ISIS is now in Libya

[KevinNYC]

Analysts have been looking at the waning of Al Qaeda as the jihadist leader for a little while now

[LJJ]

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter which faction of Islamist insurgents these people belong to, these factions will work together. Al Quada and IS have already put their minor (and very possibly delusive) squable aside and agreed to work together.

[KevinNYC]

lol if Obama was the one who started the war in Iraq, Kevin would have even spun that to a plus

I haven't spun anything in this thread. My problem with that CNN article is it doesn't fully explain the context. There's a civil war going on in Libya in 2014 and the article hardly mentions that. This group is just one of the groups fighting there.


The original sin of the Iraq War was it was a war of choice. There was no reason in 2001 why we had to invade. That is why they spent all of 2002 selling the war.

ISIS has sprung up for reasons that were not US decisions. We did not cause the Syrian civil war and we didn't cause Assad to empty his jails of Jihadists and start funding them through oil purchases either. We also didn't cause Nouri al-Maliki to so alienate the Sunnis, they would side with ISIS.

[KevinNYC]

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter which faction of Islamist insurgents these people belong to, these factions will work together. Al Quada and IS have already put their minor (and very possibly delusive) squable aside and agreed to work together.

Not all of them will work together or ISIS wouldn't have defied Al Qaeda and made a bid for supremacy.

I don't know what you mean by delusional squabble as these groups were killing each other earlier this year and yes it seems like they now have a truce but that is only because they have started losing battles. I don't see this as a long lasting alliance.

[RidonKs]

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter which faction of Islamist insurgents these people belong to, these factions will work together. Al Quada and IS have already put their minor (and very possibly delusive) squable aside and agreed to work together.

why are they coalescing?

this is a leading question btw, but i'm curious what you think. the easier rebuttal to your claim of an inevitable trend toward unity is in kevin's post above.

[LJJ]

why are they coalescing?

this is a leading question btw, but i'm curious what you think. the easier rebuttal to your claim of an inevitable trend toward unity is in kevin's post above.

Because, as much as the leaders of these groups might want as much personal power as possible, their fighters certainly won't fight eachother and have virtually identical ideals.

KevinNYC will try to tell that "but, they were fighting each other just two months ago". Yeah that's why IS has been expanding so greatly without any major losses, despite their territory in Syria coming straight out of the Al Quada groups pockets for the most part. Their fighting has mostly been "x group joins AQ, y group joins IS" and consolidating areas of control, their hasn't been much bloodshed at all. The real fighting happens between IS & AQ versus Assad, the Kurds and Iraq since the beginning. With a very small, insignificant troupe of unafilliated Syrian forces who have been hopelessly exaggerated and propped up by the media yet are entirely insignificant in the conflict.

[KevinNYC]

Because, as much as the leaders of these groups might want as much personal power as possible, their fighters certainly won't fight eachother and have virtually identical ideals.

KevinNYC will try to tell that "but, they were fighting each other just two months ago". Yeah that's why IS has been expanding so greatly without any major losses, despite their territory in Syria coming straight out of the Al Quada groups pockets for the most part. Their fighting has mostly been "x group joins AQ, y group joins IS" and consolidating areas of control, their hasn't been much bloodshed at all. The real fighting happens between IS & AQ versus Assad, the Kurds and Iraq since the beginning. With a very small, insignificant troupe of unafilliated Syrian forces who have been hopelessly exaggerated and propped up by the media yet are entirely insignificant in the conflict.

So what do you mean by delusional?
And do you deny they were fighting each other in first half of this year?

In general that bold part doesn't make sense and I don't think you understand a multi-party, multi-front civil war. Are you saying the Nusra Front was fighting the Iraqi army?

[LJJ]

So what do you mean by delusional?
And do you deny they were fighting each other in first half of this year?

In general that bold part doesn't make sense and I don't think you understand a multi-party, multi-front civil war. Are you saying the Nusra Front was fighting the Iraqi army?

There is fighting and then there is fighting. Minor skirmishes and bee stings because Al Quada and IS both prefer to be the dominant side? Sure. Major battles and sieges with lots of casualties, mass killings, mass executions between them? No.


The Nusra front is in coalition with the groups that fight the Iraqi army. They are not the same faction, but at the same time, they are almost a unit in the same army at this point.

[rufuspaul]

http://www.theamericanconservative.c...he-libyan-war/


[QUOTE]Marc Lynch revisits what academics said about the Arab uprisings as they were happening, and identifies what many got wrong. He addresses his support for intervention in Libya:

The Libya intervention is one of the very few military actions in the region that I have ever supported

[MavsSuperFan]

Removing Gaddafi was a huge mistake. Dictators > Islamists. Can not expect better than relatively secular dictators/fake religious dictators (those that are not devout) in the middle east.

[Dave3]

Libya, Nigeria, Egypt, Lebanon...

They're not in Egypt yet. I'm inclined to think that they would have a more difficult time getting into Egypt than other countries in the area just because I'd think Sisi and the military would put up quite a fight. We'll see though.

[JohnFreeman]

ISIS will fall apart once they fight a real army

[MavsSuperFan]

ISIS will fall apart once they fight a real army

very few of them exist in the middle east.

ISIS can just take their parts of iraq and syria and be happy with that.

[KevinNYC]

They're not in Egypt yet. I'm inclined to think that they would have a more difficult time getting into Egypt than other countries in the area just because I'd think Sisi and the military would put up quite a fight. We'll see though.

As in Libya, an existing Egyptian militant group joined them in the past two weeks.

[Dresta]

My post was informed by these analysts view of the dynamics of what was going on in the jihadi world.



http://www.fpri.org/geopoliticus/201...unterterrorism

What a cogent analysis...