Every nation gets the government it deserves.
The answer is - no, they are not basically supporters of ISIS. A few certainly are, but not many. They're people trapped under the tyrannical rule of strongmen who came to power in a vacuum because ... the people did not have the government they deserve.
If you're not willing to stand up and fight when a tiny number of people is oppressing you, then why do you deserve anything better? Who else is supposed to liberate you? Do you think that you're entitled to having a bunch of foreigners come risk their lives to liberate you from your own people (ISIS is headed by people who are native to the area, they're not foreigners, though many of their fighters are). That sounds like a pretty big entitlement mentality to me.
The power vacuum you talk of only existed because the people in that area allowed it to exist.
And yes, I do believe that a significant part of the population of their territory supports their actions. And no, their ruls is not "pseudo-Islamic", it's Islamic in the truest sense. Go read the Islamic holy books: they're following them to the letter. They're doing Islam correctly, just like every fundamentalist does their religion correctly; everyone else just cherry-picks the parts they like and ignores or whitewashes the really horrible parts.
Most successful resistance by populations against the government have had the resisting part of the population overlapping the military. (Conversely, most popular resistance where this has not been the case has failed.)
So this is, generally, already the case, but in a sense somewhat less significant than is implied.
I suppose if you have an entirely automated and tamper-proof, self-maintaining and reproducing, military with the senior government decision makers as the only humans in the loop the situation becomes a bit different and there becomes a qualitative difference where popular resistance can no longer spread to include the military.
I challenge you to show me any example of a government which was absolutely hated by its people and somehow managed to hold onto power. I don't think there is any. Every government gets popular support from somewhere, or else they wouldn't have an army to maintain their rule with. With occupations, it comes from the occupying nation. With places like Saddam's Iraq, it came from one powerful portion of the population that happily stomped on the other portions. With places like North Korea, it comes from a population that's been brainwashed into thinking the Dear Leader is basically a demigod.
This is a somewhat radical stance. When an armed group seizes the control of a city, the citizens don't always have the ability to fight back.
There are plenty of people who are risking their lives and have lost it in ISIS control territory, telling them they "deserved" it is really rash.
Let's reverse the point of view and let's take 1M of Americans. Do you think I will find 1M Obama supporter?
You have basically the ISIS stance, if you are living in the West, Muslim or not, you are an enemy and thus you deserve to be blown up.
Now with Mosul, we're talking about 1M people. That's far, far more than the number of active ISIS fighters and other staff in the city. Have you never heard of guerilla warfare? If a population revolts, there isn't much a poorly-led and ill-trained military force can do to stop them. The people there are not revolting, so they're either cowards or complicit (and likely both). The people always have the ability to fight back, even if it has to be done as a war of attrition (use makeshift weapons to ambush small numbers of ISIS troops). Even in Nazi Germany and occupied France, there were resistance efforts from the local populations. Ever hear of the Maquis? ISIS doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resources and training that the Wehrmacht had in occupied France.
Anyway, sure, if 1M Americans were threatened by a failing dam, and Obama refused to fix the dam and instead took actions to prevent fixing it or worse, somehow aggravate the situation, then no, I doubt many of those 1M would be supporters of his. However, Obama is also not a religious leader. Throw fundamentalist religion in there and that changes the equation entirely. Just look at all the Americans who resolutely believe that climate change is a "hoax", or worse, that evolution is (and that the earth is 6000 years old), because their religious leaders tell them this. That's likely what's going on in ISIS-land. So we could try my leafleting campaign to educate the populace there as to the reality and direness of their situation, but I kinda doubt they'd believe it. Not only do you have a bunch of religious leaders telling them otherwise, but there's also a human tendency to circle wagons around their own people/leaders (no matter how awful) and fight against any outsiders.
And "religious flamewars"? All I did was point out the reality of religion.
My post was civil enough, I called his comment stupid because I misunderstood it. Another poster, far more helpful than yourself, pointed out my error to me.
> Nice that you don't allow different opinions
Half the people who break the rules here resort to that self-flattering defense (the other half simply correct their behavior), and one needn't read much of HN to see how false it is.
> All I did was point out the reality of religion.
That's what every religious flamewarrer says. You can't do it here.
I don't see that he's 'blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning,' but rather blaming a million people for their current government, which is something very different.
I don't particularly agree with either his argument or his style of expression, but I believe that he's very much within the norms of HN, and certainly doesn't deserve to be banned for it.
That's because the comment has been edited.