A turn in the other direction from his claim to put no boots on the ground to fight ISIS, Obama is seeking congressional approval for "limited combat operations" to combat ISIS. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/us/obama-war-authorization-congress.html “would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan,†he wrote. “Local forces, rather than U.S. military forces, should be deployed to conduct such operations.†Until the next redaction... So chime in folks. Good or bad thing to do?
Well if ISIS can control some oil it will give them more money and thus more power. So they do have to be stopped, but I don't like our allies in the region. They are brutal to their own nations and hate us until times like this, then they look at us with puppy eyes and ask for help. Help yourselves you've got the cash, build a military with your own people. We have enough vets who are messed up from the our previous excursions into Iraq. They don't even care about the fact that people suffer, they are trying to retain power and wealth at our expense. I cannot wait until our economy is not dependent on oil anymore, we already have the technology. It is only a matter of time before it becomes affordable.
I say stay out completely until the world is ready to take care of business and then be as brutal as fuck. ISIS will have to be killed by Islam, not by America and this is a delaying tactic Obama's using until his time in office expires. I wouldn't mind helping a unified Islam take them out but I wouldn't accept Islam partially helping our pathetic attempts to take them out. This is going to end badly for humanity either way.
If this is in response to the recent, brutal hostage killings, I'm not in favor of it. Those people went over there of their own free will. Maybe they weren't looking for trouble, but they knew damn well that it was dangerous. We should not wage war because some do-gooders decide that they want to "help" refugees, or whatever, and got killed - they shouldn't have been over there in the first place.
I saw republicans in congress were criticizing obama for not having a broader use of the military. Wtf. Maybe we should send them over to fight isis if they're so eager. God damn
Anything that is remotely perceived as harmful in the Middle East causes republicans to fucking call for troops on the ground. McCain and his warhawk buddies, which includes a lot of democrats can't accept that there are shitty things in this world that the USA can't control. So they'll throw a bunch of money and troops at the problem only to find that it leads to worse relations, dead American soldiers, and civilian casualties. Let's let those crazy fuckers sort out their own problems. If one of our allies is directly attacked by isis then maybe that's a different story. As of now it doesn't appear that ISIS poses much of a threat to the US. We've consistently had terrorist groups who have wanted to kill Americans for the last 10-15 years and how many attacks have we had so what changes with ISIS. Fuck our citizens seem to be doing a better job at killing civilians than "terrorists." Honestly if terrorists really want to kill everyone in America then they are doing a pretty shitty job.
ISIS wants Saudi Arabia, ergo the US (and the west) must be involved for obvious reasons. They have us over a barrel, or so we believe.
This is really what ISIS wants, get the US involved in a military campaign to damage them (the US) economically since you cant in terms of military might, same thing al-Quaida/Taliban/bin Laden did, it costs a lot more money to fire off rockets from aircraft carriers and transport thousands of troops than to shoot some AK-47's out of tunnels in the mountains.
Iraq War: Episode III Horrible, Aimless, Counterproductive Policies Continue What is at stake for the US in this fight? Is it worth evermore billions of dollars, more dead American kids, more of them coming back home with PTSD and TBI? Nope. It's a waste of money and a waste of life. So, House Of Saud and your cast of backwards Gulf Cooperation Council dictator underlings - it's your region. You guys have billions of dollars worth of weapons. We sold them to you. You have more money than you know what to do with. Why don't you send your children to die for once instead of getting us to fight your battles for you? Hey, Turkey, our NATO friend, that's your neighbor. Who do you want next door? Pick one - Assad or Islamic State. Who is the lesser of the two evils? Or, hey, Iran - you guys are chill with Assad. Iran, you have a decent military by the standards of the region. You guys could do more to help your Alawi pals. It's your fight. Spend your blood and treasure propping up the kinda-sorta Shia regime in Syria. Russia, are you guys going to send in anybody to protect your interests in Syria, your old homies in the Assad clan? Russian forces, historically speaking, are good at two things 1) getting killed and 2) brutality. Feel free to hop in at any moment. They can sort it out amongst themselves. The defeat of IS means more to any of them than it would to us. Let someone else take a turn playing World Police for awhile. See how they like it. The moderate opposition is a fairy tale, it always was. Arming the Kurd peshmerga - funny to see Republicans advocate for arming Marxists, BTW - is not getting the job done. And maybe we should deign to ask this time; what will the long term effects be of backing an ethno-religious minority group? I doubt the Kurds are gonna do all Taliban on us and turn our weapons against us. But say you're a nasty IS supporter. Why don't you carry out attacks against Kurdish communities in Turkey, in Iran or in Iraq/Syria? Even elsewhere around the globe. They're killing your Salafi-Wahabi bros. Then Kurds will attack your civillians in revenge. Then some more everlasting sectarian bloodshed! Yay! Then we can come back in another decade after we're done this time and scratch our heads and pretend we have no clue of the origins of whatever horrific beast we spawn through this intervention. Or say, somehow, the Kurds plus "coalition" airstrikes defeat IS. For their efforts, the Kurds will expect their own state and they probably deserve one. They're gonna wanna carve it out of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. That's not going to go over very well.
Fighting ISIS has been the most valid use of the military since the Korean War. We should help the Kurds form an independent state in Iraq and defend it from the ISIS scumbags.
Probably wait for the dust to settle then hope somebody friendly ends up in charge. Then comes the routine of whispering in the ear of whoever is in charge, you know, the usual - foreign aid in exchange for political leverage. Yemen needs $, they're utterly impoverished. It's the poorest Arab country, almost half the population lives on less than $2 a day. It's a failed state. It's sad. I think all there is to do there is chew qat, avoid warring tribal militias and pray you don't get droned. Yemen kinda sucks. The House of Saud don't want the Houthis in charge in their backyard for sure. Saudi's Shia minority in the southwest bordering Yemen might get some big ideas. The Houthis practice "Fiver" Zaidism, an off-shoot of Shia Islam which differs from mainstream Twelver Shi'ism but still Saudi Arabia rightfully suspects an Iranian hand in the Houthi's takeover of Yemen. The Houthis too are using US-supplied weapons and equipment they've seized. That's one of the issues with sending military aid to highly insecure third world countries. AQAP of course considers Shi'ites heretics. If the Houthis are able to hold on to power they'll continue fighting with AQAP folks. Which is a plus for the US - them killing our enemies for us. I think the Houthis will act as an Iranian proxy while the Saudis will support a proxy of their own. Yemen will be yet another battleground for the Saudi/Sunni vs. Shia/Iran conflict while the regular people continue to suffer. Saudi's interests in Yemen are clear. Iran's interested in trolling the Saudis on their own turf as well as acting as sort of a vanguard of the Shi'ites, to uphold Iran's reputation among the Shia communities of the region. Somewhere in the middle of all that the US will be trying to talk to whichever faction is in charge for the month to secure permission to drone AQAP. Were I advising Obama, I'd tell him to kick back for a minute, smoke a blunt, hope as many AQAP are killed as possible then quietly ally with the winning side.