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ISIS and Horror
We all laugh at The New York Times, but Rukmini Callimachi’s reporting reminds me of its ability to be a great newspaper. Her story today on the front page is so sickening that even the Times’ loyal readers — to judge by the comments — are beginning to grasp that some problems in the world are morally more important than others:
The Islamic State’s formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.
Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million.
The offensive on the mountain came just two months after the fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. At first, it appeared that the subsequent advance on the mountain was just another attempt to extend the territory controlled by Islamic State fighters.
Almost immediately, there were signs that their aim this time was different.
Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture. Adolescent boys were told to lift up their shirts, and if they had armpit hair, they were directed to join their older brothers and fathers. In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic fire.
The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks.
Peter Brooks asks in the Boston Herald,
What’s our plan for when the regime of Syria’s Bashar Assad falls?
Yes, I said “falls.”
I wonder too.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism
agreed.
Do you know many true believers in the New York Times? ‘Cause for them, the Arab Spring was real hopeful change, Obama won the war in the Middle East, and Hillary Clinton’s server is nowhere in evidence on the front page, in the politics section, in the US section… keep scrolling down…
These are people who really believe that the US has a “rape culture” and that Planned Parenthood does mammograms.
There are few progressive contradictions too unwieldy for their minds to grasp…
Back when I was in high school, I read about the plight of women in the Middle East – unable to drive, stoned for showing an ankle, forbidden from receiving an education. It was appalling, and American feminists seemed to care about the situation.
Then 9/11 happened, and George W. Bush declared the men who did those things to be barbarians. From then on, radio silence about the rape, abuse, and enslavement of women in the Middle East. It was like they couldn’t care about a woman’s issue if the religious right also cared about it.
It’s the same thing all over again. Obama said that ISIS is “JV,” and those icky social conservatives loathe radical Islam, so the Left generally ignores the atrocities in the Middle East. The only time they admit that there’s a problem is when using those problems to slam Christianity, equating Islamic sex slavery with the desires of Christian craft store owners to not buy IUDs for their employees. “Theocracy! We’re one Supreme Court decision away from Hobby Lobby employees being sold alongside the yarn, right next to the superglue!”
Sorry for the cynicism.
Bridget,
You need not be sorry and you are not cynical. You have hit the target exactly. This is where the vague cultural relativism of modern nihilism has taken us. Imagining that the free exercise of Christianity in America is some great threat while ignoring the horror & tyranny proclaimed in pride by the Jihadist murders & rapists themselves.
Exactly.
Regards,
Jim
No. That’s why they’ve been promising to help the FSA for years. They came close to doing it after Ghouta, when Paul, Cruz, and pals stopped them. Rubio and Bush were sound on the issue.
They’ve just always had higher priorities, political or otherwise.
Yeah. The theological argument in favor of child slave brothels is at its strongest when the, ahem, talent is not Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. The attack on the Yazidis brought the first large quantities of suitable girls under their control.
They’re now an incredibly important part of ISIS, and a big part of why healing will be so difficult in the region for decades to come. It’s also a big part of the difference between AQ and ISIS; we mock claims from AQ to be repulsed by ISIS, but there are some ways in which that repulsion is legitimate, even from them.
If you want to make a difference on this issue, volunteer in the primaries on this basis, telling people that is why you’re doing it. Then volunteer in the general.
There are some problems that we don’t want fixed by the government. There are some problems that can only be fixed by the US government. This is one of the latter. We’re close to being in the final year of this cycle, there’s both an unpredictable primary and an unpredictable general, and there’s a real chance that a relatively small number of serious volunteers could be decisive in either.
Marching might be more fun, but you’re not powerless and you could make a difference here.
I couldn’t agree more, in a larger sense: Marches are generally pointless. Elections matter. But to people who are desperate, knowing that the American people have heard and do give a damn about this would be deeply meaningful.
I’ve been in touch with Rukmini, and she’s putting me in touch with people who are working — now — to get those girls out of captivity. This may be something that people here can support immediately and may save more lives, but I need to know more about who’s involved and whether they’re really familiar enough with the situation to do this successfully.
I’ll keep you posted when I’ve got more information.
Candidates would need an actual policy on this for that. (eg President Walker would send troops etc.)
God bless you Claire. Deeds, not words. (Alla seninle.)
I don’t want these people (victims of mass violence) to hear that Americans give a damn, I want to hear that their tormentors have been strung up from a lamp post, effective immediately.
Our president was elected in part to keep us out of wars, and that our being there made things “worse.” Keeping along the lines of this argument, as distasteful as it is, could a strategy be that our own country is sitting on our hands, until the modern-day slavers’ coreligionists’ impose a local and Islamic response?
In the meantime, yes –volunteer for a candidate who promises to make a difference. Will the American people be behind him/her?
If so, this should be our stated policy. Complete with an honest discussion of what it entails and the risks.
Well, sure, but for now we don’t need more detail than Rubio, Walker, Christie, Fiorina, and Bush have already given. It’s not like we know the details of the situation on the ground in November 2016 yet. A serious commitment to act is enough. Similarly, Paul’s sometimes iron commitment to not doing anything, and to slandering those who disagree, is a more than sufficient basis for evaluating him. Cruz isn’t even as consistent as Paul, but his trolling of Middle Eastern Christians and vicious slanders of those who would act make Senator Obama seem like a moderate.
To give Trump credit, while seizing the oil probably isn’t a workable plan, his repeated promise to hit ISIS hard/ assault them firmly/ hit them so hard and fast they don’t know what’s happening is probably the most detailed policy he has, and it seems likely that a President Trump would do something.
There is a continuous his
That will be interesting to watch.
There is a continuous history of chattel slavery in many Muslim countries. It will be difficult to condemn as an antiquated practice that has been outgrown; there are reliable reports of ongoing slavery in Mauretania (which only recently outlawed it,) Sudan, and if not presently, very recently Saudi Arabia.
That’s in addition to sex slavery which is even more extensive. There are the dancing boys in Afghanistan, and in terms of war captives, in addition to ISIS, there is ongoing kidnapping and forced marriage of non-Muslim girls in the Indian subcontinent using the exact theological justification used by ISIS – which is validated by mainstream interpretations of Sharia.
Ms. Callimachi’s reporting also gives a poignant voice to those vanished African kuffars enslaved by Muslim traders and sold into the trans-Atlantic and the trans-Sahara slave trades.
Also: we laugh at the Times because they too often veer towards partisan hackery and upscale yellow journalism, not because they don’t have some of the best reporters around who can do very good work.
JoE,
If you have a moment: Why do you say Senator Cruz is trolling ME Christians? I know they might have booed him off the stage, but I thought that was over his support of Israel (I cannot recall the details. Thanks,
One of the handy things about being on the anti-ISIS side of the debate is that ISIS is endlessly creative in coming up with new ways to commit atrocities.
Child slave brothels aren’t just a problem while they run. Every client of the brothel is a rapist, and that means that ISIS has a lifetime’s blackmail over every one of them. Every client has, for the rest of his life, a powerful incentive to support ISIS’ brand of Islam, because every other brand strongly condemns child rape of this kind. The same goes, albeit to a lesser degree, for those who provide them with services. ISIS is, in this respect, more like Imperial Japan than Nazi Germany. They don’t just want to engage in genocide and other atrocities. They want to maximize participation in it, to use the taint to radicalize. They may be correct as a strategic matter assuming the only moral good is the perpetuation of ISIS.
I’m in favor of the US mostly taking a collateral role; I don’t think we need ground troops in Syria or Iraq, embassy defense etc. aside (and special forces there may be able to take advantage of opportunities to attack those who wish to harm America and have means to do so). There’s a very big difference between a collateral role and no role, though.
If the US does as Paul suggests and decides to refuse to trade with Iraq, then it will be clear that adopting liberal western positions is a death sentence. We force actors to adopt the anti-Western policies that will get them meaningful support rather than the Western values that will only result in their betrayal. If we want to get to a world where it is hard to create safe spaces to plan, train, and equip for attacks on America, we want to enable those who want to support us to do so.
He went to a conference for which Israel was irrelevant, and started making false claims in support of Israel (it’s simply not true to say that Israel is the best ally of Middle Eastern Christians; it’s regularly been on the other side of conflicts with them and frankly has more important priorities that often conflict with supporting them) and insulting those that were present. It’s true that he was insulting them because there were anti-Semites in the audience, but it was a gathering organized by Zionist Christian conservatives (John Ashcroft etc.); it’s not like Antisemitism was dominant.
They listened and applauded his initial statement about Israel. They only started to boo when it became clear that he was trolling them, that he wasn’t interested in the subject of the conference and just wanted to make waves. It’s like turning up to a 9/11 victim’s family gathering in December 2001 and talking about the way that some of the people present support abortion, and that we should regret all homicide. If you make a passing reference to that, it might be tacky, but would be acceptable. If you make your whole speech about the equivalence between abortionists and Al Qaeda, then both the grieving families who support life and those who disagree are going to be outraged.
It is important to evangelize for Israel, but doing so by insulting and upsetting people in dire straits doesn’t persuade anyone. Depressingly, it appears to have been a highly successful fundraising effort.
Oh just in case we some how think that these poor Yazid are the only victims of ISIS culture of rape and slavery this article just broke on ABC about the Islamic States own caliph (Abu Bakar al Baghdadi) and his serial sexual assault of American hostage Kayla Muller. [expletive] monsters every last one of them. This guy I think we should capture alive so we can have the pleasure of killing him slowly and painfully.
Reposting this from the other thread:
Map of slavery, which is horrifying.
A serious commitment is demonstrated by some detail. Sure the detail could change with circumstances, but I (speaking wrt Australian elections, so fwiw) would be more impressed with a party that stated something along the lines of:
“we will take part military action in Iraq to secure Nineweh Plains and establish a safe haven there for Assyrians, Yazidis and other victims of ISIS. Our commitment will take this form….”
rather than
“we will take strong action against ISIS”, which is vague as.
In the US Fiorina, for eg, has been pretty specific about the Iran Deal. “First day of my presidency I will call Mr Khamenei and tell him…”. It’s not so difficult to add a couple of phone calls about Nineweh Plains to that Day One schedule, and to share their proposed content with the electorate.
But to be honest, I fear that Cruz’s approach is more typical (perhaps also in Australia). ME Christians’ suffering only matters in a certain context, not because they have worth in and of themselves.
Thank you, James. I am going to seriously consider your idea.
Uh don’t canonize Kayla Mueller yet.
Looks like Rachel Corrie 2.0
I don’t know who Rachel Corrie is. I wasn’t canonizing anyone simply bringing forth further proof of the depravity of ISIS, and its reach and scope.
I agree with you entirely on this matter. Specifics would be nice, but let us be honest with ourselves here. Specifics are only called for when people actually care (and I don’t mean that the candidates or politicians don’t care, but rather the general public). If I am being generous I would guess only about 20% of the population even knows exactly what ISIS is actually doing. Sure most know they are bad, but few could give you a detailed run down of their atrocities. For all the danger and evil they pose they are far removed from the minds of people who live several thousand miles away.
Our politicians could take the time and effort to try to educate the public, but then again if they aren’t shouting about Mexicans and Walls they might not get an audience.
Rachel Corrie
Kayla Mueller
I save my sympathy for those who don’t actively support the Enemy.
Known elsewhere as St. Pancake.
How can an attitude like that lose an election? Victory is inevitable.
Is that possible? I think you’d have to be almost completely isolated from all media — mainstream, social, print, television — to be entirely unaware. What percentage of the US population is that remote from the media?
Sometimes, the American public hear what they want to hear, and live in a state of denial on anything uncomfortable or challenging.
Most people may be “aware” of ISIS, but many eschew the details…
It just may not be so obviously demonstrated that they don’t want to hear the details.
There’s a lot of Americans who know that ISIS is a Muslim terrorist group, but who see no differences between different Muslim terrorist groups. Kay’s comment in #30 is not a particularly unusual position.