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Don't get involved in a sectarian conflict in a foreign country. There is nothing to win there.

Quote from: Zanza on June 14, 2014, 04:42:20 PM
Don't get involved in a sectarian conflict in a foreign country. There is nothing to win there.

We can win the War of Terror.

Couldn't decide between One and Two, so voted :jaron:

Honestly, I don't give a shit.  Bombing or not doing anything works for me, though none of the choice are likely to "work".  I think I lean more toward not doing shit.  Let them sort it out.

No

There's not a poll option for me:

ROTW - Massive bombing campaign.


edit:

Guys these are the people who'd organize another 9/11 in a heartbeat, if given the finance, time and territory from which to plan it. 

This may be cold-hearted, but the whole region is aflame, and intervention will be just knocking burning embers around without putting them out.  Let them sort it out and redraw the maps.  Plus, there are at least two power in the region that may get involved, and that I won't be sorry for when they pay the heavy price for it.

Amazing how some would consider getting sucked in a 2nd time over there when the 1st time was such a debacle!

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EDIT: If America really wants to do a service to the World - let it use its nuclear arsenal and strerilize the whole fucking region.


G.

Quote from: mongers on June 14, 2014, 05:35:54 PM
There's not a poll option for me:

ROTW - Massive bombing campaign.

I think the US- bomb them to paradise and ROTW- military targets only options are functionally the same, but with different flavor texts.

Quote from: Grallon on June 14, 2014, 05:40:03 PM
Amazing how some would consider getting sucked in a 2nd time over there when the 1st time was such a debacle!

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EDIT: If America really wants to do a service to the World - let it use its nuclear arsenal and strerilize the whole fucking region.


G.

Who's we?

Grallon never used the term 'we' in that post :hmm:

Quote from: Valmy on June 14, 2014, 06:08:31 PM
Grallon never used the term 'we' in that post :hmm:

That's just Raz.

I sorta agree with Grals. Spare the Jews however.

Quote from: Valmy on June 14, 2014, 06:08:31 PM
Grallon never used the term 'we' in that post :hmm:

I must have gotten confused.

I'm going to go Durka Durka Durka, since from a rational IR Realist perspective, I would prefer another Ba'athist Sunni general with absolutist tendencies and a fantastic mustache back in control of Iraq as a natural, regional geopolitical foil to the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran.

Kudos to Yi for the not-completely-obscure-but-obscure-enough LBJ reference, though.

We must save Iraq from the Iraqese.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on June 14, 2014, 06:24:45 PM
I'm going to go Durka Durka Durka, since from a rational IR Realist perspective, I would prefer another Ba'athist Sunni general with absolutist tendencies and a fantastic mustache back in control of Iraq as a natural, regional geopolitical foil to the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran.

Kudos to Yi for the not-completely-obscure-but-obscure-enough LBJ reference, though.

Those guys are dead or making a pack with the devil.

It's said former Ba'athists and Sunni ex-military officers are backing and have thrown their lot in with ISIS/ISIL, hence perhaps some 'truth' in the conspiracies about how the Iraqi Army/officer corp just melted away in front of the islamists. 
But I don't think they're survive to become top dog, they'll be dispensed with when their usefulness is over. 

Use drones, bomb the shit out of shit with hellfires, declare win prematurely again.

Or "The I just don't care anymore" option.

Quote from: mongers on June 14, 2014, 07:18:40 PM
Those guys are dead or making a pack with the devil.

It's said former Ba'athists and Sunni ex-military officers are backing and have thrown their lot in with ISIS/ISIL, hence perhaps some 'truth' in the conspiracies about how the Iraqi Army/officer corp just melted away in front of the islamists. 
But I don't think they're survive to become top dog, they'll be dispensed with when their usefulness is over.

Yes, unfortunately considering how Maliki and Company have managed to spend all this time--and out money--purging the shit out of them from any possible constructive role instead of, you know, working with the Sunnis like we constantly encouraged, it's a bit of an impossibility now.  How 'bout that democracy thingy.  This guy makes Morsi look positively compromising.

Welcome to the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iraq, fellas.  Don't Mess With Texas, etc.

Who knew an anti-littering campaign would have such dramatic repercussions on the world stage?

Go ahead and try and de-fuck it.

ISIS are evil. Period.

Send SF doodz to liaise air strikes with regular Iraqi military doodz as they push up north.

Obama's gonna puss out though. Just like he did on Syria.

No reason to get involved, at least not yet.  Give some more time to see what develops first (preferably ISIS and Iran bleeding each other dry) and only then decide if it's worth bombing shit or not.

Quote from: Legbiter on June 14, 2014, 09:08:11 PM
Send SF doodz to liaise air strikes with regular Iraqi military doodz as they push up north.

Obama's gonna puss out though. Just like he did on Syria.

What is the end-game in your fun little plan?

Voted airstrikes, but honestly I don't care.

I do note from the voting that us YOOROS are more free spending with american blood and treasure.... embarrassing, yes, but noted

It's difficult to overstate how little appetite our country has for any do-gooding right now.  We tried pretty hard to right Iraq and Afghanistan, spending a couple trillion bucks to do it, and it's obviously failed.  Now we're currently in the midst of an ongoing economic collapse.  Why should we try again?  I'm surprised anyone is for an actual ground deployment of major forces.  Thinking on it, I would change my vote to an affirmative "don't spend another dime" stance.

At this point: no blood for oil.

Quote from: Ideologue on June 15, 2014, 04:15:24 AM
It's difficult to overstate how little appetite our country has for any do-gooding right now.  We tried pretty hard to right Iraq and Afghanistan, spending a couple trillion bucks to do it, and it's obviously failed.  Now we're currently in the midst of an ongoing economic collapse.  Why should we try again?  I'm surprised anyone is for an actual ground deployment of major forces.  Thinking on it, I would change my vote to an affirmative "don't spend another dime" stance.

Yeah, it's a little bewildering how bad of a mistake our long interventions have been.  We can blame Bush and company, but really, at the end of the day, a lot of Americans believed that pounding the shit out of very bad guys, and building better nations was a good idea.  The end result was thousands of American lives and a couple of trillions squandered, just to make the situation potentially much worse than what we started with. 

We'll recover from this mistake, and our authoritarian enemies like Putin shouldn't gloat too much.  The authoritarian nature of their societies means that they squander their wealth continuously, rather than in notable misadventures like we did.  However, it's still painful to shoot yourself in a foot like this.

Quote from: DGuller on June 15, 2014, 11:14:40 AM
However, it's still painful to shoot yourself in a foot like this.

OK Dorsey.

Quote from: Sheilbh on June 15, 2014, 04:49:20 AM
At this point: no blood for oil.

At this point it seems a lot like Vietnam. It is extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to win, so we walk away. But it is probably much easier to avoid losing.

Post 1993 (or whenever it was) the long game strategy of nominal involvement in Somalia seems to be working. We go in, pick off a few bad guys, the country stays in chaos, but the bad guys don't win. If they get close to winning, Ethiopia or the African Union steps in and pushes them back. Maybe that isn't the best analogy because Africans have had more than a nominal ground commitment, but we could probably get the same results with a lot less effort (or less attractively, Iran seems ripe for the role of Ethiopia). Applied over a couple decades, the situation in Somalia seems to be improving.

Quote from: alfred russel on June 15, 2014, 12:12:33 PM

Quote from: Sheilbh on June 15, 2014, 04:49:20 AM
At this point: no blood for oil.

At this point it seems a lot like Vietnam. It is extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to win, so we walk away. But it is probably much easier to avoid losing.

Post 1993 (or whenever it was) the long game strategy of nominal involvement in Somalia seems to be working. We go in, pick off a few bad guys, the country stays in chaos, but the bad guys don't win. If they get close to winning, Ethiopia or the African Union steps in and pushes them back. Maybe that isn't the best analogy because Africans have had more than a nominal ground commitment, but we could probably get the same results with a lot less effort (or less attractively, Iran seems ripe for the role of Ethiopia). Applied over a couple decades, the situation in Somalia seems to be improving.

Will Iraq have ninjas instead of pirates?

Quote from: The Brain on June 15, 2014, 12:17:01 PM

Will Iraq have ninjas instead of pirates?

It will just be a super poor and incredibly violent place, filled with goofballs.

It occurs to me that ISIS needed to have a free hand all this time in order to get this far. I wasn't aware the Allies had stopped all air strikes and everything, even sans ground troops, but they must have for it to have gotten to this point. Drones and Tomahawks might be a good idea at the least.

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on June 15, 2014, 03:38:19 PM
It occurs to me that ISIS needed to have a free hand all this time in order to get this far. I wasn't aware the Allies had stopped all air strikes and everything, even sans ground troops, but they must have for it to have gotten to this point. Drones and Tomahawks might be a good idea at the least.

Iranian human waves sound cheaper than Tomahawks.

Quote from: The Brain on June 15, 2014, 03:44:01 PM

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on June 15, 2014, 03:38:19 PM
It occurs to me that ISIS needed to have a free hand all this time in order to get this far. I wasn't aware the Allies had stopped all air strikes and everything, even sans ground troops, but they must have for it to have gotten to this point. Drones and Tomahawks might be a good idea at the least.

Iranian human waves sound cheaper than Tomahawks.

You think Iranians don't have missiles of their own?

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 15, 2014, 03:49:36 PM

Quote from: The Brain on June 15, 2014, 03:44:01 PM

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on June 15, 2014, 03:38:19 PM
It occurs to me that ISIS needed to have a free hand all this time in order to get this far. I wasn't aware the Allies had stopped all air strikes and everything, even sans ground troops, but they must have for it to have gotten to this point. Drones and Tomahawks might be a good idea at the least.

Iranian human waves sound cheaper than Tomahawks.

You think Iranians don't have missiles of their own?

Human wave missiles?

Firing Iranians out of cannons into mobs of Iraqis?  #winwin

This is like the Iran-Iraq war of....Oh.

No intervention by the United States. This is essentially the same Iraqi government (largely due to its Iranian ties)  that refused to sign the BSA with us that both Bush and Obama wanted. They made that decision, let them live with the consequences. Good for us too, I don't want us involved here, but if we had a BSA we'd have an obligation.

Quote from: Viking on June 15, 2014, 04:09:06 AM
I do note from the voting that us YOOROS are more free spending with american blood and treasure.... embarrassing, yes, but noted

Yeah, I'm actually surprised by this.   I would like for the US to continue to support the Peshmerga.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on June 15, 2014, 05:32:57 PM
No intervention by the United States. This is essentially the same Iraqi government (largely due to its Iranian ties)  that refused to sign the BSA with us that both Bush and Obama wanted. They made that decision, let them live with the consequences. Good for us too, I don't want us involved here, but if we had a BSA we'd have an obligation.

Yep. Maliki chose to tie his security to Iran not the US precisely because it'd be easier to build a sectarian Shia state.

Before there was intervention for the Iraqis I think he would have to resign and there'd need to be serious concessions to the Sunni (and Kurds) who have legitimate grievances.

If there was intervention for Iran then again, I'd want to see what they were offering first.

You know precisely what Iran would want to bring to the table:  they'll want to leverage bullshit over their nuclear program, buying time and accomodation--and that is not a bargaining chip, IMHO.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on June 16, 2014, 08:15:41 AM
You know precisely what Iran would want to bring to the table:  they'll want to leverage bullshit over their nuclear program, buying time and accomodation--and that is not a bargaining chip, IMHO.

They don't have any leverage. They apparently want US bombs. How much are they (credibly and verifiably) willing to give to get it?

Until then not a single drone :contract:

Quote from: CountDeMoney on June 16, 2014, 08:15:41 AM
You know precisely what Iran would want to bring to the table:  they'll want to leverage bullshit over their nuclear program, buying time and accomodation--and that is not a bargaining chip, IMHO.

Why not? Recognize Israel, Stop funding Hamas and you've got a deal for a couple hundred bombs.

Bombing seems like a win-win scenario.

If it works, and Iraq turns into a free and democratic western liberal state, then Yeah! Awesome!

And if it doesn't then we get to kill a bunch of radical extremist religious nuts.

What could go wrong?

Quote from: Berkut on June 16, 2014, 01:13:18 PM
Bombing seems like a win-win scenario.

If it works, and Iraq turns into a free and democratic western liberal state, then Yeah! Awesome!

And if it doesn't then we get to kill a bunch of radical extremist religious nuts.

What could go wrong?

Just the usual problem - without really good intel you're using million dollar munitions to blow up ten dollar tents.

Paul Bremer's saying we need boots on the ground.

I can appreciate the Obama hate over things he can't control, but can we at least not listen to the people that fucked this all up in the first place?

Quote from: Barrister on June 16, 2014, 01:14:46 PM

Quotewithout really good intel you're using million dollar munitions to blow up ten dollar tents.

Dude, it's what we do.  They'd all just lay around anyway.

Quote from: Berkut on June 16, 2014, 01:13:18 PM
Bombing seems like a win-win scenario.

If it works, and Iraq turns into a free and democratic western liberal state, then Yeah! Awesome!

And if it doesn't then we get to kill a bunch of radical extremist religious nuts.

What could go wrong?

We could save our bombs and let the IRG spend some lives killing them.

Just say no

Should have nuked them a long time ago.

If this topic is as controversial as it was in EUOT, will it drive us all to another board?

The time to use air power was a year ago in Syria in support of the least odorific elements of the anti-Assad coalition (i.e. the same elements that were battering ISIS until Assad renewed his offensive).  That might have have taken the wind out of ISIS before the ship sailed.

Not clear exactly what the US would be striking or where or when.  Nor is the geography straightforward.

Also don't think it is panic time yet.  It is one thing to force out some divided garrisons far from the Shia heartlands, but at this point expansion can only move either towards those heartlands or towards the Kurds and their autonomous militias. 

Thin end of the wedge?

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/u-s-sends-170-military-personnel-iraq-more-possible-n132676

QuoteU.S. Sends 170 Military Personnel to Iraq, With More Possible
By Jim Miklaszewski and M. Alex Johnson

The U.S. has sent 170 military personnel to Iraq to shore up security for Americans and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, defense officials said Monday — and a hundred more could be on the way.

President Barack Obama formally notified Congress of the assignment in a letter under the War Powers Act on Monday, which said "up to approximately 275" personnel were being reassigned, noting specifically that they are "equipped for combat."

Defense officials confirmed Monday that 170 military personnel were already in place, having moved into the country sometime over the weekend. They said Obama pegged the number at 275 to give himself a "little extra headroom" in case he needs to send reinforcements.

Obama said last week that "I don't rule anything out" as Iraq has spiraled out of control amid Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence in recent days. At the same time, he insisted that the U.S. wouldn't send ground troops.

And while the 170 personnel are equipped for combat, the White House said they're in Iraq only to "provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad," and to help the State Department move some embassy staff to U.S. consulates elsewhere in the country.

Security and protection are the same reasons U.S. officials have given for sending several naval ships to the Persian Gulf, although a senior defense official told NBC News: "If the president orders airstrikes, we have plenty of firepower in the Gulf."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said through a spokesman that he supported Obama's decision, but he called on the president to come up with a "comprehensive strategy to protect America's national security interests in Iraq."

"Too many Americans sacrificed too much to allow Iraq to slip back into chaos," Boehner said.

He seems to be fucking up a lot lately.

Can't really say. He has much more info than we do.

I can't think of anyway to see the Syrian thing other then a fuck up.

Quote from: Razgovory on June 17, 2014, 01:32:20 PM
He seems to be fucking up a lot lately.

Or you just started to notice.  :P

Quote from: Razgovory on June 17, 2014, 03:18:48 PM
I can't think of anyway to see the Syrian thing other then a fuck up.

You can not care.

Quote from: Razgovory on June 17, 2014, 03:18:48 PM
I can't think of anyway to see the Syrian thing other then a fuck up.

That's not "lately".