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Ok, i have seen and read the word "jihad" here on the forum... can someone briefly fill me in?

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In 3067, the Word of Blake apparently responded to the failure of the new Star League by launching a war (or large-scale series of terror attacks). It had a number of suspiciously pre-placed troops for some of these attacks.

At the same time as these WoB attacks began, a number of border wars began around the Inner Sphere. One or more may have been triggered by WoB (for example, it's known from MWDA material that WoB hit Taurus with asteroids and framed the Federated Suns, leading the Concordat to invade the FS). However, some others appear to be normal Inner Sphere belligerant stupidity:

*the FS's Capellan March invaded the Capellan Confederation because of early rumors that the Capellans had supported WoB in WoB's attack on Tharkad.
*FS Draconis March troops invaded the Combine over rumors of FS POWs
*Skye invaded the FWL over an unprovoked attack by a FWL warship

The MWDA-era party line is that "It's all WoB's fault," but that's the historical spin typical of victors. However, WoB's actions and the fight against WoB will certainly be far and away the bloodiest part of the Jihad.

WoB will commit many horrendous acts during its Jihad, making the war as bloody as the First Succession War. The non-WoB border wars of the time will be very tame in comparison.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

Thanks Cray, but im not following on the term "Jihad" (i understand the brief storyline) sorry for asking such a stupid question, im not really up-to-date on the btech universe...

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A "jihad" (in this context) is a religious war.

The Word of Blake waged a pseudo-religious war to force its beliefs on the Inner Sphere.

Therefore, the war triggered by the Word of Blake in 3067 is called "The Jihad."

Does that help or were you asking about some other facet of the Jihad?

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

Nope Cray its all good i was wondering... "is this 'Jihad' a bad guy??" you answered my question and i got what i wanted.

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You failed once again to mention their nuke fest, their attack on the major capitals etc...oh wait and their hidden army that kept out of the lime light for roughly 10 years...also you failed to mention how NO one in the IS or Clans was aware of all of this....

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

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Karagin, I'm not particularly happy with the Jihad (just the use of the term is wrong) and the direction of the storyline.

That being said, Comstar hid its massive armies and navy for decades before the Clan invasion.

Why didn't the Houses gather intel by spying on Comstar? ROM...

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[i]And Allah turned back the unbelievers in their rage; they did not obtain any advantage, and Allah sufficed the believers in fighting; and Allah is Strong, Mighty.[/i] from The Koran, 33rd Sura- The Clans

ComStar didn't have their army posied to strike at everyone in a matter of weeks, also they had decades from after Toyama took over ComStar to the unveiling after the War of 3039. And rumors ran rampet about ComStar and it's army...even Jamie and Morgan found evidence on Terra during the wedding...

Yet now we are expected to believe that WoB can pull off the same level of deception in a third less of time and do so in a manner that let's them gain advantages that not even the houses or original SL had...all because TPTB claim that ROM was working for the WoB and the House and Clan Intell groups and agences were to busying doing nothing to see all this...then there is never answered money issue or cost for all of this, the man power issue, as well as all of the other things that have been either ignored as of yet or glossed over in the recent Jihad book. Bottom line here is we are expected to take at face vaule that WoB can do all this in such a short amount time and when folks question all of this it seems to be considered wrong by some.

And you are correct they are misusing the word, but that I think is falling on deaf ears, since even the media misuses the word 99% of the time.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

No, you failed to read my post. I mentioned all those, if not by name.

*"It had a number of suspiciously pre-placed troops for some of these attacks." (Referencing the sneak attacks on House Capitals)
*"the FS's Capellan March invaded the Capellan Confederation because of early rumors that the Capellans had supported WoB in WoB's attack on Tharkad." (Explicit reference to an attack on a House Capital)
*"However, WoB's actions and the fight against WoB will certainly be far and away the bloodiest part of the Jihad." (Use of WMDs)
*"WoB will commit many horrendous acts during its Jihad, making the war as bloody as the First Succession War. The non-WoB border wars of the time will be very tame in comparison." (Hello? 1st Succesion War? Hundreds of billions dead by WMDs?)
*"for example, it's known from MWDA material that WoB hit Taurus with asteroids and framed the Federated Suns, leading the Concordat to invade the FS" (Use of WMDs) Speaking of distorting the truth, that statement is completely false. In fact, it's canon that many intelligence agencies were aware of WoB's armies and it's designs on the Chaos March. They only failed to predict WoB's reaction to the failure of the Star League. See Dawn of the Jihad, section "Hidden Armies" (right before "Aftershocks"). It's on pg117 if the pagination of the .pdf drafts match the hard copy.

"Following the fall of Terra to the Word of Blake, the [intelligence] community had known of the Blakists' Deep Periphery training camps. Likewise, the Blakists' acquisition of so many new Battlemechs...led analysts to postulate (correctly) that the Word of Blake had more troops than they officially acknowledged. The elaborate shell game...succeeded in hiding their location, but not their existance."

"As to intent, the intelligence community (again, correctly) judged that these forces would safeguard Blakist holdings. ...the Word of Blake wanted to establish a buffer zone, finally resulting in the formation of the Word of Blake Protectorate. ... The Blakist-sponsored violence on Outreach was shocking, but unsurprising in light of the veiled declaraction of war represented by the formation of the AMC.

"The rest of the Inner was not oblivious to all this, but they were in no position to take action against a probationary member-state of the Star League over dealings with a non-aligned state. If challenged, the Blakists could have argued that the whole affair lay outside the jurisdiction of the Star League council-or even called on the Star League to come to their aid."

"The intelligence community is only "guilty" of failing to predict how the Word of Blake would react to a situation that did not yet exist. Not knowing the Star League would not survive the fourth Whitting Conference, they had no way to guess what was coming." Those rumors only began c3025. Prior to 3025, Comstar hid the ComGuards for over a century. Per DotJ, the WoB militia was much better known to the Inner Sphere than the ComGuards.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

From what I have heard, Intelligence agencies usually have all the information needed to know about any situation. The problem is linking all the little bits of info into a solid and accurate analyse of the situation. In hindsight, it is always easy to do, once you know what to look for.

In the real, it happened in 9/11. The western intelligence agencies knew something was happening (chatter in some terrorist networks was up - or something to that effect), but not what.

For war material, WoB has dozens of fully operational mech factories on Terra. A lot were mothballed. But they were able to bring them back on line. And some of the fluff indicated that they were mostly fully automated factories. And eventually the Titan yards along with the Ruins of Gabriel for Warships and such

As for training up that army, well, even if you only give them 5 years to train (5 years to set up everything and get the ball rolling), is plenty of time to train an elite army. And to blood them, you could send them out as mercenary units in high combat areas.

Like I said in another thread, I am not too pleased with the current plot line, but am more than willing to see where it goes before I decide if I am going to accept it as official in my universe.

Incidentally, an interesting estimate of the potential scale of the WoB Militia can be found by looking at the Comguards' losses and recoveries between 3050 and 3067. WoB didn't need magical abilities to get its militia, it might've just duplicated what other BT groups managed. And the WoB militia isn't necessarily super-sized.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01