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Yes, we need one anyway.

17 (21.8%)

No, we should take that elsewhere and keep this thread as-is.

27 (34.6%)

I don't care, let's see what happens.

34 (43.6%)

Total Members Voted: 75

[miljan]

Hostage situation in northern France

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34917226

[Bohandas]

The Conquest of Canaan m8ght be a good metaphor

You mean where King David united the various tribes and united Judea into one state?

No, when Joshua swept through Canaan slaughtering and pillaging everything in his path.

[smjjames]

The Conquest of Canaan m8ght be a good metaphor

You mean where King David united the various tribes and united Judea into one state?

No, when Joshua swept through Canaan slaughtering and pillaging everything in his path.

So, basically any conquerer?

[Vilanat]

The Conquest of Canaan m8ght be a good metaphor

You mean where King David united the various tribes and united Judea into one state?

No, when Joshua swept through Canaan slaughtering and pillaging everything in his path.

I'd like to see the proof for those allegations.

[Shadowlord]

As for cities rolling over for ISIS, you're talking about Iraq with it's coward military and Syria where there wasn't an unified front and Assad has been ignoring them. For cities that DON'T roll over for ISIS, one word, Kobani.

Those "cowards" were Shi'ite troops (or troops with shi'ite commanders) in Sunni cities, ordered to hold them against a Sunni army (Daesh) which claimed to be liberators and struck with suicide vehicle bombs against guard posts and such. Bear in mind that Maliki was blamed for renewing sectarian tensions by cracking down on Sunnis and consolidating political power to Shi'ites, prior to Daesh suddenly showing up on the West's radar. They fled because their commanders fled, because they knew Daesh would kill them, because they had no support or reinforcements, because they didn't trust the people in the city, and because Daesh terrified them (hitting fortified posts with car bombs is pretty terrifying)...

In Syria, Assad wasn't so much ignoring Daesh as he was deliberately taking actions to strengthen Daesh and weaken the other rebels, gambling that the West wouldn't remove him if the only viable alternative was Daesh (which is pretty obviously even worse than the Taliban). Taking into account how quickly Saddam and Gaddafi were toppled, he considered the West the greater potential threat and decided to make sure it was obvious that there was no alternative to him remaining in power. Saddam didn't have the support of Russia and Iran, either, for that matter. Assad has ports vital to Iran (and IIRC Russia too).

[Strife26]

The Iraqi Rabbit Army deserves very few words in their defense. Here's eight, which is probably six more than needed.

"They were cowards, so what can you expect?"

[Bohandas]

The Conquest of Canaan m8ght be a good metaphor

You mean where King David united the various tribes and united Judea into one state?

No, when Joshua swept through Canaan slaughtering and pillaging everything in his path.

I'd like to see the proof for those allegations.

Well in all likelyhood it probably didn't happen, the archaeological ecidence is against it, but that's what the Book of Joshua claims happened (not in those words though)

Joshua 6;17-21 provides a typical example

[Shadowlord]

The Bible also claims the Earth, grass, plants, and trees were all created before the Sun, so... I doubt it's a very accurate source.

[Bohandas]

Like I said, it probably didn't happen as written, and IBLIS aren't quite as evil as Joshua if it did, but they're up there.

Uh, equivalent example that definitely did happen, how about Nazi Germany as a metaphor

[smjjames]

Like I said, it probably didn't happen as written, and IBLIS aren't quite as evil as Joshua if it did, but they're up there.

Uh, equivalent example that definitely did happen, how about Nazi Germany as a metaphor

Not ruthless enough, I'd say the Mongols are a better metaphor.

What metaphor are we trying to make anyway?

[k33n]

There are countless examples of states in the historical record that came into being with and derived legitimacy from holy war. This is no different. They even have legitimacy with a significant minority of their population, sadly enough.

[redwallzyl]

its not Paris but the europe thread is gone. odds on it being completely ignored by the news?

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/24/457266347/tunisian-president-declares-state-of-emergency-following-deadly-explosion

[Shadowlord]

They covered Belgium's State of Emergencnyan.

[Loud Whispers]

Those "cowards" were Shi'ite troops (or troops with shi'ite commanders) in Sunni cities, ordered to hold them against a Sunni army (Daesh) which claimed to be liberators and struck with suicide vehicle bombs against guard posts and such. Bear in mind that Maliki was blamed for renewing sectarian tensions by cracking down on Sunnis and consolidating political power to Shi'ites, prior to Daesh suddenly showing up on the West's radar. They fled because their commanders fled, because they knew Daesh would kill them, because they had no support or reinforcements, because they didn't trust the people in the city, and because Daesh terrified them (hitting fortified posts with car bombs is pretty terrifying)...

Said army numbered 800 strong and they ended up growing to the mess they are now with captured American weapons from their utterly spineless surrender

In Syria, Assad wasn't so much ignoring Daesh as he was deliberately taking actions to strengthen Daesh and weaken the other rebels, gambling that the West wouldn't remove him if the only viable alternative was Daesh (which is pretty obviously even worse than the Taliban). Taking into account how quickly Saddam and Gaddafi were toppled, he considered the West the greater potential threat and decided to make sure it was obvious that there was no alternative to him remaining in power. Saddam didn't have the support of Russia and Iran, either, for that matter. Assad has ports vital to Iran (and IIRC Russia too).

How did he strengthen ISIS? Also it's fucking hilarious to see Gaddafi warning the other Arab leaders that the West would keep toppling them, seeing as how Saddam was the US's ally and they still killed him. There's a moment where Gaddafi says next year one of them (pointing at the other leaders) could be the next one killed, only that year it was him killed. The priceless part is that Assad starts laughing at him.

[Shadowlord]

Loud Whispers, using this source: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/19/9760284/isis-history

I'm guessing that your 800 figure comes from the number of ISIS fighters in the battle for Mosul in June 2014.

Assad ensured that (a) there would be a civil war instead of peaceful protests, by immediately attacking protesters, and (b) that the civil war would be dominated by islamic extremists, by attacking the most moderate / secular rebels and ignoring the most extreme ones, and also:

In amnesties issued between March and October 2011, Assad released a significant number (exact counts are hard to know) of extremists from Syrian prisons. Hof called this an "effort to pollute the opposition with sectarianism": Assad gambled that if his enemies were Islamic militants, then the West wouldn't intervene against him.

(ISIS, in 2012-13, also freed "somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 inmates" from Iraqi prisons, including "many terrorists [that] elite US military forces caught over the years." Of course, that has nothing to do with Assad.)

Once ISIS was declared (from AQI) and in Syria (2013), Assad avoided attacking them, and ISIS concentrated on attacking the other rebel groups, including Al-Nusra, to take land that had already been taken from Assad's forces.

Once ISIS was declared a caliphate after the fall of Mosul and the blitz across Iraq (2014), recruitment went way up:

Establishing a caliphate had long been the goal of the entire jihadist movement. By declaring that he had actually created one, Baghdadi gained a huge leg up on al-Qaeda in the struggle for global jihadist supremacy. Since then, ISIS has "succeeded in attracting far, far more recruits" than al-Qaeda, Will McCants, the director of the Brookings Institution's Project on US Relations With the Islamic World, told me. This has also has allowed it to gain a following among foreign terrorist groups, with major ISIS franchises in Libya, Egypt's Sinai desert, and Nigeria.

Even so, they've been losing ground and suffering enough setbacks lately that their image of being winners (to use a Trumpism) was at risk, so they resorted to dramatic Al Qaida style suicide attacks in foreign countries, including western ones since western citizens tend to ignore news articles about them in the middle east (and then apparently blame the media for not covering them :V).