ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

asif iqbal

asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
delft said:
When at secondary school the director each year read the names of the pupils killed during WWII and how they were killed. The one I remember best is the 15 year old who was on his way by bicycle to his grandmother in another town who was killed by a passing Spitfire.
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Yeah I am sure it has happened and who knows maybe even this fake video is based on real true life event who knows, wars are bad but the targeting of civilians is a complete no no a line which should never be crossed, that's why UN was established and what came out of two world wars, in the first half of the 20th century Europe ripped itself apart in WWI and WWII and in the second half spent almost 50 years starring each other down over another World War I guess it's time for Middleast to have theirs and maybe somehow from this mess a better society can emerge, I know it's not the way to think but out of bad sometimes can eventually come good

Sad thing is I don't think we ever learn from previous wars we are only good at studying them for the sake of studying

Middleast is a big mess right now and I think it will get much much worse before it all gets better

Other opinion is everyone deploys a peace keeling force like 650,000 troops to secure Iraq and Syria which we know is not possible or just leave them to it and let events play out and finally die down, until there is dictators in middleast I don't see it getting any better
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
Jeff Head said:
Yes...I saw that.

Makes me upset. Not that they made such a video, but that they let millions of people believe it was real.

Creating fictional drama is one thing...letting it be passed off as a real is quite another.
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I think the real lesson is how easily such videos can be staged and passed off as real for propaganda purposes.

In hindsight, there are many clues to the video being fake, and many of them were correctly identified by youtube commenters. However, a lot of people believed this video to be real because it fit with their own beliefs.
 
Zool

Zool

Junior Member
solarz said:
I think the real lesson is how easily such videos can be staged and passed off as real for propaganda purposes.

In hindsight, there are many clues to the video being fake, and many of them were correctly identified by youtube commenters. However, a lot of people believed this video to be real because it fit with their own beliefs.
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Yes and No. A lie is most believable when based on a truth. Most people believed this video because that sad truth is this type of thing (willful shooting at/killing of civilians) occurs in every conflict. Even the most professional armed forces have bad eggs that end up doing this sh!t and staining the image of the rest. The worst instances are where it's wide spread or institutionalized behaviour.

Here, the mystery bullet impact and boy getting up were questionable, but I had personally believed a couple of possibilities which could have allowed for those. I think knowing the reality that these kind of acts ARE happening, made me sympathetic to believe this one was real and got on tape.
 
Equation

Equation

Lieutenant General
True, I agreed with you all gentlemen. I understand the film makers were trying to tell a story or event that had happened in real life just not captured on video, BUT you just can't be irresponsible for that kind images online. Because one might be opening up a whole new can of worms coming out. Opposition believers and forces would do the same to gather world wide sympathies for their causes and than you end up with mix bag full of real and fake images and videos.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
There are complaints that ISIS uses Hollywood-style production in recruiting videos. This is worse. I'm watching the news on this revelation and basically they're saying, "it's for a cause," aka not a problem in lying. Anyone can say that. So it basically comes to whose side you're on where one side to which the other side sees as the enemy gets to decide what kind of propaganda everyone can or cannot do. Whatever happened to being objective? If the truth is on one's side, then why does one have to lie? If this filmmaker is appealing to rubberneckers that want to see the gruesomeness of an accident on the side of a road, that says something more about them than the cause. Seeing it for themselves is the motivator to do something about it? That's sad. All it does now is work against them confirming lies will be told by people who say they stand for the truth and righteousness.

I just heard about this whole story after it was revealed to be fake. I know hindsight is 20/20 but did that video depict the kid getting shot and then getting up to save that girl? If so, that was a big hint it was fake.
 
D

delft

Brigadier
asif iqbal said:
Yeah I am sure it has happened and who knows maybe even this fake video is based on real true life event who knows, wars are bad but the targeting of civilians is a complete no no a line which should never be crossed, that's why UN was established and what came out of two world wars, in the first half of the 20th century Europe ripped itself apart in WWI and WWII and in the second half spent almost 50 years starring each other down over another World War I guess it's time for Middleast to have theirs and maybe somehow from this mess a better society can emerge, I know it's not the way to think but out of bad sometimes can eventually come good

Sad thing is I don't think we ever learn from previous wars we are only good at studying them for the sake of studying

Middleast is a big mess right now and I think it will get much much worse before it all gets better

Other opinion is everyone deploys a peace keeling force like 650,000 troops to secure Iraq and Syria which we know is not possible or just leave them to it and let events play out and finally die down, until there is dictators in middleast I don't see it getting any better
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Re civilians: While the UN was set up nuclear weapons were developed that in the first instance had the only purpose of attacking cities and large towns.

Re Middle East: A big step would be if countries could be peruaded to end their sponsorship of terrorists in Syria and Iraq. Violent regime change is no solution to the peoples in the area.
 
asif iqbal

asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
delft said:
Re civilians: While the UN was set up nuclear weapons were developed that in the first instance had the only purpose of attacking cities and large towns.

Re Middle East: A big step would be if countries could be peruaded to end their sponsorship of terrorists in Syria and Iraq. Violent regime change is no solution to the peoples in the area.
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Last part is true no organisation or country can make war without supply's, likewise Assad is being equipped by Russia and has been since the uprising started

And I have said this all along trust me Putin will never allow Assad to loose this war no matter what, the Assad family has deep historical ties going back to the days of the Soviet Union and Russia will back Assad right to the end no matter how much pressure there is

I even think that if the day comes when presidential palace on the hills of Damascus is under threat Russia will rescue Assad and bring him to Russia, Russia never supported anyone like they did Assad not Saddam not Gaddafi not even the Serbs
 
Equation

Equation

Lieutenant General
My condolences and heart goes out to his family.:( SOB they killed him after all.:mad:

The Islamic State group released a video Sunday of a masked militant standing over a severed head it claimed was Peter Kassig, a former U.S. soldier-turned-aid worker who was taken hostage while delivering relief supplies to Syrians caught in that country's brutal civil war.

The 26-year-old Kassig, a former Army Ranger who returned to the Middle East to help wounded and displaced Syrians, "was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

He denounced the extremist group, which he said "revels in the slaughter of innocents, including Muslims, and is bent only on sowing death and destruction."

With Kassig's death, the Islamic State group has killed five Westerners it was holding. American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were beheaded, as were British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

Unlike previous videos of slain Western hostages, the footage released Sunday did not show the decapitation of Kassig or the moments leading up to his death.

"This is Peter Edward Kassig, a U.S. citizen ... who fought against the Muslims in Iraq," said the black-clad militant, who spoke with a British accent that was distorted in the video, apparently to disguise his identity. Previous videos featured a militant with a British accent that the FBI says it has identified, though it hasn't named him publicly.......
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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
AssassinsMace said:
There are complaints that ISIS uses Hollywood-style production in recruiting videos. This is worse. I'm watching the news on this revelation and basically they're saying, "it's for a cause," aka not a problem in lying. Anyone can say that. So it basically comes to whose side you're on where one side to which the other side sees as the enemy gets to decide what kind of propaganda everyone can or cannot do. Whatever happened to being objective? If the truth is on one's side, then why does one have to lie? If this filmmaker is appealing to rubberneckers that want to see the gruesomeness of an accident on the side of a road, that says something more about them than the cause. Seeing it for themselves is the motivator to do something about it? That's sad. All it does now is work against them confirming lies will be told by people who say they stand for the truth and righteousness.

I just heard about this whole story after it was revealed to be fake. I know hindsight is 20/20 but did that video depict the kid getting shot and then getting up to save that girl? If so, that was a big hint it was fake.
Click to expand...

I remember back in the 90's, there was a lot of emphasis on moral principles, freedom, truth, innocent until proven guilty, etc. Problem is, it turned out this was just rhetoric. When 9/11 happened, people decided that "some" moral principles can be done away if the end result justified it. We've been on a slippery slope since, and with Occupy Wall Street and the Syrian Civil War, it's become pretty clear that the only thing that mattered was which side you're on. Arab Spring is a cry for freedom and democracy. Occupy Wall Street is a bunch of hippies too lazy to get a real job. The guys fighting the government in Iraq are terrorists. The guys fighting the government in Syria are "moderate" freedom fighters.
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
Whatever one may think of ISIS, we cannot deny the sophistication of their propaganda campaign. These beheading videos truly strike fear into the hearts of their enemies and deal severe blows to their morale.

Rationally, the number of military personnel killed in these videos is negligible. However, people are not rational. The impact of hearing battle casualty statistics cannot compare to the impact of actually seeing your comrades being executed. As these videos pop up again and again, Syrian and Iraqi government soldiers will be asking themselves: why are our guys keep getting killed like this? This leads to low morale, revenge massacres, biased tactical and strategic assessments, all of which benefits ISIS.

ISIS may be barbaric, but they've taken a page out of Genghis Khan's book, and we all know how terribly efficient the Mongols were.
 
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