Tea at Trianon: Islamic State Wants to Use Libya as a Launchpad for Terrorism

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, October 27, 2025

Islamic State Wants to Use Libya as a Launchpad for Terrorism

From Kyle Orton at It Can Always Get Worse:

The Naba 512 editorial seeks to legitimise IS grabbing territory in Libya by presenting it as a modern manifestation of the original Arab conquest that ultimately brought the Roman Christian province to Islam. The article is larded with theological argumentation drawn from the Qur’an and Tradition on this front, and these citations are intended as much as a roadmap for the future as they are justifications for the past. It is notable—and consistent with IS’s approach since its beginnings—that the enemies IS rails against most in the ideological portion of the article are not the “Crusader” West, but its Islamist rivals, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda.
When Al-Naba 512 shifts to more temporal analysis, there is an unmistakeable confession that IS shares the view of its Libyan “province” (wilaya) as being in a state of considerable disrepair at the present time—there is reference to a “prolonged stagnation and inertia”—coupled with a conviction that it need not remain so.
Libya effectively has two governments, one in the west and one in the east; both of these mutually-hostile polities are quite weak and predatory, the worst combination of all. As Al-Naba correctly notes, the failure of the Libyan political elites that emerged after Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi’s downfall in 2011 has made them unpopular, and Libya has historically been a hotbed of jihadism, a trend IS hopes to give new life to by offering jihadism as the only viable alternative to the current malaise. If IS sees hope in the Libyan political landscape, it sees even more in the operational situation of general instability, especially the vast ungoverned deserts in which IS thrives, and porous borders. The strategic value of an IS revival in Libya is spelled out: the country is situated in a crucial geographical nexus that can support IS’s jihad to the south, in West Africa and the Sahel, and to the north, in Europe.
IS concludes the Naba 512 editorial by goading its loyalists to be as brave as the asylum seekers who brave the Mediterranean to get to Europe, and once there IS instructs its legions to carry out terrorism on a scale sufficient at least to consume European attentional resources, the implicit idea being that if Europe is focused on domestic security threats from IS, Europe—and by extension the West as a whole—will cause less trouble for IS at the Centre, in Iraq and Syria, and in the other theatres where it operates, from Africa to Afghanistan. (Read more.)