Vincent Vega
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
As the people of Kafranbel, a town in Syria that for the past three years has become known the world over for producing public messages and cartoons against Assad, already warned in February 2012:
As the people of Kafranbel, a town in Syria that for the past three years has become known the world over for producing public messages and cartoons against Assad, already warned in February 2012:
I think the concern in Syria is that it almost seems like a choice between ISIS (or something like them) and Assad.
Which one is worse?
As the people of Kafranbel, a town in Syria that for the past three years has become known the world over for producing public messages and cartoons against Assad, already warned in February 2012
OK, but at the same time, what is it that "we"/the west should be doing? Invading country after country? Arming conflicts we don't understand?
The Iraq was was a fuck up of immense magnitude as many of us here predicted but it's also become painfully obvious that we have no idea who is who in the Middle East.
This is absolutely correct. The place cannot be understood in Western terms.
There's not much "we" can do.
I'm glad Obama doesn't yet have a strategy. It means he's actually thinking about it.
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I think the concern in Syria is that it almost seems like a choice between ISIS (or something like them) and Assad.
Which one is worse?
OK, but at the same time, what is it that "we"/the west should be doing? Invading country after country? Arming conflicts we don't understand?
The Iraq was was a fuck up of immense magnitude as many of us here predicted but it's also become painfully obvious that we have no idea who is who in the Middle East.
I wish I could give him that much credit. He comes across as a clueless buffoon.
If the situation is complex - explain it. A leader should never look or admit to being clueless.
If the situation is complex - explain it.
A leader should never look or admit to being clueless.
He's starting to get flack on both sides now.This however, I think entirely depends on your media sources.
The left wing did the same to Bush. I'm not saying they should - but both "sides" play this silly game.I know there are plenty of right wing sources that delight in portraying him as a clueless buffoon because it's a cheap and easy shot to take, and those same media sources likely wouldn't be swayed at all by Obama explaining his position in a speech like mentioned above.
Anyone interested in an objective view of the situation surely realizes that these are complex problems that don't have an immediate quick fix that can be easily implemented without significant downsides. Treading carefully, while not as gutturally satisfying as sending in the armed forces to teach the bad guys a lesson once and for all, is the more prudent choice, especially given our history of military involvement in the region.
As the people of Kafranbel, a town in Syria that for the past three years has become known the world over for producing public messages and cartoons against Assad, already warned in February 2012:
"The main and principal goal of the Islamic State that they tell their new members is to establish an Islamic state that will encompass the Arab world," the man said in Turkey. "And after that, we go to other countries."
"Philosophy is prohibited; they canceled it as a kind of blasphemy," he said. "Many subjects have been canceled, like music and even sometimes sports. All of them have been canceled from the school curriculum."
So intervention in their part of the world creates the "Bin Ladens" originally and lack of intervention in their world will create more of them.
Their world? As far as I know we all live in the same world.
I don't think the suggestion is to leave them alone so much as to assist more strategically. I don't see why an American soldier should be dying in some shithole in Iraq when it's the surrounding Arabs that are terrified of ISIS. Let them put up or shut up. The West can help indirectly, tactically, through the use of air power or drones, etc.
Saudi Arabia has essentially used the US as its little proxy army and is risking nothing. Why should anyone in the west sit back and watch this freeloading continue unabated?
How much of it is driven by our need for oil?
I don't think the suggestion is to leave them alone so much as to assist more strategically. I don't see why an American soldier should be dying in some shithole in Iraq when it's the surrounding Arabs that are terrified of ISIS. Let them put up or shut up. The West can help indirectly, tactically, through the use of air power or drones, etc.
Saudi Arabia has essentially used the US as its little proxy army and is risking nothing. Why should anyone in the west sit back and watch this freeloading continue unabated?
How much of it is driven by our need for oil?
It doesn't matter if we meddle or not - they will hate us.That said, I'm not sure if radical Islam would be a problem at all had the West not been meddling in the Middle East since the Crimean War or so.
It doesn't matter if we meddle or not - they will hate us.