Posted on Nov 23, 2015
Know your enemy: What can we learn from ISIS propaganda?
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This article, from Cracked.com surprisingly, is interesting because it opposes the mainstream thinking about ISIS, and implies different ways of combating and defeating it. Does it change your views about how to deal with them?
http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/
http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/
ISIS
Propaganda
Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR)
Combat
Edited 9 y ago
Posted 9 y ago
Responses: 4
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You want to beat them, for real? OK. Blueprint follows.
1. Unleash the full fury of cyber warfare on them. Nuke their sites. Disable their servers remotely. Knock out whole domains if you have to. Just to make sure, patrol the airspace over ISIS territory with an EA-6 (or current equivalent) with the knob dialed to 11, frying hardware and knocking out cellular infrastructure.
2. Go after their revenue streams in earnest. Now that they've pillaged the banks, there just isn't much in ISIS held territory that generates money. One big one is oil. Knocking out the fuel trucks is a good start. Going after the finances of supporters and sponsors overseas would be devastating. Any confiscated funds should be utilized to support the refugee camps. I think that even Allah would approve of their act of charity.
3. Publicize the hell out of items one and two. If there is one thing today's youth fears, it is being cut off from their social media and the internet. If there is one thing that people with money fears, it is that it be taken away and spent on something they don't like.
4. Real subtly, but steadily, smoke some of the outlying ISIS outposts. Do it in different ways. One falls prey to bombing. Another with an SF raid. Leave the bodies there for someone to find. While dying gloriously as a martyr is revered in ISIS, dying anonymously and unremembered in some dusty town is a powerful dissuader. Don't claim responsibility; let them guess. Maybe it was the Russians or the Iranians, or the Kurds, or Assad. It doesn't matter. It was someone with some powerful mojo that came out of the desert with a vengeance and left a smoking ruin and your thugs in the dirt like Owen and Beru Lars (Star Wars shoutout).
Isolate and besiege the core strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Park your forces with flags flying high just out of range. It won't take long before they desperately attempt to strike out and get away or go down fighting. Let them. Nice, open fields of fire surround both cities. If they happen to surrender, isolate the sheep from the goats out in the open desert, not in the cities. Goats go to Iran or Syria for detention (whichever makes sense). There they will meet a brutal and forgotten end, buried in unmarked graves.
I think we could accomplish all this with a light, airmobile force supported with a Stryker Brigade for the endgame. Less than 10,000 troops total, including air assets.
This conflict is one of ideas and ideology. It is more than a physical conflict. But like a hydra, you have to cut off the heads and burn the stumps. They have built this fight up as the Islamic version of Armageddon. If they lose that battle, their version of prophesy is discredited as illigitimate among the faithful.
Problem solved.
Until next time.
1. Unleash the full fury of cyber warfare on them. Nuke their sites. Disable their servers remotely. Knock out whole domains if you have to. Just to make sure, patrol the airspace over ISIS territory with an EA-6 (or current equivalent) with the knob dialed to 11, frying hardware and knocking out cellular infrastructure.
2. Go after their revenue streams in earnest. Now that they've pillaged the banks, there just isn't much in ISIS held territory that generates money. One big one is oil. Knocking out the fuel trucks is a good start. Going after the finances of supporters and sponsors overseas would be devastating. Any confiscated funds should be utilized to support the refugee camps. I think that even Allah would approve of their act of charity.
3. Publicize the hell out of items one and two. If there is one thing today's youth fears, it is being cut off from their social media and the internet. If there is one thing that people with money fears, it is that it be taken away and spent on something they don't like.
4. Real subtly, but steadily, smoke some of the outlying ISIS outposts. Do it in different ways. One falls prey to bombing. Another with an SF raid. Leave the bodies there for someone to find. While dying gloriously as a martyr is revered in ISIS, dying anonymously and unremembered in some dusty town is a powerful dissuader. Don't claim responsibility; let them guess. Maybe it was the Russians or the Iranians, or the Kurds, or Assad. It doesn't matter. It was someone with some powerful mojo that came out of the desert with a vengeance and left a smoking ruin and your thugs in the dirt like Owen and Beru Lars (Star Wars shoutout).
Isolate and besiege the core strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Park your forces with flags flying high just out of range. It won't take long before they desperately attempt to strike out and get away or go down fighting. Let them. Nice, open fields of fire surround both cities. If they happen to surrender, isolate the sheep from the goats out in the open desert, not in the cities. Goats go to Iran or Syria for detention (whichever makes sense). There they will meet a brutal and forgotten end, buried in unmarked graves.
I think we could accomplish all this with a light, airmobile force supported with a Stryker Brigade for the endgame. Less than 10,000 troops total, including air assets.
This conflict is one of ideas and ideology. It is more than a physical conflict. But like a hydra, you have to cut off the heads and burn the stumps. They have built this fight up as the Islamic version of Armageddon. If they lose that battle, their version of prophesy is discredited as illigitimate among the faithful.
Problem solved.
Until next time.
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LTC (Join to see)
I like your plan, except for point 3. I don't think access to social media rates a high priority among people motivated to don the S-vest.
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We learn that the ISIS PAO school teaches them all to woodenly wag their finger in the air while they film.
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I think we need to give them what they want - an extremely violent reaction to their barbarity. Let them go to get their virgins with a smile on their faces.
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Capt Seid Waddell
LTC (Join to see), the way to do that is to fight to win, and to win as quickly as possible. They need to be overwhelmed like AQI was, and it requires us to keep up the pressure until the next generation experiences peace and prosperity and has too much to lose by continuing the fight.
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Capt Seid Waddell
SFC Michael Hasbun, I doubt that anything we could possibly do will create any more new terrorists than our current weakness and cowardice in the face of their attacks is doing.
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LTC (Join to see)
Capt Seid Waddell, but that is the problem; the enemy, and his next generation, don't have anything to lose by continuing to fight. You are advocating a war of attrition which 1) has never worked well for us, 2) cannot truly be won against a force willing to use international terrorist tactics, and 3) does not deny them their stated ends, ways, and means.
Also, do you have any evidence to back up your response to SFC Michael Hasbun? They aren't attacking us because we are "weak" (even if we truly are). They are able to recruit and convince their members to fight us because they propagate the myth that we are fighting the kind of war you are advocating. We need a different approach.
Also, do you have any evidence to back up your response to SFC Michael Hasbun? They aren't attacking us because we are "weak" (even if we truly are). They are able to recruit and convince their members to fight us because they propagate the myth that we are fighting the kind of war you are advocating. We need a different approach.
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Capt Seid Waddell
LTC (Join to see), we beat the Japanese, who were just as fanatical as ISIS, and considerably stronger. We beat AQI during the Anbar Awakening when their brutal methods had turned the Sunnis against them and they turned to us for help. It was Obama cutting and running that allowed AQI to re-constitute itself as ISIS, and it was Obama that stood by and watched as ISIS gained strength and took over territory.
And ISIS is attacking us because they see us as weak - just as Saddam did (twice) and Russia and China do today. They know that even if we do have superior weapons and soldiers we are afraid to actually use them – Obama is just a paper tiger.
Weakness is provocative to tyrants and will surely lead to war. Consider the Arab nations that joined us in the First Gulf War to attack a fellow Arab. They only did that because they wanted to back the "strong horse" that was destined to win. Those nations are reluctant to follow us today because of Obama's weakness, and they are now turning to Russia for leadership in the area - just as Iraq turned to Iran when Obama went wobbly on them.
If Obama had GWB's backbone we wouldn't be in the present mess, and it won't be until we get a POTUS with a spine that we will begin to get a handle on the war on terrorism - if we don't spiral down into WWIII first.
And ISIS is attacking us because they see us as weak - just as Saddam did (twice) and Russia and China do today. They know that even if we do have superior weapons and soldiers we are afraid to actually use them – Obama is just a paper tiger.
Weakness is provocative to tyrants and will surely lead to war. Consider the Arab nations that joined us in the First Gulf War to attack a fellow Arab. They only did that because they wanted to back the "strong horse" that was destined to win. Those nations are reluctant to follow us today because of Obama's weakness, and they are now turning to Russia for leadership in the area - just as Iraq turned to Iran when Obama went wobbly on them.
If Obama had GWB's backbone we wouldn't be in the present mess, and it won't be until we get a POTUS with a spine that we will begin to get a handle on the war on terrorism - if we don't spiral down into WWIII first.
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