Hamas IS Isis and Isis IS Hamas! — Page 14

I have zero interest in getting in the middle of one of the Liza v the world battles, but in this case, Liza appears to be quite correct. Multiple sources, including NPR, NY Times, CBC say that some of the oil is being bought by Assad's regime. Several of those sources are cited in this Scripps News article:



ISIS oil is going to its enemy, the Syrian regime Cheap oil creates some strange bedfellows

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Oil "going to the Syrian regime" (as this Scripps and CNN articles say) is wholly different from "purchasing the oil on Assad's behalf" (as the Headband says).

The latter implies implicit collusion; the former a more nuanced--and more accurate--description.

If you purchase from the black market out of necessity, you don't ask questions.

The point is not who is right and who is wrong. (I am right and the headband is wrong.) The point is that if you start from the assumption that an Alawite (Shia) dictator and a bloodthirsty Sunni jihadist group are in cahoots, you are misperceiving the overall situation.

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Watch how Turkey plays a deadly double game: They claim to join NATO's fight against ISIS, while they allow ISIS to slaughter the Kurds of Kobani.

To the Turks, who are Sunni, the savagery of Sunni ISIS is regrettable, but their priority is not to defeat ISIS, but to defeat Assad, who is Alawite (Shia).
NY TIMES: Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the U.S.

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And so, with America and Turkey unwilling to intervene, there will be 5,000 Kurds slaughtered in Kobani within 24 hours.

But no one cares about the Kurds because they're not being killed by Jews.



NY MAGAZINE: Can Americans Stomach Another ISIS Slaughter?

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"Obama has no idea what he's doing in this war."

As opposed to whom? His predecessor who "broke" Iraq with no long-range plan for repair? Who disbanded the Iraqi military hierarchy, allowing them to regroup under the ISIS banner?

Perhaps tazber would like to tell us who DOES know what s/he is doing in this war and what should be done next?

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That being said, the failure to assist the Kurds is particularly galling. Since the fall of Iraq, the Kurds have been our strongest supporters in the region, as I understand it. (Correct me if I'm wrong, PJ.)

If Turkey refuses to step up, maybe it's time we ignore their concerns and establish a separate Kurdish state. (Yes, I realize this is a reckless idea. I'm just upset that the only people in the Middle East who DON'T call us "The Great Satan" are being abandoned. But see our treatment of the Hmong people of Laos. Our track record for standing by our "friends" isn't very good.)

With the opposition of Turkey, a NATO member, we can't establish a Kurdish state, which would by definition appropriate part of Turkey itself.

Which is why the Turks, our Allies, are content to allow ISIS, their fellow Sunnis, to slaughter as many Kurds as ISIS can. It will be a genocide, but the Turks are no strangers to genocide, having perpetrated one against the Armenians in 1915, although we are forbidden to mention it.

These are real and horrific genocides, as opposed to the disgusting and contemptible and false accusations of genocide tossed about recently.

At any rate, ISIS will soon have a broad swath of the Middle East ethnically cleansed of Yazidis, Kurds, Chaldean Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Shiite Muslims, Jews (of course!), and anyone else they don't like.

And the world will have done next to nothing to stop it.

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Sometimes Jon Stewart seems like the smartest guy around.


Jon Stewart Has A Big Problem With Obama's 'Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad War'

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PJ, I know what you mean, but I would quarrel with your phrase "by definition". It is certainly possible to form a Kurdish state out of the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria alone. And this is what Turkey fears, assuming their own Kurds would demand to join such a state.

And I'm sure the Turks are right. But it's "human nature", not "by definition".

I was merely indulging a revenge fantasy where Turkey finally gets its comeuppance for poor treatment of the pro-American Kurds. I realize it isn't going to happen.

I really enjoyed this interview with Reza Aslan posted on Salon this morning.
I feel like we've seen a lot of this go on in this thread.

"There is a fundamental misunderstanding among these critics of religion in that they believe, first and foremost, that people get their values, their morals from their scripture, when in reality the exact opposite is true. You bring your morals and your values to the scriptures; you don’t extract them from them. You learn that on day one of the study of religion — day one, that’s the first thing that you learn!
And to a larger extent it indicates a real fallacy in the New Atheist movement, that is part and parcel of the lack of a religious education among these critics of religion, which is that they tend to read the scriptures more literally than any literalist I know. And when confronted by some particularly savage line in the scriptures, their conception forces an understanding [that says], “If you do not follow that little bit of savagery, then you’re not really a Muslim, you’re not really a Christian, you’re not really a Jew.”
You know who else makes that argument? Fundamentalists. And that’s why this notion that what these guys represent is a new kind of fundamentalism, an atheist fundamentalism, is so real. Because that’s precisely what’s being exhibited here in their utter sense of certainty; in their literalist, simplistic, exoteric, absolutist interpretation of religion; in their inability to recognize the diverse ways in which religion is lived rather than what we would refer to as top-down religiosity."




Reza Aslan on Bill Maher’s anti-Islam crusade: “Frank bigotry”

The trouble with Reza Aslan's defensiveness is that he simply attacks the atheists for attacking fundamentalism by claiming (falsely) that they are attacking the entire religion when they're not.

They're attacking the excesses of fundamentalism--while they also attack all religions. (Because, well, atheism!)

I wish Reza Aslan would spend more of his time coming up with constructive ways of combating the increasing appeal of fundamentalism to disaffected young people rather than (effectively) denying that it is happening.

But his response would probably be: "Why should I have to?"

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No, it absolutely is NOT. That's the kind of naive thinking that gets America into trouble.

If you understood anything, anything, ANYTHING about the Near and Middle East, you would know that Turkey has used persecution, ethnic cleansing and its armed forces to quell rebellions by its Kurdish minority. The minute an independent Kurdistan was carved out of Iraq or Syria, the Kurds of Turkey would secede from Turkey and become part of the new Kurdistan. There would be violence and revolution in Turkey and, most likely, more genocide.

Which is more or less what I said in two sentences, PJ. Your reading comprehension puzzles me sometimes, because I know you normally have excellent skills. Once again, you berate me for what you imagine I am writing rather than for what I actually wrote.

My point was that you could legally create a Kurdish state from Iraq and Syria alone. And you could. It was done in Northern Ireland (and, yes, we all know how that turned out, but it was done). It was done in the partitions of Korea and Vietnam (again, with disastrous consequences).

I never said it was a good idea. I merely said it was tempting when Turkey obstructs military aid reaching the besieged Kurds.

To my knowledge, no responsible American politician has proposed such a solution, nor will one. I've never heard a talking head suggest it would be a good idea. So why you insist this is somehow "typical" of American thinking escapes me. I was quite explicit that mine was an emotional response, not an intellectual proposal.

I don't claim to be an expert on the Middle East, PJ. But if you are going to repeatedly insist that you and only you are qualified to have opinions on the subject, perhaps you should start your own thread.

There's absolutely no connection between what you were taught as a non-literalist Christian and the movement in modern Islam to enshrine the Koran into law and punish apostates with death,

If you read any of the articles I've posted by Muslims themselves, you'd know that comparing the two situations is ludicrous. As Ali Rizvi wrote in the Huff Post article I posted, speaking to fellow Muslims who say "The fundamentalists do not represent me":

Despite your best intentions, you also embolden anti-Muslim bigots -- albeit unknowingly -- by effectively narrowing the differences between yourselves and the fundamentalists. You condemn all kinds of terrible things being done in the name of your religion, but when the same things appear as verses in your book, you use all your faculties to defend them. This comes across as either denial or disingenuousness, both of which make an honest conversation impossible.

This presents an obvious dilemma. The belief that the Quran is the unquestionable word of God is fundamental to the Islamic faith, and held by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, fundamentalist or progressive.

The Christians who believe in the literal word of the Bible are not leading mainstream churches and they are definitely NOT leading governments.

But an increasing number of Muslim countries use various forms of Sharia as their governing laws, and twenty-one of them punish anyone who leaves Islam or even speaks out about it with death or imprisonment.

Add to the number of governments the number of countries, the Islamist groups like Al Qaeda and Isis that want to combine literalist religion and oppressive politics, and you've got a problem, a big problem.

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