did ISIS thought they are going to win?

[Kraenen]

It's not really a hallmark of religious fundamentalists to be reasonable or logical.

[Deleted]

did ISIS thought they are going to win?
it wasn t hard to predict they would get bombed "the sh$%@t out of them" by the next us president regardless who won

Define "winning", from what i understand they are trying to trigger their version of the apocalypse, so in that sense i guess they are winning.

[Rusque]

Bombing a mountain in Afghanistan does little in my eyes to move the needle. You're not fighting physical bodies, you're fighting ideology. Each time you create more bodies via violence, it fuels their ideology and allows them to spread it even more.

[Deleted]

Difference is that with Nazi's or the KKK, we don't have them running around blowing up people or running them over with trucks, walking into nightclubs and shooting up the place.

Nazi's and KKK or, from what i've learned or heard of, are dying out. Most people like myself don't care what you look like so long as you're not hurting anyone. Do as you do, but once you starting acting evil, that were you should end.

Unfortunately, it's a very difficult topic, but laying down and just taking it isn't going to help either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf

Almost.

[Noomz]

Osama is dead, but fuck it, they won.

Osama was just a figurehead. Al Qaeda are still around, the only thing holding back their recruitment is ISIS. Afghanistan is still a shithole and Iraq is a splintered mess.

[Belize]

You can't kill an ideology, but you can disrupt the social structures that propagate and sustain it. This is especially the case when the ideology becomes embodied in a quasi-government, subject to destruction like any government.

That worked so well with other terrorist organizations that more or less controlled local government. They're totes mcgoats gone.

[Noomz]

The problem isn't ISIS, they're such a minor and laughable threat that only looks big because of the public attacks they've committed.

The real problem is what created ISIS and what created all the other Terrorist organisations over there. But we won't be dealing with that any time soon, so we just have to put up with it and keep bombing them to make sure they don't gain too much power.

You mean poverty and ignorance?

[Osmeric]

That worked so well with other terrorist organizations that more or less controlled local government. They're totes mcgoats gone.

Yes, actually it does work quite well. Understand this involves full scale war to achieve the goal (of destroying that government).

[Deleted]

Yes, actually it does work quite well.

IRA, ETA and FARC are some groups that just came to my mind, for example.

[Osmeric]

IRA, ETA and FARC are some groups that just came to my mind, for example.

Nazi Germany was the big one I was thinking of.

[Girrag]

But they aren't losing. West will destroy ISIS in current form but it will reborn somewhere else pretty soon. If somebody wants to really defeat ISIS he must find solution for hundreds years old conflict between sunni and shia and find place in the world for millions and millions people without any real skills.

[Otaka]

We've been bombing terrorists for almost two decades, they aren't exactly losing.

Then what are they doing? winning?
I though winning meant you gain something... but since ISIS is doing nothing but losing their lives and territory it doesnt exactly seem like they arent losing.

They arent conquering our countries either... terrorists have been bombing us aswell with much lower success rate.

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Because when you wipe out a power house and you don't replace it properly, and guide it with Intel and a helpful hand, you leave a power vacuum. ISIS is the result of shitty bombings of prior "diseases".

Imagine the west bombed the Third Reich and didn't have a marshall plan. Just in and out and leave Europe to itself.

We'd be dirt poor and eating our own children

Real life is not a video game, we cant just brainwash their leaders or anything... if their leaders die, new ones will emerge. Just like in our world... kennedy's death didnt stop a new president from being elected. (thats the only president i remember who got assassinated)

[Deleted]

But they aren't losing. West will destroy ISIS in current form but it will reborn somewhere else pretty soon. If somebody wants to really defeat ISIS he must find solution for hundreds years old conflict between sunni and shia and find place in the world for millions and millions people without any real skills.

That doesn't stop terrorism. Other ideologies will take over and people will move towards them. Neo-luddism terrorism will most likely strike all around the world in 10-20 years.

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Real life is not a video game, we cant just brainwash their leaders or anything... if their leaders die, new ones will emerge. Just like in our world... kennedy's death didnt stop a new president from being elected. (thats the only president i remember who got assassinated)

Terrorism can only be defeated by destroying the logistics, not the leadership.

[Otaka]

Every time you bomb 1 extremist 2 more pop up. "Bombing the shit out of them" isn't going to do anything.

It works the same both ways... they bomb us = kill a few people and more haters emerge.
More men or kids who grow up and become part of the army and then gladly go to war against those who suicide bomb innocent civilians who might have been their relatives.

ISIS isnt doing anything beneficial for themselves. They are poking at an angry beehive and the only thing keeping that beehive calm is politics.

[prwraith]

Isis did win. They kicked the ball way down the hill from where it was, and now the worlds opinion of the USA is basically the opinion the USA has of Russia.

[Saroc]

ISIS's goal was to get american troops to the middle east so that they could bring about Armageddon.
So yes, they probably see it as a good thing.

[Deleted]

Isis did win.

They managed to establish their caliphate? Daesh is not Al Qaida, the organization has a clear territorial objective, something that failed to implement.

Daesh failed, Daesh-inspired terrorism is another monster.

[Pua]

Yet they did change the idea and perspective of millions of people in the 'civilized' West.

Not really.

What changed the perspective of the west was a never-ending series of foreign conflicts against 'terrorism', conflicts that never seem to be won and see countless billions ploughed into an aggressive foreign policy that the west can't afford. It's funny how people review things when they see their public services dismantled due to lack of funds, yet flying over northern Syria is somehow considered a judicious use of taxpayers' money.

ISIS, as a military force and/or governing entity, is largely dead; ISIS, however, also happens to be an idea. To paraphrase Hugo Weaving, "ideas are bulletproof" and that means that those who depart ISIS will, someday, be recruited into the organisation that replaces it. As a ground war, ISIS never intended to win anything - the staggering gulf in air power alone means they couldn't, and knew they couldn't. What they wanted to do was win the information war, psychologically influence and radicalise the next international generation of home-grown terrorists, and survive long enough to gloat about it.

In that regard, they've been phenomenally successful as multiple conducted attacks in Europe would attest.

The final victory for ISIS, or whichever terrorist group they eventually end up as (or were formed from), is when the people in the west finally get sick to the back teeth of their soldiers, sailors, airmen and citizens dying for no gain, and subsequently bring down the proponents of aggressive foreign policy and the international arms trade by sheer weight of numbers; perhaps including large-scale social disobedience. And, funnily enough, because of the economic policy of neoliberalism, large-scale civil disobedience isn't all that terribly far away.

There's a revolution coming. I just hope it happens soon enough for me to see it.

[Corroc]

America dropped the biggest non nuclear bomb they had and killed 37 isis fighters, in sports terms we call that stat padding. No one has won or lost yet. Its still there doing its shitty thing.

[Deleted]

ISIS, as a military force and/or governing entity, is largely dead; ISIS, however, also happens to be an idea. To paraphrase Hugo Weaving, "ideas are bulletproof" and that means that those who depart ISIS will, someday, be recruited into the organisation that replaces it. As a ground war, ISIS never intended to win anything - the staggering gulf in air power alone means they couldn't, and knew they couldn't. What they wanted to do was win the information war, psychologically influence and radicalise the next international generation of home-grown terrorists, and survive long enough to gloat about it.

ISIS as an ideology also is going to be replaced by something else, as always happened.