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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Your yard sale analogy is a little off, unless the yard sale is in the middle of an active war zone.

How do you think this went down? "Hey, let's buy this stuff from Iraq. Iraq, Iraq... where have I heard of that before? Hmm, isn't that where those ISIS fellows are? Well, never mind, they probably have nothing to do with it."

There's also the issue of inconsistent punishment. If you or I had done this we'd probably be in prison and even the cleverest yard sale analogy wouldn't save us. These guys get slapped with a fine equivalent to roughly three tenths of a second of profits and walk away clean.

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> "Hey, let's buy this stuff from Iraq. Iraq, Iraq... where have I heard of that before? Hmm, isn't that where those ISIS fellows are? Well, never mind, they probably have nothing to do with it."

To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=isis

I'm not saying it was a good idea.

>To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then"

You realize that ISIS is the rebranded Al Queda in Iraq right? Al Queda in Iraq(AQI) began in 2004. The rebranding came in 2011 when Arab Spring protests in Syria resulted in that country being destabilized and AQI was able to move in to Syria to re-supply.

Regardless of the name changes they would have been part of any legitimate antiquities expert's and dealer's consciences.

> You realize that ISIS is the rebranded Al Queda in Iraq right?

And AQI was itself a rebranding of a different org that had no prior connection to al-Qaeda.

That's incorrect. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the father of AQI, Daesh, ISIL, ISIS etc was most certainly in Afghanistan. He was there to fight the Soviets with the mujahideen as well as later on to run a training camp there. It's hard to imagine that without being a member of Al Queda. Anyway:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/08/iraq.alqaida1

Also the structure of Al Queda is that of a franchise:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/sunday-review/the-franchi...

> That's incorrect.

No, its not. The group that became al-Qaeda in Iraq was founded in Jordan in 1999 as “Organization of Monotheism and Jihad” and was not affiliated with al-Qaeda. It affiliated with al-Qaeda simultaneously with it's 2004 rebranding as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

> The structure of Al Queda is that of a franchise

Yes, and just as sometimes a pre-existing unaffiliated business signs up with a commercial franchise, sometimes a pre-existing unaffiliated jihad group would join al-Qaeda.

>"Yes, and just as sometimes a pre-existing unaffiliated business signs up with a commercial franchise, sometimes a pre-existing unaffiliated jihad group would join al-Qaeda."

No you are completely wrong. This is exactly how you become part of Al Queda - you start an affiliate. This is not some grey area:

"As such, AQ’s dominant strategy since 2001 has been to encourage affiliate organizations to attack the West, sometimes with financial or operational support. [40] AQ gained affiliates post-9/11, as several groups either emerged or reoriented themselves to pledge allegiance to bin Laden. These groups included Al Qaeda in Yemen (AQY) (which later became Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP), Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which have been among the most deadly AQ affiliates throughout the 2000s'

Source: http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/group...

> No you are completely wrong. This is exactly how you become part of Al Queda - you start an affiliate

Which doesn't change that for the first five years of its existence the group that later rebranded as al-Qaeda in Iraq was not an affiliate, nor, more to the point which you falsely claimed was incorrect originally, does it change the fact that just as the rebranding from AQI to ISIS was a rebranding of an existing organization, so was the rebranding to AQI in 2004.

The arguments you make seem to be directed against the claim that the Zarqawi organization was not, at least when it was called AQI, really part of al-Qaeda. This might be a fine point to argue against, but for the fact that it's not an argument anyone has actually made in the thread, and your arguments against it are completely irrelevant to the comments they actually respond to.

You are way off point. Your original statement that I responded to was:

>To be fair, it looks like all this happened in 2010—ISIS wasn't in the nation's consciousness back then:

You are suggesting that since the name "ISIS" hadn't yet become part of popular lexicon that there might a legitimate claim to ignorance.

The fact of that matter is it was known that there was a large terrorist organization controlling large swathes of Iraq at that time. And that this group was using looted antiquity to fund their activities. There is not a single expert on Mesopotamian art who disputes that. It does not matter which moniker they were using.

Everything you have written since that is really just you having an endless semantic argument.

> You are way off point.

One of us is, but:

> Your original statement [...]

No, the statement you quote was not mine, and not one that I have at any point agreed with or supported.

And your responses to me have neither been germane to the posts they repsonded to or to rebutting that point made by a different poster. It looks like you misread my post agreeing with and providing additional context to your response to that poster as disagreement, and responded with argument that wasnt germane either to the points I actually made or to the point someone else made that you thought I must be arguing for merely because I responded to you.

The nation isn't being held responsible. :)

It think it is reasonable to expect an organization to take reasonable steps to ensure the legality of its own operations - such as not ignoring the advice of its own legal experts.

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