Are ISIS beheadings good news?

Off-Topic Off Topic - Militaria
#1

Assume you’re running ISIS, a rabid bunch of feral mongrels committed to wiping out everyone who doesn’t think (and I use ‘think’ loosely) like you.

You’ve captured various innocents and held them for months or years, and then from time to time you behead one of them in a glare of self-promoted internet publicity, rapidly taken up by the western press.

Why doesn’t the western press question the often very long interval between capture and murder of these select few, given your standard practice of countless and immediate out of hand murders as you rampage across the countryside?

Why doesn’t the western press go behind the gory videos and justifiable if selective outrage about the, in the grand scheme of things, quite inconsequential deaths of a few western innocents against the backdrop of millions of others around the planet?

What do you gain from these carefully contrived and carefully timed releases?

How do they relate to your battlefield wins and losses?

What would the western press, lazily addicted to presenting a precis of government and corporate press releases as news, find if it looked at, say, the timing of the loss by ISIS of the Mosul Dam and a beheading? And other beheadings and ISIS military failures?

Is ISIS just randomly selecting beheading victims from its large stock of captives, despite holding these creatures of the devil for even a couple of years beforehand, or is it carefully using their beheadings to distract attention from its military defeats?

I suggest that the latter is the case, and that the western press is unwittingly complicit in this because of its love of colour and movement over sensible analysis.

This in turn infects the undiscriminating public which, predictably, supports strong military action against the ISIS mongrels, reinforced by the erroneous belief that beheading a captive demonstrates invincible military power against forces which aren’t bound and forced to their knees.

Which brings us to one of the basic principles of revolutionary theory, which is to commit acts which will force the opposed greater power, typically a government, to engage in increasingly repressive actions which in time will turn the populace against the greater power to support the revolutionaries.

Which in this case is achieved by ISIS presenting itself, with all the tricks of modern media propaganda, to its sympathetic audience as the victim of a western conspiracy against Islam.

Which is somewhat questionable for a supposedly fundamentalist Sunni version of Islam, given that sect’s particular and Islam’s general historical opposition to the presentation of human figures in art etc, which is why much classical Islamic architecture and design involves geometric and related designs rather than images of humans or other living beings.

Which just brings me back to the eternal fact that those who seek and exercise illegitimate power are almost always without moral or other consistent principle, and usually without the principle they purport to advance.

Which I think applies to ISIS, which is rather better at skilful manipulation of the western press than it is in military endeavours.

I suspect that, if ISIS continues to experience defeats, ISIS beheadings will increase in proportion to those defeats.

If so, those beheadings should be taken not, as ISIS likes to present them, as evidence of its offensive and weak power to behead a defenceless captive but as evidence of its steadily increasing military failure.

#2

A very well written piece RS*, be careful though, the Media may pick up on this, and try to hire you to do the evening News.

#3

I think you have a point, RS. Mind you, the beheadings are not good news for the poor bastards being beheaded … JR.

#4

Let’s look at Mosul Dam.

Mid August 2014 the Kurds retake it from ISIS, supported by US air strikes.

The following day ISIS beheads James Foley, who had been captured nearly two years earlier.

ISIS says this is in retaliation for US air strikes in Iraq, putting this forward as a general opposition to kaffir military involvement in the Caliphate and against Muslims generally, and makes grandiose threats about how it is going wreak bloody havoc on the US etc, etc, which is duly and uncritically reported by the western press in the terms ISIS created. The same way the western press routinely and uncritically reports press releases by governments, corporations and sundry others. (Many moons ago, another naughty lawyer and I constituted ourselves under an impressive organisation name to achieve a particular piece of law reform. You have no idea how easy it to get uncritical press coverage and access to government if you have a suitably impressive organisation name and no inhibitions about pretending that you represent a vast and supportive constituency - which we did, only they didn’t know it - and issuing press releases representing the interests of that constituency.)

Yes, in a sense, the murder was in retaliation for US air strikes. However, the air strikes that upset ISIS were not those it presented generically as an affront to Islam (unlike the murders, rapes etc by ISIS criminals of other Muslims, which apparently is holy work sanctioned, indeed required, by Allah as the patron of ISIS and its holy works) but specifically the air strikes which assisted the Kurds to re-take the Mosul Dam from ISIS.

ISIS presented itself, and the uncritical western press duly presented it, as the all conquering force threatening to bring bloody terror to America and its allies when, in fact, America by its airstrikes had just assisted the Kurds to defeat ISIS and to retake a critical strategic and symbolically important dam.

An accurate news report would have been along the lines "ISIS defeated at Mosul Dam so murders American journalist in retaliation, angrily blustering that it will wreak havoc around the world in general and America in particular when, to the contrary, it has just been shown to be incapable of resisting semi-regular Kurdish forces supported by a trivial fragment of America’s total air power. ISIS strategy and propaganda appears to be inspired more by The Mouse That Roared than any realistic assessment of its military power, given that it was limited to demonstrating its supposedly awesome power to cripple America and its allies by murdering a defenceless, non-combatant, and innocent prisoner after being expelled from the Mosul Dam. The murder of the innocent prisoner successfully distracted western news media, politicians and sundry commentators from the defeat at Mosul and generated responses to the way ISIS presented itself as the angel of death to the West (but mostly to Muslims who don’t share its perverse brand of Islam) rather than an objective dismissal of the murder as the act of a weak and defeated enemy much more skilled in propaganda than arms. The murder of James Foley was in reality not, as ISIS presented it and as the western press supinely reported the ISIS press release, a warning to America and its allies not to attack ISIS but rather the pointless punishment of an innocent for the military failure of ISIS against local forces supported by US air power. "

#5

Milliners claim their clientbase is getting shorter.

#6

They are cowards that can only handle bound captives, women and little children. They will face their own destruction very soon.

#7

It was reported 2 weeks ago in the UK that members of ISIS who had become disillusioned with the actual ISIS mentality as opposed to what was presented to the world - have been leaving - if caught they have been beheaded Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed over 150 ‘westerners’ who tried to leave have been executed in the last couple of months.

Reasons given for leaving in letters and on the internet

Used as cannon fodder - barely any training and sent in almost human waves while the higher ups sit back
Not what they expected - not the great Muslim commune with all inharmony - rape, murder, theft all common - the fighters take anything they want when they want from who that want
Used as dogsbodys - menial jobs too low for anyone else to do - laundry, washing up, latrine dutys

#8

This is the inevitable consequence of self-appointed militias engaging in armed conflict, regardless of their cause.

Both sides in the 1970s onwards Irish Troubles; Baader Meinhof; Red Brigades; Palestinians everywhere they went and destablilised large parts of North Africa; and so on.

The cause is paramount, so anything done in furtherance of the cause is justified, which includes robbing banks, kidnapping for ransom, dealing in drugs and arms, ripping off other criminal gangs and standing over individual criminals, and all the rest of the tactics and activities of purely criminal gangs around the world.

Once you put yourself outside the law and lawful society, and reinforce that by attacking lawful society, there are no limits to what you can do in furtherance of the cause.

Which usually involves fighting other self-appointed outlaws supposedly pursuing the common aim, as in Northern Ireland and with the groups mentioned above, and many others including the current contests between ISIS / fading Al Qaeda and their various splinter groups.

Much as these bastards like to present themselves as the swords of justice avenging undoubted travesties such as the Americans at Abu Ghraib, they are happily free of the state controls and consequences for breaches of international humanitarian and war laws which apply to the Western armies and states to which they are fanatically opposed.

Imagine the justifiable outcry if an American soldier in a government approved act beheaded an ISIS type in exactly the same way that ISIS does, and the US government promulgated the video as ISIS does.

When it comes to comparisons by long accepted international standards, no matter how bad are the occasional travesties and atrocities by the forces of Western governments (at least in the post-colonial era as, for example, the French weren’t too delicate while trying to hang on to Algeria, which is one of the threads leading to the current problems in France), they don’t begin to register on the scale created by various insurrectionist and irregular outlaws.

The Islamic State is obviously an irregular and outlaw ‘state’, so I don’t know why Westerners going there are surprised that the people running it are outlaws and criminals. Probably just demonstrates their gullibility and or stupidity in lapping up the bullshit put out by ISIS but, more disturbingly, their disappointment in not being allowed to engage in outlaw and criminal acts themselves.

All the more reason not to let these violently inclined morons return to their Western countries.

They’ve made their beds with ISIS. Let them lie in, or better still die in, those beds.

#9

Regarding Irish Republican movements (and the same could be said for the Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades types), the issues facing the Western Jihadists encountering the actuality of ISIS never really arose, at least as far as their relegation to underclass status is concerned. Republicanism came to Ireland from France in the 1790s, and has been with us ever since. I am a Republican. However, early Republican movements (notably the United Irishmen) adopted an “armed struggle” approach early, in view of the obvious hopelessness of achieving a free Republican Ireland in the midst of the long-drawn out British war against France. The early model of “armed struggle” involved armies of virtually untrained volunteers, armed with croppy pikes (a sort of home-made halberd) and unsuitable civilian firearms, taking the field in a fairly conventional fashion, with the hope of support from France. The rebels were a pretty diverse group taking the country as a whole, but were relatively homogenous socially in the particular regions in which the United Irishmen were strong. Thus, the Ulster rising (a conventional field rebellion, relatively easily put down by the authorities) was manned mainly by Ulster Protestant liberal Republicans. By contrast, the most explosive element of the Rising - the Wexford rising - was commanded by Roman Catholic and Protestant Republican activists, but otherwise had many features of a peasant revolt, with a large rank-and-file composed of poor, oppressed Wexford farm tenants. Local risings of this sort were homogenous in social composition to an extent that ruled out the cannon-fodder, slopping out etc. scenario; these duties, where they arose, were not managed on a “two tier” basis.

Irish Republicanism was, obviously, far from excised by the eventual, bloody suppression of the 1798 Rising. However, it did in subsequent years become increasingly secretive and conspiratorial in recognition of the poor prospects for open, conventional revolt, and of the role of informers in the defeat of the United Irishmen. The last hurrah for open combat came in the Irish Civil War in the early stages of which the anti-Treaty IRA took the field openly against the pro-Treaty Free State forces - and were roundly defeated by the conventional pro-Treaty Army commanded by Generals Michael Collins and Emmet Dalton, MC (he had been a British Army officer in the Great War, and had been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in, I think, 1916). Since then, “physical force” Republicanism has worked through small, closed, cellular-organized “secret armies”. Notwithstanding the emergence of a substantial “open” political party, Sinn Féin, supporting the Provisional IRA, the heart of the movement lay in the clandestine Provisional IRA itself and its Army Council. Again, the ISIS problem of a two-tier “society” did not arise; although the IRA, not infrequently, used innocent civilians to hide munitions and carry bombs to targets under compulsion.

By the way - Gerry Adams, the “civilian” leader of the Sinn Féin political party, once famously said of the IRA, “They haven’t gone away, you know”. They still haven’t gone away. The IRA, and its Army Council, still exist. The most recent meeting of the Army Council is reported to have taken place in Belfast late in 2014. Ideas, however poisonous, are very hard to kill.

One thing that the Republican Movement does have in common with the Islamaniacs is the tendency to split. Irish boozer - sorry, writer - Brendan Behan, a long-standing IRA member, once remarked that the first item on the agenda for any Republican organization was the Split. At the very start of the Ulster “Troubles”, the IRA and Sinn Féin split into “Official” and “Provisional” factions, allegedly, because of ideological differences. After a lengthy “conflict”, political and military, the Provisional movement came out on top. Not that the “Officials” ever completely went away; they did, however, spawn a number of particularly murderous splinter groups (INLA, IRSP etc), again allegedly on ideological grounds, but more likely due to personality clashes between the leadership and the particularly homicidal and unstable personalities that gravitated towards the splinter groups.

Another common feature is common criminality. Groups like the Provisionals welcomed gifts of arms from the likes of the late and unlamented Mad Gaddafi, but still needed funds, beyond what could be raised from Party member contributions and contributions from deluded “Irish Americans”. The methods used were extortion, bank robbery, security van heists, kidnapping, forgery of currency and other serious criminal activities. ISIS seems to be involved in such activities in spades. Also, the attitude to those attempting to leave was similar. Until recently at least (when much of the Provisional “army” was allegedly stood down), taking the IRA Oath was regarded as a one-way street. Those attempting to leave, unless they were very lucky, were shot. It was also possible to be shot for committing what were in the view of the secret IRA “Courts”, crimes. This was, in fact, a two-tier process. Low-ranking terrorists committing, say, child abuse were shot, while high ranking members were rusticated and “exiled” from Northern Ireland to the Republic. This “legacy issue” of the “Troubles” is a subject of public controversy here at the moment.

There are certainly strong similarities between ISIS and clandestine terrorist movements like the Provisional IRA, Baader-Meinhof etc. However, there are also significant differences, arising largely from the mixed, ragbag nature of the ISIS “army”, and of the open, in-the-field nature of their war. In this situation, the emergence of a divide between an oppressed slave class below the real fighters is much more likely than in the situation of small, clandestine terrorist guerilla movements. Sorry for the long post. Best regards, JR.

#10

Splitting seems to be endemic in such movements:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-0Az7dgRY :smiley:

Apart from fairly inconsequential but noisy movements like Baader-Meinhof and the much more violent and destructive Red Brigades, the same happened with, for example, the Zionists in Palestine in the 1940s; the Palestinians subsequently: and Algeria under French colonial rule.

As for the IRA, the Loyalists splintered in the same ways with their various incarnations corresponding to the IRA splits and incarnations.

  1. “Irish boozer” may be a tautology. ;):smiley:
  2. I think Behan described himself along the lines of “a drunk with a writing problem”.
  3. I quite enjoyed “Borstal Boy” when I read it in the 1960s.
  4. My understanding is that Behan exaggerated his IRA credentials and activities as time went on.

The latter comment on deluded Irish Americans is directly relevant to the present issues with ISIS and its ilk, as in both cases there are those outside the battlefield who have misty-eyed notions of the struggle they are supporting, and support generously with money and occasionally by volunteering for service on the battlefield, as happened with some notable Americans of Irish descent whose names and details I can’t recall but which I think went back to soon after the American Civil War, then after WWI and, I think, after WWII who went to Britain and engaged in bombings and other attempts at armed conflict in England.

I suspect that there is a strong element of something like the mentality of the convert in these cases, as in the convert to a religion or not smoking or vegetarianism becomes a zealot of greater conviction than those who were always thus. Those who left Ireland or Palestine or Lebanon or wherever thirty years before whatever the relevant conflict was thirty years later have the luxury of strong views of a disappeared past uninhibited by the prospect of being killed for attempts to revive it.

The biggest difference is probably the ability of ISIS and everybody else to get their propaganda out; to communicate; and to recruit through the internet, free of censorship and any other control.

This reinforces the next biggest difference, which is the capture of territory and assets which allow it to proclaim itself as a state, albeit not a recognised one so far (but neither was the People’s Republic of China for quite a while following military triumph of Mao’s forces) and which, more importantly, gives it control of assets which produce, compared with most revolutionary and insurgent movements, rivers of gold to finance its consolidation and expansion.

Perhaps.

But most guerrilla movements have been ruthless in conscripting labour as porters, cannon fodder and so on. The difference with ISIS is that the morons complaining about their treatment by ISIS were volunteers from the West. It might be time to include a chapter in the volunteers’ bible, Islam for Dummies, on such matters.

No need for apologies.

Developed discussions are usually much more interesting than one or two line posts.

#11

More support for my theory.

Absence of beheading videos until last few days when ISIL beheaded Japanese hostage, just as it becomes clear to ISIL that it is going to lose, and now has lost, important town of Kobani.

Same sort of distraction politics using manipulation of news media, albeit much more violent and repugnant, as Western democratic governments routinely use when in trouble.

#12

Latest barbarity burning Jordanian pilot in a cage looks more like desperation in the face of losses, or just sadism for the sick enjoyment of the homicidal psychopaths masquerading as Allah’s instruments on earth, (probably both) than strength as a winner.

Guaranteed to alienate large sections of the international Muslim community rather than have them all weld themselves to ISIL’s cause.

Keep it up, fellas, because you’re undermining your own position and encouraging a lot of people and nations to wipe you and your evil out.

#13

Monstrous. I checked out some of the stills - could not bring myself to watch the video. I gather that the Grand Imam at Cairo has condemned this outrage as barbarous and unIslamic. I am with him on this.

In one sense, Islamic State has played their latest outrages with some political skill, at least in proving just how terrifying they can be, and in discomforting the governments of Japan and Jordan. However, the sight of a man, literally, being burned alive in a cage should certainly cut through any illusions that the vast majority of Muslims might have as to ISIS and its “just cause”. Hard to believe that anybody would choose to live under an organization capable of such medieval savagery. Also, the impact on Jordan’s hitherto relatively relaxed approach to their participation in the anti-ISIS military campaign will be interesting to observe. The young pilot was, apparently, a member of a highly influential tribe in Jordan, and Jordan is, not far under the surface, a country the “native” population is still composed of old-fashioned Bedouin tribes. The young man’s father has called for the Islamic State to be annihilated. Developments awaited with interest. In sadness and anger, JR.

#14

Rabid Jihadi’s cannot be reasoned with, or engaged Diplomatically. There are few options left as to how they can be successfully dealt with, and it’s time the Arab World’s leadership made some decisions to act before everyone else has to do it for them. Some have likened ISIS to a Cancer, I would class them more as a gangrenous infection in need of sterilization.

#15

After careful and extensive research, the ever inventive USMC has developed an effective microchip treatment for this problem. It is based on existing, and therefore quite affordable and readily deployable, technology. It also achieves Islamic bliss for the terrorists, so it’s a win / win.

MICROCHIP IMPLANT ALLOWS ISLAMIC TERRORISTS TO SPEAK TO GOD

The implant is specifically designed to be injected in the forehead.

When properly installed, it will allow the terrorist to speak to God.

It comes in various sizes: Generally from .223 to .50 cal.

The exact size of the implant will be selected by a well-trained and highly skilled technician, who will also make the injection.

No Anesthetic is required.

The implant may or may not be painless. Side effects, like headaches, nausea, aches and pains are extremely temporary.

Some bleeding or swelling may occur at the injection site. In most cases, you won’t even notice it.

Please enjoy the security we provide for you.

Best regards,

USMC

#16

They’re no more terrifying than any other group which gets its rocks off murdering defenceless victims in pursuit of some warped ideology.

As the Japanese proved in WWII, such pointless barbarity combined with a desire to die in the cause should result in massive casualties on their side.

Jordan is to be congratulated on responding with the prompt executions of a couple of ISIL fellow travellers already sentenced to death.

Maybe the West will get the idea eventually that the only way to deal with these barbarous religious criminals is to meet violence with greater violence and wipe them out in unlimited war, instead of pussy footing around on the margins.

Oh, as usual, I forgot that the Saudis, who directly or indirectly have been sponsors around the planet of the mosques and schools and groups which generated ISIL etc, have oil and the West won’t take them on because it wants the oil.

So, until the West grows some balls and takes on the duplicitous Saudis, this will go on forever.

#17

A very good technology,and from what I hear, 100% effective. My thoughts are that ISIS, (or whatever they call themselves at home these days) does have an H.Q. town, and several strong hold towns in various places. Seems to me that use of MOAB’s or some conventional Warhead ICBM’s would easily provide a broadband communication service with God. Chase them into the open, and then send them to see God personally.
It would be helpful if news footage of the missiles being launched from various Nations were played so that any stragglers could see for themselves that the entire planet was out to get them, and why. The time for subtleties has long passed, its time to go play Cowboys, and ISIS.

#18

I don’t know, RS* - I have looked at some stills from the infamous video, and the sight of a fellow human being enveloped in flames is particularly harrowing, at least for me. What next - the Death of a Thousand Cuts ? Viking-style “eagle” executions ? Torn apart by ferocious dogs ? Hanging, drawing and quartering ? They have already crucified a number of victims; some, perhaps, for being Christian, or in some other way “apostate” from the loony version of Islam espoused by ISIS. And if this is the trajectory, should the western media not report it because it is designed as a sort of distraction for ISIS battlefield defeats ? The people of the world need to know these things. Whatever the ISIS nutters may think, I have just about enough faith in human nature to believe that most people will be repelled and disgusted by such acts - very much not excluding the vast majority of Sunni Muslims.

Regarding Brendan Behan (referred to some way back), it prompts one observation. The IRA is an organization of fairly homogenous social background. However, it is obvious that there will be differing levels of commitment and competency among “volunteers”. There are commanders; under them active volunteers; under them collaborators (supplying safe houses, logistics and so on). There is a fourth group - a cadre of, shall we say, “heavies” who would, for example, enforce “community justice” largely through intimidation, but occasionally through violence, in areas under IRA influence. This was not confined to Northern Ireland. I have direct knowledge of this level of activity in Dublin, though I do not think this level of operation is “active” at the moment - politically inconvenient, you know.

I suspect that Brendan Behan was a man hovering between the “active volunteer” and the “heavy” level, perhaps close to the latter. He clearly had sufficient knowledge of active “volunteer” activity to enable him to write his later work.

One amusing comment on Behan I recall from somewhere - it was the observation, on Behan’s lengthy record of imprisonment, that he had spent “more than eight years behind bars”. One might observe that he spent rather longer in front of bars, leaning on them … Yours from the Irish Writers’ Museum, JR.

#19

I agree.

The more ISIL’s barbarity is publicised, the greater should be the determination of most of the rest of the world to rid the planet of these abominations.

In the unlikely event that happens, the rest of the world can then turn its attention to other infestations of abominations in various parts of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South East Asia, and at the same time deal with the sources of much of this barbarity in Iran and Saudi Arabia, among others.

Alas, I’m not holding my breath for any of this to happen.

#20

ISIL and their affiliates have now taken to beheading groups of hapless Egyptian guest-workers in Libya, and rounding up Syriac Christians in their core area of operations. I am coming around to the view that these terrorists are so, so good at making enemies that they vanish under the sheer burden of hatred towards them in time. Surprising, since ISIL seems to be run by intelligent, well-organized people, that this does not seem to have occurred to them. One wonders whether they are at all serious about establishing their “Caliphate” - or are they only interested in eventual, fully-fledged martyrdom ? JR.