Iraq: What to do?

[U2DMfan]

Originally Posted by Vincent Vega

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:

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...

"The West" (let's be real, in these contexts that's just a euphemism for U.S. and U.K.) is damned if we do and damned if we don't. Of course that's been true for a long time.

[AEON]

"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."

Inside the mind of an ISIS fighter - CNN.com

"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."

[AEON]

I wonder what Pres. Obama's plan will be...

[Headache in a Suitcase]

It was a mistake to go there. It was a mistake to leave without a residual force. Hopefully we can stop making more mistakes going forward.

I'm not holding my breath.

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[Babydoll]

Originally Posted by U2DMfan

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.

[U2DMfan]

Originally Posted by Babydoll

Their world? As far as I know we all live in the same world.

Ok.

[Irvine511]

i'm not sure that we do.

i see no good coming from any of this.

we should never have been there in the first place. residual force? for how long? indefinite occupation? this isn't South Korea or Germany or Japan.

these problems can only be solved by the people living there themselves. preventing a slaughter and giving aid is one thing. intervention is something else. invasion and occupation is something else as well.

i have no answers. just gloom.

[anitram]

We live on the same planet, but we don't all live in the same world.

It is also quite fair to question WHY we should be tasked with the primary responsibility of rectifying this.

ISIS is a direct threat to all of the Gulf, Iran, etc. Great, let them deal with it and contain this garbage in their own backyards.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

The West will be fighting this war against Islamic extremism for at least as long as the Cold War, and probably longer.

Leaving the region alone isn't going to change anything. They'll find us. It's an ideology bent on destroying the west and dominating the world. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

The change does have to come from within, but that change isn't happening any time soon.

This is our reality for at least another generation.

[anitram]

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?

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally Posted by anitram

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?

If we don't buy their oil, China and Russia will. The funds will still be there.

Their fight is an ideological fight... they won't stop. Not in this generation.

[BEAL]

It really doesn't seem like there's an option.

Do nothing and region becomes worse.

Strategic bombing and can isolate some of the flames. At same time create more hate towards the West.

I don't know how you change a culture or if you can. I feel really bad for the innocents, those that don't believe the extreme ideology of Islam and just want to live their lives.

It would take a massive effort from all nations to go in and stabilize and then rebuild. Many lives would be lost, both peace keeping and locals...but until those who just want to destroy are wiped out, I don't see how things can change.




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[digitize]

Originally Posted by anitram

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?

The justification in the minds of a lot of people is that the Islamic State threatens to turn Iraq and Syria into something resembling the Taliban's Afghanistan of the 1990s: a place of abject misery with a government perfectly happy to allow preparations for another 9/11 to occur under its nose.

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.


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[AEON]

Originally Posted by digitize

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.

[Kieran McConville]

What, all of them? That's ahistorical nonsense.

[Vlad n U 2]

There is no them, only us.

[digitize]

Originally Posted by AEON

It doesn't matter if we meddle or not - they will hate us.

I'm not so sure about that, for two reasons.

First, much of the rhetoric against the West from both the Islamic State and al Qaeda directly refers to its meddling, including its post-World War I appointment of puppet rulers, its two invasions of Iraq, its stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and its support for Israel, which is effectively a Western colony.

Second, and more importantly, Western meddling has arguably caused a lot of misery in the region, especially in the form of poverty. This basically comes from the handling of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire; the Treaty of Sèvres drew Africa-style idiotic borders in the Middle East, and the leaders that tended to thrive were first puppets of the West and then. Then, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt turned to semi-secular Arab nationalist dictators, while Iran turned to a strict version of Shia Islam. Under neither Western puppet not Arab nationalist dictator were economies in very good shape to prosper, and misery ensued. Poverty brings terrorism and radicalizes people. While there are probably other causes to Middle Eastern poverty than Western meddling, it is at least arguably a cause. This cause fuels the sort of misery and lack of opportunity that drives young men to freedom-fighting/terrorism.

Had states been allowed to form themselves after the First World War, I'm not sure that 9/11 would have ever happened.


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[digitize]

And into Syria we go.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29321136


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[Moser]

Sometimes you have to put the rabid dog down yourself before it hurts more people.

[The Sad Punk]

Until the rabid dog comes back to life and becomes a terrifying zombie dog.