CNN Poll says most Americans disapprove of Obama handling ISIS; theorizes Americans are warming up t
47 replies, posted
Nonetheless, heavy US involvement will make local forces complacent. I dont wanna see another headline announcing that division's worth of men stripped their uniforms on the spot and ran for the hills to the tune of a small 1000 man insurgent force
Sounds like the Obama Administration may be be leaning towards a Gulf War scenario, send in the heavy armor and weapons and mess them up and leave quickly and let the local governments clean up the mess and pick up the pieces.
I don't really have a strong opinion on the matter but the last thing you want is to let an organization as crazy as ISIS have a permanent presence in the Middle East.
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;47154941]Actually deploying soldiers is exactly what ISIS want. Then they can fight their guerrilla war. They'll get the chance to kill some Americans and the non ISIS population have to deal with another Western occupation. Which will inevitably drive more people to resist.[/QUOTE]
I doubt it, ISIS were desperate to negotiate with the US over hostages before the bombing campaign started - they don't want the US stepping things up even more.
ISIS is a much better reason to put boots on the ground than Hussein was, but neither would be pretty cool. I mean it depends what this situation evolves into
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;47155828]This country really does have the memory of a mayfly.[/QUOTE]
Generally, I'd agree with you.
But not this time. This isn't Iraq ca. 2003.
There's a real threat to deal with here now that's shaking up the stability of the entire region and will definitely continue to spread abroad and launch more attacks, worrisomely probably against us, if we don't do something about it. We should have stepped in earlier before they gained this much initiative (at least our drone and air support has been hammering them relentlessly), but I understand the wait; we needed to convince the American people of the situation and make them understand the importance of their support for the possibility of an intervention against ISIS.
This is more like Afghanistan ca. 2002. It's actually justified.
I get why people are so apprehensive about this after what happened with Iraq and Saddam, but there's an actual, credible reason to intervene this time. The circumstances are completely different; there's a serious problem that needs to be dealt with now, and we've got the ability to fix it better than anyone else.
[QUOTE=Govna;47157334]Generally, I'd agree with you.
But not this time. This isn't Iraq ca. 2003.
There's a real threat to deal with here now that's shaking up the stability of the entire region and will definitely continue to spread abroad and launch more attacks, worrisomely probably against us, if we don't do something about it. We should have stepped in earlier before they gained this much initiative (at least our drone and air support has been hammering them relentlessly), but I understand the wait; we needed to convince the American people of the situation and make them understand the importance of their support for the possibility of an intervention against ISIS.
This is more like Afghanistan ca. 2002. It's actually justified.
I get why people are so apprehensive about this after what happened with Iraq and Saddam, but there's an actual, credible reason to intervene this time. The circumstances are completely different; there's a serious problem that needs to be dealt with now, and we've got the ability to fix it better than anyone else.[/QUOTE]
It's the same in the sense that it seems righteous in the beginning, but as the war drags on without people realizing how long it was gonna take, they will lose support and end up with a half finished job. All things considered, I think if a war was to be started it would end badly.
Deploying soldiers in Iraq is inevitable, because we have so much air craft in the area. If and it's a big if ISIS shoots down a jet, they could potentially replicate our aircraft. Even though they don't have the pilots to man them yet, they still have the oil necessary to fuel them. Thus neutralizing the Kurds major advantage over ISIS. Don't get me wrong it defiantly sucks we're going back to Iraq; however, Obama in my opinion pulled out too early and created a power vacuum that ISIS is aggressively trying to fill.
Will see
I think those 4000 troops with all that heavy equipment in Kuwait is a fail safe if Iraq messes up on the next phase of their plan in Spring cause it could go either way.
Let's... Not do this again, shall we?
They want a reason to fight. Why give it to them? They don't deserve that kind of response.
That being said, I also don't want to isolate ourselves from what they are doing. We need to know every step they take to prepare for any kind of attack they might try and pull. I imagine that they would eventually try and do something to the US to provoke war.
I wish we would stop being the world police and keep our nose out of shit we don't need to necessarily be in.
[QUOTE=Govna;47157334]Generally, I'd agree with you.
But not this time. This isn't Iraq ca. 2003.
There's a real threat to deal with here now that's shaking up the stability of the entire region and will definitely continue to spread abroad and launch more attacks, worrisomely probably against us, if we don't do something about it. We should have stepped in earlier before they gained this much initiative (at least our drone and air support has been hammering them relentlessly), but I understand the wait; we needed to convince the American people of the situation and make them understand the importance of their support for the possibility of an intervention against ISIS.
This is more like Afghanistan ca. 2002. It's actually justified.
I get why people are so apprehensive about this after what happened with Iraq and Saddam, but there's an actual, credible reason to intervene this time. The circumstances are completely different; there's a serious problem that needs to be dealt with now, and we've got the ability to fix it better than anyone else.[/QUOTE]
It's not justified at all. ISIS is [I]not[/I] messing up the stability of the region - they're attacking areas that are already unstable: Syria and Iraq. They have not invaded the stable nations surrounding their occupied areas, Jordan, Israel and Turkey.
ISIS isn't even a threat to the US. Their focus is on conquering the rest of Syria and Iraq, which is troubling them enough already. All those "terrorist attacks" outside of Syria and Iraq that have "affiliated" with ISIS had no actual communication with them and were lone wolf scenarios.
There is no need for the US to intervene, there is a need for Jordan and Turkey to get off their asses and help their neighbors and for Iraq to step it up against ISIS. The US can support their efforts, but until those options are completely exhausted and ISIS, by some miracle, actually keeps going, [I]then[/I] it would be a credible option for US troop involvement.
And beyond that, say the US invades northern occupied Iraq and Syria. What then? Another decade of occupying American forces as they're sniped and blown up with IEDs? Do we clumsily set up another "democracy" in Syria and hope for the best when we leave and it inevitably falls apart? Russia won't stand for the US in Syria and Syria won't ever get back on its feet without billions of dollars for repairs - one of which the American people will [I]NOT[/I] want to pay for, even if they're willing to spending American blood for the land.
I don't want to see my brother anywhere near the ground, but it looks like we're moving full-speed to him getting deployed.
I asked him to bring back an ISIS baby though, so it might be worth it after all.
I don't want boots on the ground. I'd rather we just help out the nations with air support and let them defend themselves with their own foot soldiers.
[QUOTE=Wizards Court;47154474]maybe the guys in 1916 had the right idea :v:
[url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/amendment-war-national-vote_n_3866686.html[/url]
fuck, this is the kind of thing every nation should do tbh.[/QUOTE]
How good of an idea is that really though. What if the vote fails but you voted 'yes', now you lost your job and have to serve in the army for no reason. What if a threat appears on the horizon, and nobody wants to act until it's already bombed their houses?
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;47154673]the issue with this is that, if you had a situation like britain in 1939, and you had this voting system, we would never have gone to war and that would have been catastrophic for europe and eventually britain and the world. sometimes crueler men with more power and information have to make the nasty decisions for the greater good[/QUOTE]
I was going to use this example too, but then I remembered the Phony War was 100% a real thing, and that Britain and France didn't move a military muscle (aside from covering their own asses) until the Wehrmacht popped up in France :v:
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;47159562]It's not justified at all. ISIS is [I]not[/I] messing up the stability of the region - they're attacking areas that are already unstable: Syria and Iraq. They have not invaded the stable nations surrounding their occupied areas, Jordan, Israel and Turkey.
ISIS isn't even a threat to the US. Their focus is on conquering the rest of Syria and Iraq, which is troubling them enough already. All those "terrorist attacks" outside of Syria and Iraq that have "affiliated" with ISIS had no actual communication with them and were lone wolf scenarios.
There is no need for the US to intervene, there is a need for Jordan and Turkey to get off their asses and help their neighbors and for Iraq to step it up against ISIS. The US can support their efforts, but until those options are completely exhausted and ISIS, by some miracle, actually keeps going, [I]then[/I] it would be a credible option for US troop involvement.
And beyond that, say the US invades northern occupied Iraq and Syria. What then? Another decade of occupying American forces as they're sniped and blown up with IEDs? Do we clumsily set up another "democracy" in Syria and hope for the best when we leave and it inevitably falls apart? Russia won't stand for the US in Syria and Syria won't ever get back on its feet without billions of dollars for repairs - one of which the American people will [I]NOT[/I] want to pay for, even if they're willing to spending American blood for the land.[/QUOTE]
It's completely justified.
ISIS intends to expand itself beyond Iraq and Syria. I don't get why anyone would think they're just going to stop with a couple of pissant countries in their own region, when they've openly declared that [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/02/rome-conquer-islam_n_5550646.html]they intend to expand[/url] and when they're [url=http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.643366]already expanding into Libya and are expanding into other parts of North Africa as well[/url].
There's a stable instability at play presently in the Middle East, and this is how it's been since the Arab Spring when it began back in December 2010. But things have been going from bad to worse these last soon-to-be five years, as the emergence of ISIS as this sort of significant forceful entity shows. What stability there has been is deteriorating, and this only grows more true as the weeks go on. ISIS' existence has in the past and will continue in the future to legitimize more self-proclaimed state and non-state entities to pop up alongside them and fight either with them or within similar ideological confines; we have again seen this happen already-- in Egypt with [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_Bait_al-Maqdis]Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis[/url] and in Gaza with the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen_Shura_Council_in_the_Environs_of_Jerusalem]Salafist Shura Council[/url], among others.
Jordan and Turkey [i]aren't[/i] getting off their asses; that's precisely the issue. Could, should, need too... aren't. Iraq and the Kurds are trying to fight back and the Iraqis are [url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iraq-forces-ready-to-battle-isis-for-mosul/]getting ready to launch an offensive sometime this spring to retake Mosul[/url], but our own military advisors there with them are correctly pointing out that they're not ready to do this-- and even the Kurds admit they're massively outgunned.
Troop involvement is going to be inevitable for us; with advisors on the ground and instances of US personnel coming under attack while being hosted at bases in Iraq, not to mention our already extensive use of drones and aircraft against ISIS, it's only a question of the extent to which we'll get involved. This doesn't need to be the Gulf War 3.0, but we will end up deploying people there to fight eventually at the rate things are unfolding. We will go in, we'll help the Iraqis and the Kurds clear out and retake what ISIS has claimed, and we'll leave. We'll probably keep some people there as usual to help maintain the peace and will definitely keep some there/send others in to help with rebuilding where it's necessary, but this isn't going to be a repeat of our occupation of Iraq in the last decade, and everybody knows that. The two situations are not comparable; like I said, this isn't Iraq ca. 2003. There won't be another insurgency like what there was back then because we've actually figured out how to suppress and eliminate their leftovers quite effectively after destroying the bulk of their organization.
As far as Syria goes, that's something that doesn't even require our attention with ground forces-- it requires containment with drones and aircraft. Assad and his forces have proven themselves more than capable of holding out and, with our limited support, inevitably weakening and defeating ISIS and even al-Nusra inadvertently in the process. The presence of ISIS there however necessitates we take some action of some sort there, however, and that's just something which Russia is going to have to deal with. "They won't stand for it". What does that even mean? What are they going to do about it lol? Throw a bitchfit and complain about it like we've done with them over the Ukraine? Fine, go for it. I'm not suggesting we do shit to help Syria other than contain ISIS within their territory and perhaps conduct a few airstrikes when it would behoove us to do so on their territory against our mutual enemies there. What's damaged and destroyed in the process by us is their problem and Russia's problem; it's between them to work out rebuilding plans and expenses-- we're just there to contain and help destroy ISIS.
This is a widespread problem that's getting worse the longer it is allowed to continue to exist. We could feasibly break this group to pieces in only a few months within Iraq; we overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan in only about five months, ending with Operation Anaconda in 2002, and we could do it here again. Insurgency problems we've learned how to counter; we're masters at it, and it doesn't take a tremendous amount of military commitment either.
The longer we wait, the worse the resulting insurgency will be however and the more people will needlessly die during this war of attrition which we could quickly help end. And who knows how out of control these militants will become in the coming months? They're already spreading to North Africa. Gradually allowing them to be whittled down is just going to spread them out more desperately throughout the region and abroad and make it harder to track them down and destroy them. And the way they're dragging children into this affair now... they're already building a new generation of jihadis.
Again, the longer we let this situation go, the worse it's going to get. We are going to get involved in it eventually one way or another; the sooner we do, the sooner we can fix it. It's a serious problem that's only going to get worse if we don't do anything. Now that more Americans seems to be in favor of a more direct approach of intervention, this is a good chance to capitalize on for deploying ground forces to fight within Iraq.
Just because ISIS has the intention to expand further doesn't mean it's capable of it.
Jordan [I]is[/I] getting off its ass, though, after the burning of their downed pilot. I'm sure Jordanian operations will continue and hopefully even expand after a while.
As for the US being "insurgent experts", that's false because of ISIS itself. ISIS started as the Iraqi insurgency in 2006 and if America was so good at rooting out insurgents, ISIS wouldn't had been around by the Syrian conflict to expand its power.
As for Russia, they're perfectly capable of sending supplies and munitions to Assad to aid him in keeping their warm water port safe.
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we dont want your fucking war
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