General Middle East & North Africa Thread

It means that the standards are those that are used in general war making as opposed to the ultra strict standards that the administration had set for drone strikes.

So yes on a level it is allowing civilian deaths, the argument would be that such ultra-high standards would mean that the effectiveness of strikes would be diminished to such a level that more harm would be caused that if strikes were carried out anyway. so while for a drone strike against an AQAP operative can be done when he's away from all civilian targets and nobody else is going to get hurt. If we wait for an ISIS tank group to be away from any civilians at all (as opposed to say in a different area of town to civilians) we'll end up never hitting them and those tanks will cause several towns to fall to ISIS, which would actually cause more harm than if we just bombed them now with a small risk that some civilians might get hurt.

But even with the abandonment of the ultra high standards the normal level standards of International Law still apply, so flattening an entire town because there might be ISIS troops there is still a big no-no.

Kinda been wondering for awhile why Russia hasn't just flown Bears over Syria and bombarded ISIS. Syria would have given permission for sure....

Apart from the appalling nature of flattening towns and killing scores, but it ain't like either of them care...

Because if ISIS was gone Assad wouldn't look as reasonable as he does with ISIS around.

Plus they want to make the West deal with it, both because it saves hassle (bombing the Middle East tends to generate bad PR, plus it's expensive) and because it forces the West to make a tacit admission that Assad is the lesser of two evils.

Also, does Russia have the capability to bomb stuff that far away?

The Bears alone could do it. Those things can fly as far away as Cuba. And they have other, newer aircraft that can do it as well. It's not a question of capability.

That said, silas has a good point about wanting the West to handle it.

The Bears are not survivable on their own against any kind of competent air defenses. Russia's longest arm are their Tu-22M and TU-160 supersonic bombers, who have somewhat smaller ranges, though they're still quick enough to hit Syria if they wanted to.

I was assuming this would be done with Assad's cooperation/permission. Is there evidence that Da'esh anti-air is that capable?

What is Da'esh?

It's the Arabic acronym for al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa-al-Shām...the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. I figure it to be better than the inane ISIS/ISIL/IS thing, so I use it as my preference (it also happens to be the most widespread acronym outside of english). Others use it cuz it pisses them off.

edited 1st Oct '14 4:51:52 PM by FFShinra

I'm sure that's correct, but the english media translates it as of (as I'm sure they do the same with all equivalent cases in other Arab country names), so thats what many know it as. No need to go grammar nazi on me.

EDIT-

Yet another reason to use Da'esh.

edited 2nd Oct '14 11:26:06 AM by FFShinra

Well, these media outlets are woefully in need to hire more competent Arabic translators.

In other news, the latest territorial maps◊ paint a dire picture of the situation in Iraq and Syria.

On the collapse of Arab civilization and the rise of Da'esh.

Quite the interesting read, I think. Would it be accurate to suggest that the current forms of Islamism is seeking solace in religion taken Up To Eleven? In the sense of "nothing else works in my opinion, so this definitely will."

It would explain why a lot of its followers joined in — especially given how many of them come from countries suffering political repression and many societal problems that indeed could lead them to suffer a mini-Despair Event Horizon about all other options — but whether the founders of Islamist ideologies are the same is not so certain.

Well, Sayyid Qutb's views were born out of a combination of his own sexual frustration, his anti-colonialist feeling, and his desire to provide an alternative ideology to what he saw as dangerously popular atheistic communism.

Sexual frustration? Where did you get that?

I wouldn't say Arab civilization has collapsed (in the sense the author was meaning anyway, that is, in total), but it certainly has splintered. Each of the sub regions is going their own way. The Arabian Peninsula will remain with the old order but will likely (even if slowly, perhaps too slowly for some) evolve its way out, the Western Sahara or Maghreb will evolve a bit more dynamically without destroying everything, while the Eastern Sahara is still in revolutionary tumult. It's the Levant and Mesopotamia (which, after recent events, seems to be becoming one region rather than two, more and more) thats truely getting destroyed as we knew it.

Great article otherwise though.

Everything he ever wrote...

...combined with the fact that he never got his Nat King?

It's pretty obvious that he had some seriously confused thoughts about women and sexuality and these impacted his worldview. Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower does a good summary.

edited 3rd Oct '14 10:33:08 AM by Achaemenid

What do you mean, "never got his Nat King"? I don't find any references in that article you linked to.

Penultimate paragraph of the NPR article. Qutb was fascinated by sex, despite most likely never having had any; hence the rather exaggerated impact it has in his writings:

There's also something to be said for the idea that present-day Islamic radicals are motivated, at least in part, by sexual frustration - Mohammed Atta, for instance, specified in his will that not only were women not to attend his funeral, they weren't even permitted to visit his gravesite.

edited 3rd Oct '14 2:15:59 PM by Achaemenid

"Nat King" is rhyming slang - "Nat King Cole = Hole = sex", in case that's what you didn't get.

Apologies for the thread hop.

Nobel Peace Prize given jointly to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay, from India and Pakistan respectively

Crossposting because Pakistan's considered Middle Eastern.

I don't think Pakistan is, it's very much South Asia, there's dispute over if Iran counts as part of the Middle East, Afghanistan is defiantly the limit of what can be argued for.

Good news though.

While we're at it; it's not "wa-al-Sham" either. It's "wa-sh-Sham".

Well, he's not wrong per se. It is actually written with a laam (الشام) instead of an emphasized shiin (اشّام).