Well you know the old joke … how do you tell the difference between a surgeon and an internist at the elevator? The internist puts his hands out to stop the door from closing; the surgeon his head.
Given the doctors in the field I don’t know what an ophthalmologist would stick out but neither Carson or Paul does the degree much credit.
<snipped, by me>
You make it sound like Carson went around to thousands of schools around the country, vice some in Baltimore (where he worked) and in the surrounding areas…
Clinton struck exactly the right note at the debate: “ISIS cannot be contained, it must be defeated.” Yep.
…who joined a meeting of brain donors, only to find he arrived too late.
Seriously: If a successful computer programmer stepped into the field, would you rate that experience as highly as the experience a brain surgeon brings? How about a successful pornographic actor or actress? Because those kinds of experience are just about as relevant.
Okay, maybe it would have been better if he’d married a future President, but that was a lot harder for a black man in the 60s than a well off white woman.
She didn’t say “Invade every Arabic country and topple all of their governments and then wonder why the Turn It Off And Turn It Back On School Of Foreign Relations isn’t working this time, either”, so I doubt you’ll be too happy with her substantive policy positions on this.
Of course, compared to what Carson has, that was a substantive policy position.
Of course not. But it was an implicit repudiation of the President’s strategy. We contain other superpowers. We defeat ragtag terrorist armies.
So experience in law and in multiple branches of the Federal government, including perhaps the highest-ranking (certainly most important) cabinet post, doesn’t register as Presidential experience in your world?
Oh, right: In your world, the only experience which counts is the Three Rs: Rich, Republican, Reactionary. Beyond that, it’s all about scoring points… or shitting on the board and strutting around like you won, whatever.
Defeat doesn’t have to be military. In fact, military defeat is somewhere between Band-Aids and Bondo in terms of permanence, especially against rag-tag terroristic non-state actors who, by definition, don’t need a state to keep fighting.
Against ISIS militarily all we can do is contain them.
Defeating them is another story, and while it remains the goal it requires a different and much more comprehensive approach than a solely military one.
Not sure what that comprehensive approach is myself, to be honest, but I know that increasing the severity of the refugee crisis, demonized and marginalizing a large minority of French citizens, and killing many non-ISIS not radical Arab men, women and children in the process of hunting down some number of ISIS members, is unlikely to result in the victory we desire.
They control territory. We can take that territory away from them, then they become a typical terror organization that hides in caves. Right now they are a terrorist state. Terrorist states have far more ability to project force abroad than cavedwellers, as we’re seeing in the past month(and this is just the beginning). We can make war on, and defeat, states.
Containing a state that is barely even functioning is nonsense. Wipe it out while it’s still nascent.
Respectfully, I think you have a cartoonish view of how the military works.
What is the ratio of innocent civilians to ISIS fighters that you find acceptable?
Bombs kill easily, but they are indiscriminate. Boots on the Ground can themselves be killed or captured, but are more precise. It’s easy to just mouth-off about how we should crush some group, it’s hard to actually do it with a mind of not murdering a large number of civilians.
Especially given that they are not actually a state but a gang dominated region within a state which is in name controlled by a strongman who has Russia’s backing and that there are also multiple other players involved. And that the civilians will now have an even harder time getting out of harms way as doors of escape for them are going to shut as a reaction to the Paris attack.
And given that ISIS can operate a war on the West, as “a typical terror organization that hides in caves” pretty much as well as they can as holders of nominal territory.
Well, as folksinger Si Kahn used to sing, “it’s not just what you’re given, but what you do with what you got.”
Hillary used the opportunity given to her by being First Lady to become a person who would be a capable and very prepared President.
Carson used his fame as an opportunity to run for President without being the least bit qualified to actually perform the job, and if he’s tried to bring himself up to speed on basic facts, let alone issues, during his run, it certainly hasn’t been evident.
We can defeat traditional armies, like Saddam’s, with relative ease. They involve massed troops and equipment, and we can rain destruction down on such armies beyond the capabilities of any other nation in the history of humankind.
But from Ho Chi Minh to the present, people have figured out that you don’t fight a Western military power like the U.S. with a traditional army unless you want to be on the receiving end of that rain. Since we’ve been conducting an air war against ISIS for awhile now, I have to assume that they’ve been able to disperse and hide their strength among the population, so that we’d have to kill far too many civilians in order to destroy ISIS.
And meanwhile, we don’t speak the language, our ‘boots on the ground’ (if we send them) can’t tell friend from foe, and we suck at that sort of war. Not to mention, some of our troops inevitably get frustrated and kill a bunch of gooks or towelheads or whatever, out of frustration of fighting an adversary they can’t see. Do we really want to go down that road yet again?
And aside from the collateral damage and unintended consequences, this kind of war has become inordinately expensive because we spend much more money keeping our troops alive than in past wars. That’s one reason there were so many fewer casualties in Iraq than in Vietnam. I’m glad we do this, but it does make “boots on the ground” a much more expensive proposition than it may have once been.
This whole “take their territory away” formulation with all due respect sounds more like Sid Meier’s Civilization than the real world. We can kill all the ISIS dudes we want but there will still be an absence of functioning government in the area they currently like to shade in black on a map, and every pissed off radicalized Arab young man we kill in the process will probably be replaced by one or more newly pissed off radicalized Arab young men.
“Defeating them” doesn’t require invasion and ground troops – that would probably make them stronger, in the long run. We invade = stronger and more terrorists. To actually defeat them in the long run means invasion is precluded, unless it’s organized and led by their Muslim neighbors.
You know one of the targets the French hit? A recruitment/training center. That’s something you can only have if you have territory. And it’s why they’ve been able to mount such successful attacks. Bombing does no good, because they’ll just set it up in another building, and they have the money to buy plenty of equipment.
They even have a capital. It’s an enemy state, and needs to be treated as such. We either do it now, or we do it after we’re attacked. Either way, we’re doing it.
Then we get weaker and they get stronger. Unless we stay out. Doing what your opponent wants is usually a bad idea.
I can buy that we could get weaker from going in on the ground. What I can’t buy is that ISIS would get stronger from losing their capital, their recruitment centers, and the civilians under their control.
But okay, we’ll just take a major terrorist attack every year or so, no problem. That wouldn’t weaken our social cohesion at all. Muslims in America would be especially better off if we just let it happen without taking out their recruitment centers.