Isis is turning us all into its recruiting sergeants
As propaganda spreads terror and revulsion, calls for action grow louder – it’s the next page in the script
They
are fleeing Latifiya – a city just outside Baghdad – in their
thousands. A few months ago, it had a population of 200,000, but now
only 50,000 remain. This is a town of horror. According to Human Rights Watch, Islamist militias are summarily executing civilians.
More compelling evidence of the need for western air power to pummel these barbarians, you might think. But the persecutors here are not Islamic State (Isis). They are Shia fighters under the control of the former, western-backed prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose violent sectarianism did so much to fuel the rise of Isis. There are no parallel denunciations of these deaths by Andrew Bolt these dudes are on our side and as brutal as ISIL ever was.
Isis – it’s running what must be one of the most sophisticated programmes of psychological warfare mounted by a terrorist group in history. Partly through a social media campaign that is more advanced than those run by many corporations, it is transforming us into its recruiting sergeants.
Western media compete over inflammatory language to express the evil of Isis, and add to its almost otherworldly, terrifying mystique – a mystique Isis has depended on to conquer large swaths of Iraq and Syria, because its opponents are left too frightened to resist. The more hatred of Muslims ratchets up, the better chance it has of winning support. Thank you Rupert Murdoch and your cohorts.
Read Bolt's blog today“We must do something” has too often proved to be the cry of a man pouring a can of petrol over a burning home. Isis knows that, which is why it is doing everything it can to incite western intervention. As General Jonathan Shaw – the former assistant chief of the defence staff – says: “What possible advantage is there to Isil [Isis] of bringing us into the campaign? Answer: to unite the Muslim world against the Christian world. We played into their hands. We’ve done what they wanted us to do.”
Its “growing online support intensified” after the bombing raids, says the FBI director, James Comey. The al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front abandoned its hostilities with Isis, calling for an alliance to take on the Americans. Last Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban declared their support for Isis and called for their sympathisers to join its struggle. Isis is stronger now than it was before the bombs began to fall.
Jihadis have previously been turfed out by Sunni tribes, but there must be confidence in what replaces Isis.Murderous Shia militias must be dismantled. Kurdish peshmerga must, undoubtedly, be properly armed. The western-backed dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar must be compelled to crack down on the funding networks that are helping to sustain Isis and other terrorists. As General Jonathan Shaw says, these western client states must stop exporting the Wahhabi/Salafist ideology that underpins jihadi terrorists everywhere. Economic sanctions – and certainly arms embargoes – must result from non-compliance. External military intervention in Iraq and Syria must be led by regional powers, not by western forces as Isis craves.
We cannot bomb an ideology out of existence. One can only imagine the satisfaction among Isis’s ranks that we are following a script that it has written to the letter.
More compelling evidence of the need for western air power to pummel these barbarians, you might think. But the persecutors here are not Islamic State (Isis). They are Shia fighters under the control of the former, western-backed prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose violent sectarianism did so much to fuel the rise of Isis. There are no parallel denunciations of these deaths by Andrew Bolt these dudes are on our side and as brutal as ISIL ever was.
Isis – it’s running what must be one of the most sophisticated programmes of psychological warfare mounted by a terrorist group in history. Partly through a social media campaign that is more advanced than those run by many corporations, it is transforming us into its recruiting sergeants.
Western media compete over inflammatory language to express the evil of Isis, and add to its almost otherworldly, terrifying mystique – a mystique Isis has depended on to conquer large swaths of Iraq and Syria, because its opponents are left too frightened to resist. The more hatred of Muslims ratchets up, the better chance it has of winning support. Thank you Rupert Murdoch and your cohorts.
Read Bolt's blog today“We must do something” has too often proved to be the cry of a man pouring a can of petrol over a burning home. Isis knows that, which is why it is doing everything it can to incite western intervention. As General Jonathan Shaw – the former assistant chief of the defence staff – says: “What possible advantage is there to Isil [Isis] of bringing us into the campaign? Answer: to unite the Muslim world against the Christian world. We played into their hands. We’ve done what they wanted us to do.”
Its “growing online support intensified” after the bombing raids, says the FBI director, James Comey. The al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front abandoned its hostilities with Isis, calling for an alliance to take on the Americans. Last Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban declared their support for Isis and called for their sympathisers to join its struggle. Isis is stronger now than it was before the bombs began to fall.
Jihadis have previously been turfed out by Sunni tribes, but there must be confidence in what replaces Isis.Murderous Shia militias must be dismantled. Kurdish peshmerga must, undoubtedly, be properly armed. The western-backed dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar must be compelled to crack down on the funding networks that are helping to sustain Isis and other terrorists. As General Jonathan Shaw says, these western client states must stop exporting the Wahhabi/Salafist ideology that underpins jihadi terrorists everywhere. Economic sanctions – and certainly arms embargoes – must result from non-compliance. External military intervention in Iraq and Syria must be led by regional powers, not by western forces as Isis craves.
We cannot bomb an ideology out of existence. One can only imagine the satisfaction among Isis’s ranks that we are following a script that it has written to the letter.
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