I’m basing that logic on the very site you made, you are telling us that you do consider a more limited no-fly zone and to use the help and resources of the coalition is equal to doing a larger no-fly zone and not using any help from coalition air forces and their ground troops?
The logic is clear: it will require less than what you are making out of thin air as the old plan is a moot one. It is clear that what you claimed has no basis on was decided, the 70,000 plan was not used and that is not going to happen, and even her limited plan may not happen at all seeing that ISIS is falling apart in the region.
Again, Clinton is on record as explicitly rejecting the 2012 70,000 troop plan when she was Secretary of State. WillFarnaby doesn’t dispute that. He just claims that a current no-fly zone would -in a completely different security environment- require 70,000 troops.
And again, these are not ground troops we are discussing.
As for patronizing, I thought I was pretty polite. I personally try add cites to my arguments in real time, pre-empting requests. Obviously judgment calls are involved.
Anyway I stick with my substance. Reporting by natsec expert Spencer Ackerman suggests that the 70,000 figure was associated not just with a no fly zone, but with taking control of Syria’s chemical weapon stocks. Now frankly that sounds plausible. It’s also not on the table now.
Over here, we have a 2013 description of 5 plans outlined by Dempsey (I linked to a think tank discussion of it earlier). They are in order of aggressiveness. 1) Train and advise: no US troops in fighting situations. 2) Limited strikes: higher financial costs. 3) No-fly zone. Costs $1 billion per month. This is what they passed over back in 2012 and 2013. Not sure what Clinton’s current plan is. 4) Buffer zones to protect Turkey and Jordan. Larger no-fly zone. 5) Controlling chemical weapons. I suspect this is where the 70,000 troop estimate comes from. I note that WillFarnaby’s cite come from a 2013 passing reference to a 2012 decision. It correctly notes than an aggressive military posture was passed over. Going into greater detail -distinguishing between 5 plans - would have been a tangent.
I could be wrong though. Better evidence would be appreciated. I repeat though that Clinton’s posture is far less aggressive and far more informed than Trump’s call for 20,000 - 30,000 boots on the ground which the former reality show host falsely claims is backed by professional military assessment. It is not.
Hillary Clinton: “I think it’s absolutely wrong policy for us to be even imagining we’re going end up putting tens of thousands of American troops into Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS,” she said."
Her no-fly story talks of protecting Syrian civilians against barrel bombs. That’s rather different from the 2012 plan. The article correctly characterizes Trump’s strategy as the more aggressive one.
People need to accept that ISIL isn’t being defeated. You may as well call it al-Qaeda, because that’s what it is and developed from. First, you’re not going to destroy the entire leadership, and second, it’s based on a millennium-plus-old ideology that isn’t going to just go away. As long as there are fundamentalists and poverty-stricken portions of Islamic societies, this type of organization will always exist.
You can throw whatever forces you want at it, and it’s not going to do anything to end it. bin Laden and a solid chunk of the original al-Qaeda leadership are dead, yet Islamic terrorism continues.
Certainly you can find ways to limit terrorist activities, but you’re not going to eliminate these organizations no matter how many boots you put on the ground. They just move to the next vulnerable country. Meanwhile, TRILLIONS are spent on doing just that.
I think Ted Cruz is trying to bill himself as the Peace Candidate. Of course, he also wants to cut out all non-defense spending, and “show [us] the face of God.” So, maybe Peace Through Nuclear Winter. Hard to say.
She still will not say how many troops she will commit. Her goal of forming a coalition, presumably including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to fight ISIS is pure fantasy and she must already know that. So I am very concerned that she has other plans in mind.
She is still running for the Democratic nomination. Let’s see how she pivots in the general election and which of the two candidates comes out sounding like the peace candidate.
Either way, she would have us involved in Ukraine, and her support of NATO expansionism is very belligerent and ill-advised.
WillFarnaby, I carefully read each of your posts in this thread, and your pro-Russia sentiments are just mind boggling to me. You’ve said clearly that you think that the U.S. invading Iraq to overthrow the government was a huge mistake, and I totally agree. But Russia has invaded Ukraine, stolen territory from it, continues to attempt to destabilize the country, and you can’t even offer a mild condemnation? Your suggestion seems to be that the US leave Russia alone so it can continue its invasion against a country that was no threat to it whatsoever? What am I missing here?
No I’m not pro-Russia, I’m anti anti-Russia. I do not believe the United States should have backed the coup in Ukraine and I’m against NATO expansionism (along with Sanders). The initial destabilizing event in Ukraine was the coup, yet westerners offer no critique of that misguided policy, so pardon me if I think you’re being overly sanctimonious about the destabilization of Ukraine by Russia.
I do not support the expansion of any government, so I’m against Russian expansionism, but I’m against escalation of that conflict from without. I’m also against pursuing a policy of regime change in Russia.
The recorded call with Victoria Nuland is proof of US involvement in the coup. Right, if a paramilitary force occupies government buildings and a democratically elected president is subsequently extra-constitutionally removed from office, U.S. media will not call it a coup, in order to give legitimacy for the Warhawks and NATO expansionists to make vacuous statements about the terrible “destabilization” of Ukraine by their evil neighbor.
There’s a good case to be made that violence-as-ideology is something the Trump campaign pushes. Their entire message is “we need to be more crass, rude, and violent, and less politically correct*”. The idea that Trump is somehow the “peace” candidate when everything about his rhetoric has been violent is beyond insane. Yes, Clinton was wrong on Iraq then. Trump wants to be wrong on Iraq now. And more importantly, back then, Trump was not in any sort of legislative or executive position. He had no real political power to throw around on the issue. So waffling about what he would have done is pointless. He’s here now, he wants to bomb iraq and take their oil to finance the war (and he doesn’t even have a flimsy excuse about how we don’t know if it’s a terrible idea - WE KNOW IT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA BECAUSE WE TRIED THAT ALREADY!), he wants to murder terrorists’ families, use torture, and he recommends that people get violent towards protesters at his rallies… Then lies about it.
I think everyone but Russians calls the events a “revolution.” People protesting in the streets, the President orders them to be killed, the President is later run out of the country… pretty much the definition of revolution. Yep.
But back to the topic at hand: the Baltics. They were invaded and illegally occupied by the Soviet Union for decades. Once free, they joined NATO, because they didn’t want to be invaded again. If Putin invaded the Baltics, do you think Trump would decline to carry out our NATO treaty obligations to defend them? Do you think the Baltics should be kicked out of NATO?
As long as he keeps up this line of attack, it’s going to be hard for pseudo-antiwar liberals to justify themselves when they cast a ballot for the queen of chaos.
Where is the so-called peaceful Bernie? Having antiwar protestors jailed again?
In Clinton’s case we at least know pretty much how warhawkish she is and ain’t and can more or less predict the general outlines of her foreign policy once in office. In Trump’s case we don’t – he might enter an actual alliance with Russia or he might start a nuclear war, he is unpredictable because he is so clueless. Clinton is a far safer choice to whom to entrust the nuclear football and the command of the U.S. armed forces.
Trump is absolutely pounding her from a peace perspective. If h keeps this up he is going to have more credibility with actual antiwar voters because she will be forced to come out and explain her trigger-happy ways. Also the hardcore Neoconservatives are already in her camp. Will antiwar voters be comfortable shoulder to shoulder with Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan?
Well, that’s zero-sum, isn’t it? What territory one state gains by expansion another state loses, but all inhabited territory remains governed – except where government as such breaks down as in Somalia, and I’m sure not even you want anyone going there.
