I can't provide off the top of my head examples, but if you can find a glynch statement that rises to the level of faust's "exterminate the moslems [sic]," I'd love to see it.
If Obama wanted to re-invade Iraq at this point to dismantle the Islamic State, I wouln't have any strong objection.
Anything beyond a very limited deployment of special forces, something that is already happening, I would oppose. As I said earlier in the thread this isn't something that the US can solve long term without an indefinite stay. Until the Iraqis have a government they are willing to fight for it will continue to be a black hole that sucks blood and treasure.
I am generally a non-interventionist, but I am ready to light these guys up. How does a make shift army in a caravan of pick up trucks take over a country?
ISIS is hated by everyone in the region. The minute they can start attacking the evil US instead of fellow Muslims, they will gain supporters. This is exactly why Hamas starts wars everytime they lose power. Even though they don't "win" them, they rebuild their support base. ISIS is no different. It needs to remain the Muslim world vs ISIS if you really want them defeated. The last thing you want is this becoming the US vs ISIS.
Not a chance of that. Bombs, drones, Forward Observers, logistics and resupply, sure. I'm still don't quite understand, this site http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=iraq, says Iraq has 357 tanks. It seems like a 100 tank column would cut through irregular troops like butter. Surely there are 100 Shia tank crews that would fight. Whats the hold up?
well maybe i went overboard. i talked to the moslem guy at lunch today. he was pretty cool actually. answered my questions without getting angry and offended. loves america too. my truck's battery died in the parking lot outside and he helped me jump start it. not what i expected. i guess theres good and bad apples everywhere.
Maybe. But, one, we're already involved thanks to our invasion a decade ago. Two, the Iraq government obviously still sucks at this and could easily lose without support. Three, we still have this Iraq government set up; it's not quite like knocking down Saddam and then trying to build something new, it'd be more like the surge to contain insurgents while the existing government continues to try to establish its legitimacy (and hopefully does a better job post-Maliki). Four, if we're involved in the solution, we could be a moderating force on the Shi'a-dominated government to not make this an anti-Sunni fight; I'm concerned that in a rough scrabble for survival and power, it will turn from a government-vs-Islamist fight to a Shi'a-vs-Sunni fight with atrocities on both sides and persecutions of the losing sect by the victor. Five, these sound like really bad guys; it's like watching Pol Pot and doing nothing about it. I see the argument to stay out. I see the argument to go in. Obama has a lot of tough decisions to make. I'm willing to follow his lead whichever way he goes.
I doubt that the Iraqi government loses to the extent that ISIS takes over Baghdad. Where they control now isn't as populous as Southern Iraq and also has many sympathetic to them. As we saw the last time it looked like ISIS was going to press on to Baghdad Shiite militias started to mobilize with Shiite radicals willing to pledge their lives to defend Baghdad. The problem now is whether ISIS can be dislodged from the North and Iraq made into something resembling a whole country. Also to add ISIS is already driving the Iraqis to reform their politics even without a major US presence there. The Shiites realize that they need to find a way to bring the Sunnis back into the government to undermine ISIS support and the Kurds realize they need to work with the central government because they can't take on ISIS alone. Having the US come in and solve the ISIS problem for the Iraqis might end up removing responsibility from the Iraqis to solve their problems.
Because IS is no longer made up of irregular soldiers, and you badly underestimate IS and overestimate the Iraqis. The fact is that there are real cultural flaws in Arab armies which hinder their effectiveness ( something we've witnessed when Saddam's armies weren't even a hundredth of what they were made out to be). IS doesn't have those flaws, because you don't survive running from America for 10 years without those flaws getting purged. For example: IS pretty much has actual NCOs and other junior officers, not Shia stooges who signed up to get a nice desk job.
The problem with Baghdad is not whether IS can take it like Stalingrad. They can't. What they could do ( and have been working on ) is cut off the supply lines into the city like Grant did to Richmond
I will admit to not being an expert on Iraqi logistics but my guess would be much of Bagdad's supplies come from the South where the other populations centers like Basra and also the only port of Iraq is. The South is heavily Shiite so I doubt ISIS could encircle Baghdad and starve it out. Even if they could they don't have an air force so supplies could still be flown in. Also how long could ISIS maintain a siege of Baghdad? My guess is they don't have the numbers or their own logistics to do so.
First, they don't need to encircle Baghdad. Going with the Petersburg comparison, remember that Grant didn't entirely encircle Richmond/Petersburg. He just cut enough of the roads/railroads that Lee understood that if he didn't leave Richmond now, he would be trapped and eventually doomed. That is what IS has been doing. It's not like the South being Shi'a magically prevents them from taking roads,and they have been doing this here and there. As for air supply, that's utterly unfeasible. There's no way we could supply enough goods for the air to feed a city like Baghdad.
This is all true - but I think ISIS is weaker than people give it credit. They are an army, but they don't have any governing structure, which makes it easy for them to capture territory but harder to hold it and do something with it. We've seen how much we can turn the tide - both at the mountain and at the dam - with a handful of airstrikes, leaving the actual fighting to the Iraqi army. I think as long as that's working, you continue to do it. What you really don't want is a direct US target for them to focus on - both for our own people's sake and for the sake of not giving them a rallying cry. This is why something like having a US base in Baghdad would be a terrible idea.
