He's being realistic based on the events of the recent past. Pure optimism doesn't help you in any way.
Remember the boy scout motto: "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst."
You're not a "glass is half full" type of person are you?
Have you been following the daily news? They've lost tons of men and vehicles to airstrikes, banks holding their money destroyed, mobile oil refineries destroyed, ground attacks in Iraq taking territory away from them, and they admit in their own magazine that they're out of money and can't pay their troops. I think technically they still hold most of their territory but since they're broke they're obviously aware that the hold is tenuous.
He's being realistic based on the events of the recent past. Pure optimism doesn't help you in any way.
Remember the boy scout motto: "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst."
You're not a "glass is half full" type of person are you?
That's not the Boy Scout motto. It's simply "Be prepared"
I was not going to correct him, figured it would turn into another rant, really.
I guess he was never a Boy Scout.
Methinks you missed his point. It's true that Clinton and Obama royally screwed the pooch on Syria. I cannot remember the last American President who didn't have to learn the hard way that our intervention is not going to bring Western values, just a different set of assholes on top. But ISIS in Iraq is squarely on Bush and even more so, on the Iraqis themselves. Bush agreed to pull out, and Obama agreed to honor that agreement, because to do otherwise would invalidate our entire justification for the regime change. If we are truly doing this to remove the oppressing dictator, then when they are ready for us to leave we HAVE to leave, regardless of whether we think they are ready to stand on their own. That isn't a shortcoming of Bush or Obama, it's an inherent limitation of being the good guys. We HAVE to treat them as equals, or we're no longer the good guys.Go ahead, be an apologist for Syria. Totally ignore what Clinton and Obama did there.
As for Iraq, the agreement can be altered when half the country falls to genocide.
Some of it has been destroyed, some of it has been recaptured, and some they still control but we have drastically reduced their ability to sell. Oil you cannot get to market is simply pollution, once any internal ability to refine has been recaptured or destroyed. Even if you can make gasoline, diesel and JP4, you cannot eat it or pay fighters in it, so if you cannot get those products to market then anything beyond your own consumption is pollution.Agreed. As much as I'd love to believe the "good news", didn't ISIS control enough land to almost class as a small country, as well as captured some oil fields? (I'm no expert... just bits I remember reading here and there.) That's a lotta' people, resources and money... where'd it all go?
What replaces them will be Iraq and Syria. While both have been exporters of terrorism, Iraq at least seems to have stopped. As far as ideology, that WAS supported with all the resources of a small and moderate wealthy oil-producing nation. That is rapidly being destroyed. They can easily use the Internet to encourage radical Islamists, but without their oil-producing wealth, they have a much-degraded ability to help them, to set up training camps, bribe officials, procure and ship military-grade weapons and explosives and train radical Islamists in their use. That is a massive win for the West, and for good people everywhere who now have a smaller chance of being shot, blown up, or incorporated into a radical Islamic theocracy. Granted, the ideology is still present and still dangerous, but it's now a LOT less dangerous, because it's ability to project terror has been greatly downgraded.I don't believe that for a second and neither should you. We just had the largest gun massacre in American history from a single Muslim nutter. The ideology is a far far greater threat than ISIS ever was. The ideology is still alive and thriving. Engaging ISIS only fans the flames of that ideology. I simply do not hold the view that this ideology is something that we can engage with militarily to any meaningful effect. Can you explain how things will get better if ISIS is toppled? What do you expect to replace them? If the entity that replaces them is the same or worse, what should we do? How many people do we have to bomb and kill before the Middle East is fixed?
Radical Islam would be easier to deal with if America did not arm them so much. But we gotta justify a gigantic military budget for the contractors sakes so we gotta prop up the Bogeyman.
Radical Islam would be easier to deal with if America did not arm them so much. But we gotta justify a gigantic military budget for the contractors sakes so we gotta prop up the Bogeyman.
Methinks you missed his point. It's true that Clinton and Obama royally screwed the pooch on Syria. I cannot remember the last American President who didn't have to learn the hard way that our intervention is not going to bring Western values, just a different set of assholes on top. But ISIS in Iraq is squarely on Bush and even more so, on the Iraqis themselves. Bush agreed to pull out, and Obama agreed to honor that agreement, because to do otherwise would invalidate our entire justification for the regime change. If we are truly doing this to remove the oppressing dictator, then when they are ready for us to leave we HAVE to leave, regardless of whether we think they are ready to stand on their own. That isn't a shortcoming of Bush or Obama, it's an inherent limitation of being the good guys. We HAVE to treat them as equals, or we're no longer the good guys.
Thankfully Obama did not allow us to be fully pulled back in. He agreed that we would do the things they cannot do, intelligence and precision airstrikes and logistics, but the point of the spear, the ground combat where by far the bulk of the casualties are incurred, he insisted that they take on. Even though we are a LOT better at it, because better the Iraqis take 10,000 casualties than we take a hundred. Better for us, obviously, but just as much better for the Iraqis too - they have to learn to fight or be swallowed by radical Islam.
Russia and China provide more arms etc than we do.
But ISIS=ISLAM...
That isn't a shortcoming of Bush or Obama, it's an inherent limitation of being the good guys. We HAVE to treat them as equals, or we're no longer the good guys.
"Good guys" don't kill a few hundred thousand people for some ideology ego trip, and a dumb ideology at that. Even dumber are people who faithfully believe these proclamations of the state, more so than not really understanding modern science.
The main reason the US ever pulled out was due to waning public support, particularly for the cost involved, but of course embarrassing reasons for institutions need pr cover to save face.
You really are not up on your politics if you think half of what you just posted is true.
The two largest exporters of arms to the Mid East are 1) the US, and 2) Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ter-to-middle-east-data-show/article30459788/