The End of Daesh (the Islamic State)

It's absolutely fascinating to review, in hindsight, how those that seek to conquer and control others seal their own downfalls through the very traits that led them to successful conquests in the first place.  Take Hitler as an example.  After his lightning advance through Europe faltered at the Battle of Britain, he was perfectly capable of consolidating his control over mainland Europe before redoubling his efforts to invade Britain.  Had he succeeded, the US would never have had a staging area to invade Europe, and it's possible that Europe could be a predominantly Nazi state today.

But he didn't do that.  You could make the argument that Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement (the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) for purely pragmatic reasons, namely the oil rich fields of the Caucus region, but there was something more to it than that.  The Nazi ideology he espoused that led to his rise to power despised communists, jews, and bolshevism.  He had always aimed to conquer the Soviet Union. Furthermore his stunning victories in Europe fed his cultivated image of invincibility and strategic brilliance, leading to his overconfidence and underestimation of the Soviet Union on the eastern front.

If any history majors out there want to chime in about how I got my WWII history wrong, feel free to let me know since I'm not claiming to be an expert.  All I mean to point out here is that the very factors that led to Hitler's rampage throughout Europe (among other things, like Russian snow) ultimately led to his defeat.

The Islamic State (Daesh) is doing something similar now.

Because of the ideological soup they swim in, I don't think Daesh has any real concept of how little power they actually have.  Daesh's initial military success through Syria and Iraq was mainly due to the fact that they weren't facing a motivated opposition force, and were able to feed off of the general Sunni's population's dissent at the Shia dominated Iraqi government and the chaos of the Syrian civil war.

Daesh truly believes themselves to warriors of God.  It was this ideological force that drove them to trample over the poorly motivated Iraqi government, and that led to their successful recruitment drive of foreign fighters.  But I think it has also left them either blind or willfully ignorant to the military realities of their current international terror campaign.

Every attack they launch at a new nation earns them another new enemy, and motivates their victims even further to retaliate.  With it's nuclear arsenal, France alone could glass (for those not familiar with the expression, "glass" as a verb refers to nuking predominately sandy areas such that the heat turns the sand to glass) all of Daesh's held territory in under a week.  If Daesh should launch an attack at the US, turning to the American public in favor of deploying ground forces en masse, the US military could steamroll Daesh in a matter of weeks.  I should acknowledge the campaign could be bogged down by an insurgency as it was in the earlier 2000s, but I'm still fully confident in our armed services to get the job done.

Or, and it will be extremely interesting to see if this occurs in the coming days, should France invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty designating an attack on a member state as an attack on all member states and bring the full wrath of NATO down on their heads, all bets would be off.  NATO was designed for World War 3.  The war would be something along the lines of throwing the Sun at an ice cube.

The shifting geopolitical realities created by their attacks are absolutely astounding as well.  With Iran's influence over the Shia militias fighting Daesh in Iraq, the US has begun thawing relations with Iran, one of the founding members of the "Axis of Evil" just a few years ago.  Furthermore Daesh has pledge to attack Russia in the near future.  Should an attack occur, all of a sudden Russia becomes even more militarily involved than it was before when it was just propping up the Assad regime- now they're in it for revenge.  Beijing has even offered to help France!

All of a sudden you have the US, France (if not most/all of NATO), Iraq, Iran, the UK, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the Kurds, Turkey, and probably even more nations I can't remember off the top of my head all fighting Daesh.  All once mortal enemies now united against a common foe.  I swear the next global summit will be in Raqqa, Syria, with Hollande, Putin, Obama, etc. all singing Kumbaya and roasting marshmallows over the smoldering embers of what was once known as the Islamic State.

I could be wrong about the future, things might turn out differently.  But I'm confident that with each new attack, Daesh comes closer and closer to their own demise.  Each new attack expedites the political shifting and maneuvering that is needed to end Daesh.  Each new victim creates a new quest for vengeance.  Their days are numbered.


PS.  On a tangentially related note.  PLEASE STOP FUCKING HASHTAGGING EVERYTHING.  It annoys me to no end.  Every goddamn tragedy has to have some fucking hashtag.  STOP IT.  It is slacktivism at it's worst, and it trivializes the event and what the victims had to go through.  All it is is a way for people to feel good about themselves for posting their support on social media. Stop. It.

Quick & Fun Media Analysis of the UNC Shooting

I'm currently on my lunch break (chipotle), so I'll try to make this quick.  So I can get back to my burrito bowl.  There's a news article being shared around facebook right now about the tragic shooting at UNC chapel hill- http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/11/three-students-shot-dead-near-unc-chapel-hill.html.

In the article, the police report suggests the the motivation seems to be related to an ongoing dispute the students had with a neighbor regarding parking.

Here's the fun part-

Their religion apparently had absolutely nothing to do with what happened.  The fact they were muslim appears to be as relevant to the situation as what genders they are, or what they were studying, yet the headline proclaims front and center that they were muslim.

The end result of this is a lot of people decrying the biased mainstream media for not covering this shooting of the muslims as a result of their own islamophobia.

The shyamala-llama twist- The article is actually preying on fears of islamophobia, not actual islamophobia.  Because the shooting had nothing to do with them being muslim, the authors prey on their  audience's fear of islamophobia to incite their audience to action.

I'm not sure I did my thought process here justice, but like i said I'm eating some chipotle right now.  Kinda distracting.

Also, it's not that islamophobia isn't real, it's just not relevant to this case.