You are assuming there is a line that can be drawn between Daesh and the locals. As long as you have a sectarian central government in Baghdad, there is no line that can be drawn between them.
Daesh is simply the current incarnation of the Sunni rebellion against a Shia government. Kill every Daesh fighter and “Son of Daesh” appears on the scene in a few months.
Guys like you need to learn that there isn’t necessarily a military solution to every problem in the world. And just because you have a big military, does’t mean that it can reshape dysfunctional political environment.
We’re like the helicopter parents of the Middle East. Let 'em duke it out amongst themselves, and they won’t care about attacking us. What the hell do we sell all that military equipment to the Saudis for, anyway??? And Turkey. They’re a NATO ally, and they’re muslim and they’re right fucking next door. Saudis, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq (and the other Gulf States)… it’s all yours, baby. The training wheels are off. You can do it!!
Both of you have good points. I myself am torn between wanting to write the world’s wrongs and recognizing that we can’t and that we often make things worse.
I’m just objecting to singling out John McCain, basically because he’s a Republican and he doesnt consider these wars to be something you do while trying to pass domestic legislation. Democrats since Clinton got over their Vietnam syndrome by fighting wars in all sorts of places on the cheap, and because there was no loss of American lives, it’s become pretty much standard practice now to intervene everywhere with air power that we can get away with. It makes no sense to denounce John McCain for actually being serious about pursuing this policy, whereas Democrats just kinda like to do it in their spare time as a hobby. And we still don’t know what Plan B is when airpower doesn’t work. Apparently, Obama’s Plan B is to just continue the ineffective policy and make it his successor’s problem.
Yeah, what’s with all this “no loss of American lives” nonsense. We need to fight these unwinable wars and lose American lives in the process. That shows we’re committed, by jingo!!
Democrats think they can control our involvement in these wars once committed. They are mistaken, and they’ve made this mistake before. They just haven’t learned any lessons.
If it was possible to fight and win wars without losing lives, we’d do it. Airpower has enabled us to win SOME fights that way, but the ISIS war is not one of those fights. And frankly, we got very lucky in the past ones. Which has caused Democrats to become hubristic fools and intervene more and more.
John McCain may be an uberhawk, but he knows what war costs. He knows exactly what we’re getting into when we intervene in other countries militarily. I get no impression that the chickenhawks in the Democratic party get that.
Bullshit. Who’s “committed”? I’d say a big lesson (and perhaps the biggest!) is “don’t get involved with ground troops in the Middle East”, and Obama seems to have learned that lesson well (even if he’s gotten us more involved then I’d like us to be).
Huh? The intervention in terms of American lives and treasure has been far less under Obama than under Bush I and II.
Not if he still wants us to put ground troops in the region, since that would cost us American lives and money and make the situation worse.
Bullshit – McCain still thinks Iraq was a good idea. He has no idea what we’d be getting back into. He’s deluded on this issue. If things went his way, America would be weaker and our enemies would be stronger.
Your mistake is in assuming that we can just choose not to commit ground troops. That’s assuming that we can control the scope of the war. Wars don’t work like that.
Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, we can choose not to put troops in other countries. The President can choose not to give that order – an order which would weaken America and strengthen our enemies.
What fucking irrelevant nonsense, and the type of fake logic crap that idiots like McCain use to get us into wars that hurt America and help our enemies, like Iraq in the 00s.
Well, it’s true, he could accept defeat. It would be unprecedented and destroy his legacy, but it’s true he has that “choice”. Although ISIS gets to decide if the war is over or not. Us stopping the bombing doesn’t mean they stop wanting to kill us.
Yep, all five wars Obama is fighting in are completely under his control and he can stop whenever he wants. LOL.
LOL that you still think ground troops would be more likely to lead to “victory” than no ground troops. If we commit ground troops, we’re already defeated and ISIS has already won. That’s what they want us to do – why would we want to accommodate them? Haven’t you learned anything from the Iraq debacle? In what possible way in the real world could ground troops lead to a better outcome than no ground troops?
Victory is staying out. Defeat is boots on the ground en masse.
They are in the sense of our involvement (you’ll have to cite for “five wars”) and he could stop if he chose. And thankfully, no Americans are dying, even if we’re more involved than I’d like.
We’re already in. That’s the simple point your missing. We have killed hundreds of their fighters. We are at war with ISIS. There’s no way around that fact. So the question is, how do we win? The generals say we need ground troops. The President thinks he knows better. Hmm, where have we seen this movie before?
Yeah, and we could have stopped fighting in Korea at any time too. All that would have happened is that South Korea would have been overrun. No biggie, right? Or how about Kosovo? Could we have just stopped bombing in Kosovo? Would Serbia ethnically cleansing Kosovo despite our military action to stop it be no big deal? Just something we could accept despite our commitment of force to prevent it?
Your attitude is worse than the average Democrats. Seems like you’re saying, “Well, we’ll just give it the old college try, and if we fail, we fail.”
If that’s what Iraq wants, then fine with me. American ground troops are a bad idea. I wish we’d get the small number of ‘advisors’ that are in there out.
How do we win? By staying out. That’s the movie we’ve seen before – Generals calling for ground troops, saying that there was an actual possibility of winning, and being wrong. Most of the Generals in Iraq were wrong (even Shinseki might have been wrong – I don’t know if even his numbers would have been enough), and if they want troops now, they’re still wrong.
If a General says “put ground troops in Iraq”, he’s wrong. That would lead to weaker America and stronger enemies. There’s no way that doesn’t work out that way.
There is no victory with ground troops. That’s it. We go in again and we’re there for decades or a century, with tens of thousands of dead Americans and trillions wasted.
We go in en masse and we’ve lost. America would be weaker, and our enemies stronger.
No, I’m saying any involvement (including our current involvement) is bad, but ground troops en masse are much, much worse. Right now, because of our involvement, America is slightly weaker and our enemies slightly stronger. If we pulled out entirely (aside from logistical support, which I am fine with), we would be a little stronger and they would be a little weaker. If we went all-in with ground troops, we would be a lot weaker and they would be a lot stronger.
McCain’s strategy would weaken America. If any Generals advocate for ground troops in Iraq, they also would be weakening America. Generals have been wrong many, many times, including many times in Iraq.
So we stop fighting ISIS, they take over Syria and much of Iraq, and then a few years down the road they hit the United States or someone they are harboring does it, just like in the case of the Taliban. What do we do then?
Is that how you define “winning” against ISIS, when they no longer want to kill us? I’d really like to know how you deploy ground troops against an idea, a desire.
Conversely, how do you define “losing” from the U.S. perspective? Do you think our capital is in any danger of falling to their troops, for example?
You’re arguing against the idea of limited engagement, and in favor of ground troops, and you’re citing Kosovo, really?
Possibly, but I’m fine with the region sending in ground troops. They’re not Americans, and they won’t have the same affect on the populace and local attitudes that the presence of American soldiers would.
Wherever we’re at now, sending in ground troops makes us weaker, makes our enemies stronger, and increases the cost. And it makes ‘victory’ less likely. That’s the lesson from Iraq – get involved with ground troops en masse and you’ve already lost.
It’s hard to imagine that the same foolishness from '03 is trying to reassert itself. US ground troops in the region would just be another disaster, and it would help our enemies. Why would we want to help our enemies?
State actors, regional and local attitudes towards America and American soldiers, power and influence of adversaries (ISIS not being close to the USSR), among lots of other things. Totally uncomparable. The main thing is that the region of Korea didn’t have a population that mostly hates America and American troops with murderous passion.