Simon
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Let the threats begin: Authorities warned of lone-wold terror attacks in U.S. after airstrips against ISIS
I have no desire to re-open that debate, but I'll just say this:
The primary motivation (or at least, excuse) for AQ striking at us when they did was the continue presence of significant U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia. Their presences was specifically cited in bin Laden's fatwa issued against the U.S.. in 1998. And the reason we still had significant forces in Saudi Arabia was because that douchebag Saddam refused to comply with the ceasefire he'd signed in 1991.
Our strategic policy towards Iraq during the Clinton years was essentially "containment", which required the more or less permanent presence of significant U.S. troops in that region. There's nothing inherently wrong with that as a means of stabilizing a region, but the long-term presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia also had that destabilizing side-effect of pissing off the radicals. And as long as Saddam was still in power and refusing to comply with that ceasefire,
we had to keep those troops there. So it was either keep troops there indefinitely (as we have in South Korea), or remove the source of the problem that required us to keep those troops there.
To get out of that region, we had to get rid of the douchebag who was keeping us there.
And I just want to emphasize that there is nothing inherently wrong with keeping troops in a friendly nation, at its request, when those troops are minding their own business and not bothering anyone. That's what was happening in S.A. during the 90's. I don't believe that some tiny minority of nutbags has any moral right to dictate to the rest of that country a contrary opinion, so I don't believe we were at fault or in the wrong for keeping troops in S.A. I just think it was not in our own national interest to do so long-term.
Tell that to Australia, who just arrested more than a dozen ISIS operatives hours prior to them carrying out random public beheadings.Yeah, they've been saying for weeks how they want lone wolves to come find service members at their homes and kill them and their families.
Threat = capability + intent
While I firmly believe that they have every intention of doing so, right now there are likely so few ISIS operatives actually in the US that I'm really not going to lose sleep over it, wondering if I'm going to wake up with a knife to my throat. It's all just a ploy to scare Westerners. I'd be saying whatever I could too, knowing that I just woke a sleeping giant and they're now raining fire down on my head.
Tell that to Australia, who just arrested more than a dozen ISIS operatives hours prior to them carrying out random public beheadings.
In Australia. Not Iraq, not Syria, Australia. You're kidding yourself I'd you think they don't have the second variable in your equation.
Honestly there is so much FUD in this thread it's kept me away..
I'll try this once. Let's say we continue this campaign against ISIS, and let's say they go back to being an underground terrorist organization (they were merely an extension of Al Qaeda in post-Saddam Iraq).
What are our next steps in the region? Are we really saying that we have to maintain a military presence in the region indefinitely?
n essence, looking at this in a ten-year window, what is actually being accomplished? It isn't nothing, ISIS' capabilities are being degraded, but what are the inevitable consequences here? Again, it calls into question the actual understanding of some of the posters here regarding what drives this type of extremism. Many here are quick to push a button and send off bombs and troops without actually thinking about what the problem is. I don't disagree with the immediate goal of neutralizing ISIS as a military threat...;
But I do disagree with the notion that we can militarily defeat Islamic extremism which is what ISIS represents and which will be back in force the moment we withdraw (again) leaving a power vacuum.
If the above is true logically, the way I see it is either we nation-build, installing petty and transparent puppet states (the only nations presently supporting us), which has made us no friends in the region; or we actively engage in real diplomacy.
Lastly, before someone ridiculously says that I'm "blaming America" understand that what I am trying to do is assess the problem, logically, before jumping haphazardly into yet another armed conflict without thinking it through. ISIS is the product of that type of cowboy diplomacy, it seems many here are forgetting that. So, with the idiotic invasion in mind, let's not make the same mistakes twice (or a dozen times considering the numerous blunders in the region by past administrations).
No. But we do need to maintain the flexibility to respond to requests for help in a timely manner. When the Iraqi military asked for help against ISIS, we said no. It wasn't until after they'd collapsed and ISIS had grabbed much more land that we finally decided to help. That delay may have forced our military involvement to be more extensive and longer-lasting that it might otherwise have been.
Outside of combat forces, we do need to maintain military cooperation at the officer-training level at least.
You seem to be on both sides of the fence here. You apparently support degrading ISIS' military capabilities with a bombing campaign, but then mention the "inevitable consequences" of that as if it is the wrong thing to do. So do you support it despite those consequences, or not?
Who - either here or elsewhere -- is seriously claiming that Islamic extremism can be "defeated" through only military means? That seems a strawman to me.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said Sunday that it will take an army to beat the "radical Islamic army" of the Islamic State, or ISIS, otherwise the terrorists "will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world." He also suggested ISIS is capable of killing Americans in the United States.
"When the White House tells the world we say what we mean and we do what we say, nobody believes that anymore," Graham said on "Fox News Sunday."
"It's going to take an army to beat an army. And this idea we'll never have any boots on the ground to defeat them in Syria is fantasy. And all this has come home to roost over the last three years of incompetent decisions ..." he asserted.
ISIS, also known as ISIL, released a video Saturday showing the beheading of 44-year-old British aid worker, David Haines, the father of two who went to Syria to serve at a refugee camp.
The Sunni terror group previously released two more videos showing the beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and has threatened to kill more Western hostages.
"The first thing I want to tell the American people, from my point of view, it is our fight," Graham continued. "It is not just their fight. This is a radical Islamic army that's pushing the theory of a master religion, not a master race, like the Nazis. This is not about bringing a few people to justice who behead the innocent in a brutal fashion. It's about protecting millions of people throughout the world from a radical Islamic army, they're intending to come here."
I'm not sure the word "defeat" is even applicable to the subject outside the purely military threat being presented at any given time by those who hold militant Islamic beliefs.
I think most people would agree with the idea that militant Islam as an ideology ultimately must be reformed/defeated ideologically, by other Muslims, in much the same way Catholicism had to reform during the Reformation to eliminate/reduce extremism.
With whom? ISIS?
ISIS is murdering Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, killing Yazidis to "purify" that portion of Iraq, and even murdering fellow Muslims for not being sufficiently devout. We saw the Taliban tear down Buddhist statues and stone women long before there was a single U.S. soldier in the country. ISIS gained its first real foothold in Syria, during a period in which some have criticized the U.S. government for doing absolutely nothing in Syria.
Yet you blame these blatant acts of purely religious extremism solely on American policy, which is ridiculous. It's our fault.
That's like blaming the Vikings for the Inquisition or the Albigensian Crusade. The Wahhabi extremism that motivates this kind of behavior had it's origins in the 18th century before the U.S. even existed as a nation at all.
I do think it is likely true that resentment against the expansion of Western cultural mores is one of the motivating factors for this extremism. Of course, Wahhabism was an objection to liberalization within Islamic culture itself during a period when the Islamic Ottoman Empire -- not the West -- controlled that region, so the objection is to much more than just western influence. It's against anything that isn't considered sufficiently pure.
Honestly, do you see ISIS as being the product of anything other than the U.S.?
Any other factors to which you'd assign blame/fault/causation? Here's a story about 4 jihadis from ISIS going to Norway to kill some Norwegians? Our fault as well?
or we actively engage in real diplomacy.
How do we engage in diplomacy with ISIS?
Hadn't carefully read any of the longer posts since my last one, so didn't see any of your 437 supposed posts about it.
Thank you.