Discussion for article #227522
Never mind these pesky facts, be AFRAID. VERY AFRAID. Isis is coming!! Isis is coming!!! They got a tank for Allah’s sake!!! They could put that tank on a flying carpet and take out Ferguson, Missouri. Oh, the horror!!!
We have become a nation of p***y’s.
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LOL. ISIS only controls a third of Syria and Iraq and has captured and received any number of weapons, which of course doesn’t make them very formidable. And what is this U.S. strategy that the writers are talking about - bombing? That’s sure going to destroy them.
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I think their success in claiming so much territory in Syria and Iraq has more to do with Syria being pretty much broken and lawless and that the Iraqi army is mostly incompetent and something of a jobs program rather than scores of recruits signing up to serve a country they would defend to the death. There is still too much tribal/religious drama in Iraq, which is probably it’s future, to expect any sort of cohesion.
Hell, they had/have ISIS completely out-gunned and out-manned. They just don’t want to fight and probably a high percentage of Sunni, particularly the less conservative, thought that this group could undermine Shia power in Iraq. Then they learned how fucking 14th Century and bloodthirsty they are and it was too late. Now it’s apparently up to the Kurds and the Shia to carry the fight.
The president hasn’t hesitated using drone strikes against targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, so why not drone strikes against ISIS? Who is going to complain about it, the Syrian government? Fuck them. It’s partially their fault that ISIS exists as it does.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis
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Without tactical air defense, yes, carrier based fighters could destroy whatever armor ISIS is said to have captured and during firefights with Kurdish or Shia militia could reduce their “infantry” to nothing.
If indeed they have captured an air force base in Syria, reduce it to rubble. It’s not likely the Syrian air force will have need of it in the future.
Rather than announcing some grand coalition, appear to dither, eschew regional cooperation (the spineless Saudis could be handling the air campaign) and work directly with Shia and Kurdish commanders with U.S. elements as forward observers. This is how we destroyed Taliban strongholds in the north of Afghanistan before the invasion. We have Special Ops people there already.
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One thing that has finally dawned on me over my fifty-plus years is that the US always seems to need a boogeyman. And we always seem to need it to be worse than anything that has ever come before.
This latest rather motley bunch of a$$holes seems to be no different.
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Karen Hughes has been caught in the act again for Dick Cheney?
Any group that changes names more often than their clothes is pretty sketchy as a major boogieman. As Obama said earlier this week, these sorts of militant uprisings go on all the time in the Middle East when Sunnis and Shiites clash.
One has to ask who is financing this one. Follow the money not the rhetoric.
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I don’t think I’ve seen ISIL described as a military force making national armies tremble.
Their rout of the Iraqi Army, for instance, is widely described in terms of the Iraqi Army’s problems.
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Too many Dixiecrats in Washington that Cheney can manipulate and lick his chops thinking about the war profiteering possibilities?
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It seems meaningful to me that you have to make up the bogus threats that we’re allegedly being told, rather than being able to reference actual bogus threats being pushed by the administration, as you could during the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Apparently, anti-warriors have a tendency to fight the last war, just like generals.
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YES!
ISIS has no air power, no armor (some guys driving a tank are not a functional mechanized group) no navy, no discipline, and have LOST every encounter with any half-way organized and motivated opponent with descent arms. They have NO way to PROJECT POWER except from the back of a rusty Toyota pickup truck.
Outside of the area they already control they are impotent.
Iran checks them on the east, Saudi Arabia on the south, Jordan and Israel to the west and Turkey to the north.
Everybody in the Arab world hates them (even Saudi Arabia is no longer backing them) and fears their lunatic-brand of apocalyptic Islam. The only reason they grew at all was the disaffected Sunni conscripts in the Iraqi army joined with them rather than continue being abused by their hated Shiite Commanders.
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ISIS has accomplished one feat: It’s got right wingers like Hannity peeing their pants.
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More like we’ve been bamboozled by our for profit, corporate owned conservative media.
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Perhaps it would be better at this point to just let them fight it out and deal with whomever wins? We really don’t have a bone in this fight. They don’t threaten us unless we stay there.
This is like getting in the middle of a family feud when you don’t like anyone in the family.
By all means, let’s destroy all the heavy equipment. But we don’t have to help one side over the other. The locals don’t deserve either of the alternatives. They are all corrupt and always have been.
Both sides say they are fighting in the name of democracy and God. But I’m sure Allah would not want to be associated with any of this nor would George Washington. So why are we?
Let’s turn off the Washington spin machine. There is no way to win a war that isn’t one.
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extremely unlikely that they could get any of them off the ground at this point.
In this they sound like Rethugs but I don’t know…dirty shirts and sandals would have had my 3rd grade nun hysterical.
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While this is part of the legacy of the Cold War, we have made no friends in the region over the last fifty years with our pretty much unqualified support of Israel and, contrarily, our pretty much unqualified for the Saudis and the rest of the fake Gulf royalty/oil barons. Israel has become an apartheid state and none of the Arab states are democracies. Just what is it that we supposedly have in common with them? Give what a fucking mess Shrub and company left for Obama, you can’t even argue that engagement in the region makes realpolitik sense.
However, post 9/11, we’ve put an extra layer of nonsense on this as the country has moved farther to the right and the Rethugs have harnessed the literal Biblical wrath of the Millennialists who support Israel for all the wrong reasons anew but can’t tell you the difference between a Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Wahadist, Algerian, Indonesian or Saudi Muslim.
At the same time, we bear the primary responsibility for the deeper mess the region has fallen into because of our destabilization of Iraq. As much as I feel for the Kurds (oh, and fuck you Turkey!), he held the country together and kept a lid on religious extremism, something the Saudis and the Iranians actually encourage.
I don’t want to see us put any combat troops back in the region. In fact, I want to withdraw from the region altogether. But ISIS by all accounts are murderous madmen that have probably killed more non-combatants in the last few months than Saddam killed in a decade. They need to be wiped out or at least weakened to the point that the locals can handle the situation. Uncle Sugar is really, militarily, the only country that can make this so.
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Is it them changing their name or our inability to get it straight to begin with?
The hype fits in well with the usual suspects addicted to war mongering in this Country. Chicken Hawks, Neocons and the Military Industrial complex.
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Where are they going to go for spare parts when all their stolen hardware starts to break down, no where, and who knows how to fix it, no one. I always had the feeling ISIL won’t last long for that reason alone
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I agree with this up to the point that we set this whole mess in motion and I hate to see innocents caught in the crossfire. Otherwise, I’ve felt since the Gulf War that we need to fuck-off out of the ME in particular and the Muslim world in general. These aren’t “our people” and never will be. I’d rather concentrate on expanding wealth and democracy in the old Soviet bloc than trying to “fix” ME and Muslim societies. We have fundamentally irreconcilable world views.
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