The Middle East Crisis, Time For Boots on the Ground ?

[Grallon]

Hear, hear!

Oh look - Carnival dwarves and empty shells unite!  An outing for the entire family.



G.

[garbon]

Hear, hear!

Oh look - Carnival dwarves and empty shells unite!  An outing for the entire family.



G.

Sticks and stones, darling, sticks and stones.

[Neil]

I don't think that it's a good idea.  Barring the national will to recolonize, the West is far more the problem in the Middle East than the solution.

[Grey Fox]

Lets protect the Kurds and the other weird religious people of the region. The muslisms can kill themselves without our help.

[Camerus]

Hell no.  I couldn't think of a stupider response to the ISIS situation as of now.

[CountDeMoney]

I voted yes.  If you're going to kill shit, kill it straight up.   But if you go there, fuck all that "hearts and minds" bullshit, improving infrastructure and teaching those tribal moon worshipers how a bill becomes a law, it's all just a waste of time, money and effort with those filthy monkeys, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Go there, kill them all, go home.

[Admiral Yi]

No.  But if western countries were willing to supply troops proportional to population and GDP I would be willing to reconsider.

[Berkut]

I am starting to think that we are playing to ISIS tune, rather than the other way around.

They *want* us to take more active action against them - that is the only purpose for this calculated provocation.

And I think them wanting us to do it is a pretty good reason to think long and hard about doing so.

Who is supporting ISIS? Where are they getting their money, recruits, weapons?

[Eddie Teach]

Looking like a FOOL with your boots on the ground.

[The Brain]

Why boots on the ground? We (by which I mean you) already did that for a number of years and it worked out so-so.

[Viking]

The religion is the root cause of this. Shit like this isn't happening in non-Islamic shit holes. The moderates are part of the problem since they accept the same twisted basic tenants of the religion they just choose to ignore some of the specifics. Genocide will work, but that seems to be taking "the ends justify the means" a few steps too far.

You don't need a real army to beat IS on the ground. You only need to provide specialist support to local forces. Please do remember that when the whole thing is over then the local forces will need to survive on minimal help after "we" leave. If they can't win with "our" support they cannot survive on their own.

What I am in favor is giving up on this democratization process while there is no demand for democracy.

[Martinus]

No blood for oil! Draft war mongers! 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Too risky.  The Muslim world is turning against ISIS.  The only way for them to recover their prestige and popularity would be for them to be fightng the evil yanqui pigdogs and kill them every once in a while.  That is why they are grabbing every American they can get their hands on and cutting his head off.  Best to fight them by proxy on the ground.

as long as islamic countries and peoples generally continue to believe that their religion should rule the world and sharia (and assorted nonsense) should be the basis of jurisprudence, as long as they believe that their 'prophet' (a massmurderer and slaver) is the perfect human everyone should emulate, it's no use trying to clean up ISIS. ISIS are just most 'honest' about their endgoal, all the rest is lesser gradations of the same evil.

Ideally the region and the religion see the light before it comes to Grallon's horror-scenario.

in the mean time it might be necessary for the West to establish to the muslims the very simple fact that our safety is worth a few million of their lives. A balance of terror basically, abhorrent as it is. So it'll come down to having the Kurds doing the dirty work (and this time let them have their country)

And indeed an end to muslim migration to the West except in very very extraordinary circumstances.

[Grinning_Colossus]

No. The Middle Eastern states will take care of it themselves, and the reaction to Islamists committing atrocities against normal Muslims will be good for the political discourse in that part of the world.

[CountDeMoney]

I am starting to think that we are playing to ISIS tune, rather than the other way around.

They *want* us to take more active action against them - that is the only purpose for this calculated provocation.

And I think them wanting us to do it is a pretty good reason to think long and hard about doing so.

These guys always say that, and we always wind up killing them.  They always lose the short game.  If martyrdom is their primary goal, let's oblige them.

Who is supporting ISIS? Where are they getting their money, recruits, weapons?

As far as money goes, aside from selling oil at rock-bottom prices, they have very wealthy patrons in our friends in the Gulf:  Qatar, the UAE and to a lesser extent, SA. 

So, when people bitch about the Europeans paying ransoms for hostages as funding ISIS, maybe they should think first about what exactly our government is doing to play its part of the sucker with our bestest buddies in the Gulf.  With friends like these, who needs friends.