Israel didn’t exist in 1944.
+1, as the kids say.
(wistfully) Yeah, but weren’t we all?
Our objective in using airstrikes is to give Kurdistan some breathing room. Objective achieved.
I’m just trying to figure out if you really think we need to splurge a couple few trillion dollars and thousands of American lives because you think it’s a good idea or you just want Obama to fuck up as badly as Bush did.
Don’t be repetitious and redundant.
“Give them a little breathing space” isn’t a mission worthy of the name and I don’t think Obama’s going to just give up if the Kurds are in danger of getting overrun. He’s not going to even let the Yazidis get massacred, much less the Kurds.
No sooner do I mention a US rescue of the Yazidis then he gets the ball rolling.
And I’d note this is ground troops. calling them advisors doesn’t make them not ground troops.
The operation in Libya was actually a major Obama victory. Khadaffi’s armored column was advancing on Benghazi, and a one-sided massacre was immanent. Then all that hardware got blown up via airstrikes. Soon after that, Khadaffi was out, and all of those civilians still live, aside from the regrettable loss of some American staff there.
Since in the end it looks like nothing happened, it doesn’t play as much of a victory, but it was. Personally I think this is why the GOP is straining so hard to connect the word “Benghazi” to some conspiracy- to conceal from the public a genuine Obama victory.
Anyway, airstrikes to keep ISIS away from the Kurds, our long-time allies in the region, very well may meet with similar success. It doesn’t solve all the problems in the world, but at least one of our allies doesn’t get slaughtered. Looks like a win, much as I would like to remain un-involved in Iraq.
From the link:
[QUOTE=This is CNN]
About 130 Marines and special operations forces have been dispatched to Irbil, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said, adding to the hundreds already in the country advising Iraqi troops in their fight against the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“Very specifically, this is not a combat boots on the ground operation. We are not going to have that kind of operation,” Hagel said during an address at Camp Pendleton, a Marine base in California.
[/QUOTE]
Frankly I’m not sure what to think. If it was all Special Ops folk I’d say ho-hum (though adaher would disagree). But there are marines in there. I will say that the first deployment of military personnel are always framed as advisers.
Woah, check this out from the New York Times:
Things are very serious in Iraq: worse it may very well be that adaher was correct. The end times are surely here. We are doomed.
I’m very happy with the President right now. I now have the answer I was looking for: what happens when air power isn’t sufficient to fulfill the mission? For this President at least, it means he’ll do what he has to do to make sure the mission is successful.
It is if we’re arming them and providing their air-force. When the Shia finally get it together to militarily object to ‘Kurdistan’ expanding like an oil stain what do we do then?
Pick one side and abandon the other? Pick no side and let one ally or another lose?
There is nothing at all simple about this.
For me this has become a Genocide thing (which via UN Treaty enacted into US law obligates international action). The USA and the UK should throw it at the Security Council and say - ‘What are WE going to do right now to carry out OUR obligations. Russia, China? Anyone?’
I don’t think that’s possible. The Sunni area is a buffer between the Shia and Kurds. It’s not like the Shia can march the Badr Brigades through the Sunni Triangle to get to Kirkuk.
Biden was right: we’re going to have to consider Iraq to be partitioned. The Shia majority had their chance to govern a unified nation and couldn’t handle it. So now we have three nations.
Partition. Doesn’t. Work. It generally makes things worse.
I don’t see how. Is Yugoslavia worse off today? Sure, the breakup can be ugly, but if there’s no way the sides can get along, then breaking up is the best result.
No it isn’t. Ethnicities are mixed and boundaries blurred all over and neither ethnicity agrees that Kirkuk and the surrounding oil fields are Kurdish. The Kurds just seized them in all the confusion so you already have a point of future conflict right there.
But not with the Shiites. It’s way north of their stomping grounds. And I don’t see the Iraqi Army or the Shiite militias subduing the Sunnis unless they make a decision to do away with them entirely.
Well are we prepared to stand on one side as the Sunni are butchered? While the Sunni ethnic cleanse the crap out of any Christian communities remaining? While the Kurds and the Shia fight a murderous war and the oil fields burn?
If so why the hell did we ever get involved in the first place?
But yeah - I’ve been coming round to the ‘just let them kill each other, I don’t care any more’ position on the whole Middle East.
No matter what action anyone takes it just makes things worse.
Given the Sunnis’ behavior when they controlled Iraq and their reaction to losing that unjust control(and the killing of our troops that resulted), we should not lift a finger to save the Sunnis if it comes to that.
That we are working to prevent. Although I see no reason why the Kurds and Shias should fight. Why would the Shias even want to govern the Kurds? Can you imagine Shia citizens supporting a war to subdue the Kurds? The Sunnis I can see, the Sunnis were the oppressors for decades, but the Kurds never did anything to the Shias.
The Shia could easily take it upon themselves to come up with a permanent solution to the Sunni problem.
And look atthis map.
Note the kurdish populations deep inside sunni areas and vv. I don’t know where you get the idea Iraq neatly divides into homogeneous ethnic regions from.
Everyone’s ‘stomping grounds’ are right up next to each other, where they aren’t actually intermingled.
Not to mention the multi-faction population of Baghdad.
No matter what you think each of the three main factions have overlapping claims on land and resources.
The lack of oil in Sunni Iraq is always a major bone of contention and if you think they are going to shrug their shoulders and let, just as one example, the Kurds cut them out of Kirkuk and its oil fields then you’re very much mistaken.
Leaving aside the fact that the Turkmen minority also claim Kirkuk.