ISIS Boasts Air Strikes are not Effective

Thoreau72 · Oct 16, 2014

Conservative said:
The results and results matter. You wage a war to win it, not to just keep the status quo. There isn't a golf course or fund raiser that he doesn't like and therein lies part of the problem. He lacks leadership skills and even after 6 years experience to handle the job

Waging a war to win it is very old-fashioned, circa 1945, back when US wars were declared in accordance with the requirements of the US Constitution.

Since about the Vietnam era, wars are waged to benefit what Ike called the Military Industrial Complex.

As U2 put it so well, gold is the reason for the wars we wage. Obama does very much lack leadership skills, but that is really beside the point. Barack does not rock the boat--he does as he is told, whether the mission is military or simply an assault on the principles of the document he is sworn to uphold.

Capster78 · Oct 17, 2014

Ahlevah said:
So I'm an "anti-war crazy" because I question whether the sacrifice of so many Americans was worth the price? I "stand on the bodies of those who fought in those wars and pretend to speak for them"? I'm standing on one set of bodies--those in Vietnam--and questioning whether their sacrifice was worth it, but I don't claim to speak for them. Neither should anyone else, because I imagine more than a few of the people who died there were draftees who just wanted to get back home alive and cursed that war and Lyndon Johnson, too. I'm also standing on the bodies of all the Vietnamese civilians we killed and questioning whether their deaths were worth it as well.

Then don't base your arguments against it on body count. Make an actual argument giving reasons why it was a bad idea instead of repeating the same rhetorical arguments many others have made. Why not just cut and paste someone elses anti-war argument and post it? Your argument brings no new perspective to any conflicts we have been in at all. An argument that can be made about all the wars we have been involved in, is no argument at all. Simply because none of them are even remotely similar to each other. The only similarity is that people have died in all of them. And to make an argument based on that is just ignorant and not very interesting.

And what's to research? We lost--period. I've read all of the arguments about why we did what we did, going back to George Kennan's "containment" argument to Eisenhower's "domino theory." Where it concerns Vietnam, we didn't contain anything and the domino fell almost as if on cue, so the end result was a lot of people--Americans and Vietnamese--died for nothing. At least, that's what my gut tells me. What does your research say?

My research sais that ever since the liberals and feminists took over the country, we have lost every war. Not because we did not have the capability to win, or were fighting a worthy cause, but because the rhetorical, nonsensical, feel goodery bullcrap they spewed caused us loose every war since WW2. If the Germans knew it would be this easy to win, they would have tried it.

Ahlevah · Oct 18, 2014

Capster78 said:
Then don't base your arguments against it on body count. Make an actual argument giving reasons why it was a bad idea instead of repeating the same rhetorical arguments many others have made.

You mean make an actual argument backed by research such as "since liberals and feminists took over the country we can't win a war"? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Richard Nixon running the country when the U.S. negotiated an end to its participation in the Vietnam War?

Anyway, weighing the cost of a war to determine whether it was "worth it" is a legitimate exercise. Part of that cost, even if you don't like it because others have said it before I did, is the cost in lives. My preference would have been to use air power to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age. There would have been no buffer zones or restrictions; if an anti-aircraft battery or airfield were near an inhabited area it would have been blown to bits--no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Since we didn't do that, we lost a lot of people needlessly, especially when placed in context of our original aim (limit communist expansion in Southeast Asia) compared with the result (our failure to limit communist expansion in Southeast Asia).

So the policy wonks who see U.S. ground troops as the solution to every problem, including increasingly sectarian civil wars in Syria and Iraq, are back again. They're nuts. I'm all for hitting ISIS, but keep it confined to the air and training others with a vested interest in the outcome to do the fighting.

matchlight · Oct 18, 2014

Ahlevah said:
You mean make an actual argument backed by research such as "since liberals and feminists took over the country we can't win a war"? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Richard Nixon running the country when the U.S. negotiated an end to its participation in the Vietnam War?

Anyway, weighing the cost of a war to determine whether it was "worth it" is a legitimate exercise. Part of that cost, even if you don't like it because others have said it before I did, is the cost in lives. My preference would have been to use air power to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age. There would have been no buffer zones or restrictions; if an anti-aircraft battery or airfield were near an inhabited area it would have been blown to bits--no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Since we didn't do that, we lost a lot of people needlessly, especially when placed in context of our original aim (limit communist expansion in Southeast Asia) compared with the result (our failure to limit communist expansion in Southeast Asia).

So the policy wonks who see U.S. ground troops as the solution to every problem, including increasingly sectarian civil wars in Syria and Iraq, are back again. They're nuts. I'm all for hitting ISIS, but keep it confined to the air and training others with a vested interest in the outcome to do the fighting.

I doubt that approach will work. The only way to defeat these people, unfortunately, is probably with a powerful U.S. force on the ground, backed by aircraft. Because I doubt we will see that, I doubt these people will be defeated. And if they survive, I think it's likely they will kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of American civilians in attacks in this country.

Ahlevah · Oct 18, 2014

matchlight said:
I doubt that approach will work. The only way to defeat these people, unfortunately, is probably with a powerful U.S. force on the ground, backed by aircraft. Because I doubt we will see that, I doubt these people will be defeated. And if they survive, I think it's likely they will kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of American civilians in attacks in this country.

I don't see ISIS surviving in the long run. They're just too brutal and they've made too many enemies. Besides, they lack air power, are landlocked, and don't have ready access to supplies. They basically depend on smuggling and capturing weapons. Once the weapons and munitions they've looted are spent who's going to supply them effectively?

SheWolf · Oct 19, 2014

If air strikes were impairing ISIS in any way, do you think they would admit it? These people are liars and psychopaths. I don't about anything they have to say, and we shouldn't take them or their statements seriously.

This is the epitome of non-news news story.

Cryptic said:
Here is an ISIS fighter boasting that the air strikes are not militarily effective.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/29/world/meast/isis-fighter-and-defector-interviews/index.

Sadly, he is probably right. ISIS is an army of militiamen operating is relatively small groups whose main armoured vehicles are pick up trucks turned into Mad Max style "technicals". Most supplies- and they dont need alot, are requisitioned from the locals (voluntarily, forcibly or coerced) and transported in individual civilian trucks. Likewise, there are not alot of easily demarcated front lines in the fighting.

As the similarily orgainized Serbs demonstrated in Kosovo, these types of forces mix in with civilians and can be very difficult to identify and stop. Then factor in that ISIS includes members who are veterans of both Iraq and Afghan conflicts who probably have a long list produced list of "dos and donts" produced by Darwinism when it comes to avoiding precision airstrikes.

In short, my guess is that effective air strikes need US spotters on the ground.

BringIt · Oct 19, 2014

iguanaman said:
Could this mean you will be treating our next President with respect?

Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, respect must be earned.

Grant · Oct 19, 2014

SheWolf said:
If air strikes were impairing ISIS in any way, do you think they would admit it? These people are liars and psychopaths. I don't about anything they have to say, and we shouldn't take them or their statements seriously.

This is the epitome of non-news news story.

The US had complete control over a "stable" Iraq until Obama pulled the troops just three years ago and now Baghdad, and thus the entire country with all its oil reserves, is about to fall. This is non-news??? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/w...ear-baghdad-as-iraqi-troops-stumble.html?_r=0

SheWolf · Oct 19, 2014

Grant said:
The US had complete control over a "stable" Iraq until Obama pulled the troops just three years ago and now Baghdad, and thus the entire country with all its oil reserves, is about to fall. This is non-news??? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/w...ear-baghdad-as-iraqi-troops-stumble.html?_r=0

We shouldn't have gone to Iraq to begin with. The cost of the war wasn't worth it.

Grant · Oct 20, 2014

SheWolf said:
We shouldn't have gone to Iraq to begin with. The cost of the war wasn't worth it.

It seems then that you are backing down then from your foolish 'non news story' and are taking an even more ridiculous tack.

The fact is that Iraq was 'stable', that people were voting in elections, there were just 55 deaths in Iraq the year of Obama's retreat and few of them were terror related. The rape rooms were demolished, the genocides stopped, no more mass graves, the burning of oil wells ceased, as well as the incredible damage to the ecology, and so on.

Now, after all those gains, and having a "stable" Iraq, which was the "greatest achievement" of the Obama administration, you are backtracking completely to "the first place"?

Do you genuinely not understand the daily headlines and what is happening now, today, in that part of the world and the carnage being waged?

ISIS Boasts Air Strikes are not Effective

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