Dont know why everyone is so scared to talk about the violence and spread of Islamism. They want to kill ALL of us, not just the republicans. READ their speeches. Speak out, people! This is not going away.

I've noticed it several times when these stories are posted. Few if any responses. But we all get in a tizzy that Hillary is going to be interviewed on Fox. Or that some politician says something stupid (like its rare).
These groups are a threat to the entire world, not just the middle east. They are committed to spreading their violence and terror. Their treatment of women is horrific; not to mention anyone who thinks differently. We see whats happening in Europe and in Asia. We've already had "honor killings' here in the US. But we are afraid to say anything because someone MAY accuse us of being racist. People everywhere seem to have forgotten what the definition of that word actually is.
If we do not stand up against this movement, we will be walked over by it.

And we are not doing our part. Tsk.

I guess any protesting is "hate"? Speaking out against the practice of stoning women and girls is hate? Forced marriage and slavery? Beheadings? Will it only matter when its down the street from your house?
If protesting unjust and criminal acts is hate, then DU would be considered a "hate" site.

But mainly for Iraqis, not for us. We have fucked up their country, and now they get to live with it, while we just get to walk away.

You do realize Emanuel Goldstein wasn't real, right? These guys are real.

There are plenty just like them running around chopping things off and raping and killing in other places too.

The civilized world should be investing every available penny into alternative sources energy. If it wasn't for oil, the entire Middle East would be insignificant global power-wise and more resemble Afghanistan.

I believe more and more people are thinking the same.

I guess thats why the Admins started Discussionist!

That's how the war-drum media spread the fearmongering propaganda of the one-percenters.

These small groups of criminals, even if they have religous roots (like.... here?) will not walk over anyone here: they would be crushed in a minute if they even just *could* try...

Get over yourself.

Of course progressives all condemn what is happening in Iraq, and we have been doing so for over twelve years, at least. One is not, however, going to find many here who will agree to help gin-up a religious crusade to chastise radical Muslims. We realize that past aggressive, imperialistic actions of this country and our allies made them radicals to begin with. We also know none of this would be happening if we had not invaded Iraq and destroyed its government and military institutions.

But regardless of Iraq, what about whats happened in Libya,Syria and other ME countries? The radicals intentions have been known well before our folly in Iraq. And as bad as he was, Saddam wouldve kept a lid on this as well as Iran.
You say all progressives condemn what goes on, but as I stated earlier it seems as though on DU as well as other sites, few people actually put it in words. These stories are posted and hardly anyone rec's. But some simplistic story on Fox the other day got 300+ replies! All pretty much saying the same thing.
I re-read my post to see where i am asking for a religious crusade but I see i never said that. If loudly protesting such evil and criminal acts is considered a "religious" crusade, then we're all in big trouble.

Remember when then President George W. Bush called for just such a "crusade?"

I was not intending to link you directly to that very frightening policy, but only to note where seeing Muslims, generally, as a threat can lead to.

I dont think Bush was talking about a religious crusade. The word is used many times without relation to religion. How many times have we seen stories about being on a "crusade against guns"? But I thank you for telling me your intent, too!

I think he initially meant "Crusade" with the term's full religious implications.

He did have to dial that back, Cheney most likely told him he had to.

with you 100% on this. All we really did is create a power vacuum and it looks like Iraq is going to turn into a Islamic State. Saddam was a madman, but he didn't let this stuff go down.

None of them so far look up to the job.

This is simply one of the inevitable consequences of the original invasion and occupation policy commenced in 2003.

If you fancy yourself digging down to the roots, you will need to look into the Deobandis of the mid-nineteenth century, and follow a trail all the way back to Timujin in Baghdad.

What Bush did in 2003 was knock the cornerstone out of an arch, destroying a dictatorship which 'not by strength, cunning, and luck alone, but by strength, cunning and luck all together' held a wholly unnatural state of hostile and irreconcilable elements together, on the chief border between the two great Islamic sects. When you knock the cornerstone out of an arch, you get rubble, and even bouncing rubble. That is what has occurred here. That Iraq broke into civil war under U.S. occupation was no surprise; that we botched the selection of a new ruler was no surprise, that the thing spread to a wide-spread sectarian war by no means confined to Iraq was no surprise, that this civil war flamed up higher after U.S. departure was no surprise: all of this was entailed in the initial act, the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam, made and executed in 2003, and none of it would be occurring save for that initial act of destabilization.

And the response was that fatuous babble about the "reality based community", and more doubling down.

What accounts for most of the distinctive reactionary pattern in Islam over the last several centuries is that it began with material success, and only much later encountered any check from superior force. If one associates the early success with divine favor, and conceives it to have been a consequence of following divine will in detail, then the reaction to subsequent check will tend to take the form of attempting to restore the past, and the means seen as most apt to that will be resuming the earlier practices and attitudes believed to have found such divine favor.

I suspect the I.S.I.L. people have got about as far east and south as they are going to go....

....to the death now...plus be a lot more pissed off when they show up.

In actual combat?

Just curious.

....no in combat per say but under rocket attack enough times.

You just came across more "Gung ho" about fighting and dying than most combat vets seem to be.

....have little incentive to surrender. More like common sense. YMMV.

However, the Iraqi Army has always, even under Saddam, had serious morale problems. When pressed hard, they often don't hang around long enough to surrender to anyone. They just hit the road home as whole units.

For example: In several instances recently, the only thing militants captured were discarded uniforms and dropped weapons.

It will be young men who want to counter the attackers due to a sense of civic duty.

Mind you: the Kurds have an extremely tight military group so that military will fight (women are conscripted in the Kurdish army, and they are on the front lines as well, so it's not a fake conscription). But if there is any blow back it will be young Iraqi men who don't want their families to suffer the same fate as those executed.

Last edited Sun Jun 15, 2014, 09:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Most of the executed were younger men who wore western attire. If those photos make it to the Iraqi press, which they probably will, so people know what's happening, then there will be a counter insurgency at minimum.

BEIRUT: Syria's army has been pounding major bases of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria in coordination with the Baghdad government for the last 24 hours, an activist group says Sunday.

The strikes against ISIS -- which has spearheaded a week-long jihadist offensive in Iraq -- have been more intense than ever, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The regime air force has been pounding ISIS's bases, including those in the northern province of Raqa and Hasakeh in the northeast," which borders Iraq, said the Britain-based group.

The regime of President Bashar Assad was responding to the fact that ISIS "brought into Syria heavy weapons including tanks" captured from the Iraqi army.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Jun-15/260207-syria-pounds-isis-bases-in-coordination-with-iraq.ashx

The insurgent offensive that has threatened to dismember Iraq spread to the northwest of the country on Sunday, when Sunni militants launched a dawn raid on a town close to the Syrian border, clashing with police and government forces.

As the rapid advance south by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) towards Baghdad appeared to slow over the weekend, fierce fighting erupted in the town of Tal Afar 60 km (40 miles) west of Mosul near the Syrian border, security sources and a local official said.

ISIL fighters and other Sunni Muslim armed groups have stormed several towns on the road to Baghdad after seizing Mosul nearly a week ago – an offensive which only stalled as it approached the mainly Shi’ite capital.

The advance alarmed both Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite supporters in Iran and officials in the United States, which helped bring him to power after its 2003 invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/06/15/iraq-insurgent-advance-spreads-to-northwest/

BEIRUT — Government forces flushed opposition fighters from their last redoubts in northwestern Syria near the Turkish frontier on Sunday, capturing two villages and restoring government control over the border crossing, activists and state media said.

The military’s advances fully reversed the gains rebels had made during their three-month campaign in Latakia province, the rugged coastal region that is the ancestral heartland of President Bashar Assad. The counteroffensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels, who have suffered a string of bitter recent setbacks in Syria’s more than three-year-old civil war.

Islamic rebel factions launched their surprise assault in Latakia in March, pushing south from the Turkish border to seize a string of villages in the lush, mountainous terrain. The military, nervous about an incursion in a bastion of government support, dispatched reinforcements to blunt the rebel advance and eventually turn the tide.

On Sunday, after months of bloody clashes, army troops backed by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite military group Hezbollah seized the seaside hamlet of Samra before also taking the village of Kassab and its adjacent border crossing, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-government-forces-advance-in-northwest/2014/06/15/a0af2b58-f470-11e3-af99-2073a15a2fdd_story.html

If they're so justified in what they are doing, let them show themselves to the world.

Unless there is a physical protection, they are not really fooling anyone. - They are identifiable. Helmets offer skull protection, which is understandable.
Camoflage is different, in that the purpose is to enable the element of surprise on the enemy, in certain situations.

And ban camouflage.

No difference at all. Do you also demand our opponents stand out in the open and wave at our brave drone operates who are hiding in Nevada just to make it really fair? Maybe those drone operators should be in the middle of Iraq or Pakistan if they are not afraid of showing "what they stand for".

Again, completely different circumstances. There is no reason for local cops to look like that. They're not undercover cops.