When I heard that on the news this morning, I wondered if you guys try to call the guy and warn him that he is violating your airspace, or if the possibility that he is about to kill or injure some of your citizens gets him shot down very quickly.
Aren’t Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Qatar all places with really really strong economies and economic ties to the West?
Bullets and bombs win battles, culture wins wars. When we really learn that lesson and learn to apply it, we’ll win the war. Everything else that happens is just battles for limited gains and losses.
Well at least Assad and the Iranians must be pleased the US is bombing their enemies for them.
First of all, you have to remember that Israel doesn’t have much of what you’d call strategic depth. A couple of minutes of flight time can get a fighter jet within range of any number of military bases or worse, civilian population centers.
Second of all, there have been a number of incidents on the Golan in recent months, with soldiers (and I think even civilians) wounded by shells and gunfire from over the border. I wouldn’t be surprised if the forces there were under orders to shoot first and ask questions later.
Technically, if you kill everyone with a culture you disagree with, that fixes the culture issue. The only question is whether that leaves anyone.
Bullets and bombs win wars. What, did the South just decide in 1865 that maybe slavery was a bad idea after all? Did the North win their hearts and minds?
I guess if you’re committed to only using limited force, sure you can’t win with bullets and bombs. Tie the military’s hands and of course they won’t win the war for you.
Thanks!
We got hungry.
God this is just as exciting as 2003 when we had that huge f’ing coalition to invade Iraq. That was some really interesting shit.
This is another worrisome statement since this is being promoted to the public as a limited campaign. That’s part of its appeal, as it were. I guess we’d better hope it stays limited, because if that effort isn’t sufficient we can expect to hear “you’re trying the military’s hands, let them do their job!”
So, what will United States do when ISIS/ISIL/Khorasan start placing their operations in schools/hospitals/mosques/apartment buildings? Or, not even that, just grabbing a few hundred civilians and placing them in/around their bases?
Party like it’s 2003. We’ll bomb a school every day and the headline will be “US takes out ISIS second in command”. Surely your memory isn’t that short.
And that’s why there is absolutely no cultural tension between North and South to this day.
It’ll be limited to a great extent because we’re not at war with a state. Beating ISIL doesn’t take total warfare. But it may take ground troops.
It doesn’t really matter. If we define victory as making the other side like us then we’ll never win a war, ever. You have to define the mission so that it’s achievable. I don’t have a problem with efforts to win hearts and minds. We tried that even in WWII. But it can’t be the mission itself, because it’s beyond our control. You can only define a mission based on what we can control.
This type of bombing has rapidly diminishing returns. ISIS will quickly setup operations in crowded neighborhoods and next to Mosques. Places we can’t bomb without massive outcry over the civilian damage.
Reports indicate they’ve already began to disperse into the general population.
In other words the fighting will definitely be limited, but the meaning of “limited” may change. As much as most of us would like to see ISIS eliminated, it’s hard to trust that this will really be limited based on experience and the fact that we’re already hearing about potential ground troops and attacks on a group that is not ISIS. Like I said, here’s hoping for the best.
In all the various ways in which the US failed to form an effective Iraqi or Afghan army to allow the respective countries to defend themselves, does this surprising coalition of 5 regional nations seem like this is finally the opportunity the US has been waiting 12 long years for; a way to galvanize the region so they finally are able to collaborate in a way never seen before?