Michael Totten - Isis Quotes

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The U.S. is right to oppose both ISIS and the Assad regime. Syria's government has sponsored terrorism not only against every single one of its neighbors, but also against the United States in Iraq. But let's be honest: There will be no nonviolent political transition in Syria. The regime is overwhelmingly dominated by members of the non-Muslim Alawite minority, who will never negotiate with jihadists who want to impale them as infidels, nor with the ragtag democratic forces (now largely driven by Kurdish fighters) theoretically backed by the U.S.

Michael Totten
France has strict gun laws. France has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. That didn't stop ISIS from getting its hands on automatic Kalashnikovs seven months ago in Paris and tripling the Orlando shooter's body count.

Michael Totten
The French gun ban accomplished a grand total of jack squat last year when ISIS hit Paris. And Mohammad Atta's crew killed thousands of people on 9/11 armed with nothing but box cutters.

Michael Totten
Terrorism in the United States didn't begin with ISIS, nor will it end with ISIS. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik would almost certainly have taken up arms if ISIS didn't even exist. Their desire and ability to murder American citizens was unrelated to who controls the streets of Raqqa and Mosul. The upside of using ground troops may be a little less obvious. At least it was less obvious until recently. ISIS can be defeated militarily, at least temporarily. It has happened before.

Michael Totten
British Muslims are losing the war against ISIS. So says Sunny Hundal in a new essay in Quartz magazine. 'For the vast majority of Muslims who disdain its ideology', he writes, 'the challenge that presents to them is deadlier and far more difficult because they are caught in a pincer movement: with public and government suspicion on one side, and a seductive and supposedly empowering ideology on the other'. According to the FBI, around 200 American Muslims have left the United States to join ISIS. And according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, 600-700 British Muslims have left the United Kingdom just this year alone.

Michael Totten
Trump said Russia and Assad are fighting ISIS in Syria, but it's not true. Russia is fighting in western Syria to prop up the Assad regime against rebel fighters while ISIS territory is in eastern Syria well outside Russia's theater of operations.

Michael Totten
Contrary to popular belief—and propaganda out of the Kremlin—neither the Assad regime nor Vladimir Putin's Russia are fighting ISIS. Their only concern is keeping the Arab Socialist Baath Party propped up in its rump state in Damascus and along the Mediterranean. ISIS still has a free hand to do whatever it wants out in the desert.

Michael Totten
Iraq has never been a coherent nation-state; arguably, it wouldn't exist if the British Empire hadn't installed the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. Its three biggest communities—Sunni Arabs, Shi'a Arabs and Kurds¬—have proven themselves incapable of living together in peace. The country will probably never be both democratic and stable within its current borders. Splitting Iraq into its three constituent parts would be better for the people who live there. It would be better for us, too, insofar as this separation would prevent the kind of unstable anarchy that breeds both Sunni and Shia militias, including ISIS.

Michael Totten
Saudi Arabia is the most backward and medieval society in the entire world outside ISIS and Taliban-occupied territory. Tehran is like Amsterdam compared with Riyadh despite the Iranian government's theocratic regulations and draconian enforcers.

Michael Totten
Their absolute monarchy isn't drastically different from the ISIS 'caliphate' in Syria and Iraq except that Riyadh plays well with others diplomatically and pushes back hard against Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis do so for entirely self-interested reasons, of course. They don't care about human rights any more than the Iranians do. They're the world biggest proponents of hard-line Sunni fanaticism. The only reason they're bothered by ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is because ISIS and the Brotherhood threaten the Saudi royal family's stranglehold on absolute power.

Michael Totten