Iraq and ISIS Discussion

[Gunz]

I hope none of the good guys got hurt.

Some of the peanut-gallery comments at the end of the article surprised me. Either Mail readers have no idea how extraordinarily difficult these operations are or they've got a bunch of adolescent pukes posting replies.

 

[Raptor]

Rescue attempt on the Syrian pilot. Aborted. The attached article implies that US SOF may have been involved...who knows.

ETA - As I type this, I see the headline updated to specifically state US SOF involvement. ...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...S-shot-Syria-helicopters-come-heavy-fire.html

Read the article, then the comments, have to say I agree with the ones by Gobstopper and tlv.

 

[reed11b]

Rescue attempt on the Syrian pilot. Aborted. The attached article implies that US SOF may have been involved...who knows.

ETA - As I type this, I see the headline updated to specifically state US SOF involvement. ...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...S-shot-Syria-helicopters-come-heavy-fire.html

Oops, made the mistake of reading the comments. Some day I will learn.
Reed

 

[Ooh-Rah]

I've been waiting with "held breath" since he was shot down. Somehow this one seems different, I'm so concerned a U.S. soldier will be captured during a rescue attempt. My heart skipped a beat when I read the initial headline.

 

[Raptor]

I've been waiting with "held breath" since he was shot down. Somehow this one seems different, I'm so concerned a U.S. soldier will be captured during a rescue attempt. My heart skipped a beat when I read the initial headline.

I'm getting the feeling that people who write headlines don't actually read the articles...

 

[racing_kitty]

I'm getting the feeling that people who write headlines don't actually read the articles...

While the DM is better than a lot of what we're expected to swallow from the American media outlets, they have a pretty bad habit of writing click bait for headlines, and their editors let that slide.

Pretty damning of American media that I'd rather go to a Brit tabloid than any native source.

 

[pardus]

Islamic State Militants In Syria Ask Twitter To 'Suggest A Way To Kill The Jordanian Pilot Pig'

Twitter responses include "beheading", "burning him alive" and "running him over with a bulldozer".

Poor bastard...

 

[Grunt]

There are some humanoids that simply need to be eradicated.....

 

[Gunz]

...Pretty damning of American media that I'd rather go to a Brit tabloid than any native source.

The DM consistently out-scoops American media and prints what American editors love to ignore, such as anything negative about Hillery Clinton.

 

[Florida173]

Kinda of relates to what I've been saying about this threat since the beginning. Underestimating and characterizing them as just another insurgency, especially because of what some people think they know about how they evolved, is incredibly naive.

We're going to be there for a long time.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...gain-in-its-fight-against-terror-9955853.html

Underrating the strength of Isis was the third of three great mistakes made by the US and its Western allies in Syria since 2011, errors that fostered the explosive growth of Isis. Between 2011 and 2013 they were convinced that Assad would fall in much the same way as Muammar Gaddafi had in Libya.

Despite repeated warnings from the Iraqi government, Washington never took on board that the continuing war in Syria would upset the balance of forces in Iraq and lead to a resumption of the civil war there. Instead they blamed everything that was going wrong in Iraq on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a great deal to answer for but was not the root cause of Iraq's return to war. The Sunni monarchies of the Gulf were probably not so naïve and could see that aiding jihadi rebels in Syria would spill over and weaken the Shia government in Iraq

 

[CDG]

Islamic State Militants In Syria Ask Twitter To 'Suggest A Way To Kill The Jordanian Pilot Pig'

Poor bastard...

I know there's arguments to be made about national interests and all that, but more and more it feels like the right thing to do is destroy these pieces of shit as swiftly and mercilessly as possible. No counter-insurgency, no nation-building, just raw brutality against them and anyone that doesn't actively oppose them. Send a strong message and international opinion be damned.

 

[Tbone]

I know there's arguments to be made about national interests and all that, but more and more it feels like the right thing to do is destroy these pieces of shit as swiftly and mercilessly as possible. No counter-insurgency, no nation-building, just raw brutality against them and anyone that doesn't actively oppose them. Send a strong message and international opinion be damned.

I don't know about you, but for a while now it has just seemed "logical" to deal with them "directly". I mean, they pose a problem for a lot of countries and are the definition of evil. So why not do what it actually takes to eradicate them and do the world a favor? The priorities of this administration are so jack backwards it makes me feel stupid. We have a real chance to do some good here and yet the world leaders act as if it's taboo to kill bad people? C'MON!!

 

[Raptor]

I don't know about you, but for a while now it has just seemed "logical" to deal with them "directly". I mean, they pose a problem for a lot of countries and are the definition of evil. So why not do what it actually takes to eradicate them and do the world a favor? The priorities of this administration are so jack backwards it makes me feel stupid. We have a real chance to do some good here and yet the world leaders act as if it's taboo to kill bad people? C'MON!!

Cause if we eradicate them, the anti-war people will bitch like always.

 

[Tbone]

Cause if we eradicate them, the anti-war people will bitch like always.

I'm pretty sure they are going to be anti-whateverthemilitarydoes in any situation. I woudn't try to appease them. They can stay in their fantasy. I think the best thing we can do is to do the right thing regardless of what out-of-touch people want to spew at you. At the end of the day, nobody can argue that the world is worse off because there is no such thing as ISIS. Then again, I am probably misguided about are capability to eliminate ISIS

 

[Raptor]

I'm pretty sure they are going to be anti-whateverthemilitarydoes in any situation. I woudn't try to appease them. They can stay in their fantasy. I think the best thing we can do is to do the right thing regardless of what out-of-touch people want to spew at you. At the end of the day, nobody can argue that the world is worse off because there is no such thing as ISIS. Then again, I am probably misguided about are capability to eliminate ISIS

I completely agree, unfortunately, not all the politicians do, but that's a rant for a different day.

 

[Gunz]

Kinda of relates to what I've been saying about this threat since the beginning. Underestimating and characterizing them as just another insurgency, especially because of what some people think they know about how they evolved, is incredibly naive.

We're going to be there for a long time.

Absolutely. Or somewhere else. Jihad mutates. One thing common about modern radical Islamic groups is that they always seem to go back to the ancient concepts, they want to resume what they believe is unfinished business, i.e., the conquest of non-Muslim lands, (al fatah). The core legitimacy of any jihadist movement always comes back to a decision made right after Mohammed's death...the decision for the unlimited expansion of the territory of the Islamic state in order to establish the religion. So with that legitimacy at its core, it attracts everybody from True Believers to rapists, psychopaths, thieves, opportunists and idiots. It's not an insurgency or a revolution or a rebellion...it's salmon swimming upstream to the spawning ground.

 

[Rapid]

Modern politicians don't have the balls to do anything it takes to eliminate ISIS and co. Not if they want to be elected to important positions -- or keep those positions.

Politics is a career, a gravy boat, and a path to something more lucrative. It's nearly always been that way, but now more than ever, it has very little to do with 'public service' or doing what's best for a country.

 

[Florida173]

Politics aside.. we are already engaged with ISIS...

 

[Gunz]

...But politicians don't look any farther forward than the next election. Ideally, for them, any unpleasantness going on needs to be tied up in a neat package before they come up for reelection. They have big trouble thinking in terms of a decades-long committment, so generational warfare like that being waged against jihadists, or COIN ops and nation-building adventures, which require exactly that kind of long-term devotion, may never fully be resolved.

 

[Florida173]

...But politicians don't look any farther forward than the next election. Ideally, for them, any unpleasantness going on needs to be tied up in a neat package before they come up for reelection. They have big trouble thinking in terms of a decades-long committment, so generational warfare like that being waged against jihadists, or COIN ops and nation-building adventures, which require exactly that kind of long-term devotion, may never fully be resolved.

Like I said.. Politics has nothing to do with the stuff that is going on right now against ISIS. There is no COIN because this isn't an insurgency. We don't need politicians to wage war.. remember Kosovo.. we still have people there.