Yay! The UK joined in the bombing of ISIS / Deash

The BBQ Pit
21

And when you’ve spent billions of pounds, caused countless deaths, and contributed to the destruction of a giant swath of land, and the weeds still come back, maybe your tactics could be adjusted.

Hell, to keep on the metaphor, when all your weed-elimination tactics to date have cleared out enough useful plants to allow an even larger crop of weeds, maybe your tactics could be adjusted.

That’s not to mention the glaring fact that we’re talking about actual people, homeless, displaced, burned, crippled, maimed, and dead. And the fact that most of the time the “weeds” are indistinguishable from poor people desperately trying to survive. Who may themselves become a part of the problem in desperation.

22

Oh for fucks sake. The British wrote the book on how to negotiate with non state actors, you guys would not have been ruling most of the world if you did’nt. You find out the fissure within a movement and organization, exploit them. Identify bribable parties, people whose loyalty is not quite Catholic, those who might be willing to settle for less. Support opposition and control them. None of this has been done at all; which quite obviously means that the Intelligence Agencies have not been as successful as they like to claim. The Americans are blundering as per usual; but the Brits? Charles Napier is spinning in his grave

:rolleyes: Yes. “Innocents” who will face the bombs and while hunkering down will conclude that even the lunatics of ISIS are better then these crazy Brits; at least they don’t blow up people in their beds. Not to mention provide a new type of recruit for ISIS, people who don’t care much for their ideology, but who are willing to put up with them for the opportunity to avenge the death of a loved one, a friend, the bombing of their hometown,; you know, Human nature.

And no chance of doing anything about it, because bombing is not going to solve anything; it never does, to occupy and pacify a place you need your own troops on the ground and not proxies of dubious loyalties and with no control. Especially when you are pursuing two mutually incompatible objectives; which is removing Assad and getting rid of ISIS

23

I think we disagree on the nature of the problem. The way I see it, the war against ISIS is a war of ideas. They act the way they act because they believe the things they believe. We could bomb them until they’ve been reduced to atoms but the ideas which motivate them will still have currency.

Let’s say we destroy ISIS completely and retake all their territory. How long do you think it will be until another group of God-boggled savages come along and proclaimed themselves the “true” caliphate and started the hideous process all over again? A few years? A few months? What will we really have achieved? Apart from God knows how many civilian casualties, that is.

The way I see it, the weeds in your analogy aren’t the ISIS fighters themselves, they are the ideas and beliefs which motivate them. And ideas, for good or ill, are 100% bombproof. Moreover, we’re not in a position to fight that war of ideas because we have absolutely no credibility whatsoever. By getting involved like this, all we’re going to end up doing is inspire more ISIS fighters to replace the ones we kill. The best thing we can do is stay out of it and wait for ISIS to burn out.

24

Huffington Post to the rescue!

25

I wasn’t aware that such levels of simultaneous cluelessness and sanctimony were even possible.

26

What on earth makes you think that such negotiations have not or are not being undertaken?

No, they behead people, throw gays off buildings, squash them under tanks, stone them and burn them. That is what they do, that is what they offer whether we take action or not.

Absolutely, that is a massive downside. The risk is that we create more ISIS recruits that we kill.

Bombing is a containing and degrading process as a precursor to troops on the ground. Innocents will die, soldiers will die, ISIS combatants will die and it will be messy, long and expensive with continuing ISIS terrorist attacks on countries that take part.

But I’m sorry, I must have missed your own masterplan. How are you going to stop ISIS again? What is your recommendation? What are the downsides of your plan?

27

You new here?

We told you to buy the extended warranty.

28

Let’s keep this in perspective, though. Many of us don’t consider it good policy to bombing in Iraq, but at least we have the blessings of the legitimate government there to be doing so. In Syria, not so much. Assad has invited the Russians in, but not the rest of us.

29

I’ve seen some real gems from you in the past, but this winner is worthy of being set in a 99 cent brass setting and sold at the dollar store.

30

Well that is a plan.

That would take time and there is an unknown amount of innocent death before that happens. Doing nothing does not mean anyone’s conscience can be clear.

31

Sorry if you don’t understand the difference between something being legal and something being, at best, of questionable legality. But that’s really your problem, not mine.

32

And doing “something”–in this case bombing, I guess?–will take time and cause an unknown number of innocent deaths. My conscience will not be any clearer.
Of course, there is a tremendous gap between “do nothing” and “kill people with airstrikes.”

33

I completely agree. There are no good options here. I just believe that, given how disastrous our previous Middle East interventions have been, and given that ISIS and groups like them will exist as long as the ideas which motivate them have currency, bombing is more likely to increase the suffering of innocent people than holding back.

34

Very obviously. Political masters have decreed that they are not to do so. Even if they have been done, their is zero political will to execute the kind of processes which need to be done.

Some of them do. And its not like the U.S/U.K, with their torture centres, double taps, assasinations on 6 continents are much better; (they are better, but seriously, not as bad as ISIS is not exactly a level you should be aiming for). Plus; fuck ISIS and their kind, but if thats all they offered, they would not have achieved half of what they have.

Its not a risk, its a certainty. How does that tally with the defeat “ISIS aim”?

Ha. Ha.Haha Hahahaha. There are extremely unlikely to be any troops on the ground. Cameron will rather get fellated by a pig at Lords, before he will agree to that; he know he will be PM for about 3 hours if he sends in the Royal Irish and the Grenedier Guards. Plus bombing has never won a war on its own; the flyboys love to put out smartly made propganda pieces and tall claims, but airpower works in conjunction with ground troops towards a realistic aim.

Plus its not a real air campaign at all, its pinpricks and firefighting. An actual campaign would at the very least see attacks on communication, transportation, electrical infrastructure. Not bombing some suburban house a militant might once have taken a shit there.

I have none, since I have no interest in this one way or the other. If I was running it, I would support the Syrian government to the hilt, they and their army are the only local force which can defeat ISIS, without need for major foreign involvement. One of the reason for the rise of ISIS has been the vacuum cause by the Syrian states collapse.

If they want success, then getting rid of Assad needs to go on the backburner. If Britain could deal Smuts, and Michael Collins, they can deal with Assad.

ADDENDUM: This is obviously bad luck this thread, since while composing this post my heaters plug caught fire; twice.

35

Appreciated.

Bellend.

36

[QUOTE=Novelty Bobble;18907217T]

I’m not sure you know what the word “squeamish” means.
[/QUOTE]

Oooooooh! Paging Kenny Everitt.

37

Not if you’re in a western military. All strategy options must involve dropping shit from very great heights and have VERY LOUD BANGS

38

Eh, this isn’t a jingoistic campaign being waged against ISIS. For whatever criticisms you can levy at Obama, it’s a starkly realist campaign. He’s quite open about the fact that the only thing we can do with airstrikes is “degrade and constrain”, but it is necessary for ground troops to defeat them. Obama’s position is that until such time as a sufficient local ground force emerges, there is no significant ground combat role for Western troops, and that continued airstrikes just seek to keep ISIS from getting any more powerful than it already is.

The only real alternatives are to do absolutely nothing, and to invade. Both of which have serious problems. Britain is a part of NATO and a major military ally to America and France, it has already been participating for a long time in strikes in Iraq. There’s an international action here, and broad agreement among the West that airstrikes against ISIS should continue. It made little sense for Britain to remain uninvolved in the Syrian airstrikes while continuing to bomb Iraq vis-a-vis Britain’s international obligations. If the British people want to make a stand for “some other strategy” then they should do so, but the prior position of “we’re cool bombing but only on one side of a largely arbitrary geographical line” was kind of a dumb one.

As usual most of the posters of this board remain immensely ignorant of operational military realities. Particularly those who say the strikes against ISIS “are doing nothing.” Before the strikes started, ISIS was expanding its territorial control. They are no longer doing that, and have lost territory in some areas. Before the strikes started, ISIS had a group of Yazidis penned up on a mountain, facing imminent genocide–airstrikes stopped that. Kobane was about to fall to ISIS, aistrikes stopped that.

There have been reports in the New York Times and other major newspapers highlighting that many more civilians are now fleeing ISIS territory than in the past. Many have said that they were willing to buy into ISIS’s vision of a state at first, and ISIS started providing some degree of security and services, the heavy bombing campaign has crippled their ability to effectively deliver those as ISIS is facing a cash crunch. Many recent refugees have said they’re leaving because of a “degradation of conditions”, these aren’t people who are on ISIS hit lists for being religious minorities but people who would’ve been content to mind their own business under ISIS, and who were at one point, but because of degrading conditions no longer are. ISIS has almost no professionals in its ranks in the petroleum fields. For this reason they have had to pay professionals to work oil fields and oil refining facilities they control. Said professionals said at first ISIS tripled their wages to keep them there, and they also were able to avoid the strict scrutiny that regular civilians under ISIS control were subjected to (i.e., ISIS would look the other way if they engaged in morality violations.) But after the airstrikes ISIS could no longer pay the high wages, and as wages dropped, many of these professionals have no fled.

In one report, a man who was a baker before the war is now trying to run an entire oil refining factory, because without money none of the professionals are willing to stay. Due to a degradation of its abilities, ISIS is also limited in its ability to “trap people in” smugglers easily come and go from ISIS territory and people that have wanted to leave have found it fairly easy to pay smugglers to get them out.

The airstrikes have basically been akin to a trip wire, and ISIS is on the ground now because of them. But they cannot do more than that, but ISIS could certainly recover if we let up pressure. I think Obama has actually struck a decent position on ISIS, I was not happy with his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the whole “red line” situation with Assad; but he’s I think doing the best path available to him in a generally shitty situation, and I think our NATO allies need to be involved here as well. It shouldn’t be the United States doing all the work here.

39

Or, if you’re an idiot, writing love notes to ISIL that start off, “Please don’t bomb London! I know that you’re just misunderstood! Can we convert you to not being bloodthirsty radicals who behead people for imaginary offenses?”

40

It is worse then doing nothing. Doing nothing at least does not give ISIS a new route for recruits. The only ones making any sense are the Russkies. Scary world.

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Before the strikes started, ISIS was expanding its territorial control. They are no longer doing that, and have lost territory in some areas. Before the strikes started, ISIS had a group of Yazidis penned up on a mountain, facing imminent genocide–airstrikes stopped that. Kobane was about to fall to ISIS, aistrikes stopped that.
[/QUOTE]

Eh, what? They took Anbar and Palmyra after the bombings began. And Kobane was a limited operation; with set objectives, supporting ground troops. When one says that ISIS strikes are not succeeding it does not mean that we think that every bomb is dropped on an empty desert or mountain. It means that the attacks as carried out are not achieving nor are reasonably likely to achieve stated objectives.