n/t

and is "bad" a good enough reason to engage militarily?

We've often bombed Pakistan and Yemen with drones under Obama and the rationale was to stop Al Qaeda.

. . . that could indeed be flattened by an air power hammer?

As I understand, ISIS is pretty small in numbers. They likely just travel as a few guys in the back of pickups, moving independantly. Bomb any old pickup, and we're most likely bombing a couple field hands commuting to a farm for daily work.

Or maybe Jamaica?

It makes about as much sense as invading Iraq in the first place.

And certainly the original blunder was Bush's invasion. But aren't we still trying to protect ourselves and any Iraqi allies we may have made commitments to?

On the other hand, ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia, and we don't want to tick them off. In addition, Iran is opposed to ISIS, and we're not ready to cozy up with Iran, nor do we want to improve Iran's standing in the region by aiding them in getting rid of ISIS, though we may have to do so.

It's a complicated mess.

-Laelth

Are you saying the Saudi royal family itself is supporting ISIS and that that would keep us from protecting Baghdad?

Are we still so dependent on the good will of the House of Saud that Obama is willing to allow sure atrocities in Baghdad and the sure damage it will do to our party?

it dates back to the century of 600 AD. It is a sectarian fight over who is the true heirs of Muhammed, the Prophet. This is not our fight nor should it be. The course of sorting out this infighting was disrupted by the West. That went well, didn't it?

This conflict is only nominally religious in nature. My post below, #22, explains why.

-Laelth

the Shi'a and the Sunni run deep and have a long history. Not all Muslims are Arab, and Iranians are not an Arabic people. The advent of Islam in Persia occurred with a corresponding break up of the Persian empire.. The Persian culture and monarchy survived because they adopted the Shi'a form of Islam which established a lineage of venerated Imams, not unlike the lineage of the monarchy, and thus Islam was assimilated without the tribal government common to the Arabic tribes at the time. It was not an easy transition for the Persians to make. The Persian plains had been long crossed by armies and had assimilated whole cultures into their own. You will find a streak of "we're not Arabs" that runs through the modern culture.

Shoot, I wrote a thirty plus page paper on this some years back and it is really too complext to stuff into a post on a forum. However, there is an article I read that kind of addresses this but does so from a western foreign policy viewpoint.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/01/why_can_t_arabs_and_iranians_just_get_along

Undoubtedly your paper was excellent, but my sense is that what we're seeing in Iraq has very little to do with religion.

Certainly, the response from the U.S. is about regional power, not religion. We still have interests in the region, and we have a duty to protect those interests. We could care less about their religious issues, even if religion is what is driving this conflict.

-Laelth

The Royal House of Saud, as far as I know, supports ISIS. The Saudis want a Sunni Muslim state encompassing northern Iraq and most of Syria. They want a vassal state. In part, we want them to have a vassal state to serve as a counter-balance against Iran's regional power.

We are torn on this one. Do we support the Saudis and their vassal, ISIS, even though ISIS is abhorrent? ISIS's plan is to evict all the Syrian Christians and kill all the Syrian Alawites. Or, do we support the legitimate government of the democratic state we literally created, Shiite Iraq, which has close ties with Iran?

It's a tough call. I would not want to be in President Obama's shoes at the moment. None of his options are good.

-Laelth

. . . and I think the short-term future of our party is riding on what he decides. Even bombing the ISIS aggressively would be but a stopgap. And bombing might further radicalize (if that is possible) the ISIS so that it commits even more atrocities against Shiites and sends out even more terrorists to Western targets.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

But then you could ask how bombing would prevent the 100k army from reforming itself and then campaigning again.

We'd have to do maintenance bombing, then, to make sure the ISIS doesn't rise from the mat.

But isn't maintenance bombing better than having a worse-than-Al-Qaeda state?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The night is always young. It's never too late.[/center][/font][hr]

Probably less than 20,000. And likely well dispersed, not marching in columns in one big army. Its another insurgency, and difficult to distinguish the bad guys from the civilian population.

Like in Vietnam.

Oh...wait.

And there's no Viet Cong yet making raids in the South.

Different wars, different times.

Unless Iraq troops work in close conjunction with our "300" spotters it's all just political cover for the president really. He is a bad situation. Having not prosecuted the war criminals in the first place they now rise up to haunt us.

. . . the ISIS march into Baghdad? What happens when we have Fox News running video on loop of ISIS troops rounding up Shiites for slaughter. What happens to the chances the Democrats retain the Senate?

FOX/KOCHS/GOP will complain whatever Obama does.

There are a lot of big players involved in this situation. They will all have to figure out how they want things to shake out.

. . . won't be bothered by the endless asking of the question, "Who lost Baghdad?"

ten flash points was the removal of Saddam Hussein. His removal would cause in 10-15 years a trans Iraq/Iranian/Syrian super state hostile to the US. Guess what Bushie ignored the warnings.

The Sunni Shiite have had peace once.....back in 950 AD. It's fucked. We went in there ( I was aboard BB Wisconsin as a liaison) and like every military adventure we embark on, we had no idea what we were doing.

The region will burn. Unless we commit massive troops which i am against. Which we don't have money for anymore.

What will happen will be Rwanda all over again. It will be genocide. Which is going to happen since Malaki decided not to have an inclusive govt. Malaki sealed his fate when he decided to cut the opposition out of having a voice in the govt.

It's no longer our problem.

To borrow from Star Trek:

Iraq is our Kobayashi Maru..it's no win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

The winning move was not to move in the first place.

n/t

We've expended enough lives and resources and there is still no peace. We can't bomb the region into peace. There are extremist religious/ethnic factions in the region that just doesn't want democracy or to get along with each other. I agree with Vice President Biden. Iraq should be divided three ways. They just don't trust each other there. So find a territory division they can all accept over constant fighting and be done with it. The side who violates another's territory after that are the a-holes.

involved in global terrorism, but is instead a regional insurgency. Until there is evidence otherwise I reject the terrorist label. I don't support these vile theocratic murderers, but quite frankly a sunni state spanning parts of Syria and Iraq and a Shiite state covering the remainder is what is going to happen. We can deal with this re-alignment sensibly, or we can decide to engage in neo-colonial nation building by force.

. . . but ISIS has vowed to take Baghdad. I think a Baghdad in their control or a Baghdad under bombardment is going to be terrible for the world. But certainly terrible for our chances of keeping the Senate.

Not that we should bomb just because we want to keep the Senate. Such would be immoral. But we have to face facts.

My "gut" wants to disagree with you, but I also see the wisdom of your point of view.

I, certainly, don't claim to have the right answers on this issue, but my sense remains that we ought to defend the democratic government we literally created (i.e. Shiite Iraq). We broke Iraq, and I think we have a continuing duty to fix it. What the right "fix" is, however, is unclear to me.

-Laelth

I missed that.

Imagine that, a President who actually uses diplomacy, instead of shouting "YEE-HAW!" and blowing shit up as a first response.

JERUSALEM – Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.

The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.

The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any links to extremist groups like al-Qaida.

In February 2012, WND was first to report the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert region.

That report has since been corroborated by numerous other media accounts.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-jordan-base/5387532

"...On Thursday, the New York Times reported that last month the Obama administration rebuffed a secret request from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, who was concerned over jihadist gains, to consider military airstrikes against extremist strongholds.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/saudis-arming-jihadists-seizing-iraqi-cities/#JsTooBM4JDIAbOO8.99"

"...General Wesley Clark one of the most highly decorated 4 star generals of the US military openly admits that there has been ‘a policy coup’ in the US government. He explains that he was told, back in 1991, that the US would actively invade and destabilise countries across the Middle East to take control of the region. These are not the words of an outsider conspiracy theorist, but the man who did this job for the US government. Of the list Clark was shown, only Syria is left standing, and the US and UK have all but declared war on Syria this week."


http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/08/27/us-general-wesley-clark-war-on-syria-planned-in-1991-as-part-of-middle-east-land-grab/