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Yeah man I'm tired of all these Jabhat al-Nusra attacks against Western countries, such as the following: .... ....
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Sep 9, 2016 03:05
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Sergg posted:Yeah man I'm tired of all these Jabhat al-Nusra attacks against Western countries, such as the following: They've praised ISIS attacks, and were openly affiliated with Al Qaeda until a month ago, so there's every reason to believe they'd carry them out themselves if they have the opportunity in the future.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:07
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Sinteres posted:Removing them as essentially the top rebel faction is necessary for any sort of peace. I'm sure the tried and true "bomb them without any regard for the complexities of the situation" strategy will get the job done, just like it did in Iraq.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:07
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Remember guys, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite them publicly breaking with Al-Qaeda, despite the fact they have never attacked a Western country and have openly declared they have no interest in attacking a Western country, and despite the fact they are busy fighting a brutal civil war and are surrounded by another one of our enemies, they were totally coming right for us.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:08
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Volkerball posted:I'm sure the tried and true "bomb them without any regard for the complexities of the situation" strategy will get the job done, just like it did in Iraq. Sorry we weren't able to recruit Al Qaeda fighters like you wanted, maybe next time.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:09
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Sinteres posted:They've praised ISIS attacks, and were openly affiliated with Al Qaeda until a month ago, so there's every reason to believe they'd carry them out themselves if they have the opportunity in the future. They've already stated that they will not carry out attacks in the west (or outside Syria) and that they are just focusing on Syria and fighting the regime. Obviously there's no reason to just believe that and let them carry out their business, but as of now they really are just focusing on Syria. Can't say anything about the future though.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:11
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Like any day those JaN fighters would've broken out of Aleppo and headed straight for the Mexican border to kill us.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:11
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Sinteres posted:Sorry we weren't able to recruit Al Qaeda fighters like you wanted, maybe next time. You are so bad at this.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:12
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Volkerball posted:You are so bad at this. You, on the other hand, are quite good at crying over dead terrorists who you openly hoped the US could co-opt as a masterstroke with no chance that we'd be the ones getting played at all.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:15
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I feel safer knowing that we are actively bombing a group who publicly split from Al-Qaeda and are surrounded an army of Shiite jihadi mercs and who are also at war with ISIS. Assassinating their leaders certainly won't cause them to reexamine their strategy of focusing exclusively on the Syrian Civil War.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:16
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This thread is just full of terrorist lovers and that's the only explanation.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:17
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Sergg posted:This thread is just full of terrorist lovers and that's the only explanation. Volkerball specifically was a really big fan of the Petraeus plan and has been clutching pearls about the US relationship with Nusra for quite some time.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:20
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Sergg posted:I feel safer knowing that we are actively bombing a group who publicly split from Al-Qaeda and are surrounded an army of Shiite jihadi mercs and who are also at war with ISIS. Assassinating their leaders certainly won't cause them to reexamine their strategy of focusing exclusively on the Syrian Civil War. This, except I actually mean it.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:26
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Sinteres posted:You, on the other hand, are quite good at crying over dead terrorists who you openly hoped the US could co-opt as a masterstroke with no chance that we'd be the ones getting played at all. If you don't want to turn the middle east into glass, you're a terrorist sympathizer? This thread used to be better than freep once upon a time. Killing 4 terrorists is counterproductive if it brings another 200 into the fold, which is the exact sort of results we saw the last time this strategy was tried. "Kill em all and let god sort em out" had catastrophic consequences, and I can't believe you aren't aware of them. It's a testament to how little you know about this subject. Switching from that strategy to the sahwat was a night and day difference almost immediately. It was all pretty cut and dried. I'm not sure why you're acting like it's obvious that something like the sahwat would've never worked and we should just kill all the terrorists when there's loving mack trucks full of clear data from Iraq showing how fundamentally and totally flawed that perspective is. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 03:26
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Sergg posted:Remember guys, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite them publicly breaking with Al-Qaeda, despite the fact they have never attacked a Western country and have openly declared they have no interest in attacking a Western country, and despite the fact they are busy fighting a brutal civil war and are surrounded by another one of our enemies, they were totally coming right for us. What do we actually know about the targets and why they were meeting?
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Sep 9, 2016 03:28
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Volkerball posted:If you don't want to turn the middle east into glass, you're a terrorist sympathizer? This thread used to be better than freep once upon a time. Killing 4 terrorists is counterproductive if it brings another 200 into the fold, which is the exact sort of results we saw the last time this strategy was tried. "Kill em all and let god sort em out" had catastrophic consequences, and I can't believe you aren't aware of them. It's a testament to how little you know about this subject. Switching from that strategy to the sahwat was a night and day difference almost immediately. It was all pretty cut and dried. I'm not sure why you're acting like it's obvious that something like the sahwat would've never worked and we should just kill all the terrorists when there's loving mack trucks full of clear data from Iraq showing how fundamentally and totally flawed that perspective is. I don't think we can wipe out Nusra and all its supporters, but I do think redrawing a firm line between them and other rebels is necessary if there's going to be any kind of negotiated end to the conflict with buy-in from non-jihadist groups. Even if the rebels magically won in Syria, I think it's obvious that allowing Nusra to hover over the new government like Hezbollah does in Lebanon wouldn't be a positive development either. I don't think a good outcome is possible in Syria, so we're left with a series of bad options, this being one of them. In the long run maybe that does mean carrots in addition to sticks to convince former supporters of Nusra and other jihadist groups to join whatever the hell the country ends up with, but at the time Petraeus proposed his plan the jihadists were pretty regularly rolling US-backed groups for weapons and lunch money, or co-opting them, which obviously happened in Iraq too after we withdrew. We didn't have enough control on the ground in the first place to ensure that whoever joined us would stay loyal. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 03:34
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Kim Jong Il posted:What do we actually know about the targets and why they were meeting? Jack poo poo, obviously. Every single person here is talking out their rear end
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Sep 9, 2016 03:36
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Sinteres posted:I don't think we can wipe out Nusra and all its supporters, but I do think redrawing a firm line between them and other rebels is necessary if there's going to be any kind of negotiated end to the conflict with buy-in from non-jihadist groups. Even if the rebels magically won in Syria, I think it's obvious that allowing Nusra to hover over the new government like Hezbollah does in Lebanon wouldn't be a positive development either. I don't think a good outcome is possible in Syria, so we're left with a series of bad options, this being one of them. You cannot demand JaN not be involved in the future of Syria, and bomb them in pursuit of that, while doing nothing about the forces responsible for 90% of the civilian casualties in the country. That is such a willful blindness towards the human rights of certain Syrians, and a massive double standard, oriented solely around the selfish interests of the US at the expense of everyone else. It deserves to be portrayed as the blatant sectarianism and imperialism that it most certainly will be. And that portrayal makes the fight that JaN fights look like a real and necessary one, which will empower them in the long run, and is certainly a major reason why they severed ties with al-Qaeda, to give that portrayal more legitimacy. If the US is committed to not doing anything whatsoever about the regime, then it has to do nothing, period, as the result of any other strategy will be vastly worse than doing nothing, due to the clear double standard along sectarian lines. "Well there's no good outcomes," doesn't absolve that stupidity. ISIS is an exception, but targeting JaN and other opposition groups is much, much shakier ground. Especially when those groups are fighting to lift a siege on 300,000 people while the US is doing nothing. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 03:45
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Volkerball posted:You cannot demand JaN not be involved in the future of Syria, and bomb them in pursuit of that, while doing nothing about the forces responsible for 90% of the civilian casualties in the country. That is such a willful blindness towards the human rights of Syrians, and a massive double standard, oriented solely around the selfish interests of the US at the expense of everyone else. It deserves to be portrayed as the blatant sectarianism and imperialism that it most certainly will be. And that portrayal makes the fight that JaN fights look like a real and necessary one, which will empower them in the long run, and is certainly a major reason why they severed ties with al-Qaeda, to give that portrayal more legitimacy. If the US is committed to not doing anything whatsoever about the regime, then it has to do nothing, period, as the result of any other strategy will be vastly worse than doing nothing, due to the clear double standard along sectarian lines. "Well there's no good outcomes," doesn't absolve that stupidity. I guess we'll find out soon if there was any kind of quid pro quo and if we'll get any kind of movement from the Russians on reining in Assad. I'm not a big optimist, but it would be nice. This was supposedly one of the big stumbling blocks previously, so I'd hope we got something out of it, but it's hard to see the regime letting up now that they have Aleppo encircled again. Erdogan was making noises about how no agreement is possible without Turkey's assent after the Jarabalus operation, so maybe he was worried about getting left out while the big boys were talking? We'll see.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:53
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Volkerball posted:You cannot demand JaN not be involved in the future of Syria, and bomb them in pursuit of that, while doing nothing about the forces responsible for 90% of the civilian casualties in the country. That is such a willful blindness towards the human rights of certain Syrians, and a massive double standard, oriented solely around the selfish interests of the US at the expense of everyone else. It deserves to be portrayed as the blatant sectarianism and imperialism that it most certainly will be. And that portrayal makes the fight that JaN fights look like a real and necessary one, which will empower them in the long run, and is certainly a major reason why they severed ties with al-Qaeda, to give that portrayal more legitimacy. If the US is committed to not doing anything whatsoever about the regime, then it has to do nothing, period, as the result of any other strategy will be vastly worse than doing nothing, due to the clear double standard along sectarian lines. "Well there's no good outcomes," doesn't absolve that stupidity. ISIS is an exception, but targeting JaN and other opposition groups is much, much shakier ground. And JaN/JFS has noticed this stance too and is using it to its advantage. The split from al-Qaeda, the re-branding, everything was done in order to receive ground support from the Syrian population and convince them that their jihad is a noble cause against the tyrant and his government who have been responsible for more Syrian deaths than anyone else. If JFS wins support from the locals in the areas it controls and is then bombed by the USA while the USA does nothing about the regime itself, they (the USA) will instantly be seen as traitors of the revolution. They'll be seen as being on the same side as Assad and over time, JFS will become more and more legitimate and "the good guys" in the eyes of the Syrians, especially as they are putting a lot of effort into working with the other rebel groups and pushing a message of "together, we are stronger". We need to combat JFS, but in a different form (e.g: sahwat) rather than just screaming "kill the terrorists!!" and bombing the area they control into oblivion. It's a lot more complex than that, and as Volkerball said, it didn't work in Iraq.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:58
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Volkerball you're so dumb. You dumbyhead! You think terrorists can be co-opted into effective proxies? Yeah OK buddy you probs also think we can take those Kurdish terrorists and pacify northern Syria with them. Lol. Just lol. What's next? Paying former insurgents to police their own neighborhoods in Anbar? No way Jose. We need to preemptively strike before that smoking gun is a mushroom cloud.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:01
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Laurenz posted:We need to combat JFS, but in a different form (e.g: sahwat) rather than just screaming "kill the terrorists!!" and bombing the area they control into oblivion. It's a lot more complex than that, and as Volkerball said, it didn't work in Iraq. Nothing worked in Iraq though, ultimately. Yeah, there was a lull in the violence, but it became worse than it was to start with after that lull. Radical groups are gaining power even in liberal Western democracies, so at the end of the day I don't know that there really is anything we can do to prevent the rise of radical movements in war-torn countries with sectarian conflicts, even if we do everything we're supposed to do. We tried plenty of hearts and minds campaigns in Afghanistan too, and that's another war we'll never win. Maybe none of that is an argument for bombing, but I think the idea that we were going to co-opt jihadist fighters in the middle of an ongoing sectarian civil war that dwarfed the violence during our occupation of Iraq was absurdly optimistic. Sergg posted:Volkerball you're so dumb. You dumbyhead! You think terrorists can be co-opted into effective proxies? Yeah OK buddy you probs also think we can take those Kurdish terrorists and pacify northern Syria with them. Lol. Just lol. I don't think Volkerball actually has much regard for the YPG, though I'd be happy to be corrected. The PKK is Turkey's enemy though, not ours, and Turkey's responded by attacking the YPG. How's Anbar doing these days? Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 04:04
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Sinteres posted:I don't think Volkerball actually has much regard for the YPG, though I'd be happy to be corrected. The PKK is Turkey's enemy though, not ours, and Turkey's responded by attacking the YPG. How's Anbar doing these days? Anbar's doing much better now that Iraq abandoned that stupid policy of paying those Awakening guys to police their own neighborhoods. You've identified the real crux of the matter though, which is that we need to work with Russia more closely on getting rid of all the terrorists.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:15
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Sinteres posted:Nothing worked in Iraq though, ultimately. Yeah, there was a lull in the violence, but it became worse than it was to start with after that lull. Radical groups are gaining power even in liberal Western democracies, so at the end of the day I don't know that there really is anything we can do to prevent the rise of radical movements in war-torn countries with sectarian conflicts, even if we do everything we're supposed to do. We tried plenty of hearts and minds campaigns in Afghanistan too, and that's another war we'll never win. Maybe none of that is an argument for bombing, but I think the idea that we were going to co-opt jihadist fighters in the middle of an ongoing sectarian civil war that dwarfed the violence during our occupation of Iraq was absurdly optimistic. There was no long term plan for Iraq though. The Islamic State's top positions are filled with ex-Ba'athists from the old regime and the detainees at Camp Bucca and the country was still horribly corrupt. I remember reading an article somewhere that said the mayor of Mosul basically let the city fall to the Islamic State back in 2014. And Fallujah has always been the heart of sectarianism and extremism which was never solved after the invasion and the civil war either. But IS is being pushed back in Iraq now and with their defeat, things will look a lot better for Iraq than it did during or before the Iraq War. I'm not talking about starting a hearts and minds campaign in Syria. I'm just saying that it's ridiculous for the USA to be on one hand arming the rebels, while on the other hand bombing JFS (who are working closely with the rebels in Aleppo) and doing NOTHING against Assad's regime. An indirect approach to combating JFS would be better, like establishing a group such as the New Syrian Army (who were entirely constructed by the USA to be the sahwat that fights the Islamic State) that will fight JFS and the government while improving relations on the ground. Obviously I know that my opinion could end up not working out either, you never know in a conflict like this. But bombing isn't the answer either. We can only speculate what will work to eradicate extremism and not letting Assad get away with the murder of thousands of Syrians.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:24
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C'mon guys this really isn't a big deal at all. It's super easy to separate the former JaN from the rest of the rebels. It's not like they're fully integrated into the entire command structure, logistic train, etc. of the rebels in the north of the country or anything. We just need to hammer out a deal with Russia to get rid of the terrorists. I don't know why we didn't think of this before. It's also very vital that we strike now, when they are surrounded by the SAA. Otherwise we might miss a golden opportunity to kill guys who'll all be dead in 2 years. We hosed over the Kurds so it's high time that we gave equal treatment to the rest of the groups we've been supporting.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:41
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The strike against those rebel leaders show a gross miscalculation of priorities by the US. I don't get this idea that ISIS or Al-Qaeda is a larger threat than Russia and it's puppets. Our first priority should be the continued destruction of the Syrian state or the creation of an environment where Russian helicopters can't take to the sky for fear of tasting American MANPADS. Politicians and members of the public who say we should "stand with Russia" in Syria are racists who have the blood of Syrian children on their hands.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:12
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rear end struggle posted:The strike against those rebel leaders show a gross miscalculation of priorities by the US. I don't get this idea that ISIS or Al-Qaeda is a larger threat than Russia and it's puppets. Our first priority should be the continued destruction of the Syrian state or the creation of an environment where Russian helicopters can't take to the sky for fear of tasting American MANPADS. Politicians and members of the public who say we should "stand with Russia" in Syria are racists who have the blood of Syrian children on their hands. With any luck it would go as well as the last time we provided anti-air weapons to jihadist rebels to drive out the Russians.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:19
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I'm looking all over the place and I can't find any mention that it was the US who carried this airstrike out. The articles linked in the Tweets posted to this thread say they don't know who did it. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and wager that Russia did this, not us.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:23
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Sinteres posted:With any luck it would go as well as the last time we provided anti-air weapons to jihadist rebels to drive out the Russians. You mean it working and leading to, in part, the neutralization of Russia for 20 years?
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Sep 9, 2016 05:26
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rear end struggle posted:You mean it working and leading to, in part, the neutralization of Russia for 20 years? Fortunately there were no unintended consequences.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:31
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Sergg posted:I'm looking all over the place and I can't find any mention that it was the US who carried this airstrike out. The articles linked in the Tweets posted to this thread say they don't know who did it. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and wager that Russia did this, not us. Probably a safe bet. Or it could just have been a target of opportunity. Doesn't really make sense for the US to care all that much about Aleppo.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:32
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rear end struggle posted:You mean it working and leading to, in part, the neutralization of Russia for 20 years? What he means is that the Russians will lose tons of aircraft, withdraw from the country, then the Syrian government will collapse several years later, then a brutal civil war will be fought between the surviving factions, with a neighboring power eventually coopting one of them that matches the ethno-religious makeup of the country into a position of dominance.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:33
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Sinteres posted:Fortunately there were no unintended consequences. If you think arming the Afghan Muhajadeen led to 9/11 you're an idiot. Sergg posted:Syrian government will collapse several years later, then a brutal civil war will be fought between the surviving factions, with a neighboring power eventually coopting one of them that matches the ethno-religious makeup of the country into a position of dominance. That isn't already happening?
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Sep 9, 2016 05:40
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For realsies though Syria is going to end up Afghanistan'd no matter how the cookie crumbles. It's well on it's way there already. My city is taking in about 100 refugees from Syria next year. I've been volunteering lately to get people registered to vote at Eastern Michigan University's campus and I think I'm gonna clean loving house when we do Dorm Storm and send some people to the local mosques. All the white men seem very apathetic about voting but the black and Arab women sign up immediately.rear end struggle posted:That isn't already happening? That's why it's ironic.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:40
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The recent Aleppo strike is dumb, but in the context of the wider US "War on Terror" against Al-Qaeda and it's affiliates the US seems to have been sort of restrained in Syria. We've had those strikes against "the Khorasan Group" which I thought were only a few but Wikipedia has a decent list, the drone strike we're arguing with Russia over, and possibly latest one. In comparison, the US was happy to keep striking targets in Yemen until the Saudi's invaded from what I recall, even as the Houthis seized ground. Just judging from the fact that Michael Flynn was head of a US intelligence agency two years ago, there's got to be at least a few members of the US military establishment who are focused on Sunni jihadists before anything else.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:40
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rear end struggle posted:If you think arming the Afghan Muhajadeen led to 9/11 you're an idiot. How in the world can you think they're entirely unrelated? Bin Laden himself was involved in that fight, and the Taliban provided Al Qaeda with a safe haven in the 90's when nobody else would. They didn't take down the towers with Stingers we gave them or anything that direct, but it would be a real challenge to construct a full timeline of the events that led to 9/11 without including our support for the mujaheddin.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:47
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Sinteres posted:How in the world can you think they're entirely unrelated? Bin Laden himself was involved in that fight, and the Taliban provided Al Qaeda with a safe haven in the 90's when nobody else would. They didn't take down the towers with Stingers we gave them or anything that direct, but it would be a real challenge to construct a full timeline of the events that led to 9/11 without including our support for the mujaheddin. The Gulf War and stationing of American troops on the Arabian peninsula arguably played a much greater part in leading the way towards 9/11 than the war in Afghanistan. As for the Taliban itself they are more the result of the war in Afghanistan and the resulting refugee crisis than whether or the Mujahideen received Stinger missiles, there was a war going on and the way the Soviets waged it was brutal enough, way before substantial Western (and Saudi) aid arrived to cause a massive exodus into Iran and Pakistan, where in the latter you had kids growing up in refugee camps with education sponsored by Saudi religious groups. I think almost no matter if the Mujahideen received weapons to combat the Soviets and the DRA effectively then the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, the Pashtun tribal lands, was going to end up being lawless and packed with refugees.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:53
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Sinteres posted:How in the world can you think they're entirely unrelated? Bin Laden himself was involved in that fight, and the Taliban provided Al Qaeda with a safe haven in the 90's when nobody else would. They didn't take down the towers with Stingers we gave them or anything that direct, but it would be a real challenge to construct a full timeline of the events that led to 9/11 without including our support for the mujaheddin. When do you think the Taliban was created? If your answer is "before 1994" then I'm going to have to deduct some points from your score. All of our financial and weapons aid was doled out by Pakistan, and most of that went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who then proceeded, at Pakistan's behest, to reject the Peshawar Accords and pursue a bloody civil war with the other mujahadeen groups. After rocketing a large portion of Kabul to death, Hekmatyar failed to gain any popular support and failed to make significant headway against the other mujahadeen groups. That's when Pakistan decided to switch puppets. Some local small-timer named Mullah Omar suddenly found himself in possession of tens of thousands of Pakistani madrassah students armed with Pakistani weaponry and backed up by Pakistani regulars. In Pashto, "Taliban" means "Students."
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Sep 9, 2016 05:58
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU2moizkfGk
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Sep 9, 2016 06:00
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I was really angry at you earlier in the thread which is why I was being super snarky with you but since finding out that we probably didn't start another unnecessary blood fued with yet another group of pissed off Muslims I feel a lot better so my post about the Taliban is really just an informative thingy to help ya understand the complexities of the Afghan War. What value judgements you make from that information is totes up to you, I'm just leaving it out there.
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Sep 9, 2016 06:08
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