Obama decides to bomb his terrorists

From the wayback machine June 29, 2011

June 2014 ISIS announces Islamic caliphate in area straddling Iraq and Syria

Smart Diplomacy! tm
 
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I imagine this ISIS issue and how the US is directly arming the Kurds is a real problem for Turkey. PKK was black listed most for Turkey but they're no different from any other Kurdish group.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Bombing them will just martyr them and other people will inevitably get bombed too which will just increase local sympathy
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Well, any fool could say that and ... look Fluffy, you just did! But since it's so obvious then why would a sophisticated machine like the US government do something that would be bound to increase the ranks of ISIS (with the backing of all the Arab states that have been implicated with supporting ISIS along with the US in the first place)?
Is ISIS really so much cleverer than the US that they can goad a superpower into doing something stupid - just like Osama did? Or were the beheadings just needed to scare the people and shut up the peaceniks so the US could get on with doing what it wanted to do anyway.

The world makes much more sense when you stop listening to what the politicians say and watch what they do.
 
I am watching what they're doing and I'd do the same myself. Obama is not Bush and this isn't Iraq all over again. Taking out groups like ISIS and al Qaeda are what the great powers are supposed to do. The problem with Iraq 2003 was that it wasn't about al Qaeda.
 
Glaucus said:
I am watching what they're doing and I'd do the same myself.
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So you admit that you would violate international law and the US constitution yourself? Perhaps that's to be expected because after all you are just some regular guy and not a statesman.
Anyway, Russia and China are also biggish powers. Are biggish powers allowed to go bomb whoever they like without asking anyone else? When China becomes the dominant power is that the example you want them to follow?
When the law makers and law enforcers refuse to follow the law it breeds lawlessness. Have you seen the Canadian parliament lately? Did you see what Australia just did? Things are coming apart very quickly these days. 13 years of war and mafia rule have just about rotted out the whole system. Obama is not Bush but he is the true heir.
The more enemies he makes the more power he has.
 
So we have "head chopping off", "women can't drive" undemocratic monarchy Saudi Arabia as part of the coalition. Let's see. Who else. Oh yeah. Bahrain ... where the people are still protesting the reign of the undemocratic monarchy there. Nice friends Obama has.
 
What's the date on that article? It says the conflict started 14 months ago. That's wrong.
 
Glaucus said:
What's the date on that article? It says the conflict started 14 months ago. That's wrong.
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Just went back and it happened again TODAY!
Yup. Looks like it's from May 2012. Looks like the Telegraph keeps the page date "live" - *sigh*. Mea Culpa.


(Guess the opposition has been nasty for a long time.)
 
US bombs grain silos and gas plant vital to power generation of Homs and oil infrastructure.
It's another case of "sh!t happens in war". If we didn't bomb they wouldn't suffer and there are other ways to make things better. In fact, a decade and a half of bombing people has shown that bombing people just makes things worse. We make people suffer for their own good.

Still, those that don't give a damn about the innocent victims will insist that the best way to help them is to bomb them and the infrastructure they rely on for life.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Still, those that don't give a damn about the innocent victims will insist that the best way to help them is to bomb them and the infrastructure they rely on for life.
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Wrong. Those who care about innocent victims do what's needed to help them and in this case it's bombing ISIS but also Assad's forces. Obama's big mistake isn't that he finally decided to bomb ISIS but that he foolishly has done so without also attacking Assad's forces, whom most Syrians consider to be the greater evil. All Obama has done now is convince the moderates, who do exist, to no longer trust the US. Recent interviews with a former Syrian officer who defected when he refused to fire on Syrian civilians says he does not welcome the air strikes on ISIS because it frees up Assad's military to focus on them, the Free Syrian army and it's allies. Which is weird because Obama expects these very same anti-Assad fighters to do Obama's dirty work for him and defeat ISIS on the ground. The Free Syrian army no longer trusts Obama and they have good reason not to. They see that while US war planes are bombing ISIS, Assad's air force has stepped up it's bombings against them and the prevailing conspiracy theory amongst them is that the US and Assad are working together. The thinking goes that the US allowed Syria to get so bad only to attract the juhadists and then the US can wipe them all out in one spot. Not plausible in my opinion and for many reasons, but I can't blame them for thinking that either.

Yes, bombing ISIS and even Assad forces will cause the death of civilians. That is not a reason to not attack them and that's because both of these groups have killed many and are likely to continue killing. And both those groups are rather nasty, the only main difference between the two is that ISIS proudly showcases their brutality while Assad's forces try to keep it hidden behind prison walls. Both deserve to be bombed into oblivion and I find it rather unsettling that only one of them is.
 
Glaucus said:
Yes, bombing ISIS and even Assad forces will cause the death of civilians. That is not a reason to not attack them and that's because both of these groups have killed many and are likely to continue killing.
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"It's OK for us to kill civilians because they were going to do it anyway."
 
It's never ok to bomb civilians, but the chance of them being killed shouldn't stop us from bombing those who intend to kill civilians and many of them. ISIS is currently attacking a major kurdish city (Kobani) and thousands may die. If no one helps them they will die. That's all I need to know what needs to be done.
 
Glaucus said:
Wrong. Those who care about innocent victims do what's needed to help them and in this case it's bombing ISIS but also Assad's forces.
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I'm not sure I shouldn't be worrying about you, Mike. This sort of black and white "we bomb them or they win" kind of right wing thinking is quite different from the old Mike and is very out of character - I wonder if you are not perhaps suffering from a great deal of anxiety in your life - or worse, a tumour on your amygdala. This kind of violent ideation often comes out of fear and is fundamentally irrational.

First of all, calling for the bombing to be tied to getting rid of Assad is transparently pro neo-con agenda. Israel has long wanted to get rid of Assad and the US wants to take out a Russian ally but Assad still has support at home. Your assertion that the people think Assad is more evil than ISIS is false. People would rather have Assad than ISIS and they would rather have ISIS than a vacuum. Take out Assad and ISIS will be right back - unless the "allies" can fill the country with boots on the ground.

Next lets look at the fact that you are completely in favour of unilateral action (and the coalition of the willing is the typical bunch of lackeys, the browbeaten,and hangers on whose populations are generally at odds with their supposed representatives). Just because the countries who can never seem to say no are throwing in figleaf levels of support doesn't hide the fact that this is a US action.

You are completely in favour of violating international law. Any claim of right to protect that Putin might have made (but never did) the people of Donbas who continue to be shelled by the Kiev regime you rejected on grounds of "sovereignty" despite the fact that the government did not change in any manner proscribed in law, but you gladly reject sovereignty of Syria though Assad just won an election. Because you are so scared of ISIS you don't care about law or collateral damage.

You also see no alternative to the violence but more violence. The fact that ISIS has been chopping heads off and waving them at the west basically goading the US to attack them doesn't suggest to you that they have already figured out that they grow every time America bombs people?

How about we look at cutting off the flow of arms instead of sending in more arms. How about we cut off the flow of money instead of sending in more money. How about we work with REAL moderates, the non-militarised moderates who started the protests. They actually do exist but we have undermined them by supporting armed groups and pretending that THEY are moderate not because they were against violence but that the supported violence in the same direction that we wanted it. How about we work with Russia and with the current government of Syria to get real humanitarian relief into the country (because there is a government there, it's just that you don't like it) and we can start bringing refugees to our countries until things settle down. But destroying the infrastructure that people depend on (grain silos, power stations, refineries, etc - and how come ISIS can sell oil for $25 a barrel and make a massive profit? Don't say it's just because they stole the wells. It costs to bring oil out of the ground and transport it to market. We pay $100 - who is the bigger pirate?) is going to kill more people than the bombs do - always does and we always do it.
Yes, bombing ISIS and even Assad forces will cause the death of civilians. That is not a reason to not attack them and that's because both of these groups have killed many and are likely to continue killing.
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Back in the day when the bike gangs were bombing each other in Montreal the police didn't institute a bombing campaign against the bike gangs because it would be better to kill a few innocent civilians than let the bikers continue. They didn't even go on a shooting spree and never mind the bystanders. Your position is that of a moral relativist - it is OK to for us to kill innocent people because we cry when we do it because we are the good guys. We don't cry when we do it. We don't even tell anyone about it if we can help it and if it DOES come out then we talk about how much we regret it - but we're going to keep doing it anyway.

We never never never attack on humanitarian grounds. We allow the royal family of Bahrain to brutally suppress its pro-democracy protesters (by calling in the Saudi army to shoot them) because Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are the friends of our elites and they do good business. We don't bother Thailand, that coup is just fine, so fine the news basically forgot to mention it. But if there is specially selected news to rile up our populations to support violence against bits of land whose leadership is either independent or friendly to our rivals ... THEN we can kill their people to save them. That's all Iraq was about. There are still people who think Saddam had WMDs.
 
Biden apologizes for saying ...

At Harvard, Biden said that "our biggest problem is our allies" in responding to the civil war in Syria.

"The Turks … the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war," Biden said.

"What did they do?” he continued. “They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad -- except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."
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Ex-ambassador says Harper's way of helping could make things worse.
Their core is made up of seasoned, motivated fighters and an extremely experienced leadership that go back to the “dirty war” waged by the American and British Special Forces in Iraq between 2006 and 2009.

ISIL is playing a strategical game of chess with its every move, while the West is playing military tic-tac-toe.

ISIL is not just a military organization, it is a political movement with a well-thought-out ideology, however abhorrent it may beto the West. It governs the huge areas it controls in Iraq and Syria. Ruthless in eliminating any potential opponents, it also provides electricity, food and other vital services for ordinary people in the areas it controls.

That is why American air strikes against ISIL recently targeted not only oil and gas facilities but also grain elevators – a highly problematic course of action in both legal and humanitarian terms, particularly if the conflict is to be a long one.
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It's NOT about people, it's about power - US power. It's about making sure people are given the leaders we want them to have - obedient leaders. ISIL and Nusra will never be obedient to the US.
 
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