IGX

odin wrote:If Libya were to fall under their sway there may be a need for Europe to employ some more aggressive policies. Bit too close to where I go on holiday for my liking. I mean I love seeing topless birds on the beach but headless ones would spoil the vista considerably. And hiding the inevitable boner in my vilbrequin's would be tricky.

Which it will. When, oh when, will Bush and Cheney be held responsible for all their illegal wars?

We need to dig up Saddam and give him some chemical weapons. He'd solve this shit for us in a micro-second.

Is it an elaborate strategy to pitch someone against Iran do you reckon?

I say we take ringside seat, grab some popcorn, and get some entertainment out of the whole deal.

If they get a wild hair up their asses and find a way to suitcase nuke/contagion release New York, who gives a fuck? 1 million less coexist stickers to look at on the highways.

1) Prez Bush starts an unnecessary war and fucks it up royally until the Petraeus surge turns thing in our direction.
2) Prez Obama utterly squanders the hard won gains of the surge.
3) ISIS takes over.

There's a very good, but long, article in the Atlantic about ISIS, if anyone wants analysis and facts rather than spitballing about their motives/plans like you idiots have done on page 1.

hey, get your head out of your blueberry-stained ass.

if you had paid attention to page 1 of this thread you would see that several days ago i cited that article and posted the link.

DrDonkeyLove wrote:1) Prez Bush starts an unnecessary war and fucks it up royally until the Petraeus surge turns thing in our direction.
2) Prez Obama utterly squanders the hard won gains of the surge.
3) ISIS takes over.

your argument seems to be that we should be policing iraq--and libya, which gives new meaning to the idea of chaos.

i kind of see your point, but can we truly bring order when shia and sunni throughout the region hate each other and are determined to to fight to the death?

dead man walking wrote: the article is here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... ts/384980/

Too nuanced

dead man walking wrote:

DrDonkeyLove wrote:1) Prez Bush starts an unnecessary war and fucks it up royally until the Petraeus surge turns thing in our direction.
2) Prez Obama utterly squanders the hard won gains of the surge.
3) ISIS takes over.

your argument seems to be that we should be policing iraq--and libya, which gives new meaning to the idea of chaos.

i kind of see your point, but can we truly bring order when shia and sunni throughout the region hate each other and are determined to to fight to the death?

My general point is that president W created a monster fucking mess with his ill planned invasion and occupation but scraped out something manageable in the end only to have president O abandon those gains as thoughtlessly as W's initial invasion. Their presidencies have been a one two punch of ineptitude and despair.

take heart. our president is talking about getting to the root causes of the problem. i think his answer is no name calling and a jobs program.

DrDonkeyLove wrote:My general point is that president W created a monster fucking mess with his ill planned invasion and occupation but scraped out something manageable in the end only to have president O abandon those gains as thoughtlessly as W's initial invasion.

This is neocon myth. The surge had some extremely specific metrics for success that invovled the Iraqis stepping up. Those metrics were not met, so the surge failed.

Iraq is the ultimate argument against fighting ISIS. If we couldn't build an Iraqi military that could beat a large militia in 10 years, we'll never be able to do it.

You'll notice that the resident hipster cookie baker has nothing to say about Libya. For all this talk about smart power etc., they went out and tried to out do W and Cheney on stupidity and created a Somalia on the Med. Good going team O!

As for the metrics around Iraq, along with the Iraqis stepping up (and granted they have failed miserably at stepping up), the plan was to keep a small American force in place to stabilize the situation. However, Obamarama wanted out and threw whatever gains into the trash on his way out of Iraq. Not to mention, his administration completely ignored the one part of Iraq that was actually pro American and had their shit half way together; the Kurds. A lot of the ISIS gains in Northern Iraq were a direct result of our sad sack funding and support of the Kurds. We farmed that out to the Arabs, that don't particularly like the Kurds and not to surprisingly were not very interested in keeping them supplied with war material. That is until ISIS started over running large swath of territory.

But go on. W and the Republicans are bad. O and the Dems are good. Them evil neocons!

Funny this is, O has done almost everything W did and then some. ISIS has taken root in Syria and Libya; why? Even W had the common sense (or lack of attention) to leave them alone. Syria and Libya were destabilized with who's help? Who was asking Congress to bomb the Syrian regime with no plan for afterwards?

DrDonkeyLove wrote:1) Prez Bush starts an unnecessary war and fucks it up royally until the Petraeus surge turns thing in our direction.
2) Prez Obama utterly squanders the hard won gains of the surge.
3) ISIS takes over.

I am still very curious as to why USA attack Iraq. It was pretty clear to everyone at the time that there were no WMDs, and the fact that they haven't been found 12 years later confirms it. I used to think it was for the oil. But thinking of it, if GW demanded oil from Saddam he would probably happily obey. What then? I heard a talk about OPEC planning to move to Euro as an oil transaction standard, which would change the status of the US$ as the transaction standard. The mainstream media tends to keep quiet - simply because they cannot afford proper journalism - and the analysis of this kind tends to appear mostly in dissident publications, whose quality and credibility varies.

Yeah, a "small American force in place" would have stabilized the situation.

Phaedrus wrote:Yeah, a "small American force in place" would have stabilized the situation.

^^^^^^ shows how much you dumb ass knows.

The absence of American Military advisors is the main reason the Iraqi government fell apart. The Americans kept the Iraqis from stealing everything not nailed down and improved the morale of those few Iraqis that gave two shits. Now, you can make the argument that the Iraqis will never be self sufficient, but that is besides the point. If we wanted to maintain the gains we had made, we fucked up big not stepping on an Iraqi nut sack or two to ensure we kept a presence on the ground in Iraq.

Batboy2/75 wrote:You'll notice that the resident hipster cookie baker has nothing to say about Libya.

You have to let me know ahead of time if you want me to change the subject to Libya for you.

As for the metrics around Iraq, along with the Iraqis stepping up (and granted they have failed miserably at stepping up), the plan was to keep a small American force in place to stabilize the situation. However, Obamarama wanted out and threw whatever gains into the trash on his way out of Iraq.

The writing was on the wall before he took office. And the political goals were not only unmet, the government of Iraq told us to leave. So we either topple another regime and start over, or we acknowledge the inevitable and go.

But go on. W and the Republicans are bad. O and the Dems are good. Them evil neocons!

You imagine straw men. I've praised Republican presidents in this thread. Obama has fucked up plenty of things, but Iraq wasn't one of them. Iraq was not something anyone could have unfucked as long as the Iraqis wouldn't play ball.

Grandpa's Spells wrote: You have to let me know ahead of time if you want me to change the subject to Libya for you. The writing was on the wall before he took office. And the political goals were not only unmet, the government of Iraq told us to leave. So we either topple another regime and start over, or we acknowledge the inevitable and go. You imagine straw men. I've praised Republican presidents in this thread. Obama has fucked up plenty of things, but Iraq wasn't one of them. Iraq was not something anyone could have unfucked as long as the Iraqis wouldn't play ball.

We'll never know if the U.S. could have worked out a Status Of Forces Agreement w/Iran because Obama didn't want one. He was kicked out of a party he was aching to leave.

Having forces in place would not have unfucked Iraq. But, they would have minimized or eliminated the power vacuum that allowed ISIS to race across Iraq unchecked. Recent history can't 100% prove I'm right but it definitely proves you wrong.

That he superciliously failed to grasp the power of ISIS is proven by his dismissive "JV team" comment just this summer as they were dominating. To this very moment he not only refuses to acknowledge why they've been so successful, almost all of his efforts are spent denying the roots of their strength.

In short, he's been an utter fuck up in Iraq and determinedly remains one.

maybe ddl, but he kept fighting in afghanistan. don't forget that important strategic undertaking.

I was watching Dr. Strangelove on TV last night, tuning in about when they were talking through the doomsday bomb. Brought me back to growing up in the 1960s with duck & cover drills and fallout shelter signs in the schools. We were staring at nuclear armageddon.

Makes the whole thing with ISIS seem pretty small. They kill 40 people? We can add two zeros to that total without even trying.

Smet wrote:I am still very curious as to why USA attack Iraq. It was pretty clear to everyone at the time that there were no WMDs, and the fact that they haven't been found 12 years later confirms it.

Real or not WMDs were never more than a red herring. A lot of bad people in the world have nasty weapons. One of the justifications I heard for the Iraq war was that hunting down al Qaeda was proving difficult (Everything's difficult when you fuck it up.) and taking out this one particular bad guy would likely bring some of the terrorists to us. If that ever was part of the plan, it worked in the sense that wackos have poured into Iraq. Unfortunately, not all of those wackos were considerate enough to arrive when we were there to kill them.

At this point, my preferred solution to ISIS is telling the governments in area that they can clean this up themselves, or we'll make sure the Kurds have the best equipped army in the region.

we should stick to the old playbook--royal despots are the best allies.

keep jordan and the saudis strong. where is the shah when you need him? democracy may work here, but a ruthless overlord is the proper way to control tribes of goat herders who happened to find oil under their feet.

nafod wrote:

dead man walking wrote: the article is here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... ts/384980/

Too nuanced

I don't click links.

nafod wrote:I was watching Dr. Strangelove on TV last night, tuning in about when they were talking through the doomsday bomb. Brought me back to growing up in the 1960s with duck & cover drills and fallout shelter signs in the schools. We were staring at nuclear armageddon.

Makes the whole thing with ISIS seem pretty small. They kill 40 people? We can add two zeros to that total without even trying.

Watched it 2 weeks ago.One of those films you can watch every year or two.The german in the wheelchair always cracks me up.

Batboy2/75 wrote:

Phaedrus wrote:Yeah, a "small American force in place" would have stabilized the situation.

^^^^^^ shows how much you dumb ass knows.

The absence of American Military advisors is the main reason the Iraqi government fell apart. The Americans kept the Iraqis from stealing everything not nailed down and improved the morale of those few Iraqis that gave two shits. Now, you can make the argument that the Iraqis will never be self sufficient, but that is besides the point. If we wanted to maintain the gains we had made, we fucked up big not stepping on an Iraqi nut sack or two to ensure we kept a presence on the ground in Iraq.

MORE BOOTS ON THE GROUND! If ISIS doesn't watch it, the US is going to TAKE THE GLOVES OFF and come remind the world what a quagmire really looks like (until they lose interest and go home).

The Iraqis were given all the nicest toys and trained by the Americans for nearly ten years though were either overrun by ISIS as soon as push came to shove.