Marxist Response to Isis

[Diirez]

Before this Paris incident I was a staunch non-interventionist on Isis. But seeing now that Isis' power is growing quite fast and is now training recruits and sending them back to the Western powers, I don't know where I stand on the issue.

So what is a Marxist response to how to stop Isis?

[Creative Destruction]

It may be kind of lily-livered, but: stop capitalism.

[Slavic]

The attack in France was not credited to ISIS, but to Al Qaeda.

[BIXX]

The attack in France was not credited to ISIS, but to Al Qaeda.
I believe it was a branch of al qaeda that was functionally part of isis

[Creative Destruction]

The attack in France was not credited to ISIS, but to Al Qaeda.

the line is starting to get blurry again. AQAP may be claiming credit, but, iirc, one of the attackers pledged allegiance to ISIS.

[John Nada]

Before this Paris incident I was a staunch non-interventionist on Isis. But seeing now that Isis' power is growing quite fast and is now training recruits and sending them back to the Western powers, I don't know where I stand on the issue.Rightist reactionaries backed by imperialists should be left alone when they're attacking workers and oppressed people in other countries, but when they go back and hit the imperialist countries, war's a-okay. Think about that for a moment.

It's actually got me a little torn too. The US and co don't have good intentions. They've committed even worse atrocities. Shit, they'd probably back Daesh if they didn't clash with their interests. Most of the other factions in the region are reactionary as fuck too.

Yet the YPG/YPJ are a very progressive force. I think their victory could be good for the region, though I don't entirely agree with their theories. I really can't blame them for taking aid and support from the US and their allies. If I was in a battle, and someone started attacking the enemy and gave me weapons and supplies, I'm not going to shun it and complain that it's imperialist shit just to keep it real. For example, a lot of revolutionaries took weapons from the imperialist during WWII. However I'm afraid that the US will try to manipulated the situation to back pro-west reactionaries when they get the chance.
So what is a Marxist response to how to stop Isis?Support progressive movements that are fighting them, know that any aid from capitalist to revolutionaries is out of convenience and not some "progressive" aspect of imperialism, and fight the inevitable betrayal the imperialists will commit. Oh, and pray to Marx for Full Communism.

[motion denied]

So it's all fun games until they murder Europeans? Oh.

And of course, oppose intervention.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Why are we asking what "we" should be doing when nobody here is in the states affected? Why are leftists so obsessed with positioning themselves on every issue? Why wouldn't we take the consistent approach of explaining what IS is and why it exists, and continues to exist? Isn't our job to lay out what is actually happening?

[Prof. Oblivion]

So it's all fun games until they murder Europeans? Oh.

And of course, oppose intervention.

To be fair to imperialists, they have been somewhat involved in the "fight against IS" prior to the Charlie Hebdo shooting. ;)

[peoplesreprisal]

As an anarchist I have asked myself the same question. How should a revolutionary respond. I obviously don't want to present myself as supporting reactionary right wingers such as the front national or bigots but the particular ideology of these Islamic extremists needs to be condemned as it is essentially a form of religious fascism.

My comrades locally have advised me that I should refuse to take any stance as it is detrimental in the way or effective political propaganda as we are currently attempting to organize a small group in the area. However, I must say that I no more support fundamentalist radical Islam as I do capitalism. It seems to me to be just a different form of fascism. Just what's going through my head currently.

[ckaihatsu]

I don't approve of the political silence, whether it's measured or by-default. As revolutionaries we should have a take (position) on *everything*, since Marxism / revolutionary leftism is a full-blown social paradigm, just an unrealized one.

The thing that tips the scales regarding imperialism vs. Islamic fundamentalism is the factor of *religion*, and religious *law* -- I'll say that secularism should definitely be favored.

Here's the precedent / explanation:





The Key Role of Pakistan

Pakistan, with a history of close military ties to the Unites States, and a brand new military dictator who also happened to be an Islamic zealot, got drawn into playing a critical role in the holy war next door. Its involvement in Afghanistan's CIA inspired Islamic insurgency can in fact be seen as part of its own politics of Islam or what is known as the Islamization of Pakistan. Whatever the motivation, the ruling elite of Pakistan has always been keen to make Pakistan an Islamic state.

As early as 1949, just two years after the creation of Pakistan, the ruling Muslim League got its landmark Objectives Resolution passed through the Constituent Assembly which made religious life of its predominantly Muslim population a business of the state. The Muslims of Pakistan, said the Resolution in part, “shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the requirements of Islam as set in the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah.”[4] This resolution was followed by a 1952 Report of the Basic Principles Committee of the Constituent Assembly prescribing that the head of the state shall be a Muslim, and that a board of Ulema (Islamic clerics) will be constituted to ensure that no legislation in Pakistan contravened the teachings of Qur'an and Sunnah. In 1956, when Pakistan's first Constitution was belatedly produced, the country was named an “Islamic Republic.” The 1962 Constitution, formulated under the military rule of Ayub Khan, provided for an Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology which assigned the task of ensuring that no law of the country violated the teachings of Islam. When the present constitution of Pakistan was enacted in 1973 under the parliamentary rule of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, it formally declared Islam as the state religion, and changed the designation of Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology to The Council of Islamic Ideology.

The real Islamization of Pakistan is said to have begun after July 5, 1977 when Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq staged a military coup and took over the government in Pakistan. The General having no other credible mandate to rule, used the real Islamization of Pakistan to stay in power. He claimed a divine mission to Islamize the Pakistani state,[5] and based the legitimacy of his regime squarely on that mission.

In practical terms, the centrepiece of Zia's Islamization project turned out to be the Hudood Ordinances of 1979, prescribing “Islamic” punishments for apparently randomly selected offences of drinking, fornication, adultery, theft, and rendering false testimony. A former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan recalls that “During the Martial Law regime there have been public hanging and whipping. The events to take place were advertized in the newspapers and lacs of people gathered round the gruesome scene.”[6] That hundreds of thousand (lacs) people were gathered to watch these events, advertized in advance, hardly leaves any doubt that by having these gruesome scenes enacted Zia intended to terrorize his opposition, specially those who belonged to Bhutto's party, the PPP. That party still seemed to be popular among the masses of the poor and powerless people according to intelligence coming from Pakistan Army and American sources.[7] It was no coincidence that those being picked up for alleged violations of Zia's Sharia laws also happened to be poor and powerless.

The regime had in fact created a repressive environment in which media of mass communication were under strict censorship, political dissent was met with imprisonment and torture, and the Islamic Republic was staging an orgy of public floggings of the “sinful” under Sharia laws. What is significant to note is that this draconian rule had the “unstinting” support of the U.S. administration.[8]




The United States of America in
the AfPak Region and Beyond:

War on Terror or Alliance with Islamic Terrorism?

Hassan N. Gardezi

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1069.php

[Centriops]

It was syndicated terrorism. Many westerners, for some reason, are being influenced by such a movement. The perfect Marxist responce to this would be to fight back, but the question is how? ISIS has been responsible for numerous genocides. I don't even consider these people 'Muslim'.

[ckaihatsu]

It was syndicated terrorism.


Yup, and both tacitly allowed and indirectly armed by the U.S. and other NATO countries.





Many westerners, for some reason, are being influenced by such a movement. The perfect Marxist responce to this would be to fight back, but the question is how? ISIS has been responsible for numerous genocides. I don't even consider these people 'Muslim'.


I hear ya -- it's downright Orwellian:





Summary: Chapter IX

After a ninety-hour workweek, Winston is exhausted. In the middle of Hate Week, Oceania has switched enemies and allies in the ongoing war, heaping upon Winston a tremendous amount of work to compensate for the change. At one rally, the speaker is forced to change his speech halfway through to point out that Oceania is not, and has never been, at war with Eurasia. Rather, the speaker says, Oceania is, and always has been, at war with Eastasia. The people become embarrassed about carrying the anti-Eurasia signs and blame Emmanuel Goldstein’s agents for sabotaging them. Nevertheless, they exhibit full-fledged hatred for Eastasia.




According to the manifesto, Eurasia was created when Russia subsumed all of Europe, Oceania was created when the United States absorbed the British Empire, and Eastasia is made up of the remaining nations. These three nations keep their respective populaces preoccupied with a perpetual border war in order to preserve power among the High class. Goldstein writes that the war never advances significantly, as no two allied nations can defeat the third. The war is simply a fact of life that enables the ruling powers to keep the masses ignorant of life in other places—the real meaning of the phrase “WAR IS PEACE.”




http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/section8.rhtml

[Broviet Union]

The only consistent Leftist viewpoint is to oppose the ISIS ideology while making it clear that they exist because of Western imperialism. Anything else is a slippery slope to Eustonite-ism.

[DOOM]

I guess european jihadists going to syria must be massively affected by western imperialism.
Like there's totally no ideological side to islamism

[Thirsty Crow]

Before this Paris incident I was a staunch non-interventionist on Isis. But seeing now that Isis' power is growing quite fast and is now training recruits and sending them back to the Western powers, I don't know where I stand on the issue.

So what is a Marxist response to how to stop Isis?The classic answer is short and simple - pretty much the only option here, save for some nightmarish scenario of total imperialist domination on behalf of primarily the US and its partners (which isn't realistic), is class struggle, escalating one at that. I firmly believe this is the only viable option in two ways: 1) in the long run since there is no basis for it today* and 2) that this is the only way to completely eradicate the phenomenon at hand.

* Of course, the issue and task at hand is to orient ourselves in the here and now as to how we get from this situation to the one I briefly outlined. And what needs to be said is that no cheerleading on one imperialist bloc in its war effort can serve as a healthy political basis for communists.

So the outline of a position is also simple - no verbal, ideological or any other kind of support for war. If left liberals and reformist object to this, they may be reminded of the fact that the state apparatuses don't need "support" from tiny groups of communists. And they ought to be reminded also of the fact that communists don't and can't see the actions of said apparatuses through some lens of mystification. We need to be clear on the how and to what effect when thinking about this.

On the other hand, I don't think communists should pardon for and make tacit excuses for such forms of reaction. No ground should be given to political Islam - as one element of the maintenance of bourgeois society, and one element fostering hideous and severe divisions among the class.

I'd say this piece of writing represents a good example of what I'm talking about, even though it isn't solely about ISIS exactly: https://libcom.org/library/proletariat-has-take-struggle-against-religious-fanaticism-which-reinforces-state-increa

[hashem]

the only Marxist response is what MLKP (Marxist - Leninist communist party of Turkey) has given: fighting together with YPG in a united front. many communists from Turkey have fought in Syria and died their because they see Syrian revolution (which has liberated some parts of Rojava) as a part of revolution in their own country.

[xyouthxattackx]

If you want to beat IS and Al Qaeda you should topple our capitalistic government that funds and trains terrorists to destabilize. Oh, sorry, not only US, Saudi Arabia is one of the main funders too!
P.S. I can say the same about Boko Haram!

[Samurai Socialist]

The only consistent Leftist viewpoint is to oppose the ISIS ideology while making it clear that they exist because of Western imperialism. Anything else is a slippery slope to Eustonite-ism.

^^This

ISIS is a reactionary movement, in the most part due to over a century of European and US imperialism. The Marxist standpoint should be to oppose the violence and the ideology, as mentioned by the poster above, but to highlight the real longstanding root of the problem - western capitalist interests trying to dictate the politics of the region.

[ckaihatsu]

This is where one of my diagrams may be useful here, a schematic-type layout of the politically relativistic nature of the situation (as with any other in social reality, really)....


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals



http://s6.postimg.org/6omx9zh81/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/cpkm723u5/full/)


What this is saying is that the classical nation-state (the large inverted blue triangle in the middle) looks *rightward*, to imperialism (gold color), as a prop.

Unfortunately this may not always be enough for the nation-state, but as it looks further rightward it may garner additional *support* -- as with courting the 'religious right' (sky-blue color), in this case Islamic fundamentalism -- but it goes out on this limb at the expense of its own identity and cohesion as a nation-state. (Note that the 'principles' this far rightward are 'regionalism / exceptionalism' and 'god-belief', on the thin dark-blue inverted cones that hold up the general platforms above.)

In Ukraine, of course, the U.S. / NATO has gone as far to the right as supporting actual *fascists* outright.

[blake 3:17]

An interesting piece I largely agree with by Michael Walzer: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/islamism-and-the-left

Just got this today via Tariq Ali: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/inquiry/16695-israel-may-be-arming-al-qaeda-in-syria

I'm not particularly interested in 'correct' 'Marxist' answers to these kinds of questions.

I am opposed to Canada's dropping bombs on Iraq. That's just state terrorism.

[bricolage]

An interesting piece I largely agree with by Michael Walzer: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/islamism-and-the-left
You agree that 'the left' should support US intervention against Islamism?

[blake 3:17]

You agree that 'the left' should support US intervention against Islamism?
Oops! My bad. Not that part!

Edited to add: wtf do I know. I'm opposed to anti Muslim bigotry, but I've also seen a whole shift on the Left here become Islamophiles. I ended up leaving my silly post-Trot group after some comrades here were making claims that 9/11 was some great anti-imperialist victory and others were sorta OK with that. I was like fuck this shit, this is stupid.

The anti war movement here was controlled very manipulatively by IS who have become weird Islamophiles. They're pro-Iran and anti-Cuba. Huh? That one seems so duh.

[RedKobra]

Its like asking what do I prefer the uranium that gave me cancer or the cancer itself. They're both shit. They both have to go. Quite simply if you want to get rid of reactionary anti-imperialism you need to get rid of imperialism. The only way we can do this is to undermine Capitalism at home. Bring Western Capitalism to its knees through mass strikes, working to rule, civil disobedience and non-compliance as well as agitating and educating amongst the working class.

[Ocean Seal]

Before this Paris incident I was a staunch non-interventionist on Isis. But seeing now that Isis' power is growing quite fast and is now training recruits and sending them back to the Western powers, I don't know where I stand on the issue.

So what is a Marxist response to how to stop Isis?
There is no Marxist answer for stopping ISIS. ISIS is a bourgeois front, much like the United States/ Jordan/ Israel/ Iraq's Provisional Govt/ the FSA/ Bashar Al-Assad.
Marxists don't have any comment, but to not engage the same stupid interventions which lead to the the rise of ISIS in the first place. We are against bourgeois conflicts where we are sent forward like pawns for the gains of the ruling classes. We reject all false humanitarian pretenses.

[blake 3:17]

FEBRUARY 02, 2015

It's Only Money
Why Not Negotiate With ISIS?
by CLANCY SIGAL
Being the child of union organizers, the first word I taught my infant son was “negotiate”. He learned too well. As soon as he learned to talk every time we disagreed over his behavior or a chore he demanded to “’agotiate” it. Progressive parents be warned. The first word should have been “no”.

Why not “agotiate” with ISIS if it saves even a few lives? Such as the Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and Jordanian pilot Lt. Kasasbeh if they are still alive. Who knows if the ISIS bosses will keep their word? Only one way to find out. Give them the money, we have oodles of it to waste on corrupt Afghan narco-pols, the insanely expensive poorly performing F35 Strike Fighter as an outright gift to Lockheed Martin, and anything you want to look at in the bloated Pentagon’s “defense budget”.

Sooner or later, as we learned in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and as all trade unionists know, you have to sit down with your worst enemy and work out a deal. It ALWAYS seems impossible at first. Their atrocities and a desire for blood revenge fog our mind, and the very idea of talking to the suicide bombers’ shot-callers is “appeasement of evil”, which it is.

But why stick on a failing principle when lives are at stake? ISIS doesn’t want our money but our recognition of the Caliphate as a legitimate state. Whether we like it or not that’s pretty much where it is. They ain’t going away any time soon. Journalists have stopped calling ISIS the “so called” or “self styled”. That’s how we tried wishing away the IRA with stunning lack of success at first.

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists”? Sure, we do. After swearing on the King James Bible “no surrender to terror”, the British government, with lots of talk and some money, bought peace from the armed and quite ferocious IRA (which on one occasion bombed me out of my bed). Yet today former IRA killers like deputy first minister Martin McGuinness and Mary McCardle sit in the Northern Ireland Assembly as part of the peace agreement with Sinn Fein (alias IRA).

Israel, which trumpets the “we never reward terrorists” line, CONSTANTLY negotiates prisoner releases and swaps all the time in return for dead or alive IDF soldiers. It’s a fairly open secret that the French and probably British and Germans deal via foreign intermediaries, or their own secret services, with some pretty nasty ISIS genociders. Is there any alternative other than continuing to bomb the crap out of ISIS which I’m not against?

I’m sure Henry Kissinger would love my devious two-track proposal. Give ISIS money (and hence implied recognition) in return for lives…and then drone them back to the stone age, in Curtis Le May’s immortal warning to the North Vietnamese. (Incidentally, Hoorah! For the “low life scum” – Sen. McCain’s term – of Code Pink protestors who invaded the Senate testimony of war criminal Kissinger.)

ISIS is our original sin because of the lying, deadly way we invaded Iraq. You break it, you pay for it, in the no less immortal words of one of the chief liars, Gen. Colin Powell.

Shit, man. It’s only money.

Clancy Sigal is a screenwriter and novelist. His latest book is Hemingway Lives.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/02/why-not-negotiate-with-isis/

[RNBG1920]

Why are we asking what "we" should be doing when nobody here is in the states affected? Why are leftists so obsessed with positioning themselves on every issue? Why wouldn't we take the consistent approach of explaining what IS is and why it exists, and continues to exist? Isn't our job to lay out what is actually happening?


Nice told. Liberal journalist can't be our comrades, nor jihadists.

[blake 3:17]

Why do we have to pretend to be experts on everything?

[khad]

Why do we have to pretend to be experts on everything?
Most sensible post in this thread.

[ckaihatsu]

Why do we have to pretend to be experts on everything?


Making genuine efforts to understand and describe the world as-it-is isn't 'pretending', and you're disparaging the very act of *learning*, in the most active and critical senses of the term.

A solid grasp of empirical reality allows us to *generalize*, and that's the process of *science*. Finally, being able to actively *use* science could be called 'wisdom' -- expert science -- which is not a bad thing to have.




philosophical abstractions

http://s6.postimg.org/cw2jljmgh/120404_philosophical_abstractions_RENDER_sc_12_1.j pg (http://postimg.org/image/i7hg698j1/full/)





[A]s revolutionaries we should have a take (position) on *everything*, since Marxism / revolutionary leftism is a full-blown social paradigm, just an unrealized one.

[ckaihatsu]

Finally found a coherent position piece....





[...]

U.S. foreign policy is an imperialist policy. Having wreaked so much destruction and suffering on the peoples of the Middle East, it is either crudely naive or an act of unabashed cynicism to assert that the Pentagon can be the agency to bring justice in the same countries it violently destroyed. The growing strength of the Islamic State and other such reactionary political forces is a dominant problem for progressive people in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world. For the past half century, the U.S. foreign policy and military strategy has been to destroy leftist and secular anti-imperialist movements and governments that constituted the leadership of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in the region. Having fulfilled that agenda, the officialdom in United States should not act surprised that loathsome organizations like the Islamic State have risen to fill the void.

Progressive forces in the Middle East are locked in a life-and-death struggle for the leadership of society against brutal reactionaries like the Islamic State. U.S. military action is not designed to nor can it help them. We, in the West, can offer political support and solidarity for their struggle to rescue the region from imperialism, the reactionary monarchies, the Israeli military machine and the revanchist reactionaries like the Islamic State.

For our part, progressive people in the United States have to mobilize now against the policies of our “own” government that has created a firestorm of destruction in the Middle East and now seeks “authorization” for decades more of war in the same countries and against the same peoples. Authorized by an imperial establishment, the policy of endless war that will be carried out by the Pentagon military machine can only lead to more suffering – neither peace nor liberation for the targeted peoples.

It is urgent that we revive the broad anti-war movement. Let’s start with the March 21 National March gathering at 12:00 Noon at the White House and by joining in the other actions scheduled in the days before in Washington, D.C.

Click here for a detailed list of the March 18-21 Spring Rising events.

-- Statement of Brian Becker, Director of the ANSWER Coalition

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
For more info go to: www.ANSWERCoalition.org.
Click this link to make an urgently needed donation to build the anti-war movement.




http://www.answercoalition.org/imperialism_the_islamic_state_and_the_policy_of_en dless_war

[nadya]

We have to disown this terrorist organization even if it pays lip service to Leftist or socialist or communist leaders like Saddam Hussein. Or we will be wiped out of history books. My one cent opinion.

[Peachman2000]

I'm all for helping to stop ISIS, but not until we take accountability for helping to create the conditions for groups like ISIS to exist. The United States government has to admit that their only goal in the Middle East was to gain raw resources. If they keep sending aid, and bombing ISIS without taking accountability, they will continue to be hypocrites. The only way to help stop "terrorism" is to stop imperialist actions in the Middle East.

[Peachman2000]

We also can't fight ISIS with our military. Our military would defeat them but would create two major problems. 1) By beating them, we would be able to continue our imperialist policies in the Middle East. And, 2) We would add more fuel to the fire and other revolutionary groups will rise up in the future.

We need to stop sending bombs to ISIS, and we need to help other countries fight them through aid. Once ISIS is defeated, we then have to withdraw all forces leftover from the gulf wars and Afghanistan wars. We then must finally end our imperialist policies in the Middle East and allow for the people to create their own governments.

If we did that, we would decrease terrorism and make the Middle East a better place. It would also be a great start for ending American imperialism. We could then start rolling back our policies in other places.

This would obviously never happen in our capitalist country, but in my opinion this is what should be done.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Before this Paris incident I was a staunch non-interventionist on Isis. But seeing now that Isis' power is growing quite fast and is now training recruits and sending them back to the Western powers, I don't know where I stand on the issue.

So what is a Marxist response to how to stop Isis?

I like the response of Lebanese hash/opium kingpins, they is bad business and savages, kill em.

[John Lennin]

How about blaming the US?

[ckaihatsu]

I'm all for helping to stop ISIS, but not until we take accountability for helping to create the conditions for groups like ISIS to exist.


I don't think this kind of action from the U.S. can be done *at all*, not even conditionally.

Until just recently I'd been of the position that 'The U.S. helped *create* ISIS, so it should stop immediately and clean up its own mess.'

But I know imperialism would never *really* oppose such fundamentalist fanaticism (as we've also seen with Ukraine, and Israel), because having it around is just too useful to imperialism as a geopolitical 'enforcer' -- like the CIA or NATO.

Here's from another thread:





[T]he anemic Western response to ISIS is at least partially due to worries that defeating Sunni Islamists like ISIS would take too much pressure off of Iran and Syria, the primarily enemies of Israel in the region.

The other reason is that the West does not want to get into another costly and unpopular quagmire in the Middle East.


---





The United States government has to admit that their only goal in the Middle East was to gain raw resources.


Yes, historically it's been about oil, but moreso it's about geostrategic positioning -- the global chessboard.





If they keep sending aid, and bombing ISIS without taking accountability, they will continue to be hypocrites.




The only way to help stop "terrorism" is to stop imperialist actions in the Middle East.


Yes, this is most to the point -- 'revolutionary defeatism'.





We also can't fight ISIS with our military. Our military would defeat them but would create two major problems. 1) By beating them, we would be able to continue our imperialist policies in the Middle East.


Yes.





And, 2) We would add more fuel to the fire and other revolutionary groups will rise up in the future.


I *wish* this outcome could inevitably be brought about by imperialist intervention, but in actuality it would be better for the Western powers to not be there at all.





We need to stop sending bombs to ISIS,


Yes.





and we need to help other countries fight them through aid.


No, the 'proxy' thing doesn't work because the "moderate" groups just funnel the arms to ISIS.





Once ISIS is defeated, we then have to withdraw all forces leftover from the gulf wars and Afghanistan wars. We then must finally end our imperialist policies in the Middle East and allow for the people to create their own governments.


Yes.





If we did that, we would decrease terrorism and make the Middle East a better place. It would also be a great start for ending American imperialism. We could then start rolling back our policies in other places.

This would obviously never happen in our capitalist country, but in my opinion this is what should be done.


Yup.

[Vogel]

I don't know about a Marxist response, but if you want an intelligent, and un-bigoted response, I would listen to what this guy, Reza Aslan, has to say :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz_8HU-mQfc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pjxPR36qFU


You might recognize him from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1cOnNrY5s

[John Nada]

I'm all for helping to stop ISIS, but not until we take accountability for helping to create the conditions for groups like ISIS to exist.By "we", do you mean Americans(maybe their allies too)? "We" often assume that everyone on the internet is American;).
The United States government has to admit that their only goal in the Middle East was to gain raw resources. If they keep sending aid, and bombing ISIS without taking accountability, they will continue to be hypocrites.And if the US gov admits they're imperialist capitalist out to exploit the Middle East, yet continues to do the same thing, how is that better. That they're honest assholes?
The only way to help stop "terrorism" is to stop imperialist actions in the Middle East.I'd say the two are synonomus, only imperialism itself has killed way more people.
We also can't fight ISIS with our military. Our military would defeat them but would create two major problems. 1) By beating them, we would be able to continue our imperialist policies in the Middle East. And, 2) We would add more fuel to the fire and other revolutionary groups will rise up in the future.I'm not sure about you, but unfortunately, I don't have my own private military.:grin: However,

1.The US and their allies can fight whoever they feel like fighting.
2.Daesh isn't fighting a traditional war(ie over territory per se). Defeating them would entail hundreds of thousands of troops, and a brutality that somehow manages to make Daesh look meek by comparison(which the US is good at).
3.If the US and co. somehow managing to make them irrelevant at best, imperialism will still be there. By losing, imperialism will still be there. By do absolutely nothing, imperialist capitalism will still go strong. Imperialism is advance capitalism, it must continue to exploit poorer countries. Only a socialist revolution can end it.
4. No one is psychic, but US intervention is virtually always reactionary. The very rare chance it's not is by accident.
We need to stop sending bombs to ISIS, and we need to help other countries fight them through aid. Once ISIS is defeated, we then have to withdraw all forces leftover from the gulf wars and Afghanistan wars. We then must finally end our imperialist policies in the Middle East and allow for the people to create their own governments.Every established country and most rebels in that area is ran by reactionaries. Don't give any of them weapons or aid. That and withdrawing all US forces from the region will give people the chance to make real revolutions.
If we did that, we would decrease terrorism and make the Middle East a better place. It would also be a great start for ending American imperialism. We could then start rolling back our policies in other places.It would decrease terrorism by virtue of the US not doing it.It'd be a good start to "roll back our policies" at home.
This would obviously never happen in our capitalist country, but in my opinion this is what should be done.Sadly, it's unlikely to every happen under capitalism. It's the nature of the beast.
I like the response of Lebanese hash/opium kingpins, they is bad business and savages, kill em.They have my unconditional and unconscious support.:cool:

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Its like asking what do I prefer the uranium that gave me cancer or the cancer itself. They're both shit. They both have to go. Quite simply if you want to get rid of reactionary anti-imperialism you need to get rid of imperialism. The only way we can do this is to undermine Capitalism at home. Bring Western Capitalism to its knees through mass strikes, working to rule, civil disobedience and non-compliance as well as agitating and educating amongst the working class.

And whilst the communist left spends the next decade waving flags and generally being incompetent and irrelevant, what will happen to the likes of ISIS in reality.

I'm sorry if I appear rude, but I just think that we have lost our way if we keep reducing the answer to diverse social, political, economic, religious and international problems to 'stop capitalism'. Given that we aren't that good at practically opposing capitalism, let alone seriously threatening it or overthrowing it, it seems as though we should really:

a) spend some time giving more thought to practical methods of undermining capitalism rather than intellectual masturbation, and
b) engage in some genuine introspection that goes beyond 'I will be a better communist next time'-type rhetoric, or 'let's form a new-new communist party and update our programme slightly'.

Sorry if i've become cynical, but it's just hopeless to walk around demanding something that we don't understand how to do.