[bootlegga]

xerxes xerxes:

I disagree. What is the goal here? Get medieval on ISIS' ass? They already live in that era.

I think this brought on by hysteria from the two recent be-headings and by the usuall warmongering by the usual neo-con war pigs. This is exactly the kind of "dumb war" Obama said the US should avoid and yet here we are.

He might as well invoke the 25th amendment and make John McCain president. Because this is the kind of reckless, Ill-advised, BS war he would start because people like that can only feel good by sending other peoples children to die for no reason.

Like I said in the other thread, I don't think ISIS is a threat to the West. At worst, they're a regional nuisance and horrible to say the least for the people who have to deal with them. Let Iraq deal with them. Or let the Turks. Let some of the angriest people on earth (the Turks) go after ISIS. Ask the Aremnians what happens when Turkey really doesn't like you.

Groups like ISIS exist because of US interference and meddling be it real or imagined. Why give them more propaganda for recruitment?

ISIL isn't a threat to the West. But neither was Serbia or Indonesia or any other place we intervened to prevent genocide.

To me this has nothing to do with any perceived threat from ISIL - it has to do with the atrocities they are perpetrating on people inside their territory.

I don't know about you, but the failure of the West to intervene in places like Rwanda and Darfur still bothers me.

While I wouldn't want our troops on the ground, I have no problem providing air support for Arab troops to deal with ISIL, which is an almost existential threat for them and their regimes.

While it is often true that the pen is mightier than the sword, sometimes you deal with people who don't know how to write - that's when you have to use the sword to communicate with them.

[BartSimpson]

Canada is getting into Iraq now:

http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=884499

[andyt]

Good. Anything except putting combat troops on the ground has my support. The actual ground fighting is going to have to be done by the actors in the region, or they're not worth fighting for in the first place.

[Thanos]

Yeah, thanks Obama you wuss.



Adults vs children, and malicious children at that. Nothing more to it all anymore.

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

Yeah, thanks Obama you wuss.



Adults vs children, and malicious children at that. Nothing more to it all anymore.

It would be funny if it weren't so serious.

[Thanos]

It's always noteworthy when their own on-screen graphics don't match the line of domestic political bullshit that they're peddling. Some think-tank twat going on about how President Obama is the worst ever in the entire history of worst evers while their own computer department says otherwise.

I really don't know why I bother. I'm so deep-down sick of these mendacious and malicious shits that it really isn't fun anymore. When some stool-sample on that odious channel can look at the camera and seriously say that "Obama should call up Bush & Cheney for advice on how to win a war" and not be taken outside by the nearest sensible person to be flogged in the fucking street then maybe there isn't much point remaining at all in being sensible.

[N_Fiddledog]

The one I don't get is why is Obombya always looking for an excuse to get into Syria?

It's a mistake.

As he's talking about arming the Syrian rebels they are making pacts with ISIS. Yes some rebels are fighting still fighting ISIS. Others are making agreements with Apoo Pakr and the boys. How does Obama know who's going to get the American rocket launcher in Syria?

One almost has to revisit the conspiracy theories we hear from our "moderate" Muslim neighbors, like the one that says America created ISIS and continues to influence them. Or how about the one that says Obombya's Muslim Brotherhood advisers want him in Syria?

I don't necessarily believe those - not the first one anyway - but why is he always trying to sneak into Syria, anyway? Iraq sure lots of support for bomb dropping and arming the Kurds, but who's supporting this continuous need he exhibits to move into Syria?

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

I think Obama is doing the right thing. There's no way he can successfully use ground troops to reform Iraq in how the US wants it to be. But supporting the saner elements with airstrikes and arms seems like a better idea than just sitting back and hoping Isis doesn't win.

ISIS can't actually win much more. It can't take southern Iraq because that's Shiite and will be protected by Iran. Unless ISIS grows vastly more powerful it can't conquer the Kurds, but we definitely want to help the Kurds. Even in Lebanon ISIS will meet fierce resistance from Hezbollah and the Falangists. It was only successful in Syria because it fought the other rebels while those rebels were fighting Assad. In Iraq it didn't actually have to fight, the locals were with them.

The main danger is that ISIS is just allowed to consolidate its gains and really develop a functioning caliphate. Jordan and Syria have already bought oil from them. They might not expand much past current territory, but they can sure cause a lot of trouble in the region from that territory.

As for them coming over here, there's no move Obama can make to prevent that. If it looks like ISIS is being defeated in Iraq, they might come over here as a desperation move. If they are left alone in Iraq to consolidate their power, they might send terrorists over here to cause trouble. I don't see a move Obama can make to prevent that, except to be watchful at home.

But all in all, you go, Obama. And Canada should step up as well, with whatever little aid we can offer. No Canadians in ground combat missions either, but otherwise, you go Harper.

Excellent synopsis of the situation in my opinion, though I drew the opposite conclusion. I don't see the need for any intervention except unless theree is genocide happening.

[N_Fiddledog]

Why Syria?

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/10/6131247/obama-isis-syria

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-will-us ... ry-targets

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/s ... deter-isis

[martin14]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Excellent synopsis of the situation in my opinion, though I drew the opposite conclusion. I don't see the need for any intervention except unless theree is genocide happening.

I agree, but it is fun to watch Obama flopping around like a fish.

Dangerous, but fun.
Putin must be rubbing his hands with anticipation.

[Thanos]

By the rules of Bush/Cheney you can't merely fight the cancer in one place and let it metastasize elsewhere. ISIS came out of Syria and spread to Iraq, not the other way around, so chasing it out of Iraq to save that ridiculous government in Baghdad doesn't make much sense if it's once again left to it's own devices in Syria.

The more honest thing would be to acknowledge that this really isn't a threat to the United States at all and instead is merely another spasm of the eternal us-vs-them cycle of American domestic politics. But that would require a bit of honesty that the backbiting and backstabbing political radicals and propagandists of the moment just aren't capable of doing. The US government is being manipulated into a course of action by their disgusting media because the propaganda that's being used is simply too strong to oppose right now. Apparently stampeding permanently frightened bunnies really isn't all that difficult of a thing to accomplish.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

The more honest thing would be to acknowledge that this really isn't a threat to the United States at all and instead is merely another spasm of the eternal us-vs-them cycle of American domestic politics.

With a growing number of American and Canadian citizens fighting for ISIS and eventually coming back to our countries primed for jihad then I'd say that this is clearly a threat.

Or do you need to wait for the obligatory moslem massacre in Ottawa or Guelph before you'll see this as a threat?

[N_Fiddledog]

Thanos Thanos:

ISIS came out of Syria and spread to Iraq, not the other way around,

No. The organization began to form in Iraq as an Al Qaeda spin-off, eventually becoming AQI - Al Qaeda in Iraq. You can trace that name back to 2007 at least.

In 2010 Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi took over AQI in Iraq. Apoo began sending his guys from Iraq into Syria in 2011. In 2013 Poo Pakr announced he was changing the name to Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham.

[N_Fiddledog]

This one came out today.

Obama said willing to overthrow Assad if Syria attacks US planes

And I wonder if this isn't what it's really about for Obama.

The atrocities of ISIS on their return to Iraq have offered Obama public support and cover to revisit what he and the Muslim Brotherhood always wanted. To attack Assad in Syria. Backing the MB has always been Obama's MO.

Syria Muslim Brotherhood: Any Alliance Must Target Assad Repressive Regime

[xerxes]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos Thanos:

The more honest thing would be to acknowledge that this really isn't a threat to the United States at all and instead is merely another spasm of the eternal us-vs-them cycle of American domestic politics.

With a growing number of American and Canadian citizens fighting for ISIS and eventually coming back to our countries primed for jihad then I'd say that this is clearly a threat.

Or do you need to wait for the obligatory moslem massacre in Ottawa or Guelph before you'll see this as a threat?

$1:

Americans are joining ISIS — are they a danger to the US?
Updated by Zack Beauchamp on September 2, 2014, 12:30 p.m. ET

About 100 Americans and well over a thousand Europeans have joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In theory, these so-called foreign fighters pose a major threat to their Western homelands: their passports give them freedom to slip back home, bringing their battlefield experience and anti-Western extremism with them, potentially to plot attacks. According to the New York Times, senior American counterterrorism officials believe "it is becoming harder to track Americans who have traveled there" as "the conflict in Syria and Iraq drags on."

It's worth taking a deep breath. The risk of Americans coming home from Iraq or Syria and pulling off an attack in the US, while something that intelligence agencies will and should take seriously, is something that Americans probably do not have much to fear from. While there's more of a risk in Europe, there are still plenty of reasons to think that Westerners joining ISIS is far less of a problem than you might think.

There just aren't that many people coming home to plot attacks

About 2,000 to 3,000 Westerners have traveled to Syria to fight for one group or another during the conflict there, according to Thomas Hegghammer, the director for Terrorism Research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. "The actual number of the people on the ground is lower" right now, he says, because "quite a few of them have returned."

"So far," Hegghammer says, "it looks like the blowback effect is going to be quite low." According to Hegghammer's research, at most one in nine Western jihadis who fought in a foreign war have come home to plot attacks. But he says that this estimate comes from a very low-end estimate of the total number of foreign fighters, and that the ratio that returns to attempt an attack in the West is likely "between one in 20 and one in 100." To date, "the number is much lower" for volunteers from Iraq and Syria.

There've been "about four to six plots, involving five to ten people, in the West. And that's out of 2,000-3,000 volunteers, so the blowback rate is one in several hundred," Hegghammer concludes. Vanishingly small.

So far, there simply aren't very many ISIS volunteers coming back West to plan terrorist attacks. According to Hegghammer, that's partly because ISIS simply isn't prioritizing an attack on the United States or Europe. They're too busy fighting to preserve the caliphate to spend a lot of time abroad.

These guys are easy to catch

he conflicts in Syria and Iraq aren't over yet. It seems likely that, when those conflicts start winding down or entering some sort of stasis, Western volunteers would become more likely to return home and stir up trouble.

But even then, they're not nearly as dangerous as you might think.

"We're going to know who these guys are, and we're going to watch them closely as they transit home," Will McCants, director of the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, told me.

McCants admits that's it's hard to catch ISIS volunteers on their way to Syria or Iraq. However, it's much, much easier to identify them on their way home. "Once they've gone in," McCants says, "US intelligence is going to find them." Partly that's because the US and other Western countries are obsessive about monitoring their borders and are keenly aware of this threat, but it's also because jihadis love to talk on social media. "I've been told by people in US intel that publicly posted statements in Twitter are an absolute gold mine," he says.

The Atlantic Ocean is the US' friend here. Airports have the most "robust systems" for detecting returning fighters, according to McCants. It's very hard to get back to the United States from Iraq or Syria without flying, and ISIS veterans who check in an airport will likely get detected pretty quickly. Once that happens, their numbers are small enough that US intelligence and law enforcement will be able to keep a very close eye on them.

Europe is at much greater risk — but it's still not huge

The risk is greater for European countries, both because there are more Europeans fighting for ISIS and because those fighters don't necessarily need to fly to get back home, making detection harder.

"The Europeans have robust systems in place when people travel through airports," McCants says, "but it breaks down when people travel over land." You could imagine ISIS militants driving through Turkey, for instance, or hooking up with smugglers to take them over the Mediterranean.

"I think there is a significant concern for Western Europe," Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says. "They've got a big problem on their hands."

But even if ISIS decides they want to plan a big attack in Europe, they won't have an easy time of it. "It'll be hard to stay off the grid," McCants explains. Any terrorists trying a major attack are "going to be getting in touch with family and friends, or they're going to need to get in touch with other militants to get materials." The more time they spend talking and coordinating, the easier it is for European intelligence agencies to intercept their communications.

"The 9/11 attacks took a couple years to put together and pull off," Watts says. "To expect ISIS to be able to pull something like that is not reasonable. I don't get too stressed about it."

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/2/6096767/americans-isis-europeans