It’s been explained to you a dozen times: Obama is doing as much as he thinks the American people will accept without letting the whole thing go to hell.
Do I agree with it? No. Do I understand it? Yes.
You can pretend to not understand it if you wish, but that’s the way it is. That is all.
Not quite grasping the golden chain of your reasoning, here. The generals are unanimous, and unambiguous, and have a clear and reasoned method to bring all of this to a satisfactory close? But Obama is steering us to a course of action, and/or inaction, which will certainly lead to disaster? And is doing this in order to curry the favor of Fox News and Breitbart?
Is that the argument, here?
I suppose, then, that all of us fervent anti-war types should align ourselves with the Republicans, the Party of Peace?
I understand it perfectly well. It’s politics. War is being waged in line with the needs of the President’s legacy and the future of his party. Your implication that the President would like to do more but just can’t because the public wouldn’t accept is i nonsense. He’d like to do less, but the public won’t accept that either.
it’s true in a technical sense that he’s doing what the people want: the people want action but don’t want many coffins coming home. But let’s not call it leadership or good intentions. It’s 100% politics. It also means that he’s given up on trying to lead. He’s done virtually nothing to explain his policy to the public or build support for it. It’s just a placeholder action, keep the war going another year or two until it’s someone else’s problem.
And…? Are you bothered that Obama seems to be getting away with it?
If the Republicans want to run on ramping up troop levels in Afghanistan and sending ground troops into Syria to “destroy” Da-esh, more power to them. It’s not going to win any elections, though.
Please submit your Certificate of Telepathy for our inspection.
Saying Obama hasn’t explained his policy is like saying you have never questioned his leadership.
In reality, you just don’t listen. His speech last week explained the policy. If you don’t understand it, it isn’t because Obama has done something wrong, it is because you literally can’t hear anything when you run around yelling “Obama can’t lead, neener-neener!!” for 18 hours every day.
I think we should send Fightin’ Ben Carson to Syria. He can either rush ISIS, or point them to Assad, whichever he thinks best.
If I understand his expressed logic, we should air-drop enough pistols and ammunition to all the people not currently under the control of Assad or ISIS and the situation will resolve itself.
You know what’s missing from everything you’ve said? What the President should do.
Obama puts on a coat, you say, “That’s wrong.” He takes the coat off, you say, “That’s wrong.” It looks very, very much like you’d say “That’s wrong” no matter what he does, absolutely, always, in every case.
What’s the right thing to do?
There are two right options:
#2 is not a “right option”, and is in fact the most wrong, in my view. It would weaken us the most – far more than our current course of action.
The President believes that too, in fact he’s convinced that Russia is weakening itself in Syria. If he gets egg on his face for that one he deserves it, since Russia’s objectives in Syria are quite achievable if they have no opposition other than ISIS. Protecting a regime that’s already fairly strong is pretty easy, actually. Syria is not Afghanistan. The Assad family has historically been very bit as secure as Saddam. Doesn’t take much to swing things back their way. Russia’s likely to get a win here.
According to you. These aren’t the actual objective only right options handed down on high.
This is a complex system, meaning that you can’t predict the outcome of any particular action. I can see some value in sticking around to pick off the occasional piece of low-hanging fruit-- those things that we can say with some certainty will have a positive outcome-- while avoiding throwing ourselves full in to a conflict that we don’t know will leave things better or worse off.
Destroying ISIS isn’t really the problem. I’m sure the military has a perfectly good plan to achieve that. The real problem is whatever happens after ISIS is destroyed. And the US just failed at that spectacularly, twice. ISIS has to go, but looking at recent history, the US may not be the right one to lead this particular effort. The model you are proposing is emotionally satisfying, but doesn’t seem to work.
That doesn’t mean that we have to just sit there letting them do whatever they want, however. We can wear them down a bit, pick off the leadership, protect a few keys sites and generally make things easier when the time comes for them to get taken out.
Let’s go down to the quarry and something something!
The reason Russia intervened is because Assad’s fall was starting to look like an inevitability in the near term, not because of anything ISIL has done. And you think Russia sending three dozen aircraft is going to turn the tide?
Here’s a prediction: this whole mess is going to go on for ten years, and Russia is now on the hook to send a lot more military or to cut and run. There’s still no way Assad will remain in power - it’s just a matter of how quickly he goes, and whether things get worse after he does. And it probably will.
Russia knows how to keep their clients in power. They are very, very good at it and have the will to commit whatever resources are needed to get the job done.
You must’ve been born after 1989…
Gorby made it clear he wouldn’t use the military to keep the captive nations in line. That’s why they all fell in such a short time.
Assad will not fall with Russian support. At least not if we fail to even lift a finger to oppose Russia. Russia wouldn’t have failed in Afghanistan if we hadn’t opposed them there either.
So, they know how to keep their clients in power except for the times when they don’t. Got it.
You’re way too smart to not understand the difference between “can’t” and “won’t”. Plus the difference between opposition and lack of opposition. In Syria they face a situation more analogous to Hungary than to Afghanistan.
This idea that Russia is made of wizards that can keep anyone in power indefinitely is…unique.