“Allies” however, several of which were more or less open actively engaged in aiding ISIS.
I predict that regardless of what we do, ISIS will control significant territory and use that control to play host to, as Ravenman put it, “whackos from other terrorist organizations” and cause “tens of thousands of innocent civilians [to] be murdered, or at best horribly mistreated, by an incompetent and vicious mob of pieces of human trash for many, many years to come.” I doubt very much that our (further) intervention in the region will have a net positive effect on those facts. I will be happy if I am proven wrong.
I asked a question, which didn’t actually get answered…Don’t plan on rehashing how Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9-11.
Riiiight. It was Cheney who ordered PNAC operatives to plant white phosphorous bombs in the WTC. I get your drift, wink wink.
Um…Afghanistan kind of did, actually…the whole reason we invaded was because AQ was operating from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to turn them over to us when we asked. I think you are thinking of Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. But if you don’t want to talk about it except to, um, do whatever you are doing, then that’s fine.
Al Qaeda was operating in lots of places thiugh yes they were able to operate freely there. But as you say yourself we invaded because a denied exdradition request, not because the Taliban was involved in 9-11. But I think there’s been enough 9-11 threads so sorry I brought it up. I misundertood Bryan’s post I guess.
Nope. Never in a million years would ISIS have managed to take even an inch of Iranian land. And they never really had a chance on Baghdad, either.
No worries…I don’t think anyone here thinks that the Taliban were directly involved in 9/11 if that’s what you were thinking. I’m actually surprised you thought Ravenman or Bryan thought that (I can see how you might think of me, since I’m such a ‘conservative’ and all :)).
I take it the Reuters article is this one, and the other article is this one, from Time.
Both are incredibly vague. One moment, that American fellow in the Reuters article brags about how the Shia militias “are no longer there” - the next moment, he acknowledged “that Shi’ite forces were still in the area, perhaps across the river, outside the city.” So are they packing up to go home for reals, or are they just sorta kinda lounging around on the sidelines, looking away awkwardly and avoiding eye contact while the Americans drop their bombs, waiting for a chance to rejoin the fight as soon as the Americans leave?
Neither article mentions the supposedly withdrawn / withdrawing militias by name. The only militia that is named, in the Time article, has clearly not withdrawn just yet: “The leader of the largest militia group in the battle, the Badr Organization, told the Times that he was also considering pulling out” (my bolding). So who the hell really knows.
Yeah, well, guess what, practically every military/political actor in the MENA is in that exact same boat.
After three weeks of fighting, Tikrit still has not fallen. Now, finally, the U.S. is providing airstrikes. Apparently U.S. air support was made contingent on the Iranian-backed Shi’a militias pulling out of the fight, which they have. To whatever American general or diplomat decided to make that a condition, apparently the worst that could happen if the U.S. ignores ISIS is not that ISIS could survive, but that the Iraqis could finish them off with Iranian help. And then Iraq ends up even more firmly within Iran’s sphere of influence than it is now. And in the Syrian Civil War it would strengthen Assad, who is an Iranian ally already.
Your spin on this is interesting. My own take (or spin) is that the Shiite militias being directed by Iraq specifically were opposed to any US or coalition support in their attack and said they could do it alone (and in fact said that our help would be less than useless). After failing several times the government of Iraq has asked for our collective aid in providing air strikes and intelligence support of the Iraqi army and militias not aligned with Iran. Basically, Obama et al or whoever devised this strategy look to be pretty smart from where I’m sitting, and if the Iraqi government with US aid can take the city NOW, it’s going to make the Iranian backed MILITIAS look a bit bad…which is all to the good, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I haven’t heard many good things about how the militias are treating either prisoners or civilians (especially Sunni civilians) in the area, so not sure why we should be doing much to make them look better especially when they specifically were opposed to us doing anything at all.
True, but ISIS would have a hard time selling the oil. It can’t exactly send tankers sailing.
If we didn’t race in to police the areA maybe countries that are actually threatened by the so-called Islamic State would actually do something instead of waiting for us to save their asses.
While we bomb the shit out of them we create the best recruiting tool fhey could ever imagine.
Taking that oil off the market causes major market disruption. If/when they control enough it’s hard for others to ramp up supply enough in the short to moderate term to make up for it. The associated price spike affects every industrialized economy to some extent. Europe, Japan, China, and India as heavy net importers are heavily affected. Crippling those economies has widespread, worldwide economic impact. You think the worldwide recession caused by a spike in US mortgage defaults was bad.
Of course it wouldn’t get that bad. Either people keep buying even though it’s ISIS or a significant chunk of the total world’s military power drops on ISIS.