by patches70 on Thu Dec 15, 2016 12:46 pm
Jihadists are fighting a war, often against a better equipped, technically superior enemy. Using a a poor schmuck as a walking smart bomb makes military sense considering what they are up against. They don't have tomahawk missiles, laser guided smart bombs, satellite access, helicopters, air forces, etc etc. A lot of the things they do make a typical western civilian cringe but when you break it down to the core element, it's not much different than what we do ourselves.
Basic training in the military is for one purpose only. To strip the individualism from a civilian and replace it with a carbon unit that will follow the orders of it's superiors without question. I think it was in Band of Brothers where one of the recruits described it as making "each soldier accept his own death".
Arguments will go that basic training is necessary because in the heat of battle there isn't time to question orders. The problem with that is that most soldiers are never destined to ever see any battlefield and many never even leave the borders of the US, yet they all go through the same basic training.
For western cultures the incentive for joining the military service is usually financial. Most recruits don't join the service because they have an innate desire to kill other human beings. They join because they want to learn a useful trade, college assistance and etc with the main point a desire to better one's own condition, skill sets and lives, eventually often after serving.
Now contrast that with the culture that fosters Jihadists. Suppression, misery, destitution and indoctrinated since birth that the cause of their woes are that of the western powers ruled by Satanic influence. These are people with nothing left to lose and people with nothing left to lose are dangerous.
Imagine if your kids are starving, your wife is sick, there are no jobs, there is no opportunity. Someone comes to you offering a few thousand dollars, a fortune by your standards and an implicit promise to do right by your family if you'll strap a vest to yourself and hit a checkpoint, cafe or anything that you see for yourself as assets of an oppressor or even worse an invader and occupier.
The US can call ourselves "the good guys" all we want, but if our troops are within another country actively or just after aggression, then we are an invader and an occupier. That's just the reality of it, no matter what circumstances lead to that invasion and occupation. In our own country of the US, imagine if Mexico invaded and occupied us. We wouldn't stand for that as people, many of us wouldn't just give in and collaborate with our occupiers and many of us would fight against the occupiers with any means at our disposal including terror attacks at occupier assets and people. It wouldn't matter if those people were civilian contractors. We'd even target those of our own countrymen who collaborated with an occupying force, wouldn't we?
As Western nations occupy and interfere with more and more nations where Jihadists can and do thrive and the culture and social foundations favor the Jihadist, the Jihadists movements attract more personnel, money and technical savvy. They use this influx to train and launch counterattacks at the occupiers home countries. These attacks, due to the previously mentioned limitations of the Jihadists, remember they don't have air forces and such, leads to trucks being driven through crowds of fleeing Frenchmen, women and children, all valid targets from the POV of the Jihadists. After all, they've seen their women, children blown up by drone strikes.
The Western countries respond with more bombings and the cycle just keeps perpetuating itself.
When one focuses on the Qur'an and say "this is what gives these people the justification for what they do" misses the point. Take a large group of Christians, put them in the same circumstances as the people from whence the Jihadists recruit and you'll find that the Christians will act much the same way. Then the roles reverse, the Jihadists say "the Bible gives these people the justification for what they do".
The justification is war. The reasons for why the war is waged is irrelevant, the leaders tasked with waging that war will use whatever they have to to convince, prepare, transform civilians into soldiers. A soldier is a weapon. Western Basic Training the initial phase in that transformation of turning a green blooded civvy into a weapon of warfare that will follow orders blindly. If convincing that weapon that blowing himself up gets him into Heaven works, then by all means the leadership will use that to create more weapons because their job is to wage war against an enemy.
When people feel as though their back is against a wall and think they have nothing left to lose, they are more easily transformed into said weapons. After all, they have nothing and if the last thing they can do is strike back in at least some small measure at those who they perceive as an enemy responsible for taking everything from them, then why wouldn't they? It's not like you can appeal to the "you've got so much to live for!" argument to talk them down.
The US' current policy in fighting the Jihadists is so fucked up. It basically consists of flying a drone around in the sky for hour upon hours at a time looking for one guy. When that one guy is found the drone then fires a missile to kill that one guy and anyone else who happens to be nearby. This includes women, children, family members and innocent bystanders. Each of those people killed, including that "one guy" (even if he is a "bad guy") all have family. They all have mothers, fathers, sons and daughter none of which are going to take kindly to a drone blowing up their loved ones. With that one strike we take out one "terrorist" and end up creating ten more. That is an effort in futility and insanity.
But it's not just Muslims and the Qur'an who can be perverted and transformed into killing machines. Any human being can be so transformed given the proper prodding, circumstances and brainwashing.
IMO.
