at the time we were about to bomb Syria on behalf of the Syrian rebels.

I'm not dodging; I'm actually asking what you are saying.

or was it there all along?

It was actually there for a long time, back to when AQ broke off from MB.

ISIS is a "near enemy" theorist: they have to defeat the "lesser satans" before they can tackle the "great satans".

Keep that in mind: everything they say is based on defeating existing Arab regimes. We don't actually matter except as proxies.

My impression is that they are all different flavors of the same thing. They all want a Caliphate but vary on strategy and tactics.

As for ISIS in particular, my feeling is that the new iteration we see in the MSM is just a rebranding exercise designed for a western audience.

However, am I correct in saying that the MB is basically a nonviolent group, more concerned with the charity and political side?

Al-qaeda is not a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. Maybe Recursion is thinking of Hamas, which back in the mid-eighties, was. The brotherhood has long ago abandoned violence. Though now that the Egyptian Coup leader is basically seeking to violently purge the movement from the country, well...

AQ's sort of its own thing, and is represented in Syria as the al-Nusra front, from which IS spawned, and was disowned due to bad PR. it probably has people with "ties," but of course the same could be said for any collection of people; seven degrees of Khaled Meshaal, if you will.

because AQ wanted to pursue a violent path.

I also thought Al Nusra and ISIS might be the same thing because I saw a picture of their leader and he appears to be the same guy we see in some of the famous posed pictures of ISIS (the guy with a beard but mustache shaved off surrounded by masked jihadis).

and "khorasan' isn't an independent group from al-nusra. It's basically a made-up distinction because our "coalition partners" are still funding and supporting al-nusra.. and don't want to stop. so we pretend to have uncovered a brand new unknown group that we can bomb, without implicating our "allies." in their support for the very same group.

IS for instance is in part composed of leftovers of "al-Qaeda In iraq" - remember htem from 2006 or so? Mingled with the leftovers from al-Nusra, to form ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Al-Nusra is just the Syrian AQ affiliate. Add to this the fact that AQ has itself changed from a cell-based clandestine organization - the sort of terrorism one can see i nthe film "True Lies" ("Crimson Jihad," rofl) - and instead become a sort of populist militant movement.

from an almost unlimited pool, and also instill terror into those they are about to attack, which is a modern twist on a classic tactic straight out of Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Many similar features. However, they fight each other on occasion because they do have different leaders and some differences. As far as enemies go, though, they're only enemies when they're direct rivals over some bit of dirt. Otherwise they can be ignored for the short- and perhaps intermediate-term.

From this distance, from outside, they're the same.

From inside, they're different enough for some to die for. (Then again, some are willing to die for trivial differences.)

It's like the pictures. From the outside, they're the same. A skull-cap-topped, caftan-wearing mass of unruly graying hair and beard, surrounded by idiots holding AKs. On the inside there are slight differences, at least at the DNA level.

Both are primarily home-grown. I view them as more "local" than, say, the Donetsk People's Republic folk.

No clue about the serendipitous "discovery" of the Khorasan group. Such folk are always around; their level of organization is a question.

Just like the original "Mujahideen" in Afghanistan, you now have thousands of foreign fighters streaming in.

A difference now is that with social media they can recruit from all over the world and communicate with each other more easily.

About the split between the near-enemy and far-enemy theorists.

they get to fight the far-enemy at the same time.

It's a twofer!

Theocons and warmongers on both sides will be ecstatic.

This isn't a new strategy.

wanted to ARM the 'opposition' in Syria, a country which was FIGHTING extremists pouring into that country from Iraq, Libya, Bahrain, Qatar etc?? Why would the US seek to STOP Syria from dealing with extremists?

How did ISIS gain so much power within a few weeks apparently, that they are going to take YEARS, more time that WW11 to 'deal with them'?

Did we just NOTICE them a couple of weeks ago?

By Jove I think you've got it! This is why I love to peruse the pages of DU.

Last edited Sun Sep 28, 2014, 01:17 PM - Edit history (1)

was on TV saying that Khorasan had a factory working on "toothpaste tube bombs" and other ways of concealing bombs in ordinary looking personal products people carry onto airplanes.

I assume "exploding tampons" or "disposable razors" might have been on their list...but, he didn't mention those. So we took out their factory....so he said.

I don't know..reeks to much of "Yellow Cake from Niger" and "aluminum tubes" ...etc.

But, then...what do I know. I'm not a "Security Expert" or former General paid by the MIC to appear on CNN/MSNBC/FAUX. Catchy name though...for their group. Whether real or assigned by MIC....like "ISIS" which is so catchy and not the real name of that group.

they simply didn't spring up from nowhere.

Of course, we have our own parallel here in the US. The way I read posts around here, you'd think that the tea party sprang up out of nothingness to challenge the election of Barack Obama. Certainly, they were right wingers before, probably among those cheering on the Clinton impeachment. It's just that when there is new leadership, they sometimes take on a new name, and the media parrots that information across the globe.

Whatever we're going to hear about hourly in 2017 doesn't even have a name yet.