Link: ISIS - I don't want to put the subject in the title...
- Thread starter TIDE-HSV
- Start date
I'm with ya there brother. I'd be knocking over the camera, kicking for terrorist junk, and running zig zag through the sand.
One reason I have heard proposed is that the execution is rehearsed. So the terrorists take the prisoner, put them in front of a camera, and make them read the stupid index cards. When the prisoner refuses, they beat the tar out of them. When the prisoner finally just reads the cards, they pack up the camera and take him back, no beating. They do this a couple of times. Have him read the statement on his knees in front of the camera, then go back. They make a routine out of the video recording. Then one day, whack, they actually execute him.
Idk if this is what happens, but it seems plausible.
Agreed, to a point.
After the Kosovo campaign, I was more than a little impatient with the air power advocates asserting that air power alone got the Serbs to the table.
I thought that was just silly.
That said, it is the context in which air power is applied. Sending cruise missiles against a guy living in a cave is futile. (Unless the objectrive of sending cruise missiles against UBL was merely to get the words (Monica Lewinsky below the fold on the WaPo's front page, in which case air power worked like a charm)
Air power applied with ground power in some form is a lot more effective. Against UBL, there was absolutely no credible ground threat. In Kosovo, the UCK and a substantial US ground force along the Serb border in Macedonia (and about to cross that border into Kosovo) got the Serb leadership to agree to a NATO peacekeeping force.
In Afghanistan in 2001, air power plus the northern alliance and the increasing deployment of US ground forces got Pashtuns to abandon the Taliban. In Iraq, an impressive air campaign followed by a certain amount of US and Kurdish ground forces was quite successful.
The point is that air power plus a credible ground force complicates the opponent's calculations enough to be very successful. In Iraq today, I'm not sure if the Peshmerga and what remains of the Iraqi Army are credible enough, but I'd be willing to give them the air support.
I think your last sentence sums up what we have to do. If we go in again, unless we're going to form police forces for all the trouble spots in the world, everything will be the same within a year after we leave. I do think that the Sh'ia will be much more of an effective fighting force, if the Sunnis try to push south into traditional Sh'ia lands. I understand that the Sh'ia militias are actually taking the lead in battles involving both Iraqi regulars and them. I'll have to admit that I'm a bit of a skeptic about the claims of the military men about what they could have done if the reins had been taken off. That's been around since warfare began. And it wouldn't mattered at all in the long run. They will always revert to being who they were before we came...
Absolutely. Like the guy being restrained during or after a fist-fight yelling, "Let me at him."
I am pretty thoroughly convinced by Clausewitz's reasoning. Warfare is an inherently political activity. Nations engage in war for political purposes. Sometimes those political purposes are deadly serious (e.g. Carthage during the Second and Third Punic Wars; if you lose, your country ceases to exist) at other times, the political objectives are not so existential (Prussia seizing Silesia in the War of the Austrian Succession; if you lose, you don't get to seize the coveted province). I am willing to help, in a limited fashion, the Iraqis stop ISIL, but only so much (SF advisors, air support and small arms ammo; things we can turn off relatively quickly if the situation changes). If I was an Iraqi Shiite, having seen what ISIL does to folks who embrace a different brand of Islam than they do, there would be virtually no effort I would not be willing to expend. If I lose, I'm dead, and so is my family. Literally. They ought to be a lot more motivated than any American is.
Interesting interview on the radio with a Kurd. He said that they have received no arms at all from Baghdad, which fears a well-armed Kurdistan. In the past, we've been reluctant as have other countries, because we wanted them to have a unitary army, not two. He said their biggest need was for weapons which will destroy the heavy armored vehicles which the ISIS forces are using against us, which were the abandoned ones we gave the Iraqi army...
We have the dumbest foreign policy of any country on the planet and that goes back at least 20 years. We create so many of our own problems that it is almost unbelievable that it is by accident. If it by accident than I am scared by the level of incompetence in the upper levels of our military and government.
gmart, I agree and would add the media and the ridiculous quest to remain PC drives much of that stupidity. Will we learn before it is too late?
The reality might be that it is impossible to kill every one associated with the evil that we see from ISIS and other Islamist groups. We must be willing to try and not be shy about stating that if we decide to intervene or stay out of it.
The reality might be that it is impossible to kill every one associated with the evil that we see from ISIS and other Islamist groups. We must be willing to try and not be shy about stating that if we decide to intervene or stay out of it.
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