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Fighting in the End Times
Daesh went out of their way to take over Dabiq, a town in Northern Syria.
This in spite of the fact that Dabiq has no apparent strategic value in the lay of the land and probably contains as many goats as humans.They also named their principal propaganda organ Dabiq. What this tells us about Daesh theology can inform both how much danger they pose and how best to fight them. Paying attention would require the kind of care that did not inform the second invasion of Iraq.
George W. Bush’s administration sent people to help rebuild Iraq’s government who did not understand the difference between Shi’a and Sunni or the implications of Iraq being a fake nation created by British and French diplomats in the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot concluded a written agreement in 1916, long before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. We American Indians, of all people, should understand what happens when imperialists draw lines on a map to suit their interests.
To Daesh, what we call a War on Terror is a confrontation between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Kufr, an epic struggle in which any peace is temporary and tactical. Islamic theology matters to the fight we are facing but it’s not something the public would understand and to…
