My insanely stupid question of the day about ISIS and Europe

brussels-suspectsI have a really stupid question, but I hope you all will take it seriously because I’m genuinely confused about the answer.

We all know that in Europe, ISIS is using both newly arrived refugee operatives and long-residing fifth-column residents to embark on a bloody terrorist campaign in Europe.  My stupid question is this:  What is ISIS’s end goal?

The reason I ask is because it’s reasonably clear to me what ISIS cannot achieve, but unclear to me what it wants to accomplish:

ISIS cannot accomplish the imminent conquest of Europe in the traditional sense of a victorious country taking over the entire government infrastructure.  In other words, we’re not looking at a repeat of Germany’s blitzkrieg European takeover in the earliest days of WWII.  ISIS doesn’t have enough bodies on the ground to make that happen and the reality is that Europe possesses the weapons, whether because of its militarized police or its little armies.

ISIS is not attempting to get Europe to leave its Muslims alone.  Leaving Muslims alone was precisely what Europe was doing before al Qaeda and ISIS got feisty. Europe turned a blind eye to the sharia-run enclaves and even invited the more civilized Islamists into their institutions, such as education and government.  The Islamists’ terrorist campaign is undoing this laissez-faire approach to Muslim ghettos by making European governments realize that they’ve been nursing vipers at their bosoms. (And isn’t that a great 19th-century turn of phrase?)

ISIS doesn’t seem to be using the bombings and shootings to impose wholesale sharia on a frightened population.  They don’t need mass murder to achieve that goal.  Instead, as the past decade has shown, converting a population to sharia-compliant conduct is accomplished much more easily through rape, sexual and other assaults, and targeted murders.  Indeed, of the many attacks on European (and American) soil, the only ISIS-inspired mass murder that did carry with it a clear “lesson” was the Charlie Hebdo attack which was a direct attempt at sharia-style censorship.

ISIS doesn’t seem to be aiming to keep Europe out of messing with the Middle East.  Even those cheese-eating surrender monkeys in France, once enough blood was spilled, actually went into the Middle East to drop a few bombs.

I can sort of imagine that these attacks are an attempt to destroy Europe’s economy by leaving the continent off-balance and destroying tourism.  However, that seems awfully sophisticated to me and, again, pointless.  Even if ISIS destabilizes Europe’s economy, what’s that to ISIS?

It’s always seemed to me that Islam’s best road to conquest in Europe was just to do what it was doing:  immigrate, breed, incubate, and then take over completely once it achieves critical mass.  These terrorist attacks are premature, because even antisemitic Leftist Europeans are going to wise up to the fact that it’s kill or be killed — and as I mentioned above, the European states still control the police and their little militaries.

Ultimately, the only thing I end up with as an answer to my question — “What’s ISIS’s goal with these terrorist attacks?” — is that ISIS operatives are planting bombs and engaging in other acts of quite violent mass murder . . . because they enjoy mass murder.  They’re sadists and their message to the sadists of the world is “if you join us, you can creatively kill vast numbers of people too.”  That is, ISIS’s operatives don’t have any specific end in mind; the process is pleasure enough for them.  Plus, it’s good advertisement.

Those are the thoughts underlying my stupid question.  Please educate and enlighten me because I’m obviously missing something here.  (And if I am indeed being just a mentally minimal moron, I blame coffee.  I’ve never drunk coffee, but recent reports about its health benefits have got me attempting to learn to love it.  I’m figuring out workarounds for the taste — chocolate, protein powders, cream, etc. — but my body is still feeling the shock, and it’s probably affecting my mental processes.  Yeah, that’s it.  That’s my excuse for a dumb question.)