Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
Hmmmm... I guess Muslims just have a weird way of treating liberators?

The premise is simplistic, but all that resistance we encountered in Fallujah? Wasn't a spontaneous, one time event, didn't appear out of thin air. Pleasing Allah is a potent motivator.

ISIS has been very successful in speaking Islam-ese to Muslim youth around the world, exploiting their psyches of feeling disrespected and marginalized.

We need to avoid feeding that narrative, we need to give moderate Muslims a foothold in their battle for "hearts and minds".

Fighting ISIS is like trying to smash mercury balls from a thermometer. If we carpet bomb everyone - including all the non-combatants - in ISIS held areas, be prepared for radicalized Islamic youth in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc.
I'm no proponent of carpet-bombing or boots on the ground. I'm just quibbling with the premise that G.W. Bush et al. "created" ISIS, which is more of a Democratic National Committee talking point than a serious bit of foreign policy analysis, IMO.