Boots on the ground or get out?

[tubman13]

ISIS or whatever, get in or stay the hell out?

Stop all foreign aid to all nations in the area, other than Israel, and spend the money here?

Regards,

Tom

[quincannon]

Rarely are there easy answers to complex problems, and this is not one of those occasions.

When you get in how do you get out, and eventually you must?

When you withdraw are the potential consequences both in the region, and eventually the wider world greater than the risk of deeper involvement?

I don't know the answers, and will not pretend I do. What I do know is the some balance must be struck in stopping these folks, and eventually rendering them non-existent (you can read that dead as a can of corned beef).

I also know, or at least think I know, that these folks are not nearly as capable as the press, and that same old gang of TV talking heads makes them out to be. They are after all slaves to the culture they come from, so read Peter's "War in Twenty-Twenty" and find out the great weakness of that culture.

[Yan Taylor]

One thing that I am happy about is the fact that other nations are getting involved and it is not just the old US/UK alliance, the fact that some of these countries are Muslim also helps, as these ISIS arse holes want an Islamic state, but they are killing their own in an ethnic cleansing spree, Muslim killing Muslim, well I hope that Turkey realises that if ISIS spreads its wings then they will be next, so they better get shooting, as they have one of the largest armies in the world.

One other thing, this air battle is costing a fortune, and Britain are in debt at the moment, so if these ISIS guys have millions stashed away (which they do) then once this money is found they should pay us for all the ordnance we have dropped on them, that will teach them.

Ian.

[quincannon]

Turkey has two great concerns. ISIL is certainly the present forefront, but they also have a large part of the Turkish population that are ethnic Kurds, and they greatly fear a greater Kurdistan being formed thereby losing territory to a traditional enemy. ISIL will take advantage of that, so Turkey had better get off the dime and come to some agreement with the Kurds (that may last - who knows) before there is no more Turkey. The Kurd issue can be settled politically (I think). ISIL must be settled with bullet and bayonet.

[Colt45]

It may sound extreme, but extermination of the ISIL/ISIS radical a-holes is really the only good long-term solution. This mamby-pamby approach being taken is a waste of materiel and time. When Carthage was utterly destroyed, it's people killed, the land salted, etc., nobody ever had any trouble from the Carthaginians again. Same deal here with radical Islam.

[Yan Taylor]

I must admit that a lot of Muslim people over here have turned against them (Isis) mainly over the beheading of the English aid worker (from just up the motorway from us in Salford), they picked him up from an aid convoy that drove from England to Syria, and that man was worshiped my the Muslim people of Manchester, so they are starting to lose any backing from their own over here.

I am totally behind the Kurds having their own country, not only the Turks but the Iraqi’s under Saddam gave them a hard time, and if my history is correct, Kurdistan was its own nation, and sadly the British played a part in its downfall.

Ian.

[quincannon]

That, I am afraid is not the long term solution, but I also suspect it's a pretty darn good short term solution.

In the long term the cause must be removed, and that does not involve killing of anything but ideas, and that killing is done by education, changing of culture, access to economic development, and the removal for all times religious control of government and the every day lives of people. This last is the hardest, and the first three contribute to it, but consider this (and not knocking anyone's beliefs here. Islam is about 700 years in the developmental cycle behind Christianity. Ask yourself just where Christianity was in the year 1300, and look at Islam today in that light.

[Dark Cloud]

A tad extreme, but near impossible anyway. In any case, the citizens of Carthage this day might take issue with it.

First, Carthage in the day was an actual army with flags. Specific things that could be destroyed. It was a specific location that the Romans burned and plundered. They did not salt the earth, as salt was valuable and salting a large area would be expensive, so the skinflinty Roman Senate is unlikely to have done this even if able to accumulate enough salt for the job. It's sort of a literary template, may have happened to small villages in the past, but since much of olde Carthage remains with no indication of such an event, it can be put aside. The Romans did enslave a ton of them. Carthage was a Phoenician city and colony, and as a people they're still with us called different things.

The IS is yet another flash in the pan, and they can fold back into their numerous populations without any ability for us to distinguish them from anyone else. Killing people always seems so clean, so cut and dry, but only on paper. Further, these days doing so as a literal form of genocide would perpetuate their existence and generate support. It's what happens when you have a ton of young men with no education, no jobs, no future.

[Yan Taylor]

They want to round up all those Iraqi troops that left all their heavy weapons behind and ran, they virtually left the front door open for the Isis murders to walk into large cities and kill anyone they thought were not of the same ilk, round them up and do what the Russians did with their penal battalions. Imagine if your city was threatened with such brutality and your armed forces simply ran and left you all to die.

Ian.

[quincannon]

DC: I suspect Colt was not being literal, as you obviously do. Rather he was speaking to the destruction of their conventional military capability. That destruction is a necessary first step, followed by two hundred or more years of application of long term solutions.

Ian: If the governments of France and Britain had been inclined to listen to T.E. Lawrence, and Gertrude Bell, a lot of these problems would be non-existent. They did not.

[mac]

Very difficult geopolitical situation here. If boots on the ground are to be used as a protection from these murderers then I do not think they should have US (or Australian) feet in them. Rather some from the associated areas including Turkey. There may as Chuck has said be a sensible political solution for the Kurds within Turkey.
Long term the solution is that proposed by that marvelous girl holding the Peace Prize. Education! As Chuck says think of Europe in 1300; what changed? Education,education, education.
Cheers

[quincannon]

Yes, I have noticed that burning witches and heretics has diminished over the years, not that there are some among Christianity that still don't advocate it.

Another side bar: I am presently studying the history of Christianity as part of my preparation for mentoring a young man, who is a candidate for Confirmation in the Episcopal Church. Interesting stuff, mixing religious doctrine and dogma with politics, ignorance, attempted mind control, and all the rest of man's foibles. Things started to change with the printing press, to the point where knowledge was no longer centralized in the hands of the few. I suspect the internet, when viewed five or six hundred years from now, will be seen to have the same or greater impact.

There is no short game in the geopolitical world. The short game is for fools, fakers. and the delusional. It is only the long game. The pity is we humans are impatient for instant answers, and fail to look often at the progress that takes centuries to achieve, or at least don't look often enough.

If there is a sensible political solution to the Kurds within Turkey, they had better get on the stick pronto, or Turkey will dissolve when faced by both external AND internal pressures.

[mac]

Given that ISIS have been very forthcoming with their plans (rather like Hitler in Mein Kampf) I cannot see why Turkey is buddying up to them in the slightest. There can be little doubt that ISIS have Turkey on their to do later list. Surely it is better to be proactive in defending the Kurds from ISIS and perhaps gain politically with them than to be, by the default of inaction, complicit in what ISIS is up to.

Couple education with a free internet (read freedom of speech) and you have a fantastic pro democracy tool. Democracy can only thrive with free speech and education. This is why so many politicians in all organisations are trying to find excuses to curtail freedom on the internet.
Cheers

[Yan Taylor]

Isis are throwing men at the town of Kobani similar to what Hitler did at Stalingrad, they know how much of a coup it would be if this town falls, it would show that even with American led airstrikes they can still be effective and take ground, it wouldn’t surprize me if there casualties were enormous, but the lives of their fighters probably mean nothing to them.

Chuck, I mentioned about the British making a balls up with the Kurds in one of my posts, but seeing you mentioned that the French were also involved, they can solely to the blame and why not, as they were also to blame for Vietnam.

What do you mean that they have stopped burning Witches, quick get me a bucket of water.

Ian.

[quincannon]

There was one of those news pop ups on my computer this morning saying US war against ISIS not getting off to a good start.

I wonder what these news agencies would have said had they been around at Bunker Hill, Bladensburg. First Manassas, and Bataan? In their arrogance they presume that when the first US shot is fired, or the first bomb drops the enemy is supposed to fold and admit defeat.

War is hard, and rarely does the hard come easy, without setbacks and initial miss steps.

Syria and Iraq have the French kicking the can Ian, but there is plenty of blame to go around.

In Indo China, we could have said no in 1945. We didn't. It's true the French made a mess post 1945, but so did we post 1956.

We must learn to dismiss what was, and concentrate on dealing with what is.