Originally Posted by boardman
In France you do what they did...Go in with guns blazing and sort the bodies out later. I'd just about guarantee you some French citizens were killed by friendly fire in that theater. When people realize that they are going to be killed no matter what some amazing things happen and they start to fight to keep from dying just like those passengers did on flight 93. It's not out of the realm of possibility that unarmed AND untrained citizens will rise up but they have to have the conviction to do it. Knowing that the special tactics units of the police department is willing to stage an Entebbe type attack on the hostage situation and sort the bodies out later will instill enough fear to spur action. Having an angry dude or two in the crowd with a handgun certainly isn't going to hurt the situation any. I suspect the citizens of one of the most civilized cities in the world have lost a little of their civility after this weekend and wise up a bit...or they won't and will risk suffering the same thing again.
Tough talk...and implausible.
You wouldn't fight for your life if you found yourself with your back against the wall and seemingly no way out? I doubt that.
Globally, you build a coalition to close the borders to Syria from the outside and let those fuckers take on ISIS on their own. 22 million remaining citizens in Syria. 30000 ISIS fighters. That's overwhelming odds even if the citizens only had sticks and stones to fight with. If they don't support ISIS let 'em prove it.
Problem is they don't want to fight it. If that's the case you're at least keeping them and their radicalism contained. They're using the world's sympathy to flee as refugees as a vehicle to expand their hatred westward. France just paid the price. At least they're hitting back and not pussy footing around about it.
:facepalm: More tough talk. You assume those 22 million Syrians are a monolithic group. Syria is 75% Sunni Muslim ruled by an Alawis(sub-sect of Shi'a) minority. The Alawis are propped up by Iran, Shi'a Iraqi fighters and Hezbollah. The Sunnis are fractured, Al Qaeda sympathetic groups, so-called Sunni moderate groups with the Peshmerga from Iraqi Kurdistan and ISIS. Everyone is fighting everyone else. The Peshmerga are badass and should be getting all our support, but we won't because Turkey worries that after they beat ISIS and Assad, they'll turn on Istanbul.
You missed my point entirely. I'm saying make them all go all in, or all out, on whether religion plays the central role in their civilization and find a way to work out their differences or perish. Yeah it's kind of implausible and I think I already said as such. Maybe not for the reasons you think but because the rest of the world has grown too civilized to understand the fundamental nature of the barbarism so they think it can be solved peacefully. It can't.
Islam as a whole has to decide if their religion is going to be a peaceful one or not and live by their decision. Contradictory as is may sound, if they are the peaceful religion some sects claim to be they may have to fight and kill the radicals to prove it. Outsiders will never, ever do that for them.<<<<This should be the biggest takeaway, BTW. Our piddling interference largely keeps them divided. We play to both sides trying to force compromise. They play us like a fiddle getting our money, our guns and now our sympathy to take their weak.
The games we are starting to play with Russia over this is another story altogether.
Some of those sects divided over who was the rightful successor of the prophet will come together when their families are wholesale slaughtered in the most barbaric ways by the most radical among them and they have no way out. Catholics and Protestants have largely learned to live with similar differences. It took a lot of violence among them to get to that point.
Saudi Arabia is the most radical of all Islamic Countries. There is no religious division there that affects the outside world. They've made their decision to live by Sharia and they keep it within their borders. Fine. Let the Syrians and the Iragi's and the Iranian's and the Afghans do the same. If they do we should leave them the fuck alone to do it. If they try to spread their insanity outside their borders to more civilized countries those countries need to get down to their level, the only level they understand, and make them suffer not until we feel they've paid a sufficient price but until they beg for mercy. That's what they understand.
Fuck letting any of them flee, not the women nor the children. I know it sounds heartless but when those fighting age males and many of the women and mothers have to stay there and watch those atrocities unfold it won't take long for them to put a stop to it. Taking the refugees is doing nothing but enabling the radicals who don't want the ones fleeing there anyway. That war will not be won by outsiders...ever. It's been going on the better part of two centuries. What makes us think anything has changed. The Crusades ended the last real Caliphate but it didn't stop them.
FYI: the last "real" Caliphate ended in 1924 when Mustafa Kamal Ataturk dissolved the Ottoman Empire and established a secular Turkey as a nation state.
There is some disagreement as that was a Caliphate mostly in title only. Even the Ottoman sultans didn't put a lot of emphasis on it. When the Caliph did rise to power it was very political and the Ottomans had become quite secular which is why it died out without succession. For that reason many don't consider it the last "real" Caliphate.
If you can't build the coalition and contain them then we build the wall here and vet every single person that wants in. Waiting list too long? Too bad...we aren't beheading people here that's why you want to be here. You want in quicker? Convince your country to join the coalition and go guard that Syrian border for a year. Maybe we can fast track you then.
Most plausible thing you've said. I too worry about ISIS sympathetic m.a.m. infiltrating the refugees only to attack us here. Vetting...vetting and more vetting.
It's all a political game anyway so none of that is going to happen. Can't convince folks to spend money on wars that don't exist. Without the military-industrial complex our economy goes in the shitter. <<<This is my main point to all of this. I agree it's easy to talk tough behind this keyboard but much of what I've said is the truth. This is their problem, not ours. They need to fix their internal problems internally or understand they will die 100 fold when they attack outsiders. Other countries need to get on board and strike back the way France is now. Innocents there be damned.
Agreed.
