This whole ISIS thing...

[Satan]

So, I've been keeping up on this whole ordeal and beheadings and shit. I've seen the videos, and tonight I listened to Obamas address to then nation. He says we're not sending combat troops into the areas, but will "degrade and ultimately destroy."

 

I've seen the ISIS flag in front of the White House, and in other US cities via photo on the web.

 

What do you guys you guys and gals think? Discuss.

[Guest]

Why would you watch those videos?

[abovetheearth]

The ISIS flag was in front of the whitehouse?

These guys fight women and children. Men who submit too. They wear Adidas track suits and shoot inaccurate (from far) old ass AK's. They shoot rockets from the beds of 1983 Toyota trucks. They are a threat to that region. Only. I think the Arab nation are funding them but it's open space there. Drone em and send them to their paradise.

[Guest]

The ISIS flag was in front of the whitehouse?

 

Here's the story: http://abcnews.go.com/US/secret-service-aware-apparent-isis-flag-photo-front/story?id=24985241

[kgry]

I think there will be boots on the ground, Obama will never admit to it. You rarely hear about special ops unless the mission was a success. And you need to at least gather some intelligence on the ground to support air strikes. That said, America, fuck yeah. The chance of ISIS striking the US is low but I feel for the families of these guys who were beheaded. It's disgusting. Bomb them the hell off the planet. This thing seems minor compared to what Russia is doing. Cold War part 2.

[dmac8706]

there are already boots on ground over there. Im over in afghan right now and and on my way over here we met up with some dudes that were on there way there as of a few months ago. its going to be a never ending ordeal. but as far and things popping off in the states isn't going to happen. they are focusing on air attacks and it won't be another iraq war. but the military has small units in several countries that people don't hear about. 

[FangsAnalSatan]

Weren't 4 high ranking ISIS membered killed in a bombing that happened last Friday?

[kk-downing]

Bring back Arab Nationalism. 

[BuzzersonKillwell]

We'll look to avoid any large-scale invasion in favor of arming local factions whose interests align with ours. As they gain a foothold in the region they'll splinter due to competing interests and ideologies and a new radical faction will emerge. Since they'll be pretty heavily armed with all the weapons we sent over there to help secure the region last time around we'll see the need to intervene again. 

 

The process will begin anew. It's the circle of democracy. Hakuna Matata. 

 

There is a chance the new radical faction won't be a threat to our interests and they'll just slaughter each other and we can sort of wash our hands of it. Kind of like we did with Sudan. 

[atticus]

Speaking of Afghanistan, the fact that the US will be training and equipping regional forces to fight ISIS kind of makes me scratch my head.

[HybridxReality]

I'm still trying to piece together what's happening in Gaza.

[nancy_raygun]

I'm still trying to piece together what's happening in Gaza.

 

That's what I was thinking reading through this thread.  After al-Queda and trying to figure out the Palestine-Israel thing, I'm just burned out middle eastern conflict.  That's probably not a great thing to say.

[aflycon]

I'm still trying to piece together what's happening in Gaza.

Colonialist Israel is killing Palestinian civilians for shits and giggles because they can act with impunity and the unwavering support of the US and UN.

Hamas (the dominant political faction in the Gaza Strip, I think they're associated with the PLO and therefore a terrorist group) are responding by launching un-aimed or poorly-aimed missiles toward Israel, occasionally killing a civilian or damaging structures.

This, of course, is reason enough for Israel to continue firebombing the Strip and wiping out the population, because they have "ancestral claims" to the land they were placed in less than 70 years ago.

You won't see any Western nations doing anything to stop this, but tensions are (as ever) boiling in the states around Israel and Palestine.

[TheGhostOfRandySavage]

Colonialist Israel is killing Palestinian civilians for shits and giggles because they can act with impunity and the unwavering support of the US and UN.

Hamas (the dominant political faction in the Gaza Strip, I think they're associated with the PLO and therefore a terrorist group) are responding by launching un-aimed or poorly-aimed missiles toward Israel, occasionally killing a civilian or damaging structures.

This, of course, is reason enough for Israel to continue firebombing the Strip and wiping out the population, because they have "ancestral claims" to the land they were placed in less than 70 years ago.

You won't see any Western nations doing anything to stop this, but tensions are (as ever) boiling in the states around Israel and Palestine.

That's a pretty good and accurate summation, actually.

[noalarmplanet]

What I want to know is why Archer would do this sort of thing? 

 

[thebiglebowski]

Colonialist Israel is killing Palestinian civilians for shits and giggles because they can act with impunity and the unwavering support of the US and UN.

 

The state department has become increasingly critical with Israel. What do you want us to do about it? It's semi-justified military action given that the has been firing missiles on them for years. The fact that they are accurate or not is fairly irrelevant - would you sleep well at night if someone was firing missiles into your city but they were inaccurate? No way.

 

It doesn't fit the pattern of something that we would use anything more than political measures against.

[thebiglebowski]

I think there will be boots on the ground, Obama will never admit to it. You rarely hear about special ops unless the mission was a success. And you need to at least gather some intelligence on the ground to support air strikes. That said, America, fuck yeah. The chance of ISIS striking the US is low but I feel for the families of these guys who were beheaded. It's disgusting. Bomb them the hell off the planet. This thing seems minor compared to what Russia is doing. Cold War part 2.

 

More likely night raids than intelligence gathering. There is a netflix doc on Special Ops called "Dirty Wars." Very, very critical of the practice but it's pretty much about how they have crossed all kinds of borders (Qatar, Yemen, Pakistan, etc) conducting them.

[aflycon]

The state department has become increasingly critical with Israel. What do you want us to do about it? It's semi-justified military action given that the has been firing missiles on them for years. The fact that they are accurate or not is fairly irrelevant - would you sleep well at night if someone was firing missiles into your city but they were inaccurate? No way.

 

It doesn't fit the pattern of something that we would use anything more than political measures against.

 

I didn't mean to imply that Hamas was innocent in all of this, just that the civilians of Gaza are, and that the military response from Israel is vastly disproportionate to the provocation - and whether it is even provocation is debatable - from Hamas. The IDF deliberately targets schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, etc. to kill as many civilians as possible. 

 

I definitely do not agree with the ideology of Hamas or even necessarily support the PLO as a whole. But I do support the notion that Palestine - and, by extension, the Gaza Strip - is a sovereign nation and deserves to exist peacefully alongside Israel and the other Middle Eastern states. They've been there a hell of a longer time than the Israelis have. 

[thebiglebowski]

I didn't mean to imply that Hamas was innocent in all of this, just that the civilians of Gaza are, and that the military response from Israel is vastly disproportionate to the provocation - and whether it is even provocation is debatable - from Hamas. The IDF deliberately targets schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, etc. to kill as many civilians as possible. 

 

I definitely do not agree with the ideology of Hamas or even necessarily support the PLO as a whole. But I do support the notion that Palestine - and, by extension, the Gaza Strip - is a sovereign nation and deserves to exist peacefully alongside Israel and the other Middle Eastern states. They've been there a hell of a longer time than the Israelis have. 

 

Again you step over the line of rationality in suggesting that they try to kill as many civilians as possible. Hamas is well known to hide fighters and rockets inside schools and UN safe zones in order to prevent retaliation from Israel. There's nothing deliberate about it. Again I'd ask if someone was shooting rockets at you from inside a school, what would you do? You might choose to shoot back, you might choose not. It's not an easy situation to deal with, though. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as you make it out to seem.

 

You have soldiers fighting terrorists (which is really just a matter of perspective in how they differ) in areas inhabited by civilians. It's gonna go bad. I think both sides are equally to blame. If you think Israel's actions are worse and they should be the first ones to back off, fine, I can understand that. Comparing the act of provocation to the military response makes no sense to me. Should Israel just start waiting for a missile to fly and then launch an equally shitty missile back into Gaza as a response and see what it hits? That would definitely be a proportionate response.

[aflycon]

Again you step over the line of rationality in suggesting that they try to kill as many civilians as possible. Hamas is well known to hide fighters and rockets inside schools and UN safe zones in order to prevent retaliation from Israel. There's nothing deliberate about it. Again I'd ask if someone was shooting rockets at you from inside a school, what would you do? You might choose to shoot back, you might choose not. It's not an easy situation to deal with, though. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as you make it out to seem.

 

I've never heard of Hamas hiding rockets or fighters inside schools, but I'll take your word for it - it doesn't seem like a stretch to me. I'll admit that I made it out to be more cut-and-dry than it is, because with friends who are from the region, the issue as a whole just makes me very angry. Still, I don't think I can excuse Israel bombing schools, much less hospitals; it's as if they have absolutely no regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.

 

It's certainly true that tensions between Gaza and Israel have been high for quite some time, but that doesn't mean that Israel's response should be to absolutely annihilate Gaza. Given how many times they've violated ceasefires and treaties since this most recent conflict began, and that they've killed thousands of civilians in only a few months while suffering losses that are negligible in comparison, I would go so far as to say that the IDF's goal is not to end conflict with the Gaza Strip, but simply to end the Gaza Strip.

 

You have soldiers fighting terrorists (which is really just a matter of perspective in how they differ) in areas inhabited by civilians. It's gonna go bad. I think both sides are equally to blame. If you think Israel's actions are worse and they should be the first ones to back off, fine, I can understand that. Comparing the act of provocation to the military response makes no sense to me. Should Israel just start waiting for a missile to fly and then launch an equally shitty missile back into Gaza as a response and see what it hits? That would definitely be a proportionate response.

That's not what I meant. If I recall correctly, this most recent conflict began when three Israeli teenagers were murdered - Hamas operatives were suspected, but never proven to have been involved - and Israeli civilians responded by kidnapping a Palestinian boy and burning him alive. I don't want to use the term "overreaction" since we're talking about human lives here, but I think that is a prime example of how Israel responds to issues like these. It's brutal, and it's goddamn inappropriate. 

 

Now, I'm not saying that Israel should play tit-for-tat and respond with exactly as many missiles, aimed the same way as Hamas. What I am saying is that it wouldn't hurt to dial back the bombings, maybe try to respect a ceasefire for more than a day, and perhaps send in soldiers on the ground if they're so concerned about Hamas operatives; we all know they've got the money to fund an actual infantry assault. 

[thebiglebowski]

Ok nothing I really disagree with terribly in that one.

 

I think the kidnapping was just a spark but the gasoline was 4k rockets fired into Israel since 2005. That's what this is really about.

 

The idea of "leave the artillery at home" is just not practical or realistic. No country is going to put their own soldiers life in much, much greater risk to achieve a mission to avoid collateral damage on the other side. If you could get people to respect the lives of other humans enough for that to happen, there wouldn't be a reason to go to war in the first place. I also think that could potentially be received far worse by Palestine and the rest of the world. An invasion that is heavy on the troops might be interpreted as an occupation, which it seems fairly clear that was not Israel's goal, given that the offensive is pretty much completed (at least it appears to be).

 

Sooo, ISIS?

[partysmasher]

This IS stuff is terrible, i think initially the US etc were arming/lifting sanctions on rebel groups and some that had been considered low-threat terrorist groups who were effectively fighting IS as they advanced through Iraq but i believe that was in july.  Sooner or later there will be coalition troops in there i'm sure, they wont have much choice i don't think. 

 

The beheadings are shocking and reason in itself to go in, but it shouldn't be forgotten that this group are carrying out mass killings (they beheaded dozens of Iraqi soldiers upon capturing their base and displayed their heads in the neighbouring town) and ethnic cleansing routinely for months now, i personally think this warrants whatever military action is necessary to put an end to it. But the repercussions of that do scare me, especially having been about for the bombings in London.

[thebiglebowski]

 i personally think this warrants whatever military action is necessary to put an end to it. But the repercussions of that do scare me, especially having been about for the bombings in London.

 

I don't think the reason that a full military engagement hasn't begun isn't that it's warranted or fear of repercussions but:

 

1) Fighting IS is essentially helping Assad in Syria, which is somewhat intertwined with how we deal with Russia and Iran politically. Need to manage carefully.

 

and

 

2) Money. We have put so much effort in our own government over the last 3 or so years to curb spending and reduce our deficit (a gigantic portion of which was funding 2 drawn out wars). No one wants another one. The American people are fairly sick of them and it has to be considered a last resort. NATO action is essentially US action, as we foot most of the bill for everything. We can't fight wars until they bankrupt us.

 

[kylekrische]

"bomb them the hell off the planet" 

 

It's still actually shocking to me to see the ignorance in your country. 

 

This was a group equipped and trained by the US during other conflicts they had no place in. These are problems created by the US. Your irrational fear of being attacked in the US by ISIS is also created by the US. Slaughter a country and then act surprised when everyone there fucking despises you. The beheadings are brutal and evil in it's purest form, yes. But it doesn't take much searching to have your browser full of some of the most horrific shit you've ever seen carried out by American/British/Polish military there. 

[Requiescat]

"bomb them the hell off the planet" 

 

It's still actually shocking to me to see the ignorance in your country. 

 

AMEN to that. As an American myself, I couldn't agree more. We're a nation full of naive and ill-informed people making decisions like we actually have a real grasp on the world and it's individual and often unique problems. The Middle East is a perfect example of that. We're a nation barely a few hundred years old attempting to fix problems that have existed for thousands of years. Often, they're well beyond our scope and actual understanding. It's sad and disheartening. Honestly, it scares me the type of knee jerk reactions most Americans have for just about any situation. I am not, nor have I really ever been, proud to be American because of this simple fact. We simply, often, have no idea what we're doing or talking about.

 

Americans do not seem to realize that often all we do is fan the flames than actually solve problems. We need to be extremely careful how our actions are perceived internationally because we WILL see the repercussions of it as history has proven all too often.

 

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this opinion but I stand firm by my statements. We need to be very careful else we risk complicating already complex issues. That almost always never ends well. Again, history has proven that all too well.

 

I'll admit I remember the morning of 9/11 quite well and my reaction to it. My dad woke me up and said, and I quote, "We're at war" and I walked out of my room to see the towers in flames. My first reaction and comment was, "Well, it's about time. I'm not surprised." not because I was happy we were attacked but because, even at age 16 or 17, I knew our foreign policy was begging a situation like this to happen and, of course, it eventually did. It was even more upsetting to see the world rally behind us only to have us do everything in our power to get them to disagree with our response. Scary for sure.

 

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I know this is an explosive issue (no pun intended) but I figured I'd share my thoughts. I don't expect you all to agree. Hopefully, we will mature and learn to handle ourselves in the international community a little better than we have in my lifetime so far. Time will tell.