These would be the “thoroughly vetted” “good ones” already here???
You’re not helping your case any.
Expect another good Christmas for the gun industry…
Except that a non-refugee with a gun is far, far more likely to kill you than a refugee of any sort. Those in this thread concerned about American lives might want to consider this.
Huh? How would people already here be “vetted”, thoroughly or otherwise? I wasn’t “vetted”, and neither were most people I know. I’m saying the biggest danger of random violence is from people already in America, and probably people who have been in America for years (if not decades or more).
You can’t deny a safe haven without holding ground. In Afghanistan, the Taliban do not have total control over any territory, so no training camps, no recruitment centers.
your argument that ISIS can’t kill more Americans than would be killed in a ground war is quite debateable, especially given the events of the past month. Sure, if we did an occupation, something literally no one wants to do, we would lose more Americans. But going in on the ground, breaking all their stuff, and killing them by the truckload would not be a high casualty operation. I’m not sure how much of a solution it would be either, but it would do more damage than we’re doing now. And deny them safe havens, since we can come back and destroy whatever they build and kill a lot of them anytime we want. That’s something you can’t do from the air.
We gave Japan what they wanted and more. Your logic is poor. They aren’t playing chess, where if we do what they want we are playing into their hands and setting ourselves up to get outwitted. They are fanatical morons and what they want is destruction.
Training camps and recruitment centers are mostly obsolete, now, at least in terms of terrorist attacks abroad. Now it’s electronic – recruitment is through the internet, and “training” is mostly “see how many people you can kill”, or something like that (along with handy bomb-building websites and the like). That’s the danger – people who are already here, and have been for years, being radicalized due to psych issues and loneliness, and lashing out. 9/11 style attacks are not really the danger any more.
That’s something that would just create more of the same. End the cycle of wars of choice – try something new for once. War and violence in this chaotic and unpredictable region will just beget more of the same.
Imperial Japan and ISIS are not comparable in the least. That’s a joke. Japan attacked us militarily in our territory. They were a real, functioning country, with military goals. Not comparable at all.
Geez, you’re just reciting amateur discussion board stuff now. Internet recruiting is great for sending untrained lone wolves out to do some damage, which can be useful for sowing fear, but it doesn’t get much in the way of results. The big terror attacks are almost always pulled off by trained operatives who did what amounts to Army BCT abroad. The attacks in France were well executed and tens of thousands of EU citizens have gone to Syria for training. They are well and truly fucked and only going to get moreso as long as they keep churning out trained soldiers.
Well, let’s hear your ideas that haven’t been tried before. So far all I’ve heard is fatalism. We just have to take it, while doing the minimum to appease American public opinion.
ISIS is not far from being a real country, and I said before that an attack by trained operatives is still an attack by another country. This is actually US policy. In the days after the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton was praying that it wasn’t an attack by proxies of another country, because that would mean war. Cite: The Clinton Tapes:
The “untrained lone wolves” are by far the most likely scenario (and have explained most attacks in recent years). As for the Paris attacks, “trained” is relative – so far it seems as though some of the attackers were abroad at some point and some were mostly ‘home-grown’… but the big need for coordinated mass-killing is will and desire, not training. Such will and desire is no more likely to come from abroad than groomed at home.
Just what I’ve said – targeted ops, no invasion, no occupation, logistical support for allies, and better security at home. ISIS won’t and can’t survive for long. Let a generation go by in which there are not large numbers of Arabs and Muslims with relatives killed by American weapons. Let recruiting dry up and any claims of American or Western Imperialism drain away as the vestiges of ‘empire’ dissipate. Slowly stop supporting the Saudis.
No, they’re incredibly far from being a real country. Real countries have some semblance of stability and security – ISIS has neither, and isn’t close to either.
ISIS is a gang, not a country. It needs to be fought by law enforcement procedures. Calling it a country is a way to justify bombing something in retaliation, nothing more.
If it was that easy they would have just given you a gun and pointed towards the enemy. Training matters, you know that. I didn’t serve, but I did go to BCT, and those few weeks gave me a huge appreciation of what preparation and teamwork can accomplish.
The current policy does not get us there. We’re killing a lot of Arabs and their media has a habit of exaggerating whatever we do there anyway. We are not winning friends with our current policy, and we’re not defeating ISIS. We are literally accomplishing pretty much nothing other than to create a stalemate that will just kill people and radicalize them.
A terror state doesn’t need those things. They function like a cancer. It has to be cut out.
Training matters for successful military operations. It doesn’t really matter for mass-killing. Those are very different things.
Yes – Obama should do my policy. He’s wrong for being as involved as he is. But his actions are nigh-infinitely better and less damaging to America than what you’re advocating.
Now you’re just throwing out undefined terms (“terror state”) and similes. Bullshit.
You do realize how many attempted mass shooters hit like, 3 people, right? Sometimes not even? Our worst domestic terrorist incident was a vet. Training matters in mass killing. It matters if you want to kill even one person. I’m pretty comfortable telling you that even with the training I did get, which is more than 99% of Americans get, I’d be hard pressed to succeed in killing anyone, much less a lot of people.
A policy that doesn’t bring you any closer to your stated goal is worse than a policy that might.
ISIS controls territory. They have a capital. They have 10 million people under their brutal control. It’s a state.
A gang controls a territory, and to a large extent the lives of the people who live there, and even has a headquarters. But most gangs have better coordination and command and operations than this one.
Keeping this claim up will not make it true.
Ah, repeating the JV argument in different words. So what’s the death toll in November, 500 so far?
That wasn’t even coherent. Are you claiming that statehood is defined by body count?
Makes sense. It’s why we were victorious in Viet Nam.
Bullshit. Anders Breivik was entirely self-trained and shot 69 people to death. For killing lots of people, assuming healthy adult men, it’s a matter of mindset and getting the guns. When mass-kill-attempt attacks have “failed”, it may have been due to poor planning, or lack of will (e.g. failure to steel one’s self for mass murder), and maybe lack of skill, but all of this can be ‘remedied’ on one’s own without going to a terrorist training camp.
Bullshit. Your goal is “destroy ISIS” – mine is “do what’s best for America in the long term”. My policy brings us closer to that. Obama’s might not, in the short term at least, get closer to “destroy ISIS” than Graham’s plan, but Obama’s plan is much better for America. So Graham’s policy is much, much worse – even if it’s closer to his “stated goal”.
No, it’s not a state. That’s not nearly enough to be a state. Not even close.
Weird argument. Obama is doing better than Graham would because Obama is failing to accomplish his goal.
Now since this thread is about Clinton, do you not think that Clinton is going to be just a tad more determined to achieve her stated goal given her history?
Obama is doing way better than Graham because goals aren’t nearly as important as actions. And Obama’s strategy doesn’t greatly weaken America as Graham’s does, even if it might take longer for ISIS to be gone.
Nuking ISIS would kill them even faster than Graham, but it would weaken us even more. So a “nuke Syria” strategy is even worse than Graham.
The goal isn’t everything. No more wars of choice. No to Obama’s strategy too, but it’s way, way less bad than another ground war of choice.
Nuking them wouldn’t weaken us at all except morally. You make comic book style arguments, as if our moral uprightness is our source of strength in war, even though we’ve compromised our values in every hard war we’ve ever fought and survived the experience(and lionized the leaders who led us down that path).
A student of history would recognize these arguments as straight from the 1920s. And we all know what happened not too long after, the most savage war in human history. We are headed inexorably down that path if ISIS succeeds in establishing their caliphate.