Surely no more or less of a legal grey area than extrajudicial abductions and executions by CIA or Mossad, drone strikes against civilians in Yemen and Pakistan, or indeed, any of ISIS’ actions up until now. Anyway, which sovereign states do you imagine would complain about foreign mercenaries assassinating ISIS Memberson their soil, to whom would they direct their complaints, and in which international courts do you imagine the offending mercenaries would be tried?[/quote]
[quote]pat wrote:
When I say half measures, this is what I mean. Start at 12:15.
You will hear 2 familiar themes, it’s Bush’s fault and it’s poverty and social services to prevent terrorism. Forget the fact that a lot of ISIS fighters are educated and middle class or higher. So no sense of urgency in a military campaign designed to take out an enemy:
[/quote]
First, President Obama didn’t even mention former President Bush verbatim. He stated that ISIL evolved from al-Qaida in Iraq, ipso facto, a consequence of the invasion of Iraq.
[/quote]
So in your apparently very, very literal world, people have to be named by name, rather than strong inference for the implication to take root. Sorry, that’s naive. Everybody and their brother understood what he meant, save for you, when he said the invasion of Iraq was responsible for the rise of ISIS. When an even stronger correlation is the leaving of Iraq, without a strong residual force in place to help fortify the fledgling country was responsible for the ease of which ISIS took a strong foothold in Iraq.
And the fact the ISIS arose in Syria, not Iraq makes that argument bullshit anyway. What happened in Iraq is not necessarily correlative to what happened in Syria. There is no indication that leaving Saddam in power and untouched would not have prevented the Assad regime collapse, from which ISIS rose. The only thing either scenario would have prevented was ISIS’s infiltration of Iraq, not their creation. The argument doesn’t hold water, it’s very assumptive.
The majority of the world is poor, it does not stand to reason that disaffected poor people necessarily become terrorists. The more common historical thread is that they are a people who are vulnerable to tyranny, not vulnerable to take up arms and become jihadists. There is very weak correlation between poverty and lack of education and terrorism. There is no indication, at all, that if everybody had what we consider a decent standard of living, that they would not be terrorists. Many of them, especially the foreign fighters were neither poor, nor uneducated. And not other country invests more across the globe, fighting poverty and poor education than the United States.
[quote]
USCENTCOM commander General Lloyd has stated that as of 23 February, 2015, approximately 8,500 ISIL terrorists have been killed in the US led air campaign in Iraq and Syria. 58 tanks, 184 HMMWVs, 303 technicals, 26 miscellaneous armored vehicles and 394 other vehicles have been destroyed according to statistics from the Pentagon. Given that CIA has estimated that the strength of ISIL front-line and garrison fighters - constituted by their regular forces (jund), the elite paramilitary (inghimasiyalone may have up to 15,000 members), and death squad (dhabbihah) personnel - numbers between 20,000-31,500, those numbers are hardly insignificant. Your “half-measures” narrative is not hard headed, empirical defense analysis; nor is it an educated guess. You aren’t merely shooting from the hip, but in the dark as well. [/quote]
Whooptie do, we broke some of their shit. If we truly had 60 countries vigorously fighting ISIS, we wouldn’t be counting rubble, they would be gone. They are still taking territory, firmly holding the territory they have and in many places are still advancing. They have been somewhat contained, but are far from destroyed. A true 60 country coalition would have had no problem removing them from existence by now. The truth is it’s a ruse. Most of the 60 contribute very little to the effort. While we play “count the broken Humvees” they continue their terror campaign with vigor and effectiveness. I am not saying we haven’t made progress, we’ve made slow progress and it shouldn’t be slow if we have 60 countries committed to their destruction.
I get it, he’s your guy, you like him. But he has made incredibly bad calculations with regard to this enemy and continues to do so.
This is what I have been saying all along: “What has happened in Iraq is a tragedy â?? for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the entire world. It is tragic foremost because it didn’t have to turn out this way. The hard-earned progress of the Surge was sustained for over three years. What transpired after that, starting in late 2011, came about as a result of mistakes and misjudgments whose consequences were predictable. And there is plenty of blame to go around for that.”
The complete removal of all troops with the job unfinished, against the advice of nearly every military and civilian adviser had predictable results that were in fact predicted by many, many people. It doesn’t take a military or political genius to figure it out. It was blindingly obvious what was going to happen. In fact many people here, including myself said that the troop pull out was going to result in troops going back and that is exactly what has happened. Another blindingly obvious predictable fact is that more troops will be deployed and some will engage in combat, whether intended to or not.
According to documents released by Snowden, â??The only solution for the protection of the Jewish state â??is to create an enemy near its bordersâ??.
This is interesting for a number of reasons. If true it would ensure a stateless threat to keep Iran in check (look what just happened in Yemen for instance) and an enemy to keep the military industrial complex rolling…
But how exactly would an enemy near it’s borders protect the Jewish State? Aren’t there enough enemies near it’s borders already? How exactly would that work?
And Varq, wouldn’t it have been better to have a stable Iraq friendly to the West & the Saudi’s & Israel?
Personally, I think the whole thing got way out of hand in a procession of missteps involving the Shia Maliki regime & Iran, Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Syrian civil war and a weak US exit strategy from Iraq.
This is what I have been saying all along: “What has happened in Iraq is a tragedy â?? for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the entire world. It is tragic foremost because it didn’t have to turn out this way. The hard-earned progress of the Surge was sustained for over three years. What transpired after that, starting in late 2011, came about as a result of mistakes and misjudgments whose consequences were predictable. And there is plenty of blame to go around for that.”
The complete removal of all troops with the job unfinished, against the advice of nearly every military and civilian adviser had predictable results that were in fact predicted by many, many people. It doesn’t take a military or political genius to figure it out. It was blindingly obvious what was going to happen. In fact many people here, including myself said that the troop pull out was going to result in troops going back and that is exactly what has happened. Another blindingly obvious predictable fact is that more troops will be deployed and some will engage in combat, whether intended to or not.
[/quote]
This is what Petreus went on to say:
“The proximate cause of Iraq’s unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011”.
The actions of the Iraqi prime minister undid the major accomplishment of the Surge. [They] alienated the Iraqi Sunnis and once again created in the Sunni areas fertile fields for the planting of the seeds of extremism, essentially opening the door to the takeover of the Islamic State.
“Some may contend that all of this was inevitable. Iraq was bound to fail they will argue, because of the inherently sectarian character of the Iraqi people. I don’t agree with that assessment”.
"The tragedy is that political leaders failed so badly at delivering what Iraqis clearly wanted; and for that, a great deal of responsibility lies with Prime Minister Maliki.
This is what I have been saying all along: “What has happened in Iraq is a tragedy Ã???Ã???Ã???Ã??Ã?¢?? for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the entire world. It is tragic foremost because it didn’t have to turn out this way. The hard-earned progress of the Surge was sustained for over three years. What transpired after that, starting in late 2011, came about as a result of mistakes and misjudgments whose consequences were predictable. And there is plenty of blame to go around for that.”
The complete removal of all troops with the job unfinished, against the advice of nearly every military and civilian adviser had predictable results that were in fact predicted by many, many people. It doesn’t take a military or political genius to figure it out. It was blindingly obvious what was going to happen. In fact many people here, including myself said that the troop pull out was going to result in troops going back and that is exactly what has happened. Another blindingly obvious predictable fact is that more troops will be deployed and some will engage in combat, whether intended to or not.
[/quote]
This is what Petreus went on to say:
“The proximate cause of Iraq’s unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011”.
The actions of the Iraqi prime minister undid the major accomplishment of the Surge. [They] alienated the Iraqi Sunnis and once again created in the Sunni areas fertile fields for the planting of the seeds of extremism, essentially opening the door to the takeover of the Islamic State.
“Some may contend that all of this was inevitable. Iraq was bound to fail they will argue, because of the inherently sectarian character of the Iraqi people. I don’t agree with that assessment”.
"The tragedy is that political leaders failed so badly at delivering what Iraqis clearly wanted; and for that, a great deal of responsibility lies with Prime Minister Maliki.
Mufasa
[/quote]
We knew that was a problem before we left. That didn’t start being a problem after words. Everybody knew Iraq was not ready to go it alone, that Maliki was incompetent and that their security forces were understaffed and under trained. We knew they weren’t ready. It was no surprise.
Found this interesting article. It touches on a lot of things, including the origination of Islamic extremism, the Soviet disinformation campaign against the West, the origins of Al-Qaeda, and it’s leadership. It blames the US AND the Soviet Union for a lot of it and calls out not only the Soviets for their part, but the United States, it’s so-called Arab allies, and the CIA. Basically both sides playing the Muslim extremists against each other for their own gains, or the gains of the “New World Order” if you believe in that sort of thing…
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Found this interesting article. It touches on a lot of things, including the origination of Islamic extremism, the Soviet disinformation campaign against the West, the origins of Al-Qaeda, and it’s leadership. It blames the US AND the Soviet Union for a lot of it and calls out not only the Soviets for their part, but the United States, it’s so-called Arab allies, and the CIA. Basically both sides playing the Muslim extremists against each other for their own gains, or the gains of the “New World Order” if you believe in that sort of thing…
Nothing new under the sun.
From the same source and author:
As Pogo once said, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
Interesting that Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the KGB but it makes sense because the Muslim Brotherhood stood to bring down the US ally in Egypt, so of course it would have been a Soviet ally in the Cold war.
Meanwhile this is happening:
How is all of this worth price in lives and culture?
It always bothers me when Special Forces and Special Operations are used interchagably. Nitpicky, I know. I definitely drank to this news the other night. This makes me want to drink, but for the opposite reason:
ISIL takes control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
It always bothers me when Special Forces and Special Operations are used interchagably. Nitpicky, I know. I definitely drank to this news the other night. This makes me want to drink, but for the opposite reason:
ISIL takes control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
[/quote]
I think it’s pretty clear, by the ability of ISIS to take control of a city that has been bolstered increasingly by Iraqi forces prior to this action, that our strategy is not working. When you know something is going to happen, and you prepare to prevent it and it happens anyway, that something isn’t working.
Despite the minimization by the administration of this event, this is a big deal and it shows we are not in control of the situation at any level.
The Iraqi forces, even after increased training and arming by the U.S., are still totally incapable of defending their country. If anybody is not worried about this, then you should start to worry. This is bad news.
