The Idiocy of ISIS

I am an idiot.

For the life of me, I cannot understand what ISIS is up to. Yes, I understand they want an independent Islamic state; yes, I understand they want to spread their perverted style of Islam to dominate the world; and, yes, I know they want to goad America into a ground war, despite not even wining the one they are in at the moment.

But how they expect to do that by killing innocent civilians as they did today in Spain and previously Britain, France and Germany is way beyond me. How is that going to help their cause—if they have a cause, at all?

ISIS is of course not the first to deal in chaos. But they are the first to be so chaotic about it. Prior the World War One, Anarchists spread terror throughout Europe. Their weapon of death was the bomb, not white vans, and they were pretty indiscriminate about where they placed those bombs. I am not condoning them or their actions, but at least they had a cause, a belief: self-governed societies based on voluntary societies. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but nor does the Green Party or Stephen Kearney coaching The Warriors, so I guess I am just an idiot.

But what does ISIS stand for? What am I missing? Do they have any objective, other than those professed above? An even earlier group of terrorists, Nizari Ismailis, also known as Assassins, were killers for hire so there was a monetary rationale. They were also driven by a very clever ploy by their leader, The Old Man of the Mountain, who drugged them up, sent them to brothel, brought them back and then convinced them that what they had just witnessed was the Afterlife. Of course, they couldn’t wait to get back there.

Is that what drives ISIS fighters and suicide soldiers?

Given their terrifying modus operandi includes rape at will, I doubt such an afterlife has the same attraction.

So, I am still none the wiser at why ISIS does what it does. But in writing about it I have at least arrived at one conclusion: I may not, after all, be the idiot here.