ISIL's nuclear weapons

In my last post? Or the one before that? (Sorry, really tired right now.)

Hence your last paragraph effectively contradicts the last part of your second.

Perhaps ‘form a government’ wasn’t the right phrase to use, as I said it would be a religious dictatorship, but the point I was trying to make was that it would be a way of imposing a governing control over people; ISIL are not advocating anarchy despite seemingly random and ruthless behaviour.

If ISIL is attempting to form a ‘government’ then surely ISIL wouldn’t deliberately carry-out the sort of major terrorist attack (like 9/11) that would inevitably provoke the West into destroying ISIL?

I don’t know how you defend against terrorism; the reason terrorism has evolved the way it has is because it is so ‘effective’ and difficult to combat, irrespective of how powerful the defending conventional forces are.

There is no intention to ‘form a government’ such an idea would be abhorrent to ISIL There is a very plain intention to impose a ‘way of life’ – their way of life. It is called a Caliphate. It means that life wherever ISIL rules will be lived according to their perverted notions of Islam.

ISIL are the spawn of Al Quaeda and the attack on the West was accomplished in 2001, with the smaller stuff following on (London, Paris, Madrid etc.)

We are being rather slow to realise that we cannot, in the light of current thinking, defeat ISIL with the weapons and methods currently in use. ISIL have no structure to attack. They appear to be a corporate body without a body. They come together to make a strike, they then disperse into their background. They do not have tanks, artillery, air power. All of these assets are useless to them at this stage and useless to us.

Think of the IRA. Their tactics and the way they fought their covert war made our military assets redundant from the off. We had to deal with them using secret, covert means with excellent intelligence, establishing a network of paid informers and inflicting much pain and damage as ruthlessly as possible. And collecting a lot of ‘flak’ when we caught them and disposed of them out of hand.

Using broadly the same methods would have worked against ISIL but, now I think we’ve missed the boat. It is reported that they have virtually unlimited funds. They have more than enough committed, fanatical followers who can now merge and blend into most countries in Europe and Britain.

They are slowly gathering speed. We’ll have a hell of a job stopping them.

I think we need to remember what ISIL actually is. It is an organisation that is dedicated to forming a government; admittedly a dictatorship, based on a particularly narrow and utterly intolerant religious ideology, but a government all the same. The method that ISIL has chosen to gain power is one of pure terror directed by religious extremism…

…but it is a particular religious extremism…..and there is the key right there.

There is suspicion that ISIL is (privately) funded by very wealthy individuals and groups in Saudi Arabia and that this is because ISIL follow a particular strain of Islam (Sunni over Shia, I think, but I’m damned if I’m going to look it up) and that Saudi Arabia is waging a war by proxy after spending decades and billions of dollars promoting the same particular strain of Islam; Saudi Arabia being a respectable country, with a friendly disposition towards the west, and all. In that respect the hostility towards the west is something of a smokescreen, but one which could provoke (and has provoked) a response from the west (which plays right into the hands of ISIL making it a ‘holy-war’ and adding to the smokescreen)!

Unfortunately those funding ISIL seem to have got more than they bargained for, and have created a monster! The rulers of Saudi Arabia are now on the target-list (with just about everybody else).

However ISIL have to be a bit careful, having alienated just about everybody, including those that helped spawn them, they mustn’t confuse ‘noise and smoke’ for real power; a serious ISIL terrorist attack on the west would probably spur the west into destroying ISIL! Martyrdom probably isn’t what the leadership of ISIL have in mind even if they promote martyrdom for the more gullible of their followers.

John

Of course he is not and my intention was not to suggest he was. Merely that across the Islamic world there is a breadth of opinion and he falls into the more extreme camp by making the comparison he does. It is one which is not shared by other equally respected figures.

Charlie,

He’s nobody’s fool. He’s written extensively on the subject of Islam. He’s informed and I respect his opinion.

Nothing there with which I’d argue CD. What does concern me and others who give some thought to these matters, is the apparent level of covert support in this country for these rascals.

The fact tht we can’t control illegal immigration means that many who are our enemies find our borders completely porous. We now read that illegals are being exported out so that they can return at a time of their choosing co-incident with whatever beneficial welfare changes are in the offing !

The threat of ISIL is necessarily a covert threat. They cannot move large armies across the Channel but, they could, given our lack of control over our coastline, infiltrate piecemeal and merge successfully into a receptive and visually identical section of the population.

There, to assemble over time, very dangerous toxins of a bacterial or viral nature and capable of causing huge casualties and perhaps more importantly widespread panic among a population that to my understanding, does not have the resilience or mental and physical toughness of the wartime generation.

Yes, let us overestimate the capabilities of ISIL and be prepared.

One or two commentators either inferred that I was being a bit tough on ISIL and they weren’t quite the threat that I made them out to be.

The point I was trying to make was that we should not overestimate the capability of ISIL as a threat to the United Kingdom.

I do not doubt the inclination of ISIL to exterminate anybody that doesn’t bow to their ideology but there is a big difference in the threat of ISIL depending on whether you live in the United Kingdom of whether you are a virtually defenceless Yazidi!

What concerns me is that United Kingdom defence policy seems to be increasingly skewed towards the ‘threat’ of ISIL at the expense of our more traditional (and much more capable) enemies. Plus our (however well intentioned) interference in the region has been turned against us and led to accusations of imperialism or even religious crusade; now that ISIL are terrorising the whole region there have been, of course, calls for the west to ‘do more’. We’re damned either way!

A fine novelist but that does not make his views on ISIL any more relevant than anyone else’s. And there will be much debate around the assertion he makes in the third paragraph.

One or two commentators either inferred that I was being a bit tough on ISIL and they weren’t quite the threat that I made them out to be.

Well, here are some more thoughts from no less than renowned author – tho’ not to everyone’s taste – V.S. Naipaul. He says (report, D. Tel. 23rd) that ISIL can be likened to a latter day Fourth Reich. He goes on to write that they believe in their own racial superiority and have wiped out whole civil populations of certain regions.

Naipaul continues that ISIL offer the most serious and potent threat to the world since the Third Reich. ISIL are dedicated to a contemporary Holocaust. It has pledged itself to the murder of Shias, Jews, Christians, Copts and Yazidis.

The Nobel prize winner, said that ISIL is a totalitarian State, absolute in its authority.

Useful info for the Doubting Thomas’

I don’t know Operation Firedog.

The only way that I imagine you might be able to do it is by adopting the methods of your enemy. Eg. Malaya, Cyprus, Borneo. These theatres were relatively small scale, even so, we used air assets at at least two of them to assist. Our enemy didn’t have that luxury.

You can’t do that with regular forces opposing irregular forces as the Americans discovered in Vietnam

You can if you have disciplined forces and a clear political will to achieve it -the prime example being Operation Firedog.

It makes me wonder why these sites haven’t been reduced to rubble.

Sorry, I missed this…..it is an excellent question; why haven’t ‘surgical strikes’ been made against oil targets?

On the contrary al Qaeda high command has strongly denied any connection whatsoever in Syria, Iraq or anywhere else.

I accept your general points about the various expeditions there over the centuries but in this latest adventure the objective has been successful. What the future brings is another story of course.

You haven’t won if you haven’t defeated the enemy. To win, you have to kill the enemy in sufficient numbers as to persuade them that they no longer have credible forces. You have to dusrupt and destroy their communications, supplies and intelligence.

You can’t do that with regular forces opposing irregular forces as the Americans discovered in Vietnam. We most decidedly have not achieved our military objectives at a considerable cost in lives and treasure.

I rather had the impression that they had morphed into ISIL?

Well, in some respects I think you are correct. ISIL didn’t clone 200,000 ‘fighters’ overnight; some will have already given their allegiance to the Iraqi government, Al Qaeda previously, and Saddam Hussain before that!

I agree with what was achieved by British / Allied Forces in Afghanistan; a temporary, and far too costly, interruption to the normal state of affairs: tribalism, corruption and the law of the gun (to whatever fundamentalism is in fashion).

On the contrary al Qaeda high command has strongly denied any connection whatsoever in Syria, Iraq or anywhere else.

I accept your general points about the various expeditions there over the centuries but in this latest adventure the objective has been successful. What the future brings is another story of course.

CD 16

I rather had the impression that they had morphed into ISIL?

17.

Charlie, I have a slight advantage being former military but not staff. I believe that the Allied presence in Afghanistan was like a pebble thrown into a pond and creating a transitory ripple effect – it shows and then is gone in seconds.

All we have to show for around 300 years of political and military interference is the building of the odd bridge and stretches of highway. The prevailing mindset in that country – as far as I can judge – is and always will be tribal and medieval.

Well that’s one of the reasons our boys died in Afghanistan so it was not all in vain as most would have us believe.

Fair points, but ISIL aren’t stupid…..and they are certainly aware of their own limitations.

And what happened to those behind 9/11, those that planned the attack, their ‘organisation’, their ideology and those (made) guilty by (an engineered) association? Why don’t we hear anything about Al Qaeda these days?