"Even then, many in the Western world had not heard of the group. That would not last long."
That seems similar to a "Bush-ism." ie:
"No one knew that … " (Shias and Sunnis in Iraq wouldn't get along, and that Iraq could devolve into chaos)
It implies an excuse that the experts were caught by "surprise" too.
Of course the foreign policy experts, and the State Department, CIA, etc... the government ... whose job it is to know, knew. If the lay person on the streets of NYC didn't know, and the reporters didn't know, that's not a plausible excuse for being totally ignorant of the threat posed by the conquest of a major city in Syria by extremist terrorists, and their expansionist incursions into Iraq.
The real questions, are:
Why was the emergence of ISIS as a major threat, a "surprise" to the news media so late in the game?
Why didn't our gov., act in any meaningful way to stop a major terrorist threat to the world back when it was growing?
Why not offer or push to help the Iraqis to defend against incursions & invasion? Or offer air support with drones?
Why not force Turkey to patrol the border so that foreign fighters, money, supplies, oil sales don't cross?
etc...
Many lives could have been saved, many horrible atrocities prevented, if we had acted sooner and with greater determination.
Why didn't we care back then?
1
Mr. Trump eagerly & prematurely declared victory in Syria & ordered (since rescinded) the withdrawal of US troops.
He forgets that US forces went to Syria, before ISIS was on the map, to assist rebels to depose Assad. Some of the rebel groups could barely tolerate each other, but they managed to coordinate their efforts against Assad. Then they discovered somebody was shooting at them from the rear. It was ISIS. ISIS actively opposed Assad, & everyone else as well, & more viciously than even Assad.
Necessarily, the rebels turned much of their efforts toward ISIS, while Assad enjoyed the respite, while ISIS exhausted itself, by selling his soul to Putin who acquired Russian bases in Syria & resupplied the Syrian govt forces.
Mr. Trump pretends victory, while he forgets, or never knew, or doesn't care that US forces went to Syria to retire Assad. That work remains unfinished.
1
I am not sure if writer-reporters at the NYTimes compose their headlines but I am pretty sure that a better , more descriptive title for this piece would be the "de-volution of a rogue state into a a tiny sliver".
I dont think the headline wanted to communicate that the the change from minor political state to struggling, barely extant remnant, referred to growth and eventual joining with the rest of the world's small states and nations.
2
It's only a matter of time before there will be further conflagration that the Islamic State (or some evolved avatar) will be poised to exploit. Looking at it today I am reminded of the Long March in the Chinese Civil War; God forbid they should follow the same trajectory as the Communists did thereafter. The US has rarely lost the opportunity to rest prematurely upon its laurels.
isis will return in one form or another. they will never give up. they will never surrender. they will never abandon their religious ideology. all that the west can do is seek to contain isis insofar as that is possible, as well as to continue to refrain from pointless attempts to introduce 'democracy' into tribal nations.
2
The same plight could have described the Continental Army. ISIS could yet outmaneuver their competitors. Smallness naturally creates an easier to administer army, a concentration of decision-making, and more direct lines of communication. The remaining fighters in this group have the capacity to form an elite cohort who have earned each other's fealty, who know each other. They could disperse and reform in an advantageous position, after their enemies declare them defeated.
This is the nature of colonialist enterprises, and why they all eventually fail. Like it or not, the world's war on terror has wasted years, YEARS, by ignoring the causes of extremism in these areas of the world, perhaps because they seem too politically complex to tamper with. Maybe there is too much co-dependency, too much corruption, to address the causes of this form of extremism. People don't strap bombs to themselves for no reason. Yes, we can call them religious zealots, and maybe they are, but they wouldn't be a threat if they had an easier means to exist alongside their neighbors.
Think I'm being naive? No, I'm not being naive. These people are humans just like us. Walk down to your local church and take a hard look. How many of the parishioners do you think have the capacity for violence if they thought their families, their way of life, their religion was threatened? If so cornered, they'd probably exercise that capacity with conviction and zeal.
6
@Scribbles
They cannot demand worldly services and sophistication at the end of a sword, made by ones enemies.