cant figure out why politicians and pundits are playing word games about ISIL/ISIS, asserting it is a terrorist organization and not a state. Being a state has nothing to do per se with whether it is good or evil, or whether we approve of it or not or whether we consider it to be a rogue state. Being nasty and evil doesnt disqualify it from the club. Nobody ever argued that the USSR or the German Democratic Republic were not states, vicious as they were, and in the case of the GDR artificially synthesized by Josef Stalin and the Red Army. It calls itself a state, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and possesses all the defining attributes of a state and adopting/resurrecting the Islamic caliphate model that was in the world from the seventh century until 1924 when the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished. ISIS/ISIL has population, territory, sovereignty and government (headed by a caliph who is clearly in charge). It collects taxes, provides public services and has a monopoly on the use of force within its boundaries. Its boundaries are in flux, as with any state on an active war footing. It engages in uncivilized behaviors much like the 3rd Reich, the USSR and the GDR, seizing and holding its citizens for ransom, and murdering them by its laws. Like those states it is also a police state, but it adheres to an evil but defined body of law, namely sharia law. We may despise and disdain it and everything it stands for, but lets skip the charade.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 18:00:03 +0000
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