On the point of 'is this war on terror/war on ISIS an actual war' - yeah it is. The nature of warfare is ever changing. We call these types of wars 'New Wars'. Wars aren't necessarily between two states, or localised in one theatre. The concept of a battlefield doesn't exist anymore, the whole world is the battlefield. Since the 90s, these 'New Wars' have had an increasingly eschatological slant and since the 70s there's been a significant decrease in the amount of interstate wars. The wars we think of when we think of the word 'war' are the 'traditional' types of wars, dominated by Clausewitzian thinking. That's old school, though. Many of the traditional assumptions of warfare no longer relate to the current nature of it. Our war with ISIS is a war. It's a war between an exclusivist (Salafi jihadists) and cosmopolitan identity group. They're reliant on guerrilla techniques and counterinsurgency (international terrorism = modern guerrilla warfare). Their territory is controlled by political manipulation by peddling fear and hatred. State's no longer have a monopoly on legitimised political violence - this has been steadily eroding along with the changing nature of warfare.


Expanding on this point, over the last half century war has become far less total. We do not go in with everything we have. We take care in selecting methods that produce the least collateral damage. I don't know if 'noble' is the best word to describe, but there's international norms that focus on making war more humane.


Their ideology and their war effort are the same thing. Their ideology is jihad - 'holy war'. This eschatological type of war, while being religious in nature, isn't solely motivated by religion. Do you disagree that economic aspirations and geopolitics have influenced ISIS's formation and how the conduct themselves in their jihad?