If they can sucker the US (or France) into a ground war, it makes it easier for Daesh to cast themselves as defenders of Islam against Western Imperialism and lets them smear their opponents as tools of those same Imperialists.
Sucker us in? Really? A ground war against a serious effort by the US would be their end. Sure they may get sympathy and even recruits, but they'd completely lose the aura of being victorious.
The fact is, they can't dislodge us from any area we choose to hold, nor can they prevent us from advancing to any area, or even hold an area that we want. In all combat situations, US troops are able to concentrate at will, while their soldiers are forced to disperse. The only way we lose a ground war is by choice.
Don't get me wrong, they can certainly inflict casualties, particularly if we fight stupid (and there is no way a Democratic President will not fight stupid), but they can't win.
It's not a mistake that they arose
after we withdrew, nor that they have no concerns about advancing while President Obama sits in the oval office.
Likewise, the fact that the GOP obsesses over the threat of "islamic" terrorists makes it easier to argue that Muslims need to join Daesh's "caliphate" in order to resist the enemies of Islam.
Does it? How? Specifically, how does it make it easier to argue? Do you really think there were no arguments before?
This is a statement that many are just hand-waving over and accepting as fact. It may even have some truth to it, it's kind of hard to argue that
anything doesn't have the potential to motivate radicals - I mean for goodness sakes we have anti-free speech safe spacers in this country - but it's kind of repugnant when you think about it. What are you calling for? People to not have such opinions? Repressing them?
And what if you're absolutely wrong? What if the threat is exactly and specifically what your "GOP caricatures" say it is? How then is not saying something that's true going to help in the long run?
There doesn't need to be a specific mechanism for this to work because the mainstream media does an excellent job of disseminating exactly what the GOP candidates think about Islam.
Honestly, beg to differ. All - and I mean all - the mainstream media does a good job of disseminating is scandal. They don't give two figs about what the GOP candidates
actually think or any nuance or reasoned argument that they make, they only care about the snippet that makes the most outrageous headlines.
My wife and I even noticed during the debates that when a candidate started making too much sense the timer buzzer would ring. I should go back and time a few to see if there was a deliberate short changing going on.