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Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



I feel like I'm in this dream where there are comically evil bad guys who have pissed off the entire world, but nobody's doing anything to stop them. Or rather, there's one group of badass good guys (and girls!) willing to fight them but everybody else refuses to help them. Please tell me this is all one bad dream.

Dolash posted:

Sounds like someone Forgot Benghazi.

Too soon man, too soon.

SedanChair posted:

MIGF's Turkeyposting is cute as usual but I have to say I'm really starting to wonder if there's a mindwyrm in obama's brain going "turkey bro. what about turkey. turkeyturkeyturkey what if they strike. be you afraid."

Either that or obama is into some long game poo poo, where the taking of cities is "not a major concern." Let me peruse through my case file of "times I thought Obama had an 11-dimensional strategy."

My impression of our inactivity, at least, has been that there's a general war-weariness (and upcoming elections) rather than a lack of desire to see ISIS eradicated. I mean it would be great if it happened, but we've already got thousands of vets that we can't take care of, and how many more trillions would another expedition into the Middle East cost us?

My Imaginary GF posted:

Option 1: Commit ground troops to assist Kurds, watch Turkey start a war

Option 5: Complete shift in foreign policy and allow Iran to genocide ISIS, at the cost of relations with all other players in the region and likely to cause attacks against America supported tacitly by the other regional players

Serious questions for a maybe-not-so-serious post. Forgive me.

Wait, what is #1? Deploy US ground forces, and Turkey will start a war with...us? Assad? Or you mean a civil war with Turkish Kurds?

Also, #5? Why would everyone else in the Middle East be perturbed with the destruction of ISIS (aside from Turkey, of course?)

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Willie Tomg
Feb 2, 2006

Atomizer posted:

Also, #5? Why would everyone else in the Middle East be perturbed with the destruction of ISIS (aside from Turkey, of course?)

Oh my sweet summer child, its time for you to learn how the House of Saud rolls in their home turf... :(

(The Kingdom has a storied history of exporting its troubled youth into Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yugoslavia, and basically every vaguely sectarian hotspot of the last 30 years, and the US abides it due to a mix of being that loving awful at long-term decision making and applied post-Soviet Nelson Doctrine, i.e. "gotta bomb somethin'!")




Also, nobody's "helping" because "helping" would involve sending an army into a destroyed and lawless negative space between Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and you're high off your own piss if you think "helping the good guys" is going to keep from having the entire world suddenly making tough choices about which side its bread is really buttered on.

Right now the "good" outcome is Bashar al Assad, the dude who gassed Damascus, stabilizing his regime in tandem with an unusually reconciliatory Iraq deciding to give nationalist fraternity another chance. I'll give you a minute to muse on that.


Politics be gettin' all early 20th century up in here.

Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Oct 11, 2014

sum
Nov 15, 2010

The New Black posted:

I'd say you might have cause and effect mixed up there.

The Syrian civil war was plainly sectarian from the start and once armed and not under the boot of the army a large amount of conservative Sunnis were going to end up waving black flags and talking jihad. That's politically poisonous and no US politician would want to be associated with enabling that no matter what the circumstances were.

sum fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Oct 11, 2014

meristem
Oct 2, 2010
I HAVE THE ETIQUETTE OF STIFF AND THE PERSONALITY OF A GIANT CUNT.

sum posted:

The Syrian civil war was plainly sectarian from the start and once armed and not under the boot of the army a large amount of conservative Sunnis were going to end up waving black flags and talking jihad. That's politically poisonous and no US politician would want to be associated with enabling that no matter what the circumstances were.
Yeah, no. It wasn't plainly sectarian. It was, and still is, simply an extremely chaotic system with multiple forces that tug in multiple directions, one that could have gone/go multiple ways at any point of history/future. Until we learn to modeling such systems better, the best anyone can say is guessing.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002
I would say it is largely sectarian, but there are significant other influences at play including radicalism. Not every largely Sunni group is as extreme as ISIS, and the Kurds obviously have a separate ethnic agenda. That said, there are also plenty of Sunnis, including middle class/secular ones who support the Assad regime in a similar way to those who support Sisi, they want to see the radicals crushed because it threatens their standard of living.

The way ISIS runs things is very different than the still mostly secular way of life in government controlled areas. Among the non-Kurdish/Non-Isis rebels there are also a pretty wide variety of ideologies but I haven't seen a realistic sorting of them in a while.

Invicta{HOG}, M.D.
Jan 16, 2002
It seems that there is another option which involves pressuring Turkey to allow reinforcements, arms, food, etc. to cross the border into Kobane. The time is running out on that, though.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Iraq is asking for urgent US ground troops to stop the ISIS advance in Anbar. I love how this has actually gotten much worse on all fronts since our bombing campaign started.

Torpor
Oct 20, 2008

.. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

FlamingLiberal posted:

Iraq is asking for urgent US ground troops to stop the ISIS advance in Anbar. I love how this has actually gotten much worse on all fronts since our bombing campaign started.

That may just be inertia, though. IS is riding a wave at the moment after their huge successes this summer, before the US was involved.

There is also an article floating around about how the IS commander in Anbar is actually a standout exceptional commander.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

FlamingLiberal posted:

Iraq is asking for urgent US ground troops to stop the ISIS advance in Anbar. I love how this has actually gotten much worse on all fronts since our bombing campaign started.

Yeah, and of course ground troops in Anbar (beyond special forces) is what Obama wants the least. Ultimately, I do think the US has continually underestimated ISIS who obviously is a real force to be reckoned with and that Obama has been trying to run a "bargain basement" intervention which hasn't work even to even slow ISIS down very much.

To be honest, there really aren't many options for the administration beyond more airstrikes, which seem to have uncertain effectiveness.

Torpor posted:

That may just be inertia, though. IS is riding a wave at the moment after their huge successes this summer, before the US was involved.

There is also an article floating around about how the IS commander in Anbar is actually a standout exceptional commander.

Airstrikes have been going on two months now though and their effect as been modest. Also, obviously, Anbar is not the only area they are on the offensive and Kobane has fallen pretty quickly. ISIS seems to be pretty good at what they do.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Oct 11, 2014

Torpor
Oct 20, 2008

.. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

Ardennes posted:

To be honest, there really aren't many options for the administration beyond more airstrikes, which seem to have uncertain effectiveness.

They could be done better, but that requires more aircraft. There are some grumblings from the Air Force.

We're like a month into this air campaign and IS still has tanks, inexplicably.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Have we seen evidence of a large bombing campaign? I haven't heard much about one. It just seems like they will show up when there's a major conflict (Kobane, and that one area in Kurdistan that was under attack).

Invicta{HOG}, M.D.
Jan 16, 2002
Yeah, there's a major offensive in Kobane and a busy day of airstrikes nets them like 9 strikes. I think that they are limited by a lot but mostly by lack of coordination for targets.

Torpor
Oct 20, 2008

.. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...cb8a_story.html

quote:

By Editorial Board October 10 at 6:36 PM

THE OBAMA administration seems to have settled on a blame-Turkey defense for a possible humanitarian catastrophe in the Syrian city of Kobane. It’s convenient and not entirely wrong. But it leaves out a big chunk of the story.

There’s nothing admirable in Turkey’s response to the fighting between the Islamic State and Syrian Kurds on the Syria-Turkey border. Set aside Turkey’s reluctance to put boots on the ground, something American politicians should understand. Turkey has blocked Kurdish reinforcements from crossing south to help in the desperate fight. Kurdish refugees from Kobane are not being made to feel welcome in Turkey, as the U.N. refu­gee agency has reported. If the Islamic State takes control of Kobane, the predictable result will be massacres of captured men and enslavement of captured women.

But the United States is poorly placed to pass judgment, having stood aside for more than three years while 200,000 Syrians died, most at the hands of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Another 3 million have become refugees, including 1 million who have alighted in Turkey — which, adjusting for population, would be the equivalent for the United States of more than 4 million Mexicans streaming across the border.

Unlike with the conflict in Kobane, there is little television footage of children being shredded by the “barrel bombs” that Mr. Assad’s forces drop on apartment buildings, schools and bakeries. It has become too dangerous for journalists to cover the war. But the horror of the carnage — these are bombs filled with screws, nails and metal shards intended to maim and painfully kill — is no less.

The administration strategy of targeting the Islamic State while giving Mr. Assad a pass has actually worsened the conditions for his victims in towns held by moderate rebels who, in theory, enjoy U.S. backing. As the New York Times reported Wednesday, the Assad regime, freed of the need to go after the Islamic State, has returned “with new intensity to its longstanding and systematic attacks on rebellious towns and neighborhoods.”

And the strategy is incoherent as well as morally questionable. The United States expects these same moderate rebels to become its foot soldiers in the war against the more extreme Islamic State. Yet it refuses to target the Assad regime, which the moderates see as their chief enemy — and which is doing everything it can to wipe them out while the United States calls for patience and restraint.

This lies at the heart of President Obama’s disagreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is urging the United States to create a no-fly zone over northern Syria. Such a move would not interfere with the campaign against the Islamic State, but it would give moderate rebels some respite from attacks and some territory in which to regroup. In other words, it would serve the interests of what Mr. Obama in the past has claimed as U.S. objectives: helping the moderates and unseating Mr. Assad. That may be why Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the proposal was “worth looking at very, very closely.”

But the White House seems as uninterested as ever in truly helping the moderates. Easier just to blame the Turks.

The perils of becoming in anyway involved in a conflict in any capacity is taking ownership of all kinds of problems.

Turkey is going to have serious troubles for years with their Kurds as a result of all of this, the image of Turkish tanks overlooking a burning Kobane is a huge disaster for them.

https://twitter.com/OliverNorthFNC/status/520664937455038464

Also stuff like that won't help. I don't even know what is going on here but it is being passed around.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Torpor posted:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...cb8a_story.html


The perils of becoming in anyway involved in a conflict in any capacity is taking ownership of all kinds of problems.

Turkey is going to have serious troubles for years with their Kurds as a result of all of this, the image of Turkish tanks overlooking a burning Kobane is a huge disaster for them.

Ultimately, the Post's argument has plenty of tension in it, if the US can't stop ISIS taking Kobane, how exactly going to attack both ISIS and Assad at this same time? Also there is the question of what exactly is the end game ultimately? Yeah, it is easy and all to wag fingers at nearly everyone involved but there isn't really much meat to their suggestion.

It is nice to think we could just solve the whole problem with "just more airstrikes" but I just don't think that is the case.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Torpor posted:

They could be done better, but that requires more aircraft. There are some grumblings from the Air Force.

We're like a month into this air campaign and IS still has tanks, inexplicably.

It could be done better but not without costs and Obama isn't going to get much more help from allies. Also, if anything his targets Assad it would dilute the amount of strikes either way and if anything there is a good chance that ISIS is going to do better capitalizing on Assad's losses than the other rebels.

Also, I will also go out and say that I think the Post is misleading calling the other rebels in total moderates, they are versus ISIS but that it is only because they are ISIS. If anything there seems to be a habit of grouping them together when if anything they are a pretty disparate group with a wide variety of ideologies backed by different powers.

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.
I was listening to the Syrian expert and activist haytham manna, he recently published a big study on ISIS talking about its sources of funding and the organizational pillars of it.

A few things caught my eye, remember that call ISIS put out to all international and local terrorists and their families to move to their 'state'? Apparently that was a lesson taught to them by the founding of the Zionist state, they figure that by getting people into one location and forcing them into a 'last stand forever' situation, the people who would want to live in that state will fight to the last person as a blood pact, and they can simply ethnically cleanse those they suspect might be just going through the motions to survive. So to them a Russian person who pledges allegiance to ISIS is an automatic citizen and native of the land, because he literally will die with the state. And to ultimately change the demographics into a Sunni one.


The propaganda, control of information and polish of presentation was a direct result of many, MANY, former Saddam Mukhabarat and military officers pledging allegiance to ISIS, in fact the biggest thing about former Saddam officials was the fact that the U.S. laid all of them off back in 2003, which led to two distinct soul-searching phases, the first phase is the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S., but they quieted down when the initial manifestation of IS (Zarqawi) turned them off and they decided to try out the new Iraqi state. The second is when they realized just how viciously sectarian Maliki and the new Iraqi state was, and that in the sectarian constitution drawn up by the U.S. was going to perpetually enforce their disenfranchisement. So they decided to head back and double down on ISIS. Essentially, ISIS is the Baath Party with a black turban and zero tolerance for non-Sunnis.

The third thing was that by far the biggest factor for the success of ISIS and the frightening resurgence of militant jihadism was the utter and complete destruction of Arab society and civilian political life as a result of the counter-revolution and massive repression in the aftermath of the Arab spring. ISIS experienced a floodgate of people and money as a result of Bashar Al Assad rolling out the tanks, the destruction of any possible alternative to military fascism in Egypt, the collapse of Libya, people turned to ISIS because they were the people who are A) ruthless enough to show any progress against Basham and Maliki because they can arm and fund themselves without waiting for Saudi Arabia or America to come arm them B) the complete destruction of any alternative way lead to the same misery and sense of despair that helped the Nazi party rise to power.

What was also interesting was the funding from the gulf states and elsewhere, apparently there was a 'gap' when the state department allowed the gulf to finance the counter-revolution, unlike the extremely stringent environment that occurred after 9/11, money was now freely available to flow to armed groups in Syria, the people who formed the nucleus of ISIS realized that the U.S. wasn't paying as much attention to the flow of money as they had to, so they went into overdrive getting all of the businessmen and people who weren't able to finance them before to do so now, and with each success they had and extortions they committed against other Syrian groups their money increased and now landed themselves (thanks to capturing oil fields) into an amazing position of being economically self sufficient to the point that there's internal reports of money waste.


It's incredible how much thought and effort these guys put into their incredibly savage and backwards way of life and ideology.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

Ardennes posted:

Ultimately, the Post's argument has plenty of tension in it, if the US can't stop ISIS taking Kobane, how exactly going to attack both ISIS and Assad at this same time? Also there is the question of what exactly is the end game ultimately? Yeah, it is easy and all to wag fingers at nearly everyone involved but there isn't really much meat to their suggestion.

It is nice to think we could just solve the whole problem with "just more airstrikes" but I just don't think that is the case.

I think the point is that by scrupulously leaving Assad alone, we have freed his hand and played into his strategy. Which we've done pretty much at every turn since the start of the war. And I'm usually the first to point out the limitations of air power, but come on now. There's a difference between a real air campaign and a toy PR effort like this, which is so characteristic of Obama. "Oh look we're striking ISIL. Oh look I'm sending the Army to Liberia to build a pitiful amount of hospitals. Assad, tut tut; I sent one AT-4 and some night vision goggles to the people you're massacring."

Obama is the foreign policy equivalent of campaigning Paul Ryan going to a homeless shelter for a photo op and washing dishes that have already been washed. All show and a cursory show at that.

kustomkarkommando
Oct 22, 2012

I'm not one to leap to Turkey's defence but attacking a country for not letting armed combatants to freely move across their border to participate in a civil war is one of the weirdest criticisms I've ever seen levelled at a country.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

SedanChair posted:

I think the point is that by scrupulously leaving Assad alone, we have freed his hand and played into his strategy. Which we've done pretty much at every turn since the start of the war. And I'm usually the first to point out the limitations of air power, but come on now. There's a difference between a real air campaign and a toy PR effort like this, which is so characteristic of Obama. "Oh look we're striking ISIL. Oh look I'm sending the Army to Liberia to build a pitiful amount of hospitals. Assad, tut tut; I sent one AT-4 and some night vision goggles to the people you're massacring."

Obama is the foreign policy equivalent of campaigning Paul Ryan going to a homeless shelter for a photo op and washing dishes that have already been washed. All show and a cursory show at that.

Ultimately, part of it has to be that the administration has silently accepted Assad has to play some part in the post-war sorting since otherwise there is just too much of a power vacuum. Assad is murderous but he is still leading a formal state that has a portion of the populace backing him. Also, if Assad falls, and peace doesn't come then the US gains even more responsibility in fixing Syria especially since Islamic radicals would almost certainly be emboldened.

The airstrikes have been light but ultimately I think it is for a reason, airstrikes are costly and trying to hit targets without flattening civilian areas is actually pretty difficult especially over such a vast area. Also, I can't help wonder if budget costs have reduced our ability to wage an 2003 like air campaign.

quote:

I'm not one to leap to Turkey's defence but attacking a country for not letting armed combatants to freely move across their border to participate in a civil war is one of the weirdest criticisms I've ever seen levelled at a country.

I guess the defense is "they're the good guys even if Turkey thinks the opposite."

Dolash
Oct 23, 2008

aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,


kustomkarkommando posted:

I'm not one to leap to Turkey's defence but attacking a country for not letting armed combatants to freely move across their border to participate in a civil war is one of the weirdest criticisms I've ever seen levelled at a country.

Is it? You only need to add a few words to that sentence to make it start to seem reasonable, like "letting armed combatants rescue a city of their countrymen from being massacred right on the border while your own army watches."

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Willie Tomg posted:

Right now the "good" outcome is Bashar al Assad, the dude who gassed Damascus, stabilizing his regime in tandem with an unusually reconciliatory Iraq deciding to give nationalist fraternity another chance. I'll give you a minute to muse on that.

Tell me more about realpolitik. :allears: If you think Assad regaining control is going to bring peace to Syria, I have a bridge to sell you. The stability tyranny brings is the kind of stability that fell apart and created this war in the first place. Recreating those conditions doesn't solve anything. It just kicks the can down the road until something else happens and war kicks off again. It makes all these deaths in vain. At least if he falls, then we can begin to address the inevitable conditions that will be created after the regime collapses whether it be 2 years or 20 years from now.

sum posted:

The Syrian civil war was plainly sectarian from the start and once armed and not under the boot of the army a large amount of conservative Sunnis were going to end up waving black flags and talking jihad. That's politically poisonous and no US politician would want to be associated with enabling that no matter what the circumstances were.

When you had Assad releasing jihadist prisoners as the protests kicked off, and talking about sunni terrorists as justification for bombing people at peaceful protests from day 1, of course there's a sectarian dimension to it. But it's wishful thinking to say that the opposition were bound to become jihadists. Every step of the way, from the introduction of JaN to the introduction of ISIS, people from the top to the bottom in the revolution were asking where else they were supposed to turn. They were being bombed to pieces, and the US were giving them radios. The jihadists, especially JaN, were there fighting alongside them. People continued to ask for Western help, but the US didn't provide it, and lost the overall PR campaign to al-Qaeda. Then the US turned around and started bombing JaN, a group that people supported as a force against Assad even if they didn't support them ideologically, and created even more sympathy for JaN and more resentment towards the US. A good combination. If they didn't want to be associated with enabling jihadist militias, they should have taken pretty much any other course of action at all sans Assad-esque carpet bombing of residential areas.


Ardennes posted:

Ultimately, the Post's argument has plenty of tension in it, if the US can't stop ISIS taking Kobane, how exactly going to attack both ISIS and Assad at this same time? Also there is the question of what exactly is the end game ultimately? Yeah, it is easy and all to wag fingers at nearly everyone involved but there isn't really much meat to their suggestion.

It is nice to think we could just solve the whole problem with "just more airstrikes" but I just don't think that is the case.

That's a really dishonest argument. The US issues with stopping the advance on Kobane are clearly due to political will, rather than a statement about their military capability. If they tried really hard to stop it and failed, it'd be a different story, but when you ask people in the administration about why ISIS is moving forward, they say it's not a strategic interest. They aren't even trying to stop it, and they're very open and transparent about it.

Ultimately, this is why I feel Turkey is getting a raw deal here. If the US made it a stated goal to remove the regime and started pushing for it, it would remove Turkey's handcuffs. As it stands now, can you really expect them as a country to do something alone that the worlds strongest superpower is hesitant to attempt? It's sad to me that the iconic image of Kobane will be pictures of Turkish tanks on the border, rather than Kerry going out and mirroring Clinton's Rwanda speech about US interests 20 years later in reference to Kobane. He said some poo poo about climate change in the same speech, so it got completely buried in the news. :negative:

Zengi
Oct 28, 2010

Dolash posted:

Is it? You only need to add a few words to that sentence to make it start to seem reasonable, like "letting armed combatants rescue a city of their countrymen from being massacred right on the border while your own army watches."

Letting armed combatants of a seperatist organization with a long history of undiscriminating violent attacks on populace, rescue an evacuated (border was open for like a month, anyone still in the city wants to be there) canton they established through deals with Assad and Iran, in the process enabling their overly romantic militarism and painting a target on your own back for Daesh terrorist attacks is not a good deal, sorry. Kobane is no different from other cities that fell to Daesh, like Tel Abyad (also right on the border, somehow no one cared) or Telafer (Turkmen city) or Amerli (also Turkmen city). Somehow PKK's lynchings, arson and looting in the last few days failed to convince me otherwise.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe
The "funny" part is that Assad does everything--everything--ISIS does, but he does it in basements like Saddam. That's most suitable to Obama, as long as you keep a low profile he will help you collect the blood of innocents.

Xae
Jan 19, 2005

Ardennes posted:

It could be done better but not without costs and Obama isn't going to get much more help from allies. Also, if anything his targets Assad it would dilute the amount of strikes either way and if anything there is a good chance that ISIS is going to do better capitalizing on Assad's losses than the other rebels.

Also, I will also go out and say that I think the Post is misleading calling the other rebels in total moderates, they are versus ISIS but that it is only because they are ISIS. If anything there seems to be a habit of grouping them together when if anything they are a pretty disparate group with a wide variety of ideologies backed by different powers.

The problem with The Post editorial is that it operates under the delusion that you can "win" in the Middle East.

If we had toppled Assad we would be Iraq 2. It would be quiet for a while, then we would be dealing with another sectarian civil war.

i am harry
Oct 14, 2003

Torpor posted:

The perils of becoming in anyway involved in a conflict in any capacity is taking ownership of all kinds of problems.


Yes quite. Let us pause for a moment and count the many humanitarian crises around the whole world, and then let us count the gray hairs on the President's head.

kustomkarkommando
Oct 22, 2012

Dolash posted:

Is it? You only need to add a few words to that sentence to make it start to seem reasonable, like "letting armed combatants rescue a city of their countrymen from being massacred right on the border while your own army watches."

I mean the international community has spent the last decade or so trying to convince countries to shore up porous borders to halt the flow of combatants to persistent conflicts In Africa and elsewhere, to suddenly go "Well actually maybe its okay if lots of people are going to die" is a very weird declaration to make that kind of undermines the underlying principle.

I have never heard anyone lament that Srebrenica could have been avoided if only the Bosniaks had more guns...

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Ardennes posted:

Ultimately, part of it has to be that the administration has silently accepted Assad has to play some part in the post-war sorting since otherwise there is just too much of a power vacuum. Assad is murderous but he is still leading a formal state that has a portion of the populace backing him. Also, if Assad falls, and peace doesn't come then the US gains even more responsibility in fixing Syria especially since Islamic radicals would almost certainly be emboldened.

The airstrikes have been light but ultimately I think it is for a reason, airstrikes are costly and trying to hit targets without flattening civilian areas is actually pretty difficult especially over such a vast area. Also, I can't help wonder if budget costs have reduced our ability to wage an 2003 like air campaign.

I think it's more that the administration is realizing that he's not going to fall if they don't do anything, and they have no intention to do anything. They've been on record so many times talking about how Assad is a butcher, and how he created the conditions for ISIS to thrive to discredit the revolution, etc. It would be a massive 180 in overall perspective to suddenly think Assad is good for Syria.

Also, no, the tea party is a very small segment of the government. The rest of the Republicans and Democrats are still all in when it comes to military spending. From a funding standpoint, the US could probably go turn Iraq and Syria to glass right now without missing a beat. And if the Obama administration is worried about the cost of airstrikes and the potential to flatten civilian areas, they'd be the first one. :buddy:

nigel thornberry
Jul 29, 2013

Syria with or without Assad is going to be nightmarish hellscape of genocidal intentions and actions, and that's not even a comment on the agency or character of the people who live there. The question is whether or not you think American bombs and taxpayer money should contribute to the death and destruction. Only the neocons and bomb makers want you to think there is some sort of winnable scenario.

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

Al-Saqr posted:

It's incredible how much thought and effort these guys put into their incredibly savage and backwards way of life and ideology.

Thanks for passing along this information. My fear has always been that there is some 'puppetmaster' faction in the US and elsewhere that has wanted Syria to be a giant honeypot for people with 'extremist potential' (like how Afghanistan was in the 1980's with Egypt sending prisoners there).

But at this point it is really getting out of hand and the trap needs to be closed.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

McDowell posted:

Thanks for passing along this information. My fear has always been that there is some 'puppetmaster' faction in the US and elsewhere that has wanted Syria to be a giant honeypot for people with 'extremist potential' (like how Afghanistan was in the 1980's with Egypt sending prisoners there).

You needn't theorize, this is explicitly the policy of "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Lots of folks take that as just silly fearmongering intended to conjure visions of Al-Qaeda landing craft hitting the beaches of Malibu but the truth is that both parties and the Department of Defense see Iraq and Syria as a place to concentrate extremists.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos
Delving into 11-dimensional chess for a moment, one way the Administration's policies make sense is if you see their goal as discouraging allies from asking for US help in the future.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



the boston bomber posted:

Syria with or without Assad is going to be nightmarish hellscape of genocidal intentions and actions, and that's not even a comment on the agency or character of the people who live there. The question is whether or not you think American bombs and taxpayer money should contribute to the death and destruction. Only the neocons and bomb makers want you to think there is some sort of winnable scenario.
That's my main issue. We were never going to fix anything. Now we're making it worse, because while ISIS is occupied with us, Assad is making gains against the other rebels, just as predicted. The whole thing was a terrible PR stunt that is going to cause bigger problems than we even had.

Torpor
Oct 20, 2008

.. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

FlamingLiberal posted:

That's my main issue. We were never going to fix anything. Now we're making it worse, because while ISIS is occupied with us, Assad is making gains against the other rebels, just as predicted. The whole thing was a terrible PR stunt that is going to cause bigger problems than we even had.

I don't think Assad is making gains because of the US. IS clearly has different aims at the moment in Iraq and Syria than confronting Assad. The FSA getting hammered by Assad probably helps their recruitment and support.

Xandu
Feb 19, 2006


It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.

Cocoa Ninja posted:

Looks like Anbar being slowly taken by ISIS is the frontpage of CNN.com right now. Although the real tragedy is that I get some of my news from CNN.com.

Wait, Amanda Bynes said WHAT on Twitter??

Is this news? I thought the government lost Fallujah last December and Ramadi soon after.

Torpor
Oct 20, 2008

.. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

Xandu posted:

Is this news? I thought the government lost Fallujah last December and Ramadi soon after.

I think the Anbar province is in a continual state of falling.

Zengi posted:

Letting armed combatants of a seperatist organization with a long history of undiscriminating violent attacks on populace, rescue an evacuated (border was open for like a month, anyone still in the city wants to be there) canton they established through deals with Assad and Iran, in the process enabling their overly romantic militarism and painting a target on your own back for Daesh terrorist attacks is not a good deal, sorry. Kobane is no different from other cities that fell to Daesh, like Tel Abyad (also right on the border, somehow no one cared) or Telafer (Turkmen city) or Amerli (also Turkmen city). Somehow PKK's lynchings, arson and looting in the last few days failed to convince me otherwise.



This is a bizarre statement since blocking the border makes the PKK worse not better. because now the party line is "Turkey is complicit in the murder of our kin! They literally had an army watch it burn!"

Turkey should probably organize loyalist kurds and send them in. Or facilitate the KRG to move through Turkey to help.

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

FlamingLiberal posted:

That's my main issue. We were never going to fix anything. Now we're making it worse, because while ISIS is occupied with us, Assad is making gains against the other rebels, just as predicted. The whole thing was a terrible PR stunt that is going to cause bigger problems than we even had.

The rebels are actually making gains heading south away from the airstrikes and towards Assad.

Coldwar timewarp
May 8, 2007



What do these gains mean if Aleppo is encircled? How important is Aleppo to the rebels?

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

Coldwar timewarp posted:

What do these gains mean if Aleppo is encircled? How important is Aleppo to the rebels?

It's the last remaining major city they hold and it's the center of all their influx of men and material. if it falls Assad has for all intents and purposes won the war in the major cities.

Torpor
Oct 20, 2008

.. and now for my next trick, I'll pretend to be a political commentator...

HONK HONK

Al-Saqr posted:

It's the last remaining major city they hold and it's the center of all their influx of men and material. if it falls Assad has for all intents and purposes won the war in the major cities.

I am not entirely sure how important Aleppo is other than as a battlefield, the population and economic value of it has to be next to zero at the moment.

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MothraAttack
Apr 28, 2008

Torpor posted:

I am not entirely sure how important Aleppo is other than as a battlefield, the population and economic value of it has to be next to zero at the moment.

But like Al-Saqr said, it is a major supply line. Beyond that, it's the biggest thorn in the SAA's side. Besieging Aleppo would free up thousands of fighters who could redeploy to Hama, Idlib and other areas and quickly erode the small advances rebels have made there in the past year. Basically, winning back Aleppo means that the war for the northern countryside would intensify significantly, and not likely in the favor of the rebels.

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