Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS Page #3

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plan, step a, b, c, d,

How to colonize

a foreign country.

The first phase was training

camps where they form a hybrid

Army from the incoming

people from tunisia, egypt,

Daghestan, germany who didn't

even have one common language.

Christoph reuter: It's an

absolutely loyal army with no

Local affiliations.

And then, locally to

know who is who in the

Respective villages, they

started to open da'wah offices,

Missionary offices.

And they did so in

many, many places.

In tal rifaat, in mar'a,

in al-dana, in mayadin,

In deir ez-zor, in manbij.

And so, slowly,

slowly, slowly,

They knew exactly what is the

composition of this community.

Whom we could buy,

whom we have to kill?

First, they

did this secretly.

Then, only, once they felt

powerful enough, they would,

With lightning stroke,

take over a particular village.

Sarah chayes:
What they're

doing is saying this system is

So rotten, it's so

thoroughly rotten that the

Only way to improve

it is by fire and blood.

Robin yassin kassab: The public

display of horrific violence

Against individuals is something

which goes way back in history

And every culture has done it

at some time or, or the other.

In britain, they used to

hang, draw, and quarter.

In china, they were

dragged into the street

And beaten to death.

In France, women who had

slept with german soldiers,

Had their hair cut off and

were beaten in the streets,

Stripped naked and paraded.

In the United States, people

would take their wives and

Their children along to the

lynching of the black man and

Then they'd stand there

and smile and have their

Photograph taken

next to his corpse.

This display of public

violence was seen as a

Necessary part of government

in order to send the message

Out into society.

"we can do anything

we like with you.

Don't resist us because we

have total power to do the most

Horrific things and there's

nothing you can do about it."

Sebastian junger: All

societies are blind to

Their own violence.

From the use of

napalm in vietnam,

To the bombing

of german cities,

To the use of

nuclear weapons in japan,

The United States has

killed far more civilians

Than isis ever could.

In world war ii alone,

allied forces are thought

To have killed around

one million civilians.

We're focused on the

wrongdoing of other groups.

It's an adaptive trait

that's probably hardwired

Into the brain because

it has survival value.

President bush:
Either

you're with us or you're

With the terrorists.

Sebastian junger: It allows us

to demonize the enemy who we

May have to fight and

to avoid the moral conflict

That comes with killing.

When the united

states invaded iraq,

They killed tens of

thousands of innocent people.

You can't do that and imagine

there won't be consequences.

Ghaith abdul-ahad:

By early 2003,

The majority of iraqis

were happy to see the back

Of saddam hussein.

There is excitement,

there is hope,

There is a

degree of anxiety.

I remember two days

after the fall of baghdad,

People were talking about,

"why are the

americans aggressive?"

"why are they pointing

their guns at the people

In the street?"

Saddam had committed

massacres within the society,

Enormous levels of violence,

but you couldn't see it.

Within the

american occupation,

Violence is televised.

Pictures of the americans

putting bags on the head of

People and sitting

them behind barbed wire,

Forcing people to be

naked, humiliating people.

The loss of their

credibility was enormous,

They could have paved the

iraqi roads in gold and still

They can do the

humiliation of abu ghraib.

There was a burning

american armored vehicle

In haifa street in baghdad.

As I'm walking I hear,

see two small helicopters.

They fire a rocket into

the crowd that was celebrating

Around the burning vehicle.

I run towards the scene and

I see this circle with a young

Boy stunned, missing leg, a

pool of blood and some liquids.

Other people

scattered in the middle.

They're not screaming,

they're not wailing,

The injured people are

silent, the silence of shock.

The helicopters come again,

They fire another

rocket into the crowd.

I'm trying to be as

thin as the curb, you know,

And then you realize

there is people left in

The middle of the road.

There's this guy who was

injured in the first attack

And then was hit again.

He raises himself, he

looks around, he falls,

Stretches his arm,

and still waits.

No one can help him,

no one can do anything.

The helicopters were gone,

But everyone was

mortified with fear.

Violence by the end

of 2003, early 2004,

Is a normal fact of society.

When you see body

parts in the street,

When you see pieces of

flesh hanging from a tree,

When you see children killed

because they were playing in

The middle of the road,

I don't think there is

Difference in horror between

seeing children just being hit

By an american rocket

with their limbs scattered,

With their, with their legs

oozing these fluids in the

Middle of the street of

baghdad and seeing someone,

You know, executed by isis.

You don't equate

the two parties,

But from the perspective

of someone who lost his leg

There is no good violence

and bad violence.

Peter bouckaert:
It is

very important for people to

Understand just how much what

is happening in syria today is

Related to what happened

in iraq over a decade ago.

Iraq under saddam hussein

was a sunni ruled country with

Both the kurdish and the

shia majority that suffered very

Significantly at the

hands of that sunni dominance.

Whether you agree or not

with the military intervention,

The main failures were

not the military intervention.

It's the de-ba'athification

of the country,

Which completely marginalized

the sunni population.

Paul bremer:
I am

today establishing an iraqi

De-ba'athification council.

General petraeus: I was an

occupation commander with all

Of the responsibilities

that went along with that,

Which essentially meant

running part of iraq,

Firing the ba'ath party,

casting them on the ash heap

Of history, created

tens of thousands of iraqis,

Including the

most educated and,

And influential in

various sunni-arab communities

Especially, whose

incentive now was to oppose

To new iraq rather

than to support it.

Huge mistake.

Dennis ross:
It didn't make

sense to do this kind of

Wide-scaled de-ba'athification

when within iraq itself,

You wanna get a job, you

had to join the ba'ath party.

So, you know, you, it's,

it's a little bit like the

De-nazi-fication.

Not everyone was, you know,

Part of shaping a

repressive regime that

Suppressed everybody else.

Ghaith abdul-ahad: The

sunnis were oppressed by the

Americans, by the

shi'a government of iraq.

Isis comes and

promises liberation,

Promises the end of that,

promises bringing back the

Sunni's pride that they've

lost from 2003 and bringing

Them back into control.

Christoph reuter: If you

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