[quote]"What does he know?" you might ask, and that's a question that should be asked. I majored in Middle-Eastern studies with an Emphasis in Arabic, and am a government certified Arabic translator. I currently work as an Arabic analyst for the U.S. Govt. [/quote] Sounds interesting. What exactly does that job entail? Military strategy or government ties and economic strategy? [quote][b]1.) Who the junk is ISIL/ISIS/Daesh?[/b] Ok ISIL stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. (Levant was originally a french term meaning, the place where the sun rises, but this is typically regarded as an area including parts of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and what is now known as Israel. ) ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria- (which is where this group has roughly been limited to, rather than the entire Levant. and Daesh is the Arabic acronym written in Latin Characters, but if you're interested it stands for الدولة الاسلامية بالعراق والشام (Al-Dawleh Al-Islamieh fi al-Iraq wah al-Sham) which is just translated into English as ISIL.[/quote] Any particular idea why the government refers to the Islamic State as ISIL, while the media and therefore the people refer to it as ISIS(as clearly, as far as control is concerned, they're more ISIS than ISIL)? [quote][b]2.) Are these guys Muslims?[/b] Well they claim to be. But they're more of a "Theography" A group with a common belief because of their location in the same geographical area. Basically, they're like your one friend who claims to be religious but only follows the parts of his/her religion that he/she agrees with or benefits him/her. ISIS takes it to the extreme. ( So, a little religious background; I'm sure you all know that Muhammed was/is their prophet. Well before he died, he said that a bunch of branches of his teachings would sprout up and they would all be different. So people then asked him how they would know which branch is the right one, and he told them whichever branch teaches the things that he and his selected leaders have taught. )[/q So now ISIS is taking advantage of all the mistakes previous religious leaders have made, for example killing and persecuting christians by decapitation and other disgusting means. So when other Muslims question ISIS about their tactics, ISIS just says, "Well this leader did it in year 642, so this is the correct thing to do." And if you still dissent, they'll kill you. [b]Tl;DR- they follow their own crazy, twisted, demented form of Islam that's sooo far from it's original purpose, most Muslims don't consider ISIS Muslims.[/b][/quote] That logic isn't right. Whether or not you consider something to be what it claims, it doesn't change what they really are. They claim to be Muslim, adhere to Muslim laws(Sharia?) and traditions, embrace an Islamic culture, and look to push an Islamic belief system, whether it's askew from the less extreme, more correct sect of it. Look at Catholicism vs Protestant beliefs. For the longest time, Catholics did not consider Protestants to be Christian, as they didn't follow traditional and common beliefs, but that's obviously not true, as both are sects of one religion. Example: Just because you have a family member who changes what the rest of your family members do, while still maintaining the basic structure of family traditions and lifestyles, doesn't make him any less family. [quote] [b]3.) Why don't we just carpet bomb the area?[/b] Really? Is this actually an option for some people? There are still good people over there, people who refuse to join ISIS even among threats and danger, these people are fleeing their homelands to get away. They're just normal, every day people. Also, there are these things called Rules of Engagement (ROE) that kinda prohibit the US from killing innocent people. Not saying wartime casualties and accidents don't happen, but intentional targeting of any innocent person is totally illegal, and members of the military who do, get put away in military prison for a LOOOONG time. [/quote] Humor me for a minute. [quote]There are still good people...they are fleeing their homelands[/quote] That almost destroys your entire argument right there. Let the good people flee, then, destroy the remaining. Yes, there [i]will[/i] be innocent people. There always will be. But you can't use that as an argument to not attack terrorists. Why else do you think they force people to stay if they can? Because they know we won't/can't attack because innocent people. And as cynical as it may sound, if it comes down to protecting my people vs protecting yours, mine get the priority. In other words, your country comes first. Sure, the future of humanity is dependent on if we can stop killing each other and working together, but if killing some of their innocent people means protecting your own, then do it. Especially if it means you're also killing some people that would halt the progress of humanity working together. And let's bring up a point you laid out further down. Raqqah. A stronghold. You claimed using nukes was bad because, well, nukes. So why not carpet bomb Raqqah? [quote][b]4.) Why don't we just send in troops?[/b] This, is actually a good question. We've done this multiple times before in recent history. Most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan fighting Al-qaida and the Taliban, respectively. American troops go in, fight the good fight, make the green grass grow, and they do it better than any other country in the world. But the baddies go down swinging, they do as much damage to the country's infrastructure as possible. Once our job is done, we pull troops out, but there is still a huge vacuum left behind in those countries, and power available for the taking. Well, some motivated crazy nut decides he's gonna take that power, and then ISIS starts where al-qaida used to be. The Iraqi government still wasn't established or rebuilt enough to combat ISIS. Same thing is currently happening in Afghanistan, we pulled out of there after making the green grass grow and putting warheads on foreheads. Now there's another vacuum where people in power used to be, and crazy douchenuts are taking advantage of the situation. [/quote] Ground troops won't work. Let's consider something. Look at Syria. Pretend for a minute we stop helping the rebels. Assad wins. No more fighting, and his own military can focus on the [i]actual[/i] terrorists. We wouldn't have to use our's. The reality is this. Extremism can't be controlled unless the people are, and a dictatorship is the best way to control a people. Perhaps people like Assad hold the key to stability in the ME, regardless of how bad t may sound. [quote][b]5.) Why aren't we tapping phones and monitoring communication to stop attacks like the one that happened in Paris?[/b] Well, in short, we are. The US does what it can, but we're bound by civil rights protection acts, and specifically the 4th amendment of the Constitution, which protects the citizens of this great nation (edit: and also provides some protections to citizens of 2nd party countries, like France.) from unlawful search and seizure from the government. Data, and phone calls have been deemed as items that are covered by the 4th amendment. So, essentially, if the government doesn't already KNOW you're plotting a terrorist attack, they can't justify this search and seizure. The flipside to that though, is the thinking that "The friend of a terrorist is a dumb-ass, the friend of 2 terrorists is also a terrorist." So it doesn't completely prohibit collection. Keep in mind though, that those 4th amendment rights are only granted to citizens of the US (and a few other cases) so abu-badguy in the middle-east doesn't have those 4th amendment rights as far as the US government is concerned, so he's free game.[/quote] Completely, solely opinion: Listening in should not be put under the description of the fourth amendment. You're not "seizing words". Once they're out there, they're anyone's and everyone's. So why not let them be free game? My thought is that unless you have something to hide, why should you care if someone hears your calls or reads your texts? It's not like you'd know when it's done, so why worry? It helps us catch the bad guys while you suffer no negative effects. [quote]6.) The question was brought up,[b] "Why don't we just nuke the middle-east?"[/b] Well, we'd have to determine which areas to nuke, a city that comes to mind is Raqqah, Syria. ISIS stronghold. Well, we bomb them and there goes our membership in the UN. We've broken all sorts of ROE's (Rules of Engagement.) Environmentalists would freak. We would have all sorts of innocent people killed. Bashar al assad (President of Syria) would freak, therefore Putin would freak. Possibly launch nukes against us. Any US president would never go for this. Honestly, I think this scenario is just so totally and completely unlikely that it's not really worth much of a discussion[/quote] Completely agree. At this point, nukes are only a deterrent, not a weapon to be used. How ever, what if an alternative WMD was used? Or even just a tactical-nuke?

Your post, overall, seems intended to push the "most Muslims hate these guys" concept, which unfortunately is not really accurate. It is possible that "most" Muslims dislike ISIS, but it would be more like 60% than the 99% people like to imply. Fact 1: These guys physically control territory comparable in size to a U.S. state. That could not happen if there were only a relative handful of them with near universal opposition. Fact 2: Popular movements in the Muslim world, for example the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, time after time are in pro-radical directions. Fact 3: A 2011 poll of Saudi Arabians found that 36% felt 9/11 was justified. A poll of Palestinians found even more support for it. I would honestly suggest doing research for the purpose of actually learning information first and foremost, then later adopt political beliefs that fit reality, vs adopting a political concept, then adopting facts to fit your politics. The Muslim world is currently unique in its extremely widespread support for violent terrorism. It is a warped and sick culture.

One of these days, Isis is gonna mess with the wrong people. Obama's too pussy to do it himself, and he only has a year left in the Whitehouse.

Just letting you guys know these mother-blam!-ers are the most brainwashed people I've seen in my life. If you don't live in the middle east I don't think you receive all the videos/news, these -blam!-ers have no sympathy at all, I've seen many videos where a member that suddenly turned into isis (or daesh), would kill his own father/brother/cousin, you name it! Even animals have more sympathy than them, I could raise a tiger and he won't suddenly kill me.

If you want it solved send the military in [spoiler]without any journalists, and an extreme clamp down on information[/spoiler] it'd be solved rather quickly

Or or or, stop denying the truth. Muslims are a danger to the world. They serve no purpose aside from causing disaster to everyone, even themselves.

I grew up in a predominately middle eastern/Islamic neighbourhood as a white kid, I can tell you from first hand experience that majority of these people aren't peaceful tolerant human beings. While they are a minority they will act humble, tolerate things to an extent and generally be reasonably peaceful; once they take majority hold of an area though their attitude changes to polar opposite. Their goal is to convert/breed until they become a majority then put their own rules and laws in place, with complete disregard for anyone else. Give it 50 years and majority of governments in Europe will be under Islamic rule.

Apparently ISIS has stated that they will soon be attacking multiple cities... Why the hell would they do that? Why give us a list of cities that are apparently under threat? Does anyone else not find this strange in any way or am I missing something stupidly obvious?

Why don't we do something similar to what happened after WW2 in Japan and Germany? We can take out ISIS, move in and take control of the local government, set up a leadership so there is no power vacuum, maintain a presence to make sure everything is going to plan, and the rest of the bureaucratic shit?

[quote]He also said that Muslims must start the debate against ISIL. Someone with a Muslim voice and an Arab face.[/quote] Exactly. My only question is; where are all the moderate Muslims who don't agree with ISIS/ISIL? Their voice should be the loudest. This is a Muslim problem and the Muslim population should be the ones at the forefront fixing it. This is an ideological battle. We could go to Syria and wipe out countless extremist groups for another decade and nothing will change permanently. There are problems with the ideology that need to be addressed by the believers of the ideology if we want a long lasting solution.

You think it's likely they'll attack in London next because I literally have to travel through main London during rush hour on Monday which is prime time for explosions, remember 7/7.

I have a question about the Middle East, mainly saudia arabia, is it true that 40% of the water we drink is oil?

We are naive to think that any political or military strategy by the U.S. or any other country will fix the Islamic extremist. ISIS is just the name and face of the current version of the problem. The root of violence and war go back to the days before Abraham. We aren't changing 5000 years of history with our agendas. We should not be involved over there. Israel is more than capable of defending itself.

Is it too late to try to help the actual refugees? Winning them over goes a long way in removing this threat.

I'm only averagely familiar with the political climate in the area, but what are the prospects for factions that don't have a likelihood for aggression against the west? Is there any sort of viable framework for a government to invest in to stabilize the area?

I thought this is something that adds a little perspective... http://i.imgur.com/JSBOmT4.jpg

-blam!- sending more troops to the middle east. More dead soldiers and a year after we pull out it will be the same again. I was stationed in Tikrit right before we pulled out. 2 months after we left the Taliban had control of the base because all the Iraqi army threw down their weapons and fled like cowards. Same story different war. -blam!- the middle east who cares if innocents have to die. Nuke em. Kill em all and let God sort them out.