My alternative title was “This is great news for John McCain,” because of course it is:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that the United States needs more troops on the ground to assist with airstrikes against the Islamic State, suggesting that ongoing efforts to stop the terrorist organization’s advances are falling short.
“They’re winning, and we’re not,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
McCain said more U.S. forward air controllers and special forces are needed in the fight against the Islamic State. He also called for a no-fly zone over Syria and Iraq and said the United States should expand its air campaign to the Syrian regime, which is engaged in a civil war.
Because what could possibly go wrong with putting more American ground troops into another war in the Middle East?
Yeah right we need to realize we don’t have a dog in this fight. Outside of hysterical claims of terrorists coming back to kill us all. Turkey and Israel have far more at stake and they have no troops in combat. I see no need for “special” forces. Stay clear. We already armed IS with captured Iraqi weapons supplied by the US.
Well I do think we should responsible for destroying the weapons they captured from out guys. But that’s about it.
We’re all tired of McCain’s laziness and of all pundits who allow him to shake his fist. Lazy? Well because his monologues are allowed to crush any economic analysis of why the Middle East has become a series of failed states.
It’s the economies stupid!
McCain apparently views this like a 6 year old views winning. He seems to have no sense of any complexity.
I think its clear we are in fact losing.
Kudos for the first interviewers who responds, “When are you suiting up and going, Senator McCain?”
Aren’t the Saudis who pay him getting enough grift out of this action?
Or are some of his Army and Marine general buddies eager to get that Operation Enduring Clusterfuck battle ribbon and patch that the flyboys are getting?
And why is he undermining morale by whining about our gallant troops losing? What kind of traitor is he anyway?
John McCain increasingly seems to be a man who loves to attend military funerals.
Seriously, someone needs to tell President McCain to go away and just fade away, like all good Generals.
Just a question: have any of the countries in the region put boots on the ground to fight these guys? I don’t even hear about Iraq. Someone tell me again why I want to be involved in this.
Not quite. Iran presumably. Jordanian intelligence may be a big deal. Iraq really can’t defend itself, let alone Syria.
Otherwise, the situation today was
have any of the countries in the region put boots on the ground to fight these guys?
Those guys are the boots on the ground for a couple of countries. And Turkey is more inclined to support or look the other way than fight them.
I can’t even watch the Sunday shows or read the international news anymore. Everyone disgusts me: the Administration spokespeople and their Democratic Congressional supporters justifying our intervention into Syria’s civil war, an intervention which has no real ability to achieve our stated goals here. The Republican warmongers and opportunists like McCain. And, perhaps particularly, the “journalists” who continually enable this fucked-up clown car. All we need the journalists to do is ask the obvious questions and draw our attention to the historical record here.
For example, these politicians should be asked the question: why not let Islamic State governance fail, as it is clearly destined to do? We’re setting IS up as martyrs with our bombing runs. They’ll be able to say “We can’t govern because the West is preventing us from doing so.”
Glad I’m very busy working on State and local politics right now; keeps me distracted from something which, to my dismay, appears to be out of my control.
I think you make a good point in that when fundamentalists have to govern they prove unpopular. Perhaps another revolution eventually comes along and sweeps them away. In the meantime, however, a group like ISIS can commit wide scale genocide. Can the world just watch as that happens? Can the United States? I don’t think so. It would set a new norm in international law that says such things will be tolerated. I think it really important to build coalitions to stand against atrocity.
That’s what Obama’s tried to do; to form broad coalitions with the most interested parties taking the lead. It’s enlightened leadership and it’s one of the many reasons I think he’s a great president.
McCain is an old fool (more than a demagogue — since what he advocates is pretty much universally unpopular). Taking on both ISIL and Assad? Sure. As Martin says, what could possible go wrong?
But that coalition is all hot air. Isn’t it the case that the world has shown that these things are tolerated?
While McCain is having his hysterics on television, down here in reality land the administration’s restrained policy seems to be having some positive effect, or at least not making things much worse for a change.
That is a very positive effect. Groups like ISIS rely on terror, getting opponents to lay down arms and capitulate for fear of being annihilated. When Kurdish forces demonstrate that with coalition air power it’s possible to effectively stand up to ISIS, it rallies those willing to stand up and fight so long as they know it’s not a hopeless cause. This is the beginning of the end of ISIS though the entire process will probably take three to five years to unfold. Obama does not get nearly enough credit for his strategic genius.
Yes, I hope you’re right. The most important of all to my mind is the thing that drives the McCains craziest, the “leading from behind”, and the whole ingathering of minority peoples starting with the Yazidis, like the climax of Lord of the Rings, finding their own way into the campaign and their own “agency” as our friend Davis would say.
In this way it might imaginably not be an imperial/hegemonic enterprise. But I don’t know if that’s really possible or not. Let alone whether Obama really thinks that way.
For those that would like another more informed opinion Senator Sanders ripped apart McCain here.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/10/12/bernie-sanders-takes-sunday-morning-shreds-john-mccains-isis-
war-mongering.html
I started a comment here but it grew. Now a standalone post.
An “Air War???!!!” You Bein’ TAR BABIED, Folks. Bre’r Fox Is Now In Control. Bet On It.
AG
McCain’s storybook:
“We need to ship weapons to those I know are ‘freedom fighters.”
When done and doesn’t work out the way McCain said it would:
“We need to bomb the targets I’ve identified.”
When done and it doesn’t work out to McCain’s satisfaction:
“We need boots on the ground to take the fight to an enemy.”
When too many US military personnel return home in bodybags and “the enemy” remains in the fight:
“We need to re-arm my friends fighting for freedom”
Then bomb again. Then new boots on the ground.
A tall tale for war addicts.