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How ISIS Will Finally Push Obama Over the Edge
Maraud through the Middle East capturing territory at a breakneck pace? The President’s going to throw some shade at you in interviews. Behead American citizens? We’ll bomb the hideouts you stopped using four months ago back to the stone age. But this, ISIS… this is how you get President Obama into King Hussein “I’ll fly the damn jet myself” mode. From Nabih Bulos, writing in the L.A. Times:
Beheadings have become commonplace in the territories held by the militant Islamic State, but the severed head reportedly found last month in the eastern Syrian city of Al-Mayadeen was nevertheless unusual — It had a cigarette placed between its lips.“This is not permissible, Sheikh,” someone had scrawled in Arabic on the decapitated corpse lying nearby, according to an account from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group. The body and head belonged to an Islamic State official, a deputy police chief.
It goes on:
From consuming alcohol to cursing, vices of all types are frowned upon by Islamic State.
But it is the militants’ injunction on smoking, in a region rife with chain-smokers and water-pipe aficionados, that may be the hardest habit to kick. (About half of Syrian men and one in 10 women smoke, according to the World Health Organization)
Shortly after the group’s takeover of large swaths of Deir Elzur province in eastern Syria, Islamic State began to close tobacco shops and shutter the ubiquitous water-pipe cafes.
For those of you keeping track at home, lighting up a Marlboro=punishable by death. Lighting up another human being=ISIS employee of the month.
“There is a lot of smuggling going on,” said Abu Mohammed, a Raqqa-based activist who uses a pseudonym for security reasons. “There are many ways to do it,” he explained via Skype. For instance, smugglers hide cigarettes inside cans or in sacks of flour or stuff them inside bags of Arabic flatbread.
More innovative was an approach pioneered by a truck driver making regular runs to the Iraqi border town of Qaim, where there is no smoking ban. Once there, the trucker would strap cigarette packs to the wings of carrier pigeons for hassle-free home delivery to Raqqa, some 175 miles away, according to an account on an opposition news website on Facebook.
See, this is why George W. Bush was right about the importance of nurturing liberal societies in the Middle East. In America, that trucker would be in the C-Suite at Amazon.
Even many of Islamic State’s own recruits have buckled under the strain.
In November, Flavien Moreau, 27, a French citizen who had traveled to Syria to join Islamic State, was convicted on terrorism charges upon his return to France and slapped with a seven-year prison sentence, according to France24, the French news broadcaster.
His career as an extremist warrior had been brief. Only two weeks after joining the group, he said he handed over his Kalashnikov rifle and headed back to Europe.
“I really struggled with not smoking,” Moreau testified, according to France24. “I had brought Nicorette gum with me, but it wasn’t enough,” he explained, referring to the nicotine replacement product. “So I left my gun with my [commander] and I left.
He left the battlefield, people! See that. It’s like I’ve always said: smoking saves lives.
Published in General
Yep. Their extremism will doom them if they can’t recruit tobacco abusers.
Their anti-tobacco fanaticism could help them make common cause with Progressives in the US (that, and their anti-Westernism).
I thought that was already ongoing, if not exactly bruited about?
So, we drop Lucky Strikes between air strikes, and the smokers and the narcs go full auto on each other?
This could work…
Vice for victory, just add a little liquid indulgence to the fire and watch it burn.
They’d walk a mile to avoid a Camel.
Quitters never win.
Wouldn’t you?
In the desert, the phrase “Let us smoke a camel together.” reflects the extraordinary hospitality of the nomadic desert dwellers and refers to the preferred method for transforming one of the host’s beasts of burden into a tasty comestible. Though it could also refer to “Your Beast” (particularly if it’s already dead). A good reason to always carry a spare…
One should not make or accept this offer if you are a long walk to the nearest camel replacement dealer. Not only do camels not grow on trees, but there are few trees in the desert in any case.
Max Knots:
“Wouldn’t you?
In the desert, the phrase “Let us smoke a camel together.” reflects the extraordinary hospitality of the nomadic desert dwellers and refers to the preferred method for transforming one of the host’s beasts of burden into a tasty comestible. Though it could also refer to “Your Beast” (particularly if it’s already dead). A good reason to always carry a spare…
One should not make or accept this offer if you are a long walk to the nearest camel replacement dealer. Not only do camels not grow on trees, but there are few trees in the desert in any case.”
Why don’t we have a “GROAN” button here??
Somewhere in the Big Apple, reading today’s news in his penthouse suite Michael Bloomberg is stroking his chin while his countenance takes on a pensive cast, “Hmmm….”
Anti-smoking? Add universal healthcare to the list, and the ISIS agenda will be just like Hitler’s.
Oops, I mean Obama’s.
Oops, I mean Hitler’s.
Instead of leaflets of western propaganda, we should be dropping palettes of cigarettes and tobacco products. Accompanied by reems of tobacco products advertising.
Hey, if it helps them from smoking another human, it’s worth a shot.
Sincerely,
Fred Cole
In Chesterton’s The Flying Inn, teetotalers combine with Muslims to overthrow Christian, wine-bibing Britain.
How ISIS Will Finally Push Obama Over the Edge
But there’s always Michelle to run interference for them.
Very funny post, Troy!
On Obama, it really seems that even on topics where he is or ought to be fully engaged his expressions of ire come off as forced or affected. He just doesn’t do “steely resolve,” least of all about trifles like Islamic terrorism.
As for the smokes, imposed asceticism make for great mind control…gets people working against themselves. Don’t execute them for the Marlborough. Just get them to beat themselves to become better little jihadis.
But here’s a question. What kind of enforcement mechanism do you suppose they have in ISIS? Do they have enforcers with truncheons within the organization? Or is it all kind of on the honors system?
To respond to the title of your post:
ISIS will never push Obama over the edge. He is, and has always been, sympathetic to Islam – to the point he will not take the proper action against a threat that is Islamic. Sure, he has this bombing campaign going, and it has hurt the enemy, BUT . . .
His actions will not vanquish the enemy, and that’s the only way to defeat a foe that resents your existence, a foe that exists to destroy all opposition, a foe that will commit unspeakable acts of cruelty, then post them on line for all the world to see.
Unless we field armies on the ground to root out these vermin, the only way to exterminate them from the air is to turn the lands they’ve conquered into a sea of radioactive glass.
Obama will do neither, and he’s setting up the next President to have only the second option available . . .
But now you know why.
According to my usually unreliable source, they have a jar. The first slip up costs the equivalent of a dollar. The second, 2 dollars. When the jar is full, everyone goes to Chuck-e-Cheese. It’s quite diabolical.