires that the caliphate bring about a fair, just and generous society, not a brutal and repressive one.

Posted by at October 30, 2017 8:10 AM

  

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