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| Ending Endless Wars and the Islamic State | Small Wars Journal |
| 2019-01-26 |
| "For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited," counseled the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu over 2500 years ago. Its physical caliphate is indeed destroyed, but as a symbiotic system comprised of ideologically linked components that drew mutual benefit from each other’s existence, ISIS is far from defeated. The remaining components - multiple regional wilayats (provinces), and an international cloud of aspirants ‐ still threaten the international order. "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive." ISIS always has been savvy and adept at strategic communications; sometimes, as in this instance, although certainly coincidental, the timing could not have been better for them. |
| Posted by:newc |
| #5 Bravo, charger! |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-01-26 14:25 |
| #4 Islam is the root, the ummah is the trunk, the various sects are the branches and the jihadist organizations are the colorful leaves on the branches. All we're doing is periodically raking leaves after the latest gust of wind. |
| Posted by: charger 2019-01-26 11:31 |
| #3 As ISIS becomes uncool, the regional groups will just transfer their allegience to whichever transnational is the latest hip group on the jihad tourism scene — possibly Al Qaeda, possibly someone new. The local players will still be whoever was in the biz before this all started, Toad The Wet Sprocket style. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2019-01-26 10:44 |
| #2 Why won't you send a few hundred thousand soldiers and spend a few trillions to make Dar safe for moderate Muslims? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-01-26 06:56 |
| #1 They don't threaten the international fucking order. What they do threaten is by being defeated, denying the international order an excuse to keep making war. |
| Posted by: Herb McCoy 2019-01-26 06:26 |