It doesn’t take wizards. It takes force. Russia is using force. We are not. ISIS cannot beat Russia and Assad.
Was it “wizardry” that kept the Warsaw Pact in line for 40 years? Seriously folks, we aren’t talking about anything complicated in this thread. There are two concepts that many posters seem to be having trouble with that are really, really simple:
If you wage war, you wage a war. Half-assed war is a recipe for failure.
If a superpower wants to keep a client state’s puppet in power, they will succeed 100% of the time if they commit military force, unless another superpower aids the opposition.
The same concepts apply. If the Russian people have been willing to consent to aggression against European neighbors like Ukraine then they’ll have no problem with committing Russian troops to support a longtime ally. Putin, unlike Obama, understands what a commitment is. Now that his prestige is linked to Assad’s remaining in power, he will not fail unless we make him fail.
You are basically saying that we are taking half measures, and the Russians are taking full measures.
However, it’s clear you don’t actually have a factual basis for anything you’re arguing, so you may be changing your argument to: we are taking half measures under that dummy Obama, and the Russians may be doing quarter measures now, but they might do full measures later, proving that the Russians aren’t being sucked into anything but that Putin is a super genius leader and the bee’s knees.
Again, I’m not totally sure this is what you’re changing your argument to, but it seems quite likely because you can’t actually defend any of your propositions that you ever make.
And who, exactly, are you asking us to prop up in Syria in opposition to Russia, Adaher? The reason that we are not getting more involved is that there are no parties in the conflict that we actually want to win. There is no end game in Syria that gives us a friendly, pro-western government.
Even for the Russians, the best they are hoping for is to return to the status-quo. They are not going to gain anything they didn’t already have, they are full in to prevent losing even more then they already have.
And yes, Soviet strength kept the Warsaw Pact together for 40 years, but in the end NATO is still around and includes most of the former Pact members. See how well that worked out for Russia?
No, I think you’re the one confusing those two concepts.
Now, I think Putin is going to go to the wall for Assad, because he has a lot to lose if Assad goes. But it would be a mistake to extrapolate that too broadly, which is what you did.
For what we are talking about, not much of a difference really. Especially since the fall of the USSR, itself, happened not long after the fall of its control over much of Eastern Europe.
Russia used force against Afghanistan too. And against Chechnya. How’s that been working out?
What kept the Warsaw Pact in line for 40 years was the vague threat that we might destroy each other with nuclear weapons.
Why do conservatives try to boil every problem down to a solution that is really really simple but also really really stupid and really really wrong?
We’ve been waging full scale war in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade. That’s part of the main reason we have ISIS now. So obviously “duh…more guns” isn’t perhaps the solution.
The problem is more complex as we don’t know that a Syria under Assad is any better than ISIS. And yet you would have us send hundreds of thousands of troops into Syria to do…what exactly?
It does hold them back a little. But if you admit there’s an objective to be achieved here then what happened to the argument that troops would do “what exactly?” Anything you can do with bombs you can do better with troops on the ground.
So is there a mission or isn’t there? And once you define the mission, can you seriously argue(against the advice of the military) that ground troops aren’t needed to succeed?
It’s reasonable that there might be an objective that is desirable, but not worth the risk and expense of ground troops. Staying out completely would be best, but short of that no ground troops is better than ground troops.
I get your argument, although I only agree with you in the short term. Long term, bombing people creates a lot of anger without respecting our power. They assume we don’t have the resolve to fight if it will actually cost us something. And don’t think it doesn’t commit us. All the Russians have to do is decide that maybe ISIS should have a few advanced SAMs. then what? Do we retreat with our tails between our legs once our planes start falling out of the sky?
Russia arming ISIS is a pretty loony prediction. If loony things happen then we adapt and adjust. If ground troops are not involved, then loony things will do far less damage to America. I’d prefer to stay out entirely, but bombing is far less risky in the short and long term as compared to ground troops.
Then it’s a good think that Da-esh isn’t our opponent! There are plenty of well armed countries in the region that ARE opponents, and it’ll be up to them to deal with it.