ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

solarz

Brigadier
The Nazi state was dismantled but the ideology of white supremicism, unfortunately, lived on. But the ex-Nazi Youth did not carry it forward, or if they did still believed it kept it to themselves.

The Islamic State will probably all of its territory in the next 2-3 years, in which case they won't have schools to forcibly indoctrinate children any longer. That means the oldest ISIS kid will be ~6-8 years old. plawolf is presumably talking about indoctrination from birth to late teens. Children are still very open-minded at that age and can easily be retaught. People can change and learn new things at any age but it's easier when they're young.

The Islamic Extremist ideology will persist for the indefinite future but that's a separate issue. The Islamic State as a territorial entity will cease in a couple of years and then it won't have a monopoly on children's education.

What evidence is there can it's possible to systematically indoctrinate children in a way that is impossible to reverse later in life? There are many other things more assured in life to worry about than ISIS children growing up to be Manchurian Candidates.

Most Nazi Youths were Germans, and the ideology of white supremacy is quite loudly reviled and denounced in Germany. What little adherents are left there keep their beliefs to themselves because Germany has some pretty draconian laws against promoting Nazism.

On the other hand, while ISIS may be gone in a few years, the Middle East will still be ravaged by violent extremism for the foreseeable future. The children indoctrinated by ISIS will grow up to serve some other extremist organization.
 

delft

Brigadier
BBC Radio 4 news just said that most Russian forces will leave Syria. In effect Russia declares Syria has won the war, but of course if some parties do not believe it they are able to return pretty fast.
 

DigoSSA

New Member
Registered Member
Putin says Russians to start withdrawing from Syria, as peace talks resume

President Vladimir Putin announced out of the blue on Monday that "the main part" of Russian armed forces in Syria will start to withdraw, telling his diplomats to step up the push for peace as U.N.-mediated talks resumed on ending the five-year-old war.

Syria rejected any suggestion of a rift with Moscow, saying President Bashar al-Assad had agreed on the "reduction" of Russian forces in a telephone call with Putin.

Western diplomats speculated Putin may be trying to press Assad into accepting a political settlement to the war, which has killed 250,000 people, although U.S. officials saw no sign yet of Russian forces preparing to pull out.


The anti-Assad opposition simply expressed bafflement, with a spokesman saying "nobody knows what is in Putin's mind".

Russia's military intervention in Syria in September helped to turn the tide of war in Assad's favour after months of gains in western Syria by rebel fighters, who were aided by foreign military supplies including U.S.-made anti-tank missiles.

Putin made his surprise announcement, made with no advance warning to the United States, at a meeting with his defence and foreign ministers.

Russian forces had largely fulfilled their objectives in Syria, Putin said. But he gave no deadline for the completion of the withdrawal and said forces would remain at a seaport and airbase in Syria's Latakia province.

In Geneva, United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura told the warring parties there was no "Plan B" other than a resumption of conflict if the first of three rounds of talks which aim to agree a "clear roadmap" for Syria failed to make progress.

Putin said at the Kremlin meeting he was ordering the withdrawal from Tuesday of "the main part of our military contingent" from the country.

"The effective work of our military created the conditions for the start of the peace process," he said. "I believe that the task put before the defence ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the whole, been fulfilled."

With the participation of the Russian military, Syrian armed forces "have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism", he added.

"COMPLETE COORDINATION"

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had telephoned the Syrian president to inform him of the decision, but the two leaders had not discussed Assad's future - the biggest obstacle to reaching a peace agreement.

The move was announced on the day United Nations-brokered talks involving the warring sides in Syria resumed in Geneva.

Moscow gave Washington no advance warning of Putin's announcement, two U.S. officials said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they added that they had seen no indications so far of preparations by Russia's military for the withdrawal.

In Damascus, the Syrian presidency said in a statement that Assad had agreed to the reduction in the Russian air force presence, and denied suggestions that this reflected a difference between the two countries

"The whole subject happened in complete coordination between the Russian and Syrian sides, and is a step that was carefully and accurately studied for some time", the statement said, adding that Moscow had promised to continue support for Syria in "confronting terrorism".

Syria regards all rebel groups fighting Assad as terrorists.

Rebels and opposition officials alike reacted sceptically.

"I don't understand the Russian announcement, it's a surprise, like the way they entered the war. God protect us," Fadi Ahmad, spokesman for the First Coastal Division, a Free Syria Army group fighting in the northwest, said.

Opposition spokesman Salim al-Muslat demanded a total Russian withdrawal. "Nobody knows what is in Putin's mind, but the point is he has no right to be in be our country in the first place. Just go," he said.

A European diplomat was also sceptical. "It has the potential to put a lot of pressure on Assad and the timing fits that," the diplomat said.

"However, I say potentially because we've seen before with Russia that what's promised isn't always what happens."

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SampanViking

The Capitalist
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
According to Almasdarnews, it is only some ground forces being removed, not the Airforce
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I guess we will have to wait and see
 

Tyloe

Junior Member
Conflicting reports. Some say the 'main part' of the air force will withdraw and leave a small group to monitor the ceasefire. But others are saying the ground force as they completed training SAA with their recent gains.
 

delft

Brigadier
It is well timed. The Geneva talks restart and Russia said you, "rebels" are too weak, despite the massive financial and material support you received over the last five years, to be worth more than your numbers in the coming elections as far any rate as you are Syrians and not mercenaries. That might be exaggerated but it is a good way to open the talks today.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
So every single Nazi Youth true believer died before 1945? Not a single one survived in a hospital? Plenty of true Nazi believers survived the war in South America and elsewhere, often to be put on trial later. Many Nazi Youth were too young to fight in 1945.

Here you are tripping on your own double standards. You insist that not a single Nazi youth was not successfully rehabilitated in an earlier post, which I chose to not nit pick on, but that was a clearly impossible to back up claim, and now you are asking me to make a similar baseless sweeping argument?!

There have been cases of North Korean intelligence agents who were caught and brought to South Korea and, upon seeing the truth of a prosperous country, rejected their indoctrinated-since-birth beliefs about communism and capitalism.

When did South Korea launch North Korea-style cross boarder snatch and grabs?

It's telling that despite all the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, none has produced the robotic killers you fear. War never wipes out all opponents. Nazi Germany and Japan took horrendous casualties and still some of their true believers survived, none of whom carried on the fight after 1945. The only ones who did were isolated Japanese soldiers are far-flung islands who gave up the fight once they returned to society.

You keep saying keeping that indoctrination of children since birth is unprecedented but totalitarian regimes have always done it and we have yet to see the "terror weapon in the truest sense of the word". If it's unprecedented, how can you be so sure it will happen? How can you be so sure education and socialization won't work?

Again, you are comparing apples to oranges. Not a single one of the regimes you described produced terrorists. They aimed to make the perfect soldier, who is very different from a terrorist, or just homicidal thugs in the case of African child soldiers.

For the perfect soldier, they were always trained and conditioned to act as part of a larger national state military organisation. They were never trained to fight independently behind enemy lines. They are like your soldier ants. Kill the queen and dismantle the hive and they loose their sense of purpose, direction and motivation.

In addition, all the modern historical examples of child soldiers were never raised from birth to be soldiers, but recruited in late childhood. That gives them a wellspring of positive childhood memories and experiences to help steer them back into a normal life.

It should also be noted that in all those historical cases, the 'perfect' soldiers were indoctrinated to either venerate a person or form of government. Both of those foundations could be sundered, and indeed, the death of the supreme leader and government they were raised to serve would have gone a massive way towards helping to rehabilitate them.

A terrorist is an entirely different beast. They are trained and raised to infiltrate enemy societies, resist 'temptation' and fight independently if necessary. Their perverted ideology is also incredibly hard to effectively counter and comprehensively dismantle.

Part of the reason why they are so dangerous is precisely because there are no valid historical comparisons, so there is no tried and tested template to use to counter them (other than kill them all, which is clearly not a remotely acceptable remedy).

The only remotely similar modern comparison would be Japanese soldiers in WWII who were fanatically loyal to their 'God-Emperor'. There are countless stories and examples of the fanatical, often suicidal zeal they fought with. Then, when their own Emperor demanded they surrender, a fair proportion of them chose suicide over obeying that order.

The Allies were projecting millions of casualties if they invaded the Japanese main islands, and the occupation would have been a living nightmare had the Japanese Emperor demanded his subjects fight and resist to the death.

That was a massive factor in why the 'unconditional' Japanese surrender was nowhere near as truly unconditional as the German surrender and why there wasn't anything like the systematic and thorough Nuremberg trials and purges afterwards to root out the die-hard true believes (another massive factor in explaining the comparative success in rooting out grown up Nazi-youth die hards which you entirely neglected to consider).

One only has to look at what the likes of ISIS has been able to do with western raised and educated adults, and the kind of monsters they moulded from those people to see the terrible potential of what they might be able to achieve with a 'clean slate' child that would have known nothing else and had no positive experiences and loving memories to draw upon to counter the poison the likes of ISIS would be filling their minds with.

There are many examples of terrorists who infiltrate western society, spending months or years living the kind of ordinary good life you suggest would make the scales fall from their eyes and rehabilitate them, yet they still held true to their perverted beliefs to launch or attempt to launch attacks or actively recruit people to join their cause.

In the case of African child soldiers, there was never really any ideological element to their abuse and training. It was enough that they fought and followed orders. There was no higher belief or justification beyond their actions other than because they were ordered to do it and because it was 'fun'. That, and their earlier normal childhood memories and experiences was fundamental in their eventual successful rehabilitation.

A trained from birth terrorist would have no such memories and experiences to draw upon, and they would have been trained from birth to resist 'temptation', almost certainly by western raised terrorist, who would teach those children to see hidden evil in every good gesture and act we do.

As I have said repeatedly, there are no applicable modern examples and comparisons. The only remotely appropriate examples are from ancient history. But I doubt the 'solutions' from those times (kill everyone, women, children and the livestock as well) is remotely palatable to any modern civilised society.

It may be possible to successfully rehabilitate individuals like that, but it will be orders of magnitude harder than anything else done before, and there will always be an element of risk and doubt in whether they are truly rehabilitated, or just employing part of their training to play along until they can slip under the radar and find an opportunity to strike.

It would only take one such case to totally discredit the entire rehabilitation effort and make people doubt every graduate of that programme.

Are you so categorically sure that any such rehabilitation programme could be 100% successful? If not, then that raises the terrible question of what you think we could and should do with people who seems to be rehabilitated? Do you assign resources to monitor them for life? What kind of restrictions would you put on where they can move to and what kind of jobs they can get? How would that kind of treatment affect their rehabilitation?

That is the most damaging weapon the terrorists have - they attack our best instincts and bring out the worst of us, and that is the biggest threat ISIS child soldiers will present to the civilised world - to push us to make impossible choices and deal with the awful consequences when they succeed in creating just one example of a truly un-redeemable innocent child terrorist.

You have the entire thing backwards. The burden, as with terrorist attacks, is not that they have to succeed in every single case, it just takes one to slip through to cause the damage and damn every other rescued child who was taken and trained as terrorists.

That is the kind of impossible moral choice they would force upon us - not that every single one of those child terrorists would be a die hard irredeemable monster, that would be comparatively easy for us to deal with. No, what happens when a small but not insignificant proportion of captured child terrorists are irredeemable but we cannot 100% reliably sort them from those who can be saved?

As with almost all terrorist attacks, the true damage is not from the attacks themselves, as bad as they can be, but from what the threat of attacks do to us, and how far that can push us from the morals, values and principles we hold dear and aspire to live up to in order to stop the terrorists and keep ourselves safe.
 
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