If it helps, I'm now picturing you singing Madeline Kahn's song from Blazing Saddles.
The core military leadership of Da'esh/ISIS is Iraqi former Ba'athist army officers who lost their jobs when Rumsfeld though it wise to disband that force. They are a lot better at what they do than any of the other Jihadi groups around because i. they're fully professional, and ii. they know a lot of the territory they're working in like the back of their hands because it's their own. If you wonder why they seem even more brutal than AQ, think Chemical Ali.
AQ, which is less ideologically opportunist, simply can't compete.
Aren't the Shia going to kill them eventually?
3. All of them? And the people they've trained? They aren't for the most part on Shi'a terrain, so they'd have to do it by winning battles. Roll on, but I'm not holding my breath.
I meant more that the war was likely to expand.
This Kurdish site - I have no clue how reliable it is - says the going rate to avoid conscription by ISIS in Mosul is $850. I'm guessing the number of people who can scare up $850 on demand is limited.
ISIS will lose when it stops winning and therefore stops being sexy. It will stop winning once its supply of dumb kids from the farm around the world dries up, but that may take a long time.
I heard that naked British people can cause earthquakes. Maybe there's a way to use that to stop them.
There was something in Foreign Policy the other day which suggested that the number of dumb kids crossing the Turkish border and the number blown to bits by the USAF was close to being in balance. The Turkish secret service may find it harder to turn a blind eye if Erdogan is held in check by a coalition. Or maybe not. Quien sabe?
I must assume Isis has been attending my grad school, where we were shown mathematically how it was economically efficient to let people buy their way out of the draft.
Adjusting for inflation, it was about $5,750 go buy your way out of conscription by the Union during the U.S. Civil War. Assuming that monetary values represent a good proxy for moral values, this means that ending slavery is nearly 7 times more just than establishing a caliphate.
An interesting calculation, but you also have to take into account modal real incomes. 1860 New England/2015 Northern Iraq might well be about the same. Your calculus as it stands though is a bit depressing since ISIS is actively instituting slavery.
My math only works if you assume there is an absolute injustice level to serve as a '0'. If you can have negative justice, the calculations get harder.
On a cynical level, isn't this a net improvement in the US's strategic position? It was limited in what it could do to defeat al Qaida, but US military could smash ISIL any time it wanted. The diplomatic issues are also simpler, since ISIL is occupying territory in two sovereign nations where it's not wanted.
And once we've smashed it a functioning democratic state beholden entirely to US interests will rise from the rubble like a strategically useful beautiful flower!
14: The military could smash Isis in its role _as a state_. It couldn't do much beyond that.
two sovereign nations where it's not wanted
Well, this is where the ghosts of Francois Georges-Picot and Sir Mark Sykes stalk the landscape. They're not wanted by the recognised governments of Syria and Iraq, but how much are they not wanted by the actual population of the areas they control? Are they wanted more or less than the sectarian Shi'a army of Iraq? Than the Alawi officered Syrian army? Than the US army whose track record in the region is of recent memory? Who knows? What will it take to make them hated enough?
14 -- I'd guess that it strengthens Iran, reasonably substantially, since Iran is now the defender of the great and genuinely threatened Shi'a population of Iraq, Lebanon, and possibly elsewhere. It also may weaken Saudi Arabia somewhat, both because of said Sunii-Shi'a tension and because the Saudis have a rival as the powerful state run by religious wackos role. For reasons that have never seemed super persuasive to me, keeping down Iran and keeping up the existing Saudi government (along with Israel) have been officially deemed to be our major interest in the ME for 30 years now. So, that seems bad for the US's "strategic position" whatever that means.
In terms of "does this make large scale terrorist attacks against the US or Western Europe more likely" I'd say maybe no, since ISIS seems more interested for now in fighting in actual ME territory. OTOH, for reasons that are also somewhat mysterious to me, these guys do seem to need state support or at least state chaos in order to thrive and mount substantial terrorism.
This has been another episode of barely informed American guy talks about the Middle East.
18: It's because the US is a puppet state of Saudi Arabia, and not the other way around.
18. Some tabloids are saying that ISIS are training western volunteers and sending them back. Assumes facts not in evidence.
16 That's still a pretty big deal. There's a set of people out there trying to ascertain who has the mandate of heaven. I think GWB made a real mistake not going all out to get Bin Laden in the 2004-2008 period.
(Although it was obviously the will of God that he not do so . . .)
21: True, there's a particular urgency in how the world looks at a full state being established and justified, but still after the smashing the US would be right back in 2005. At the moment everyone seems to understand that, but not sure how long it will last.