Shit is happening

[Kosheh]

jesus i could write paragraphs about this

Perhaps "ISIS" is just another "reason" for something? I dunno. I'm not really into politics to know much. Just throwing in my perspective on this and wondering if you guys thought about it this way.

I hate to admit that Ray's a little right, but he is - well, most of it ;P

After the end of the US' war on Iraq, they removed Saddam from power. Which was nice...from a political standpoint. However, unlike the end of World War II where we assisted the Japanese in setting up their government and rebuilding - instead, we hastily left and didn't do all that much. Yeah - we trained policemen and their military, but we didn't really go into much detail as to what'll happen after we left. So things more or less went to hell and it was generally a big clusterfuck and the economy is beyond wrecked. Oh yeah and at a people-level, their authorities did jack shit. Keep in mind there's ethnic groups throughout Iraq that function kinda like "tribes" - and Iraq's appointed leaders always showed favor for one and discrimination towards others, so nothing was ever fair.
(The Iraqi military didn't really have much to fight for - no promises of bettering their country or anything, so that's why you heard news stories of the Iraqi soldiers "literally dropping their weapons and running away", because they don't really have the belief that being a member of the military means you're willing to die for your country)

Enter ISIS, which has the mission of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East with practices that date back to the Middle Ages. They're trying to establish a very hardline Shariah law in the area (like, a SUPER fundamentalist government) They also provide anyone who joins their cause with lots of money and "safety" from their wrath - which is what a lot of Iraqi men are looking for: most of ISIS' soldiers don't even fully believe in its hardline Islamic principles: It pays the bills, and with that they have something to fight for.

(Also, as Ray's saying, at the same time there's shit going on in Syria with the current politics, and there's freedom fighters that were fighting to overthrow Assad [their current president]. We, of course, couldn't tell the difference and knowingly armed them with what they need to fight the opposition...aaaand it turned out that some of the people our politicians met with are actually ISIS nobodies. We fell right into their trap)

Sorry for arguing with you, Ray: Turns out ISIS isn't ACTUALLY religiously motivated (though it's under the GUISE that it is) It's mainly political, with money being the main driving force (there you go, BlueBlur)
Before continuing, there's reports of a lot of foreign fighters going to Syria, and then coming back and causing...well, terror.
Something interesting here is that ISIS isn't actually looking for people who are spiritually devout: they're looking for people who are helping them to further their cause (I think a British person who left for Syria was caught by authorities and during investigations, found that he purchased "Islam for Dummies" off Amazon a week prior. lmao) When drafting in these people, they're just letting these people fight for what they think their idea of jihad is.
Also, they're kinda misdirected, too: Foreign fighters are promised the prospect of shooting cool guns or hooking up with a GUARANTEED WIFE wowee.
na you're basically the bottom of the bottom. hope u like drivin the car filled with explosives because that's gonna be your first task. o yea and the detonator's in the car. u cant leave the car u gotta blow it up and ur in it. sry

aloha snackbar

The thing is Daesh (which is what many countries have began calling them; it's descriptive and trivializes at the same time. Thanks, Arabic!) is 1) a master at social media and 2) hardcore controlling the economy in that area.
They're going into towns and destroying ancient relics under the guise that it's idyllic worship - but they're also putting some of those same relics on the black market. We've got video footage of them destroying these relics, too but the majority of the structures they're destroying are ones that they can't actually move. In turn, selling those relics on the black market under the guise that it's been "rescued from ISIS' destruction" allows them to drive the price WAY UP and it's now not just a jacked price - it's more like ransom money.
On top of that, they also smuggle oil and sell the oil from refineries they've captured in Iraq and Syria. In turn, they're making MILLIONS OF DOLLARS here.
Oh, did I mention they're also actively slave-trading? Yeah, that's a huge humanitarian violation. They're doing that too - "marrying off" the women and teenage girls they've seized from towns and killing the elderly.

Daesh is actually a cover for a fuckton of dirty, dirty money.

---

Actually the real reason I posted lol was because what I mentioned a few days ago...and now, Hillary Clinton's weighed in on it.

"This is no time to be scoring political points. We must use every pillar of American power, including our values, to fight terror," Clinton said.

She said airstrikes by an international anti-ISIS coalition "will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS," the former secretary of state said Thursday in a speech in New York City.

I don't...think she quite gets it lol.
I don't remember who said it, but fear is the oxygen of terror. The more fearful we are, Daesh wins.
Our Republican party more or less agrees that we should deny Syrian refugees from entering the US, in the fear that some of them may actually be linked to Daesh. Terrorists win. (the reason they feel like this is that one of the attackers in Paris posed as a Syrian refugee - but it turned out to be a fake passport he was carrying)
Our Democratic party says "Go over there, and bomb the fuck out of 'em" - that perpetuates our practice of indiscriminately killing off Syrians so that we still end up on top. We're not actually going to do anything about changing their political influence over the region. Terrorists win (again)

Daesh is actually really weak, but their actions and news coverage makes them seem like they aren't...and with that, they're winning their current battle (to instill fear in our lil baby bellies) There's got to be a way to cut off their funding and change the ideas of the people who are losing their country to them.

But they're not :/