I never thought I’d say this, but I won’t object if we put troops back on the ground in Iraq to destroy this Islamic State organization. Even if we didn’t owe it to the Kurds, this group is so vicious and irrational that they make the Nazis look like pikers. The damage they are doing is incalculable, and it’s happening with lightning speed. I’m glad our air force is going after them today. But they need to be rolled up. No one is safe in areas that Islamic State controls. Trying to push into Kurdistan and take Irbil is enough to arouse us out of our slumber.
I thought invading Iraq was rash and irresponsible. I had no idea.
But we can’t in good conscience stand back while these lunatics destroy community after community and murder with impunity.
also, we broke it, we bought it.
Still. After all these years.
Troops on the ground are the last thing we need in this situation. What needs to happen is degrade the heavy US weaponry that ISIS captured from the Iraqi army.
The other thing the US needs to do is dispel the idea that it is being coy with ISIS in hopes of displacing Assad.
US troops on the ground in Afghanistan against a similar bunch of religious extremists wound up creating a local backlash that has advantaged those extremists. US troops on the ground in Iraq created the massacre in Fallujah that caused the country to unwind. Kurdish Peshmerga are adequate to defend their homes if they are not overwhelmed with US heavy equipment captured by ISIS.
The Taliban are moderates compared to these folks.
The Taliban were allied with al Quaeda. The Taliban blew up Buddhist shrines on the World Heritage Landmarks list. The Taliban oppressed women and had brutal religious police.
There was not a whole lot of news coverage of Afghanistan when the Taliban were taking power.
By the time that there was news coverage, the Taliban were in the position of having to govern. ISIS has not slowed down enough in its campaign to do other than use terror as a means of accelerating its military campaign. It worked. The Iraqi army melted away, communities flee instead of fight. A relatively small army of ruthless men go racing across the landscape.
Slow them and halt them and local revenge ends them. Unless they succeed in slipping away to somewhere else. And then the whack-a-mole dynamic begins again.
The terror against minorities is a military tactic as much as it is a religio-ideological tenet. If nothing else they are playing to a traditional Western fear of Islam, adopting their appointed role in Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.
One thing that Congress must find out is who exactly has the CIA been arming.
“One thing that Congress must find out is who exactly has the CIA been arming. “
We can always dream about it anyway.
Won’t happen. Certainl;y not in public view, and equally certainly not in any way that will really affect that arming.
Bet on it.
Only a real defunding of the CIA would do that, and a course of action such as that might be too late now. Imagine how much money can be made over 50 years by a black ops system that has secret eyes on every market and unlimited/unsupervised seed money form the Feds!!! The Godfather II/Meyer Lansky stand-in “We’re bigger than US Steel” quote comes to mind.
Bet on it.
AG
Were you paying attention 1995-2000? The Taliban beheadings and what they did to women? Radical feminists in this country were outraged by this, but DC couldn’t have cared less. There were massacres, humanitarian food aid was rejected, and human trafficking.
there’s a reason we elected Obama and not gramps or his ilk
Mere cultural differences — the sort of thing we in the West are blind to, seeing everything we do as we do through a particular set of filters.
Certainly not serious enough to demand an armed response….
The “cultural difference” stuff is BS. Terror is an element of statecraft. The Taliban couldn’t afford shock and awe cruise missiles or Abu Ghraib style abuse; so they beheaded people in public. Has the same effect politically.
They weren’t “radical feminists.” Even NOW was in on some of those early efforts to get the world to pay attention. If they were any kind of radicals, they were “radical” humanists like Physicians for Human Rights.
But, Marie, the Taliban were about to sign a treaty for TAPI.
Ah, yes — oil/gas fields and pipelines always trump human rights in US foreign policy. Must remember to add this to my list of criticisms of the Clintons.
IMO, one of the worst qualities of many Americans is their belief that it’s our business to fix everything that’s wrong anywhere in the world. The best thing we can do for anyone in Iraq is to stay the fuck away from their country. The fact that we caused these problems is exactly why we’re the wrong people to offer to “help” now.
Normally, I would agree with you.
But, actually, the worst thing we could do is walk away from this because these are whole communities, some thousands of years old, that are being destroyed in days. Iraq can’t stop it, and we can.
Yep. Sorry, citizens of Burma, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo or Syria, we got a Pottery Barn receipt we have to take care of.
the perfect is the enemy of the good, or something along those lines.
could be an interesting coalition be put together to stop them
This was in response to the political line from the White House, looking forward to the November 2012 elections – Declare the War on Terror Over. How sad, the misreading of Islamist extremism cost us dearly just 3 months later in Benghazi.
○ Tripoli elects Irish-Libyan ‘revolutionary’ as mayor – Aug. 6, 2014
Mahdi al-Harati founded a Tripoli Brigade [received training from Qatari Special Forces] in western Libya that fought its way into the capital in in the overthrow of Moamer Kadhafi in August 2011. After the fall of Kadhafi’s regime, he became deputy military chief for Tripoli before travelling to Syria where he joined the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. He founded and commanded Liwa Al-Umma, a rebel group made up of Syrians and foreigners. Seen by some as a jihadist, Harati describes himself as a “revolutionary”.
Flag of Liwa al-Umma
Looks like jihadism is the entrepreneurial grift of fundamentalist Islam corresponding to the multiplying culture war entrepreneurs of US politicized evangelical Christians.
Not just no, but HELL no. Our military and foreign policy establishments have never known what the eff they were doing in Iraq (or Afghanistan for that matter) which is why this catastrophe happened in the first place. There is no reason to believe they could not find a way to make this situation even worse, unlikely though that may seem.
Yeah, so, do me a favor.
Think up something worse.
We managed to produce a situation far worse than Saddam Hussein, which I doubt either you or I could have imagined. It can always get worse.
Actually, even back in the 90s it was pretty easy to imagine something worse than Saddam. There’s a reason the elder Bush left him in power.
That’s not answering BooMan’s question.
Cynically, I think that the United States should stay out of it. Few things bad will happen to Obama or America (other than once again losing all of our self-respect) if Obama just throws them to the wolves. They’ll just be some other Victims of the Year, like Rwanda or Burma, and we can go back to choking our Cheetoh-smeared chickens while watching NASCAR and Breaking Bad. But intervening could mean touching the raw nerve of omission bias and that could lead to very bad things (for America).
However, if you have a humanitarian interest at all you need to explain to me a worse consequence than genocide. From a strict humanitarian standpoint, another bungled occupation where the casualties were ‘just’ in the hundreds of thousands over 10 years is better than millions dead in the same time span. Because I do not advocate intervention and I totally understand the consequences.
Are you serious? This ongoing genocide is a direct RESULT of our last military intervention. The dirty little secret of liberal interventionism is that “boots on the ground” solve nothing and only lead to even more killing. Do you have any idea how many civilians died merely as an immediate part of our 2003 assault on the hapless Iraqi army, not even counting those who died later? How many do you suppose would die in a ground confrontation with a far more disciplined and ferocious fighting force? How many times do people like you need to see with their own eyes that sending in troops is virtually never a sane or effective solution to a humanitarian- and political- problem before the message gets through? Just get the phrase “military solution” out of your head- it’s an oxymoron.
It is as much a direct result of our providing military aid to Iraq after we left, which they positioned in Mosul with insufficient strong troops to protect it from a groups streaming in from Syria.
It also might be a result of our continued unquestioning alliance with Saudi Arabia and Gulf monarchies.
Terribly conflicted. Terribly.
Would this count as an ‘invasion?’ As per Libya?
Or not count, because up until recently we were already in Iraq?
I need to know, so I can keep track of how many times Obama has sold me out…
Nope. No troops. No airstrikes. Humanitarian aid only.
How does humanitarian aid address the issue?
You can’t give aid to the dead.
he shouldn’t compare w Genghis Khan; they had religious pluralism. Genghis’ mother was a Christian, iirc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_among_the_Mongols
These ISIS lunatics completely misunderstand the Muslim religion. This is no different than when abortion clinic bombers kill people in the name of Jesus. Unfortunately, it’s a lot more common in that region than it is in ours, at least for now. I get so angry when jackasses like this represent something beautiful in a way that makes people think it’s exactly the opposite.
As for U.S. troops, I don’t have a son or daughter in the military so while there’s a part of me willing to say now it finally makes sense to go in, I would defer to those with more skin in the game. We cannot fix everything wrong with the world. Even those things that we broke. Yet I don’t think the world should just watch as genocide unfolds. At a minimum, we should open our borders to those who helped us.
Absolutely hell no to putting troops on the ground. But we should be droning and bombing the living daylights out of these assholes, IMO.
But damn, the whole Middle East is going to hell in a handbasket quickly.
I don’t think troops can help here. First we are a day late and can’t make it up. More importantly, we are not the world’s policeman. If we are, then how about Gaza? Where are the Iraqi forces in this? Oh I know. they ran away. Meanwhile the latest thug in Baghdad seems to care less about it, so long as ISIS stays away from the palace.
Air strikes are certainly warranted.
need to own their politics. That means no matter how bad it looks, the US cannot intervene.
These images come across our TV screens and we think we should “do something”. But we don’t know how to do something in the middle east without breaking something else.
If ISIS wins then they win. It will be up to the arabs to be free from them.
If the US intervenes with ground forces, the likely effect is to give ISIS a bunch of new anti-US allies. Because it’s not like there’s going to be a big set-piece battle, the US routs ISIS, everyone cheers, and troops come home. It. Will. Be. One. Huge. Mess. ISIS and the factions in Iraq will make sure of it.
To the extent that air/drone strikes can be used against things that are 100% military targets, maybe. But given the history of “drone strikes of wedding parties” it’s hard to have any optimism at all.
Isn’t this mostly concerned with assisting the Kurds? They’d welcome help and Turkey seems willing to go along with it for now. Iran too.
Yeah, it’s partly about the Kurds. But it’s also about the fact that these folks are slaughtering people everywhere they go. Even when they don’t slaughter people, that’s usually because the people fled, so now they are homeless are have few possessions. This is a different animal than the sectarian fighting that has been taking place for a while now. This army needs to be destroyed.
Strikes began today. Josh Marshall asks a really good question. We’ve been told the Kurds are a solid professional force. Why is ISIS kicking their ass? Either they’re not that good or ISIS is better or stronger than many thought. Either way it means we have badly misread the situation.
Hmm, when was the last time a fundamentalist Islamic regime was overthrown internally?
Egypt a few months ago?
We have to. It’s the only way to atone for our past sins.
That likely includes the consulate in Irbil.
I thought you would.
The O’Bushma/Centrist/PermaGov leads and you…reluctantly sometimes, I’ll give you that (although it counts for very little as far as I am concerned.)…follow.
Good work, Booman.
Right smack in the middle of the next fuckup.
Then when that failure raises its ugly little head in another couple of years you will hop on the next PermaGov horse outta town.
Whether she did or not.
That’s what pols do.
Nice.
Thanks.
Let them fuck up by themselves.
They will, y’know. Or at least they would if we’d just stay out of their business.
But NOOOoooo…
We have to keep butting in.
Bet on it.
AG
They were still there on July 19th. Now, they’re gone, possibly forever.
You go ahead and be a smart-ass. Try to take the moral high ground by telling those folks good luck with all their fuck-ups.
Personally, I don’t want to see these murderous religious fanatics continue to advance destroying everything in their path.
It’s not about being “a smart-ass,” Booman. It really isn’t.
It’s about a continuing U.S. spiral of failure from Korea right on through Iraq and all of the other little overt and covert stops in-between.
Was the Korean War “successful?”
What was its aim, again?
It was essentially aimed at stopping China from becoming a world power.
How’d that work out?
Riiiiight…
Ditto the Cold War.
Russia is in the running still.
Big time!!!
How about the Iraq fiascos?
The recent Iran and post-Arab Spring/Egypt great game attempts?
How ’bout Pakistan/Afghanistan/Absurdistan?
Cuba/Central America/South America/etc.?
Please.
Right again.
Failure after failure.
Further…what has been the path of the U.S. culture, society and economy during all of that time?
Down like a motherfucker!!!
You don’t see a trend here?
Please!!!
Let’s “libertarian” their asses.
But NOOOOoooo…
Instead, the O’Bombers prevaricate.
Physician…heal thyself!!!
Heal Newark.
Detroit.
Oakland.
Camden, NJ.
Large parts of Washington, D.C.
Most of urban Philadephia.
Da Bronx.
The peckerwood south.
Etc.
Then go talking to them ISIS peoples.
I dare ya.
AG
Jesus.
Let’s look at Korea at night from space.
That’s what we were fighting for. And who we were fighting against.
It had nothing to do with China until China decided to get involved. It had to do Joseph Stalin’s version of the future vs. Harry Truman’s version.
You can see how it turned out. From space.
Lights at night in the Koreas?
That’s what it was all about?
Oh.
Y’mean the U.S. had no idea that China would be forced into the conflict?
Oh.
Well…excuse me!!!
Get real.
It’s been realpolitik all the time since the Dullles brothers seized the reins of the Permanent Government.
American exceptionalism.
Why?
Oh.
Nevermind.
Whoever Osama bin Laden really was, 2004:
Korean War Casualties:
You are telling me that 1.2 million people died so that S. Korea could have more lights on at night than has N. Korea?
Please!!!
And a culture where men feel the need to wear makeup in order to appear in business situations?
The U.S. has more lights on than anybody, and it is driving the global warming disaster right over the brink of the survival of life on earth.
PLEASE!!!
Nevermind…
AG
Wiki:
The lights are a metaphor. What’s shocking isn’t how bright South Korea is, but how dark North Korea is. What did we accomplish in Korea? South Korea is one of the biggest economies in the world. I think that’s an accomplishment.
CO2 emissions:
South Korea 11.49 metric tons/capita
North Korea 2.92 metric tons/capita
US 17.56 metric tons/capita
Might be too early to declare victory.
It might indeed.
In point of fact, “victory” itself is always a two-edged sword.
“To the victor goes the spoils?”
Hmmmm…
“Spoils.”
A strange choice of words, eh?
There are no “victories.” Not in a two-dimensional, Us-vs.-Them world there aren’t.
No victories, just a temporary cessation of hostilities until the next round begins.
Bet on it.
AG
Hellfire is drone or aircraft mounted. This will remain outside Iraq except for engagements?
There is so much bad isn going on in the world that I suppose I’m a bit numb to it. That said, I’m firmly in the “Let it burn out” crowd – anything that we do in the region will only make things worse long term as yet another generation of orphans develops casus belli against the United States.
The pooch has been screwed – I’ll pass on sloppy seconds.
The problem, Boo, with talking up how awful ISIS is – and they are – is the large previous number of Worst Regimes Ever or Worse Than Hitlers the US government has already identified. Castro, Arafat, Khomenei, Noriega, Milosevic, Aristides,Chavez, Qaddafi, Saddam, Hamas, the Taliban, among others, just in the past quarter century alone.
When a genuinely horrifying outfit like ISIS comes along, most Americans yawn because we’ve heard it all before. It’s just another designated Satan Of The Week. Hey, preseason football’s on TV!
If they were that bad, would we not either have created them, or be backing them?
ah, Davis, you outdo yourself !
You think it’s easy living in the focus of evil in the modern world, or something?
that’s a good point.
I, however, am able to distinguish between a brute like Saddam Hussein and actual genocidal maniacs.
Growing up, I knew men who actually fought the Nazis. I never once questioned the righteousness of their efforts because the Nazis were in the game of extermination. You can’t reason with people like that or make peace with them. You have to kill them. And the sooner you get started, the easier it will be to accomplish.
I’ve been arguing for years that the U.S. should absolutely not get involved in the Sunni-Shiite sectarian war, on either side. I still believe that, but these are not ordinary Sunnis.
I was telling TarHeel just yesterday what a horrible idea it would be to try to rely on Iran (Shiites) to beat back ISIS. That’s because we don’t want to take sides in this fight on a sectarian basis.
But there’s no fucking way we should sit back and watch these folks overrun the capital of Kurdistan and start putting everyone to the sword.
Fortunately, Obama recognizes as much, but I fear that he doesn’t realize what it’s going to take to win.
You may be able to distinguish between Saddam and ISIS.
But according to the US, Saddam was “genocidal.” (Gassing the Kurds. And don’t forget those poor Kuwaiti babies.) So was Milosevic. So were the Sandanistas. (Meskito Indians). Qaddafi? Mass murderer. (Lockerbie.) Same for the Taliban. (9-11. Or was that Saddam?) And so on. Plus, just about all of our Official State enemies have been compared to Hitler.
Really, just about the only force comparable in murderous fanaticism to ISIS in the last 20 years were the Hutu in Rwanda – a conflict the US actively opposed international intervention in. But for most of those other conflicts I named, the vast majority of American voters couldn’t find the country on a map, let alone name the protagonists in a conflict or the degree of their depredations.
Expecting the average American to be able to distinguish all the players here, let alone trace the rise of ISIS (and radical Islam in the region) to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Dubya, strikes me as way optimistic. Obama’s decision to arm the opponents of Assad without paying much attention to who really got the weapons is also a major factor.
Fortunately, we have our statesmanlike opposition party and thoughtful Fourth Estate to help Americans sort it all out for them. eyeroll
I’m actually conflicted for once. I opposed Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, et al. And going back, if I had been of age, I’d have opposed the Gulf War too. This is actually different. Still don’t know how I feel. Humanitarian drops are a no brainer to me. Strikes? I’m not as sure.
A convoy advances on Irbil where we have a consulate and people working for oil companies. As President, what do you do? And how much time do you have to act?
Stay out of it, but don’t lie to myself that what I’m doing is saving more human lives in the short term thanks to the Doctrine of Double Effect so much as engaging political expediency that may save more in the long term.
He’s not lying “to himself,” Deathtongue.
He’s lying to us all.
Lies.
They’re what’s for dinner in the United States of Omertica.
Bet on it.
AG
anyone who could be elected President would unquestioningly make the same decision. “people working for oil companies at risk? Immediate action required! Find a way to pretend it’s humanitarian.”
First off, since ISIS started as an anti-Assad group, how much US aid has it gotten from the US directly or indirectly? How about aid from the House of Saud and the little coastal kingdoms? Who’s been buying them those Toyota Forerunners? They seem to have lots of ammunition too. Is this a war between the Sunnis and the Shiites?
Also, Iran, Iraq and Syria were working on a pipeline starting in Iran and ending at the Mediterranean. I wonder if ISIS is an invention to stop that pipeline being realized. Sort of like how the US wants to stop Russia’s flow of natural gas into Europe.
So, about the poor people in danger in Iraq? Like the poor people getting shelled in Donetsk? Not to sound harsh, but recent American policy has not been about poor people in jeopardy, unless they’re medical students in Grenada. We backed the most hideous gangsters in Latin America who would routinely commit mass murders of their own indigenous citizens. If you thumbed through the book THE PHOENIX PROJECT you’ll find some of the same “techniques” were later passed on at the School of the Americas. And reprised in our last two endless wars.
Some in the foreign press are calling the US the Empire of Chaos. Iraq sure seems to be in chaos. Maybe chaos is what our oligarchy wants. After all, if you can eliminate the competition…
Yes, ISIS is there to take out Assad, Hezbollah, and Maliki. The last because Bush/Cheney screwed up by not replacing Saddam with a Sunni KSA/US poodle.
Has the US ever intervened militarily in the ME without unforeseen, or foreseen but ignored, negative consequences? The 2003 US invasion of Iraq led directly to the current situation. Our support of the corrupt and oppressive al-Maliki regime led to the Islamic State being welcomed in the Sunni regions of Iraq. We supplied the army of Iraq with US heavy weapons while knowing full well that the army of Iraq has become notorious for throwing away its weapons and uniforms and then running away at the first sign of a fight. Now the Islamic State has many of the weapons we supplied to Iraq. Aerial bombardment only succeeds when there are ground forces capable of taking advantage of it. Those forces don’t exist in Iraq. That leaves the US or Iran to put those ground forces in place. If Iran wants to bail out its coreligionists then let it. Every time we “help” one faction or another in the region we also help a lot more people to get dead. Let’s stop now while someone’s still left.
Let’s not forget the power drill-to-the-head thingies that were happening when the Shia were feeling their oats after stringing up Saddam.
Iran and ISIS are co-religionists in the same sense that Protestants and Catholics were co-religionists in the 16th-Century.
Obama is our first president to pursue an active yet non-hegemonic foreign policy, in fact he’s creating it. This is not to say everyone is with the program, but that’s the direction he’s trying to go. You’re holding up errors and misadventures of previous administrations as if it’s automatically the template for all our foreign policy. And other commentors too, comments along the lines of “the US doesn’t understand the ME” and the like envision our country as GWBush writ large, rather than the complex of citizens and institutions that we are.
Hell muthaphucking NO!!
Not one damn troop!
In memory of the younger and May 1, 2003?
○ Can the West live with ‘brutal’ al Qaeda offshoot ISIS?
○ U.S. using carrier-based F-18s for Iraq surveillance flights: official
Its very hard for me say this: I agree with AG
We aren’t the policemen of the world.
We shouldn’t be the policemen of the world.
When the US went in by itself, I cannot think of a SINGLE intervention that didn’t make things worse for both the US and the intervened population.
You want the UN? More power to you. I’ll support that.
You want NATO? Well its right next to Turkey so OK.
Other than that? No.
“But we can’t in good conscience stand back while these lunatics destroy community after community and murder with impunity.”
We can and should.
All of Europe is closer and much more directly interested.
They can do whatever they think is needed, on their own, without us, for a change.
Better we take the lead in an much larger international effort to cope with the Ebola outbreak.
http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/capital-caliphate-islamic.html
If the US mission can limit itself to destroying the US-made tanks, artillery pieces, and APCs that the Islamic State forces captured in Mosul, that will likely be sufficient to slow or stop the advance and return those forces to guerilla tactics. Once they leave Sunni territory, they leave the areas in which they can depend on the support of the people to shield them. They become the foreign fighters they are. It is only when the locals hate the US presence more than the other guerillas (think Afghanistan) that those folks make gains outside their natural base.
The Kurds and the Shi’as are not going to let that happen so long as the US is not around to be a distraction and so long as the Islamic State cannot transform itself into a conventional army of offensive aggression.
Anyone remember the good ol’ days, when we liberated Kuwait while the royal family rested in a Swiss resort? Ah, and then they came home just in time for the victory parade.
And now the Kuwaiti royal family, along with the House of Saud, are financing those ISIS fellas, tearing up the Middle East. What a wonderful world. It’s sort of constant restreaming of the short story “The Monkey’s Paw” except that someone is making money on all this, and it’s not anyone posting here.