There is a lot to say about the massacre in Orlando. There is my sympathy for the victims and their loved ones, all of whom must be kept close in our hearts. They were victims of a horrible crime committed solely because of who they loved, a heartbreaking tragedy that we must always remember. There is my deep and abiding concern that the Republican Party continues to stoke these fires of hate, calling trans women “sexual predators” and warning about the awful dangers they pose to children, then affecting a pious pose of bland sympathy when their hateful rhetoric becomes hateful action. There is my strong feeling that this is a test that one candidate has failed so thoroughly, so disgustingly that we cannot possibly trust him with even a Twitter account, let alone the Oval Office. There is my belief that we have to correct our course on gun control. This cannot continue.
But one of the most important things to say, I’ve already said on my own blog. I’m reposting it here because I don’t really think it can ever be said enough and in enough places. I wrote this after Paris, but it is no less true today:
Okay. I am going to try to explain this calmly and reasonably.
The most pessimistic estimates of ISIL’s membership put it at about 200,000 worldwide. That includes non-combatants, support staffers, administrators and other political actors as well as fighters, but 200,000 is going to be our baseline estimate because it’s always good to think worst-case scenario.
There are currently 1.3 million active US military service members, with a further 850,000 on reserve. This is solely the number of men and women that America can put into the field; it does not count our traditional allies such as France, Great Britain, Canada, et cetera et cetera.
There are 1.47 billion practicing Muslims worldwide.
Take those three sets of numbers together, and you will see a picture of ISIL as a tiny guerrilla force unable to do anything more than inflict cruelty on the defenseless. They are out numbered more than 10 to 1 by the United States military alone, and we are far from alone in our opposition to ISIL. Even many of the countries we have historically had a troubled relationship with feel that an apocalyptic death cult doesn’t make a good neighbor. ISIL is politically isolated and counting on two things to help them in their struggle against the West.
One, they are counting on the fact that because they are small and we are large, we have more to defend and they can choose to strike us where we are not expecting it. This is in the nature of guerrilla warfare. It is utterly tragic, and it will mean that Paris is not the last place that ISIL attacks us, but the same tactics that make them effective as a guerrilla force make them ineffective as a conventional army. They are not able to destroy America. They are not able to destroy anybody. They are only able to inflict cruelty upon the helpless when nobody is watching.
Two, the only way that they can progress beyond their status as petty, vicious murderers is by reframing the issue from “ISIL against the world” to “Muslims against Christians”. As a crazy, hate-filled death cult, they are a weak military force that has drawn the attention of some of the most powerful armies in history. As defenders of the Muslim faith, they have a potential army of over a billion that they can recruit from. They are desperate, literally desperate to convince Muslims everywhere that the West hates all Muslims with the same passion that they hate ISIL and want to crush Islam entirely.
In other words, when Donald Trump says that we need to shut down all the mosques to prevent ISIL from gaining strength in America, or when Ted Cruz says that we don’t need to care about civilian casualties when fighting ISIL, they are making ISIL recruiting speeches. They are doing our enemy’s work for them, and it is a testament to the kindness and decency of the overwhelming majority of the people of the Islamic faith that they have refused to give in to the hatred that their supposed allies around the world hold for them.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t need to stop and stop now.
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Very well said.
Daesh. They HATE that.
As Devichan noted: We should *always* refer to that hateful pack of terrorists as Daesh, not ISIS or ISIL.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/us-general-rebrands-isis
Let’s not show them any respect they don’t deserve.
I’m glad you get it, John. The stated goal of ISIS is to get the world enraged at Muslims worldwide, so that their huge numbers feel threatened and join the fight against the west. They *want* us to hate Islam. They want it to be all Muslims against Christians.
So the last thing we should do is anything Donald Trump suggests.
John, I know you’ve said several times that you have your own blog, but I’ve never found a link posted here. For the lazy among us, could you do that at some point?
It’s actually in the linkroll on the side of the page, but for those who don’t want to try to hunt through lots of names in small text, the link is:
http://fraggmented.blogspot.com
And yes, I know that Daesh is the best term, but I wanted this particular post to be accessible to people who may not follow the politics of the situation closely so I tried to hew a bit closer to the name the mass news media uses. ISIL was a mental compromise. 🙂
I, in normal circumstances, don’t like anyone who plugs their own blog, but rather than say the same things here, I’ll just mention that, in the middle of my gamebook playthrough blog, I posted my own brief thoughts in this tragedy :
https://wayofthetigerblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/editorial-comment/
The problem with American politics is that, for all the lip-flapping current politicians pay to their predecessors, they’ve cultivated a situation where complexity of thought is a sin. It takes too long to say:
‘We must foster stronger relationships with non-radical Islamic leaders, and make it clear to them that we understand the difference between progressive Islam, conservative Islam, and radical Islamic extremists. We must understand that the great majority of Muslims stand even more under siege than we are, as they are battered from within by extremists, and viewed with distrust by those from without. Only by accepting, honoring, and fostering closer ties with the Muslim community will we be able to open the lines of communication that will allow us to protect ourselves, protect the Islamic members of our own community, and foster mutual acceptance of divergent religious beliefs… a core principle that our nation was founded upon.’
That takes too long, sounds too much like ‘Obummer’, who’s a Muslim anyway. So instead its:
Build a wall.
Kick out all Muslims.
Burn down all Mosques.
Put them all in camps!
While Daesh is just a rabid death-cult as you say, the challenge that the world faces at a time of instability in that region, is severe. Because certainly Daesh does have sympathizers in refugees… and the way the refugees have been treated only creates more of them.
It’s a time more than any other where America can serve as ‘the shining city on the hill’, but in the current political environment no one on that side of the aisle holds a candle to the person that had that vision.
Say what you will about Reagan (and holy crap, can I say a lot), his larger vision was of an America that was made stronger by the (straight, cis, Christian) people that made it up. He saw a nation that accepted people from anywhere as long as they had a willingness (to work shitty jobs, and be second class citizens) to be free. He saw an America that was welcoming (of cheap labor), was accepting (as long as you didn’t expect to be treated well), and was made stronger by those she took to her breast (because you can always join the army, service means citizenship!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c32G868tor0
Mind you, I’m not saying that Hillary does stand for something… other than being the first woman president. But the alternative isn’t just worse, it’s potentially cataclysmic.
My understanding is that they have mixed opinions on the name Daesh. Some don’t care. Others dislike not because it’s insulting but because they want to be known by Islamic State. Which is reason enough to annoy them by calling them Daesh.
Daesh is just the acronym for ISIS in arabic. But acronyms are less common in the arab world (but exist like Fatah), but when they do exist they tend to become just a word/name/neologism rather than the individual components. So those pedantic members don’t want to be seen as just another middle eastern terrorist group. Which again is good reason to call them Daesh to present them diminutively.
The word has some pun-related value in the arab word too, especially as Daes means to trample or something like that. Though people can make the same in English about ISIS (cystisis I saw Adam Hills calling them).
John, thank you, I never look at the sidebars so it never occurred to me that you’d be there!
Beautifully said. Thanks, man.