U.S. to Iraq: If Russia helps you fight ISIS, we can't - Polidicks

[QUOTE=SnakeHead;48956102]Damned if we do, damned if we don't. The world is filled with a bunch of damn hypocrites when it comes to shit like this. I think we should just sit back and let other nations handle things for awhile because the same people will bitch no matter what we do.[/QUOTE] Afghanistan = Military intervention and occupation - Mixed. Iraq = Military intervention and occupation - Disaster. Libya = Military intervention, no occupation - Disaster. Syrian Civil War (anti-Assad) = No intervention - Disaster. Syrian Civil War pt 2 (anti-IS) = Military intervention, no occupation - ???? Whatever you guys do, people from Europe will hate you. A huge amount of people here despise America and hold it in complete sneering contempt. They force the argument in a way where you are damned whatever you do, whatever position you take. Intervene in Iraq against a genocidal dictatorship? It's all about the oil. Intervene in Libya? Imperialism. Fail to intervene in Syria? The US doesn't care about Muslim lives. We need to look at US foreign policy beyond the last decade, where everything (barring Afghanistan) has been a catastrophic failure. We've seen the costs of intervention in Iraq. We've seen the costs of non-intervention in Syria. Since none of these positions have worked, there needs to be more examination of individual conflicts and what lessons we can draw from each rather than sweeping conclusions from one conflict.

[QUOTE=Xystus234;48956119]Yeah then they blow each other up though.[/QUOTE] Better than our soldiers getting blown up while the world takes a giant shit on us IMO [QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48956146]Afghanistan = Military intervention and occupation - Mixed. Iraq = Military intervention and occupation - Disaster. Libya = Military intervention, no occupation - Disaster. Syrian Civil War (anti-Assad) = No intervention - Disaster. Syrian Civil War pt 2 (anti-IS) = Military intervention, no occupation - ???? Whatever you guys do, people from Europe will hate you. A huge amount of people here despise America and hold it in complete sneering contempt. They force the argument in a way where you are damned whatever you do, whatever position you take. Intervene in Iraq against a genocidal dictatorship? It's all about the oil. Intervene in Libya? Imperialism. Fail to intervene in Syria? The US doesn't care about Muslim lives. We need to look at US foreign policy beyond the last decade, where everything (barring Afghanistan) has been a catastrophic failure. We've seen the costs of intervention in Iraq. We've seen the costs of non-intervention in Syria. Since none of these positions have worked, there needs to be more examination of individual conflicts and what lessons we can draw from each rather than sweeping conclusions from one conflict.[/QUOTE] I think the solution is letting the parties involved in conflicts sort things out themselves and only intervening if we're directly attacked. What we've seen happen to the US in the past few decades is a direct effect from all the shit we did during the Cold War, we need some alone time for everyone to cool down.

[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48956146]Afghanistan = Military intervention and occupation - Mixed. Iraq = Military intervention and occupation - Disaster. Libya = Military intervention, no occupation - Disaster. Syrian Civil War (anti-Assad) = No intervention - Disaster. Syrian Civil War pt 2 (anti-IS) = Military intervention, no occupation - ???? Whatever you guys do, people from Europe will hate you. A huge amount of people here despise America and hold it in complete sneering contempt. They force the argument in a way where you are damned whatever you do, whatever position you take. Intervene in Iraq against a genocidal dictatorship? It's all about the oil. Intervene in Libya? Imperialism. Fail to intervene in Syria? The US doesn't care about Muslim lives. We need to look at US foreign policy beyond the last decade, where everything (barring Afghanistan) has been a catastrophic failure. We've seen the costs of intervention in Iraq. We've seen the costs of non-intervention in Syria. Since none of these positions have worked, there needs to be more examination of individual conflicts and what lessons we can draw from each rather than sweeping conclusions from one conflict.[/QUOTE] i think the continued success in Afghanistan in the face of all the other problems, has shown that full scale withdrawl from iraq was a huge part of the problem. say what you want, but afghanistan isn't going to fall to the taliban easily or any time soon, look at the ferocity of the recent offensive against the taliban i can't believe it took 3 years of this shit in syria to reverse the withdrawal from afghanistan

[QUOTE=carcarcargo;48955676]Considering the US has done fuck all to help except a bunch of shitty bombings I think I can guess who Iraq will side with.[/QUOTE] Except for providing basically all of their military materiel and all of their training, yeah, fuck-all. Details, details.

[QUOTE=Xystus234;48955767]Yeah actually. The rational thing to do would be to cooperate with them on ISIS. There's a reason that we aren't siding with them that our government isn't telling us, and it probably has little to do with the humanitarian situation, and more to do with neo-con interests in Syria, frankly. Fucking neo-cons.[/QUOTE] Do you honestly think Russia or the United states for that matter are helping against isis purely out of the goodness of their heart. Its a power play and Syria just happen to be caught in the middle.

[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;48956070]Were you under a rock last year? Putin invaded Urkraine because they dared to tell Putin to fuck off rather than take the ass rape from their Russian installed President. America and Russia's relations have soured from our sanctioning the fuck out of them.[/QUOTE] well we also managed to evade a major humanitarian crisis by accidentally negotiating the dismantling of al-assad's chemical weapon stockpiles. russia was an essential partner in carrying that out. putin is basically our only inroute to the assad regime, meaning that any negotiation regarding the future of assad will have to involve him and his country. simultaneously, while putin certainly has dissimilar interests to our own, and is deliberately opaque about his goals and motivations, he's also far more likely to heed calls for negotiations than the dictator he's propping up, and since russia is syria's superpower backer, russia has the influence and the might to pressure assad into moving one way or another. it should be understood that no negotiation of the future of the assad regime is possible while the islamic state continues to fight, and as such reaching the mutually-beneficial goal of eliminating ISIS should be the current priority. once the foaming badger is removed from the room, it becomes much more easy to discuss what's next.

[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48956146]Afghanistan = Military intervention and occupation - Mixed. Iraq = Military intervention and occupation - Disaster. Libya = Military intervention, no occupation - Disaster. Syrian Civil War (anti-Assad) = No intervention - Disaster. Syrian Civil War pt 2 (anti-IS) = Military intervention, no occupation - ???? Whatever you guys do, people from Europe will hate you. A huge amount of people here despise America and hold it in complete sneering contempt. They force the argument in a way where you are damned whatever you do, whatever position you take. Intervene in Iraq against a genocidal dictatorship? It's all about the oil. Intervene in Libya? Imperialism. Fail to intervene in Syria? The US doesn't care about Muslim lives. [/QUOTE] Occupation works if they have a nation state. All of these nations are divided by tribal/sectarian differences.

[QUOTE] Dunford said, "can't have a relationship right now with Russia in the context of Iraq..." [/QUOTE] High-school-dating-tier diplomacy Just get a room jeez

[QUOTE=Mudbone;48956336]Do you honestly think Russia or the United states for that matter are helping against isis purely out of the goodness of their heart. Its a power play and Syria just happen to be caught in the middle.[/QUOTE] Good point. But nothing good seems to happen when expansionist genocidal states (if you want to call it that) arise. We've learned from history that much, that and the fact that they're also Islamic terrorists.

[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48956146]Afghanistan = Military intervention and occupation - Mixed. Iraq = Military intervention and occupation - Disaster. Libya = Military intervention, no occupation - Disaster. Syrian Civil War (anti-Assad) = No intervention - Disaster. Syrian Civil War pt 2 (anti-IS) = Military intervention, no occupation - ???? Whatever you guys do, people from Europe will hate you. A huge amount of people here despise America and hold it in complete sneering contempt. They force the argument in a way where you are damned whatever you do, whatever position you take. Intervene in Iraq against a genocidal dictatorship? It's all about the oil. Intervene in Libya? Imperialism. Fail to intervene in Syria? The US doesn't care about Muslim lives. We need to look at US foreign policy beyond the last decade, where everything (barring Afghanistan) has been a catastrophic failure. We've seen the costs of intervention in Iraq. We've seen the costs of non-intervention in Syria. Since none of these positions have worked, there needs to be more examination of individual conflicts and what lessons we can draw from each rather than sweeping conclusions from one conflict.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Rangergxi;48956903]Occupation works if they have a nation state. All of these nations are divided by tribal/sectarian differences.[/QUOTE] i think that, in reconciling these two points, we need to look at the extent, method, and time-frame of intervention in these countries. a prime example is iraq. our intervention was quick, heavy-handed, and included a botched nation-building exercise that failed to account for the region's sectarian divisions. more specifically, the united states failed to effectively include all groups in the process of establishing the new government and failed to incorporate meaningful checks and balances and minority rights in the new constitution. a comparative success was that in cambodia: the UN peacekeeping mission there, for all its failings, succeeded at holding elections and creating stability, even if the country still faces substantial problems in human rights and corruption today.

[QUOTE=agentfazexx;48956109]I'd love for people to end war, but it won't happen.[/QUOTE] Hey I said join hands in peace, not get in bed and run all bases, let's be realistic here :v:. [editline]22nd October 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=agentfazexx;48956114]We sat back and watched during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. We got blamed for not intervening there. Had we gone in, there would have been even more death, and we would have gotten shit for that too. So idk what the world wants from the US anymore.[/QUOTE] Some sort of world police ironically. I mean NATO is kida flaccid now that the Cold War is over, and we know the UN is shit. So it just boils down to US and our military spending and big guns, with the big balls to support those guns.

[QUOTE=joes33431;48957115] more specifically, the united states failed to effectively include all groups in the process of establishing the new government and failed to incorporate meaningful checks and balances and minority rights in the new constitution. [/QUOTE] In their defence, AFAIK it's nigh impossible to include all groups in the process of establishing government democratically in Iraq, as most of those groups would vote for the complete eradication of some other groups in a heartbeat. Which is pretty much what happened when the majority representatives inevitably took the wheel. It would've taken decades to create a working democracy among the non-homogeneous population, I doubt US government ever planned to be there [b]that[/b] long and throw away [b]that[/b] much money. And since the same situation is in Syria, since the start I really doubted the policies of outright removing Assad: pray that in the end you get another, less brutal dictator. Else you either get even worse guy there, or it'll be a clusterfuck with new (Shia) ISIS eventually emerging.

Well at least Russia is doing something about those dogs

Whats this going to do for iraqi-iranian relations. I'm not 100% sure how they get on but Iraq is pretty western affiliated and its last leader did try to invade iran. Not sure if its is a naive approach to take.

[QUOTE=gudman;48957436]In their defence, AFAIK it's nigh impossible to include all groups in the process of establishing government democratically in Iraq, as most of those groups would vote for the complete eradication of some other groups in a heartbeat. Which is pretty much what happened when the majority representatives inevitably took the wheel. It would've taken decades to create a working democracy among the non-homogeneous population, I doubt US government ever planned to be there [b]that[/b] long and throw away [b]that[/b] much money. And since the same situation is in Syria, since the start I really doubted the policies of outright removing Assad: pray that in the end you get another, less brutal dictator. Else you either get even worse guy there, or it'll be a clusterfuck with new (Shia) ISIS eventually emerging.[/QUOTE] the fact that we planned to create a government without acknowledging that it'd take a long time to make one that wouldn't fall apart in a few years' time is just absolutely absurd if we didn't want to invest in creating a working government to supplant saddam (which we clearly didn't), then we shouldn't have invaded in the first place, and yet we did. it's bonkers.

[QUOTE=joes33431;48961879]the fact that we planned to create a government without acknowledging that it'd take a long time to make one that wouldn't fall apart in a few years' time is just absolutely absurd [/QUOTE] It does look absurd, but evidently that's just what happened. Maybe the goal wasn't to create a stable government? Yeah, I know that things that are adequately explained by stupidity are not to be attributed to malice (or, in this case, sort of conspiracy theory), but governments and special agencies generally consist of mostly smart people. At the very least, they're most definitely not retarded. And it seems to happen more and more often, too. More countries are making moves that look stupid. USA in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia in Georgia, Ukraine and now Syria, the way Europe looks at the Middle East and Africa, Gulf states... wait scratch that, Gulf monarchies may very well just be retarded.

[QUOTE=joes33431;48961879]the fact that we planned to create a government without acknowledging that it'd take a long time to make one that wouldn't fall apart in a few years' time is just absolutely absurd if we didn't want to invest in creating a working government to supplant saddam (which we clearly didn't), then we shouldn't have invaded in the first place, and yet we did. it's bonkers.[/QUOTE] Can we be clear here that be "we" you mean the democrats. The pullout was criticized from day one by the right.

[QUOTE=joes33431;48956378]well we also managed to evade a major humanitarian crisis by accidentally negotiating the dismantling of al-assad's chemical weapon stockpiles. russia was an essential partner in carrying that out. putin is basically our only inroute to the assad regime, meaning that any negotiation regarding the future of assad will have to involve him and his country. simultaneously, while putin certainly has dissimilar interests to our own, and is deliberately opaque about his goals and motivations, he's also far more likely to heed calls for negotiations than the dictator he's propping up, and since russia is syria's superpower backer, russia has the influence and the might to pressure assad into moving one way or another. it should be understood that no negotiation of the future of the assad regime is possible while the islamic state continues to fight, and as such reaching the mutually-beneficial goal of eliminating ISIS should be the current priority. once the foaming badger is removed from the room, it becomes much more easy to discuss what's next.[/QUOTE] the problem is assad didn't exactly live up to his word, sure we destroyed a bunch of chemical mixing equipment to make sarin gas but there was obviously a stockpile that was not turned over because more chemical weapons have been used since then

[QUOTE=joes33431;48957115]i think that, in reconciling these two points, we need to look at the extent, method, and time-frame of intervention in these countries. a prime example is iraq. our intervention was quick, heavy-handed, and included a botched nation-building exercise that failed to account for the region's sectarian divisions. more specifically, the united states failed to effectively include all groups in the process of establishing the new government and failed to incorporate meaningful checks and balances and minority rights in the new constitution. a comparative success was that in cambodia: the UN peacekeeping mission there, for all its failings, succeeded at holding elections and creating stability, even if the country still faces substantial problems in human rights and corruption today.[/QUOTE] The different groups within the country, just like when trying to build any political grand coalition in any country, are just as likely to attract each other as they are to repel each other. The groups within Iraq could be broken down (in my opinion) into: Sunni Shia Kurds Trade Unionists/Socialists/Iraqi Left Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists Baathists Many of these groups repel each other due to long brewed (and stirred by the West, but also far more importantly, by Saddam) hatred of each other. Involving both Sunnis and Shiites in a new government is incredibly, incredibly difficult. It isn't as simple as engaging all groups, excluding a small number (in this case, the Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists) and creating a new government. People always talk of the need to 'engage' with the people of the country. Of course, this is important, but I still think that it doesn't resolve the issue. The different sides don't actually want to engage with each other meaning failure is guaranteed from the start with the 'grand coalition' approach.

[QUOTE=sgman91;48962015]Can we be clear here that be "we" you mean the democrats. The pullout was criticized from day one by the right.[/QUOTE] Wasn't the pullout organized by the Bush Administration?

[QUOTE=pentium;48956110]And there we go. The states finally got an excuse to abandon the operation.[/QUOTE] Actually... fuck it. Let Russia handle it. Bye!

[QUOTE=Flapjacks;48962358]Wasn't the pullout organized by the Bush Administration?[/QUOTE] I honestly don't remember if it was in the original plan, but whether it was or not is fairly irrelevant since at the time of the actual pollout it was a partisan issue.

What would it mean for Iraqi Kurdistan if the central government received direct Russian backing, though? I got a feeling they're not just gonna let the KRG secede.

[QUOTE=sgman91;48962015]Can we be clear here that be "we" you mean the democrats. The pullout was criticized from day one by the right.[/QUOTE] let's also be clear that neither the right nor the left had any interest in building a democracy in the first place, and instead used the concept of nation building as a label to make the invasion seem more palatable after we realized that we had no reason to invade on a national security basis. [QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48962045]The different groups within the country, just like when trying to build any political grand coalition in any country, are just as likely to attract each other as they are to repel each other. The groups within Iraq could be broken down (in my opinion) into: Sunni Shia Kurds Trade Unionists/Socialists/Iraqi Left Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists Baathists Many of these groups repel each other due to long brewed (and stirred by the West, but also far more importantly, by Saddam) hatred of each other. Involving both Sunnis and Shiites in a new government is incredibly, incredibly difficult. It isn't as simple as engaging all groups, excluding a small number (in this case, the Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists) and creating a new government. People always talk of the need to 'engage' with the people of the country. Of course, this is important, but I still think that it doesn't resolve the issue. The different sides don't actually want to engage with each other meaning failure is guaranteed from the start with the 'grand coalition' approach.[/QUOTE] again, the fallacy is to suggest that any grand coalition approach was taken in the first place. we actively sponsored and supported leadership that not only systematically excluded sunnis from the political process, but also actively used shia militias that carried out numerous abuses. and that leadership partially arose because we pieced the new government together with ridiculous haste and imprecision. our concern from day one was one of a military concern, using military solutions to combat the political problems of sectarian violence and terrorism, even though research shows that military intervention has only led to the end of terrorist groups in about 7% of recorded cases, compared to roughly 40% each for effective policing and political representation. and remember, it isn't as if every sunni suddenly joined ISIS because it was just chomping at the bit to do so. sunni tribal leaders from anbar province were themselves saying that if a political solution to sunni disrepresentation was carried out, then they would be willing to fight the islamic state as well. the reasoning behind that demand is hardly opaque: sunnis have no incentive to fight for a government that has no interest in representing them. of course, shia muslims are going to be extremely hesitant to accept sunni representation into their government after the violence in the mid 2000s and the repression under saddam hussein, but that's why these processes are supposed to be delicately orchestrated over long periods of time with a multilateral force - because these things cannot be hamfisted, and yet that's exactly what we did. despite being the multicultural nation that was built upon checks and balances that maintained relative political stability for quite a long time, we carried none of those insights into our policy of nation-building in iraq. the point that i'm essentially trying to make is that our failures in the nation can hardly be used as evidence for failure in democracy-promotion, because we never really gave a competent try in the first place. and in the absence of a more nuanced and protracted political solution, it begs the question: what is the alternative? if reconciliation is impossible between iraq's warring factions, then certainly a partition would become a political impossibility steeped in endless disputes over borders and resource sharing. and to put these governments back under the control of a dictator, as a body of [URL="http://www.hoover.org/research/promoting-democracy-stop-terror-revisited"]research[/URL] finds, would only predispose that region to even more violence and instability, that is unless we want to sponsor sweeping violations of human rights a-la soviet-style iron-grip control. and let's not forget the kind of statement that either action sends to the international community. to sponsor a partition is to suggest that we have no faith in a society that is not homogenous, despite being clear evidence that such a society can exist. meanwhile, to sponsor a brutal dictator is to suggest that we have no faith in our own system of government, and would rather violate our essential principles along the same blood-colored lines that we did in the cold war than actually come to task at promoting the values we claim to have. barring all options aforementioned, we're left with doing nothing, an action which demonstrates a clear lack of a global leader's willingness to lead, leaving a power vacuum for even less responsible and even more dubious actors to take control, whether that be iran, saudi arabia, or russia.

I didn't suggest that we took that approach. I'm suggesting that its much, much harder than people seem to think.

[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48971603]I didn't suggest that we took that approach. I'm suggesting that its much, much harder than people seem to think.[/QUOTE] oh, alright. that's fair.

[QUOTE]but also actively used shia militias that carried out numerous abuses[/QUOTE] I stopped reading here, the Shia Militias were the ones in many cases bombing us when we had our troops there.

[QUOTE=Xystus234;48972222]I stopped reading here, the Shia Militias were the ones in many cases bombing us when we had our troops there.[/QUOTE] well that's great and all but it's been well documented that the iraqi government has used "official" shia militias to try and fight against the islamic state at least since 2014 'shia militias' covers a wide range of things, from ragtag bands of vigilantes carrying out revenge killings to larger groups with official government backing

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;48957494]Whats this going to do for iraqi-iranian relations. I'm not 100% sure how they get on but Iraq is pretty western affiliated and its last leader did try to invade iran. Not sure if its is a naive approach to take.[/QUOTE] Last time I checked, the Iranian and Iraqi governments are pretty tight. Iranian special forces are operating in Iraq with the government's blessing.

Lol the U.S won't ever leave Iraq and let the Russians take over, it would totally upset the balance of power in the region.