Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[carl]

The Bolsheviks were a mix of a lot of thugs, some thinkers, and some sadists. IS appears to be made up of some thugs and lots of sadists.

I get the impression that they’re as vicious as the Khmer Rouge and not as smart. YMMV, but I don’t see how that mix could bode well for their long term fortunes.

Perhaps. But I figure we have to judge by accomplishments which have been pretty impressive so far. I think we may be reluctant to say the devil incarnate is devilishly intelligent, but if they are we had better recognize it.

Zenpundit comments that one of the aspects of their genius is despite their horrific cruelty, they are still hanging on to a sort of moral high ground in the Muslim world, witness all those young foreign men flocking to their banner. He compares it to the sort of moral high ground the Commies held for decades amongst so many people in the West despite their murdering tens of millions.

These guys are damn smart. It hurts to say that about people so bad but I think it is true.

[slapout9]

Perhaps. But I figure we have to judge by accomplishments which have been pretty impressive so far. I think we may be reluctant to say the devil incarnate is devilishly intelligent, but if they are we had better recognize it.

Zenpundit comments that one of the aspects of their genius is despite their horrific cruelty, they are still hanging on to a sort of moral high ground in the Muslim world, witness all those young foreign men flocking to their banner. He compares it to the sort of moral high ground the Commies held for decades amongst so many people in the West despite their murdering tens of millions.

These guys are damn smart. It hurts to say that about people so bad but I think it is true.

Yes, and can you believe our fearless commander and chief is still going on vacation with his 1% banker buddies at Martha Vineyard. We are a completely leaderless country and the Muzzelims know it. Those folks that have been warning us for years that he is a secret Muslim don't look so crazy now.

[ganulv]

Zenpundit comments that one of the aspects of their genius is despite their horrific cruelty, they are still hanging on to a sort of moral high ground in the Muslim world, witness all those young foreign men flocking to their banner. He compares it to the sort of moral high ground the Commies held for decades amongst so many people in the West despite their murdering tens of millions.

There was a certain kind of Western support for the Soviet project in its earliest years. There was even an analogous emigration to the Soviet Union. There was a very different, at-a-distance support after Stalin Gulag-ed and purged those emigrants. It’s way too soon to see if things will play out the same way with the IS. But AQ in Iraq had decent popular support at one point, too, but they couldn’t help overplaying their hand. And this crew has been rejected by AQ in Iraq for being too hardcore!

These guys are damn smart. It hurts to say that about people so bad but I think it is true.

They’ve done a good job of seeing the opportunity in a crisis, there’s no denying that.

It’s apples and oranges in the end, but after your comparison to the Bolsheviks had sat with me for a couple of hours it occurred to me that as extremist leftist movements go, the IS reminds me more of the Shining Path. They’re completely uncompromising and own up to the violence they perpetrate. They can keep the members of a civilian populace and a government apparatus in states of terror, but they don’t really have much of a plan for maintaining a society. There are societies that have been run on pure fear for decades, but the showrunners came to power singing a different tune. The initial years of Kim-il Sung and Gaddafi had something of a mandate, and those two leveraged their mandates into strangleholds on civil society. There’s really not any indication that the IS has anything like a mandate, is there?

Anyway, just thinking out loud. I certainly don’t think “out of sight, out of mind” is the way to treat the IS, if that isn’t clear.