Hacker News Reader

What caused ISIS? The war in Afghanistan, and especially Iraq. The dictator was toppled, and not effectively replaced. Saddam may have not been the nicest guy, but he lead a fairly stable country. He was firmly in charge.

By not effectively replacing the leader of a country, it leads to a power vacuum, looking for someone to take that power. ISIS grew to fill that void. If you displace them, someone else will come along and take that power, potentially even worse than ISIS

I would go much further back than those two wars, simply put this is a situation that had been brewing for many years and simply got to where it was through better organization abilities of the groups and the withdrawing of forces to keep the peace. Our actions in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere, certainly have dug the hole deeper.

But lets be honest, go back to the Treaty of Sèvres and subsequent assigning of territory to European countries and how it was done without regard to the religious and ethnic traits of those living there. As in, European Colonialism started this mess as it did in Africa. This did not happen in the last twenty years, this is generation after generation finally reaching a point to where they could act.

If you keep arming all sides and leave it is to be expected.

I remember when the US captured and murdered Saddam, the violence and hypocrisy of it was something people are still trying to comprehend.

They sold it to the U.N., the world bought it and now look what the US has to show for it, smoking holes in the ground...

Yeah but he's not selling oil in non-USD is he?

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,...

Anyhow if we sort ISIS who will they blame for restricting freedoms at a time when rampant inequality is causing domestic unrest?

> Wouldn't it be better to spend those billions of dollars and take on some inevitable loss of life and annihilate them forever. From where did we all start believing in the defeatist mentality that world cannot take on ISIS?

You're grossly oversimplifying this. Remember Iraq? Afghanistan? It's easy for a large army to topple a government or kill some leaders. But groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are basically ideologies that rely on guerilla warfare (al-Qaeda moreso than ISIS, since ISIS at least wants to establish a caliphate).

These wars have been going on for decades and are guaranteed to continue for decades more. Even if ISIS was completely wiped out, there would still remain the ideologies and history that making recruiting for such groups possible. Knocking over governments like in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just creates even more power vacuums for these groups to grow and recruit in.

I'm not sure what the best solution would be. The U.S. and NATO seem content to just keep fighting proxy wars for the upcoming decades. Personally, I'd rather accept refugees and put the effort into successfully integrating them in Western culture. This would probably be much easier in the U.S. which already has a long history of immigration and serving as a "melting pot" of cultures. Maybe more difficult in Europe. Another big problem is the xenophobic and racist attitudes towards immigrants, and it's hard to successfully integrate people when they're forced to live amongst those kinds of people.

I'm not saying immigrants should be forced to abandon their cultures, just that leaving them to fester as an outgroup in impoverished countries lacking strong institutions can't possibly help win an ideological war. Many Western countries are already suffering from population decline. Offering a new home where the influence of toxic ideologies is weaker seems a better solution to me than indefinite war with no plan for what happens afterwards.

"I'd rather accept refugees and put the effort into successfully integrating them in Western culture."

We can't. Western culture has decided Western culture is toxic and asking others to conform to it for any reason is imperialistic, racist, and xenophobic.

Until Western culture stops the virtue signaling competition to see who can slag their own culture harder than the next person, and acquires even minimal self-confidence, there will be no assimilation possible.

"Another big problem is the xenophobic and racist attitudes towards immigrants,"

But is that cause or effect? Immediately after you basically state that these immigrants are not assimilated into Western culture, you complain that some members of the Western culture don't want to live next to them. How do you expect to "successfully integrate" people even as you just told them about how the culture you expect to integrate them into is xenophobic and racist against them and everything else? Would you integrate into a culture constantly telling you how much it sucks and how it's wrong about everything and how sorry it is to you about that?

"Successfully integrate" = "live peacefully in this country under a single government and set of laws," not force them to abandon their culture. Stuff about making immigrants abandon their religion, outlawing their traditional dress, forcing them to shake hands, whatever, is (imo) disgusting and not what I mean by "cultural integration." That stuff will work itself out over time by regular culture processes and a two-way exchange, the same as it did for all the previous immigrant groups (Catholics, Irish, Chinese, Africans, etc). No, things still aren't perfect, but over time things do become more integrated just through natural processes.

> Would you integrate into a culture constantly telling you how much it sucks and how it's wrong about everything and how sorry it is to you about that?

The people acting that way (e.g. Donald Trump) are not helping. They're an obstacle. They're making things worse for everyone. There would need to be strategies to mitigate that, finding ways to convince them to be more accepting of immigrants, or reducing contact with the most hostile people as much as possible. But I still think allowing immigration, and having programs to facilitate it, is a better strategy than what has been happening so far, despite the obstacles.

'"live peacefully in this country under a single government and set of laws," not force them to abandon their culture.'

Government and laws are culture. They aren't all of a culture, but they are culture.

May I assume, for instance, that one of the laws you'd like to see them adopt is equal treatment of women? For the specific set of immigrants in question, that is a major abandonment of culture. Do the immigrants have a responsibility to culturally integrate here or not?

"The people acting that way (e.g. Donald Trump) are not helping."

Could you find me, say, five quotes where Donald Trump tells other cultures of the world than ours is racist, sexist, xenophobic, and toxic, or where he apologizes for all the things that Western culture has done?

I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here by guessing you don't like Trump. Isn't exactly the reason you don't like him precisely that he doesn't do those things, like all proper public figures do?

Actually, never mind, I don't really care about how you feel about Trump, I just needed some textual distance before this paragraph. A few paragraphs ago I asked you if immigrants have a responsibility to culturally integrate or not. I'm also not too worried about the answer to that either. My point is, did you notice how that made you feel? I bet you find you didn't want to answer that question. You certainly didn't want to answer it with a resounding "Yes, immigrants absolutely should conform to basic Western standards of how women should be treated equally." I bet there's a part of you that wants to just go ahead and copy and paste that into a reply, just to show me.... but there's another part of you already writing the "but ...". And that's the proof of what I'm saying here... that sort of confidence is not in our culture. You don't need to go out into the culture to find this truth, you merely need look honestly inside yourself. How is that culture supposed to assimilate anything?

> there will be no assimilation possible.

While I can't speak for Europe, in America there are approximately zero second-generation immigrants who aren't thoroughly Americanized.

If by Americanized, you include become Native English speakers, then I'd have to disagree with that 0 number. There are huge swathes of NYC neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens where second generation immigrants would be mistaken for first generation in most of the rest of the country.

I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that we're not so superior to Europeans with regards to integration as we think we are. I think we tend to care less. Of all the xenophobic stuff some of our politicians say, I don't notice the word integration come up a lot.

> But groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are basically ideologies that rely on guerilla warfare (al-Qaeda moreso than ISIS, since ISIS at least wants to establish a caliphate).

The group that later decided to call itself "The Islamic State in Iraq" used to be "Al-Qaeda in Iraq", and both it and its parent organization had the goal of establishing a caliphate then; this has always been an al-Qaeda goal.

Yes, but al-Qaeda existed for years as just a decentralized terrorist network, whereas the legitimacy and appeal of ISIS partially depends on their establishing a caliphate (i.e. formal government and controlling territory). Otherwise they just go back to being another random terrorist group.

Which is both why it's slightly more plausible to "defeat ISIS" using a standard military, but it still wouldn't solve the underlying problems. More likely some other group just takes up the ISIS flag again a few years later.

> Yes, but al-Qaeda existed for years as just a decentralized terrorist network, whereas the legitimacy and appeal of ISIS partially depends on their establishing a caliphate

Prior to the post-9/11 period, during which, after a brief spike, the value of al-Qaeda's brand fell, the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn't so much a government sponsor of terror as a government sponsored by al-Qaeda, and a key part of al-Qaeda's appeal and legitimacy. Success at establishing territory with a formal government of the style promoted by the ideology has been as much a part of al-Qaeda's appeal as it is for the Islamic State (and the failure of al-Qaeda central to maintain that is a big part of the reason that al-Qaeda in Iraq, with its greater success at that, broke away and became, through a number of steps, "The Islamic State".)

The US could simply let the Kurds in northern Syria wipe out ISIS. They have the track record as the world's best ground force against ISIS.

But Turkey, the ISIS-friendly NATO partner that's bombing its own cities, wants to obliterate them. It does everything it can to keep the Kurds from closing the Turkey-ISIS supply line. Turkey's government is such an embarrassment that "Obama now considers [Erdoğan] a failure and an authoritarian." (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obam...)

The US government can easily end ISIS. But they have other priorities and agendas too. They want certain outcomes.

Just to add, but a lot of responsibility is being dumped on western nations who are acting out of humanity. But no one is mentioning the complete failure of extremely rich and near by Muslim nations from doing anything (Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Singapore). Countries with the same underpinning religion as a majority of refugees won't even accept them, and this really shows their own values. For humanities sake, we accept refugees, but don't be a fool and think its going to go well.

Non-western countries also take large numbers of refugees:

"Turkey hosts 2.5 million refugees from Syria, more than any other country worldwide

Lebanon hosts approximately 1.1 million refugees from Syria which amounts to around one in five people in the country

Jordan hosts approximately 635,324 refugees from Syria, which amounts to about 10% of the population

Iraq where 3.9 million people are already internally displaced hosts 245,022 refugees from Syria

Egypt hosts 117,658 refugees from Syria"

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/02/syrias-refuge...

I know, its the Gulf countries that are the main culprits.

OT nitpicking but Singapore is neither nearby nor culturally similar.

Yeah you are right. I meant to write Malaysia which is a Sunni Muslim nation.

Still geographically far and culturally different. Although sharing religion does create some familiarity but in reality I don't think the culture is similar.

what is culture other than behaviors, beliefs, values? In those respects, Malaysia is much more similar than any European or western country.

>Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Singapore

Singapore? Singapore doesn't belong on that list.

That 7th century cult would've been defeated by Syria's military and other forces. How about letting countries defend themselves and fight their own wars and revolutions instead of interfering in their internal politics and making a mess nobody cleans because that kind of "cleanup war" would not be profitable?

We don't need to globalize every f conflict by meddling in...

And if we don't do this, we won't have to feel morally responsible and give welfare to refugees...

The Syrian Crisis dates back to before ISIS taking over. ISIS just amplified it. Syrians were fleeing their country by the millions even before then. Millions of refugees went to Turkey and Jordan due to the civil war and the brutal campaign led by the local ruling dictatorship.

Well, it isn't ISIS alone. In Syria, you have the Kurds fighting against islamists (ISIS and others), the Turks and against Assad, you have the Free Syrian Army fighting against ISIS and Assad, you have Assad, you have Russians, Iranians, Americans and maybe others I forgot. So defeating ISIS might be possible and is being worked on - however, finding a livable solution for the whole middle east, inclusing Lybia and Iraq, is on a whole different level.

Taking on ISIS? First, that's easier said than done. They're not an army that you can just take on in open field. See occupation of Irak. But really, the war in Syria and Lybia didn't get started by ISIS and won't end if we "end ISIS", not that I think that's possible anyways. Personally, I think you have a point, and the best way to help somehow fix the clusterfuck that we (the West) created in these countries is send lots of money and help to set up refugees up in other countries in the region (Jordan, etc). But NOT Turkey, which seems to grow every day more and more extremist and I get the feeling refugees are going to be miserable at best there.

Terrible idea. Just because the west can spend billions of dollars it makes no sense to bring in large populations of a foreign culture and then actively try to assimilate them into another one. It doesn't work and leads to alienation which can be seen in the second and third generation muslims now living in Europe. On top of that, it is extremely hypocritical of the west to spend billions on refugees when most western countries themselves have their own citizens living like refugees in their own country. Over 60 million americans live below the poverty line. Helping the refugees reclaim their land will enable them to maintain their culture and mitigate assimilation issues in the west. Other wise we just add more burden to the social safety net. Do you really believe that a majority of these refugees will be able to find jobs in the west? Their is a small portion of them who are educated and highly skilled, but the majority are not.

It's quite easy to wipe out ISIS.

The problem is that it is unpalatable to a significant portion of our voters, probably you included. Think back to when the US defeated Germany. We leveled Dresden. It is entirely possible to wipe ISIS from the face of the Earth, sympathizers and supporters included.

Regarding the inevitable suffering and death, quick solutions can't hurt more than the current population. There is no such limit if we let things fester forever. Trying to avoid conflict just drags it out, preventing recovery. We could face the suffering and death of many many times the current population.

Many of these people are also climate change refugees. Syria has been suffering drought for around 40 years through poor conditions, overuse, mismanagement, etc. It used to be the pistachio capital of the world. The collapse of its agriculture sector was a factor in all this.

This is also a warning. It has just begun. Based on climate models it seems north Africa and the Mediterranean will be hit hard by climate change. There will be many more people fleeing their lands.

Isis isn't just a group of terrorists, it's symptomatic of anti-western sentiment. Even (especially?) if we kill all of them, that's not going away.

"Whom are you going to deny and on what basis?"

A 1951 treaty, that most civilized countries are now signatories to, defines what a refugee is and what these countries' obligations are:

http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-convention.html

Note that most of the people referred to as "refugees" by the media may not fit the definition.

The "read the convention" link points to a .local domain. :(

Absolutely. https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/civilizational-de...

"...Never before in the entire course of human history, has an entire culture, race and civilization decided to hand over its lands, social capital, heritage and identities to competing and intruding cultures without a fight..."

>> "the remaining ones living isolated lives in alien countries with those countries supporting them by spending billions of dollars every year"

You're just assuming that refugees won't integrate. I know quite a few refugees all of whom are living good lives in their new countries and work in good jobs. Anecdotal evidence of course but you aren't providing any evidence for your statement.

>> "taking on ISIS once and for all"

What does that mean? It sounds like you think other countries can go in and kill 30-40k people and it'll be over. It's an ideology. Take the head off ISIS and someone else will emerge. They aren't the first extremist group and they won't be the last unfortunately.

>> "billions of ppl would like to move to Europe or USA"

Again, show me your evidence. From what I've seen a lot of refugees were very happy in their own countries. They had good careers, large families, and lots of friends. They were left with no choice but to leave or die. Your view of countries outside of Europe/the USA is likely heavily tainted by the media.

You should read this study from Michigan State University that focused on the refugee mentality. Highly skilled refugees integrate well, and they are the ones you know because they integrated well. This creates this skewed view for you. However many segregate themselves and slowly begin creating their own communities, separate from the people of the native country. Have a read

https://msu.edu/course/pls/461/stein/MNREXP1.htm

> You're just assuming that refugees won't integrate. I know quite a few refugees all of whom are living good lives in their new countries and work in good jobs.

The pressing question is wether that is getting harder or easier with rising numbers and by how much.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124028/700-million-worldwide-desi...

http://openborders.info/polling-data-on-migration/

Don't have time at the moment to look at the second link but the data in the first one is pretty useless. Those 700m people who want to move abroad probably includes half of my friends in the UK who are moving simply because they like another country. Not because of any real problem in the UK. The also have good jobs and won't be a drain on the economy. Not very relevant to the current discussion therefore.