|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: What should we do about ISIS?
|
Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
|
Posted
I can't believe there isn't a thread about this already but, apart from one in Hell, I can't see anything. Today the British Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of air strikes against ISIS. For once we're coming late to the fight; I know the USA and allies have already been bombing for several weeks. Everything I have read and seen says ISIS are horrific and need to be stopped, but is this the right way to do it? George Galloway (a politician for whom I normally have little time) has made the point that there was no Islamic fundamentalism before the last Allied invasion, and that we should leave military action to Qatar and Turkey, who are well supplied with weapons.
In recent years military intervention in this part of the world seems always to have made a bad situation worse, so I feel deeply unhappy about this Parliamentary vote. Yet ISIS needs stopping - but I don't know how. What do the rest of you think?
--------------------
Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
... But I am also certain that we have to do something.
Sadly, I think Robert Armin is right. Isis is an unequivocally horrible organisation, with an ideology, if it has one, seems to come straight from the lake of fire. Nevertheless, it is never a rational argument to say 'we have to do something' unless one can persuasively say what it is that has to be done.
--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
it is never a rational argument to say 'we have to do something' unless one can persuasively say what it is that has to be done.
Relentlessly nonstop bombing, without pause, without letup, might help for starts.
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
Relentlessly nonstop bombing, without pause, without letup, might help for starts.
Nobody has either the resources to do that or the ability not to kill civilians in the areas IS has occupied. Furthermore, those people are already its victims. Presumably the object of the policy is to deliver them from IS, rather than ensure they go to the same place as they would go to if IS decapitates them.
--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
deano
princess
# 12063
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
it is never a rational argument to say 'we have to do something' unless one can persuasively say what it is that has to be done.
Relentlessly nonstop bombing, without pause, without letup, might help for starts.
Won't work. Never has done.
It has the appeal of being "safe" for us as we don't have to get properly involved, but it is ineffective.
If you want to defeat isis with conventional forces then you need boots on the ground. Air support IS useful in that case, but as a strategic option? No, sorry.
If you don't want to put soldiers in, then you can contain at best. Probably not even that.
--------------------
"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mrWaters
Shipmate
# 18171
|
Posted
From what I understand, the air strikes were designed to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces in their fight with ISIS. Modern air strikes are supposed to be precise above all else. In Gaza it did not go particularly smoothly, however the Gaza strip is one of the most densely populated areas in existence. Iraq is not. The idea is that local troops have great difficulty dealing with ISIS and their extra-motivated fighters. Air support is crucial on battlefield and it may and should swing the balance.
However what do we do when finally the lands are retaken and ISIS goes underground? Air strikes will not help then. I'm not sure if anyone has a real cure for a broken and divided country. Air strikes may help in defeating the armed forces but it will take a lot more than that to truly defeat ISIS in people's minds.
Posts: 80 | From: Aberdeen | Registered: Jul 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
|
Posted
It's a problem without a good solution. I do hope the United States does not get entangled into a land war the way it did in Vietnam. Hearing about Special Advisors being necessary has a familiar ring.
It's hard to conceive of what victory looks like which is a bad way to start a war, even if you don't call it a war. But unless the Iraqi government is expanded to include representation of the Sunni population it's going to be impossible to even contain IS. It should be noted that they are now nicely armed with weapons the US provide Iraq in the "Surge".
The current negotiations to build an alliance to defeat them makes a mockery of much previous demonization and propaganda. Will the Syrian government be included? I just listened to a UN expert who repeatedly evaded the question; who funded IS? The answer is probably Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States but that's too undiplomatic to mention. The US is doing back channel discussions with Iran on how to co-ordinate attacks and Turkey is being unhelpful. The crowning bitter will be if al-Qaeda becomes an ally in the attack on Isis.
In the US the people who are responsible for the mess in Iraq are busy leaping forward to propose to repeat the mess. It's hard to see any leadership with a coherent plan that limits US involvement. As far as I can see, everyone in Congress is willing to stand back and let Obama do whatever he does so it can be critiqued later.
[ 26. September 2014, 22:01: Message edited by: Palimpsest ]
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
|
Posted
What a devastating critique Brenda.
--------------------
Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
It's a huge mess. In Iraq, there is some hope of success, since there are forces, such as the Kurdish fighters, who are taking on IS, and so the West can help them.
The hope is that these forces can drive IS back.
Syria is shambolic, and the US plan to finance a moderate rebel group is replete with dangers, since such groups have a habit of becoming radicalized.
However, what if the above strategies don't work? For Western armies to go back to Iraq, and even more, to go into Syria - the mind boggles. Every radical in the Middle East would home in on Western forces.
So first, the hope is that Iraq can be stabilized, and the Sunni areas which are currently supporting IS, can be reintegrated into the Iraqui state, or alternatively a separate Sunni devolved nation is established. It's a big gamble.
[ 27. September 2014, 00:01: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
I am an American and my kids are in the US Army; my daughter spent the last 9 months in Afghanistan. I can tell you that there is no appetite in the population for a major military action with boots on the ground. There is a segment of the political class who is yelling for war, but they always do that for everything and we ignore them.
If they want a major military campaign, they're going to have to make the political case for it and vote the money to pay for it. (No more credit card wars like Bush2.) And frankly this will never happen.
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I am an American and my kids are in the US Army; my daughter spent the last 9 months in Afghanistan. I can tell you that there is no appetite in the population for a major military action with boots on the ground. There is a segment of the political class who is yelling for war, but they always do that for everything and we ignore them.
If they want a major military campaign, they're going to have to make the political case for it and vote the money to pay for it. (No more credit card wars like Bush2.) And frankly this will never happen.
One of the many legacies of the unhinged decision to invade Iraq.
Intensive airstrikes, combined with supplying arms and other material support to Iraqi and Kurdish ground troops, look like the only politically viable approach right now. Hopefully it'll be enough.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
|
Posted
Gamaliel is right of course.
This thread would have been a suitable vehicle for further discussion about IS.
What I'm going to do is to close this thread and link its contents to the original thread. Feel free to continue the discussion there.
Normally, I would copy the contents over to the original thread to embody the discussion that way, but I've come across the problem too late to do that; too much content here now.
Please feel free to carry on the discussion in the original thread, referring to this one as you need to.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
--------------------
Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Thread closed
Printer-friendly view
