I'm unclear, however, just who "they" are.

What I learned in war was that killing is wrong no matter who is doing it

My how things have changed

Coming to terms with the reality that there are more partisans than there are people with convictions.

have continued over so long a period though. Without the consent of a majority of the people, we would not be where we are.

I no longer believe that at least one party holds out any hope of ending them now that we have seen how it all really works.

is part of the problem, but they do not have a choice - the entire system has to go for there to be meaningful change. In liberal democracies like ours, political society aka the state is there to prop up the economic base.
Any attempt to challenge the system and they tear you to bits (or take you out). The system is completely broken.
Thankfully it is decaying from its very core. Moral authority no longer exists and too many of us have withdrawn our 'spontaneous consent' for the system. We don't believe anything they spew anymore.

No doubt.

Red Team/Blue Team Fight, Fight, Fight!

one I have no answers for

But we both know that if killers are not stopped the default position is the killing continues unabated; which is the thing we claim we do not want.

I trust Obama, a man who I presume has no love of killing, to intercede against those who have based their entire identities on killing and enslaving.

Why is killing other people so terrible? Because it causes suffering and death? If so, then there are much worse things than killers, such as hunger and disease. Perhaps we should ignore the killers and focus on those things for a while, but where's the money in that?

killed way more Iraqis than any terrorist group will ever kill.

This is about - oil - nothing more, nothing less.

inspired by God he must have gotten it right because we are following his advice, still.

He was being interviewed by O'Reilly who at that time anyhow, opposed the Death Penalty so he asked Bush how he could reconcile his record on the DP with being a Christian.

Bush, thoughtfully considered the question, then no doubt inspired by Christ, at least in his own head, responded:

Bill, we have to KILL THEM to STOP THE KILLING

And that is what we are doing, still. Quite an inspiration to this powerful nation, wasn't he?

I hear it every day now, Bush's solution to stop killers: 'We have to kill them to stop the killing'!

Just wanted to add that this was about 14 years ago and as a nation we have acted on that advice.

Doesn't seem to be working. We've killed and killed and still we haven't 'stopped the killing'.

WTFU!!

is to keep China and Russia OUT of it.
Which is why we will never totally leave the Middle East.

Any current map of US military bases tells us that. We have been attempting to ring fence China for decades now.

And now Russia is attempting to increase influence in the area, esp. with Iran, and with Syria ( because of Syria's pipeline/port)
Pipelineistan, if you will.
As you say, resources, indeed.

good article, here:
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/pipeline-politics-in-syria/

tearing up the check book

Strictly thinking in terms of operational success that being defined as defeating violent extremism in the form of ISIS, I doubt that what the U.S. is doing will achieve that. I think it just as likely that it adds fuel to the fire. ISIS obviously thinks so to. There can be no doubt that they wanted this.

In addition, what damage does another war do to us domestically?

and call it the law of unforeseen consequences (though often they're all too apparent) but the list of things that could go terribly wrong, is a long one. Consider the possibility that we may make things worse, rather than better.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]

Few decades, I can see how people would find it difficult to work up any anger over just a few thousand people being killed when a few planes crash into a few skyscrapers.

We all think we're safe, locked inside our wooden shacks. Karma will knock one day, and justice will be served.

Please tell us what your idea of justice is.

Which we admitted we used because of how barbaric it was (though the wording was something like “it was also useful for the psychological effect it had on the enemy”).

There is somewhat of a difference, in that some groups will admit that certain actions are collective punishment, while others will merely wink and nod. Thomas Friedman’s “suck on this” speech was a good example of how the war was supported in part because many in the US wanted to see people in the Middle East killed in retaliation for the personal insult they felt on 9/11. The excitement over “shock and awe” – the massive bombardment of an urban area – is another example.

As for ISIS – I’m sure they are a brutal and dangerous group. They were a brutal and dangerous group in 2007 when Obama and many others said it wasn’t worth staying in Iraq to try to keep them down (and a question I never hear answered by the warmongers – was McCain right that we should have stayed to fight them until the end of time?). They are also fighting other brutal and dangerous groups ready to terrorize Sunni Arabs in areas we drive ISIS out of. There’s not much discussion about the consequences of our actions, because we’re just not that interested in the people we’re dropping bombs on.

What doable plan would best advance a transition for that region where Arab and Muslim nations begin to handle (without the US) their own political and cultural conflicts, including their crazy extremists?

How do we get to that place?

Unless you kill everybody who's an enemy, that is. And there's a word for that, but it's classified.

America's core concept is a noble one. No, we have not always lived up to the concept of liberty and justice for all. The manipulative actions of some, and the miseducation of others, has led our nation to commit atrocities. But most people keep trying to do the right thing, the humane thing. Unfortunately, we are flawed biological humans, with different experiences, energy levels, and commitment, as opposed to perfect beings of light and energy.

The core concept of the Daesh is most definitely NOT liberty and justice for all.

I left."

Holy shit.

I suppose because the US participated in warfare against Germany in World War 1 that resulted in the deaths of around two million German soldiers and a half million or more German civilians, we had no moral basis for fighting against Germany in WWII.

To what end? What do we want and why do we want it?

"Terrorists" behead an American journalist on TV. We go to war over it. Cops shoot an unarmed kid, with his hands up, in the back, on an American street, and they break out the military guns, snipers and tear gas to shut the citizens up.


Dead is Dead. Michael Brown is just as dead as Steven Sotloff. Are we at war with the cops? No we printed up "I am Darren Wilson" fucking wristbands. And don't even get me started on Saudi Arabia, stoning a woman who was raped for adultery? Our fucking allies.

I'm driving myself crazy thinking about this shit...

Many don't make these connections.

I love your post.

We expect that, given that in the past you've stated quite clearly that you don't care about ISIS, and that they have "genuine" reasons for what they're doing.

Going forward, certainly we're on notice who's outraged by journalists and aid workers being murdered and those who don't want to be 'bawled' at over such events.

And, no, being outraged does not mean one supports war as a response.