Mosul has fallen

[Baditude]

Honestly if the Iraq military and people are not willing to defend then why should we help them again? From my reading they outnumber the insurgents by a considerable margin yet don't have the "will" to fight for their beliefs. We have helped them enough, how about we help our own country for once?

 

[T.Lex]

Honestly if the Iraq military and people are not willing to defend then why should we help them again? From my reading they outnumber the insurgents by a considerable margin yet don't have the "will" to fight for their beliefs. We have helped them enough, how about we help our own country for once?

I think it is mainly because they don't have confidence in their gov't ability to protect them.

Check this out - when the US invaded, I don't recall a half a million people leaving the area. Instead, they stayed. I wasn't there, so I don't know, but I suspect America's reputation for not committing atrocities made people feel comfortable. Our ideals - mostly democracy - made huge chunks of people want to stay to see if it would work. The people that fought us were a small (but deadly) minority. That is my impression.

But with ISIS, people are running for the border in droves. They truly fear these people and their ideology.

The inability of the Iraqi gov't to fight them is a whole different matter, and to me says that we withdrew far too early.

 

[mrjarrell]

Looks like Iran and the Shia militias are stepping up to the plate, since the US trained military is deserting. It's going to be down to the people to do the defending.

BBC News - Iraq conflict: Sistani 'issues' Shia call to arms

 

[Phil502]

It's not all Obamas fault, we were destined to lose there from the beginning, he made a lot of mistakes though and deserves some blame. There is no way to defeat these people, they are not a standing army that can be crushed, they simply disappear into the populace and survive there when the going gets tough. It's a big difference between the middle east and Germany or Japan, the civilian mindset is different, living in a stone house with no running water and just a few goats is fine and dandy with most of the people, there is no desire to get on with life and build a better nation, at least not in the terms that we in the west think of. "Terrorists" will simply hang on and live in a hovel until we leave, it doesn't matter if it's 8 years or 180, these are very primitive types. There is no breaking them from Islam as they see it, any attempt would be viewed as an attempt to Christianize them and that will never happen. Has a forced conversion from Islam into Christianity ever been attempted, I would not favor that approach and seriously doubt it could work. Until the people want a different country they are stuck with what they have now and frankly I have a hard time giving a crap about them.

 

[cqcn88]

"But who better suited for global domination and religion police than that same incompetent federal government we love to hate."Killing foreigners is why we have a federal government. As wookie hero Thomas Jefferson showed, the way to deal with people who threaten us is to kill them.Who said a New OSS assassination program or series of Ajaxes would require any boots on the ground? Like al-Qaida does not have enemies already? "Like I said the Japanese were nuts but they believed the Emperor was God. Consider the situation, 2 major cities are flattened and the guy you thought was God is defeated, then proceeds to come out and say "Guess what guys, I'm not God". Their cultural fanaticism to follow their God emperor pretty much disappears right there right?"The Humanity Declaration was AFTER the Japanese surrender, 1946. We changed the Japanese religion after we destroyed them in order to keep them in line.

So for your parallel with Japan to work we apparently need to get these guys to surrender first then offer them the kinder, gentler Islam2.0? That doesn't really offer a solution to the current problem.

In any case it doesn't defeat my larger point, which is that this current religious/geopolitical situation is completely different than Japan or Germany at the end of WWII so it's silly to sit here and try to manufacture parallels.

 

[Baditude]

A group of roughly 1,300 captured Mosul a population of 2 million and the Iraq army fled so should we.

 

[CathyInBlue]

haha

There's a pic of a column of these ISIS irregulars in Toyota pickups. That's like an A-10 driver's wet dream, isn't it?

That's pretty much what I thought. The "Highway of Death" was no accident and if need be, we can do that again, for relative cheap, compared to boots on the ground meeting ISIS/ISIL in ground combat. There's not that many of them, and if they want to form up in nice, straight lines of purty white pickups on a desert road, that works for me.

 

[T.Lex]

Looks like Iran and the Shia militias are stepping up to the plate, since the US trained military is deserting. It's going to be down to the people to do the defending.

BBC News - Iraq conflict: Sistani 'issues' Shia call to arms

Yeah, that's where this could get interesting. If Iraq gets divided into Kurd/Sunni/Shi'a sections with all of them somewhat wealthy with oil money.... Yikes.

Come to think of it, get Saudi Arabia involved and it almost starts shaping up like WWI-esque alliances (but along religious sectarian lines).

 

[BehindBlueI's]

You mean like how we dictated to the Japanese that their emperor was no longer a god via the Humanity Declaration?

History is such the stranger at INGO.

We've done it before and we can do it again, we can do it again, we can do it again!

...and Japanese culture and disparate Islamic cultures are the exact same thing and will react in the exact same way.

WWII Japan: Strong sense of nationalism, unity of culture, tradition of obedience to superiors, strong sense of duty.

Post WW1 Arabic world: Little to no sense of nationalism (tribal based society that was forced by outsiders into nations), great disparity of culture, religion, language (5 major dialects of Arabic, some of which are mutually unintelligible), ethnicity, etc. Tradition of family first, tribe second, and weak centralized leadership when monarchy not present, and often when it is.

Broader Islamic world: Zero centralized leadership, huge disparity in languages, culture, ethnicity, etc. Tunisians are not Chechnyans who are not Afghanis who are not Saudis who are not Malaysians, etc. etc.

 

[Henry]

Islamic world = One big sh$t hole.

 

[hornadylnl]

The US will be defeated like the Soviets. We will bankrupt ourselves trying to rule the world.

Tell us King Kirk. Is your foreign policy more in line with King George or President George? Seems King George wanted global domination as well and the American people thought differently. We are now 1700's England and enough of the world has become revolutionaries who no longer wish to live under our rule. We have become the very beast we fought for our independence from.

 

[mrjarrell]

Islamic world = One big sh$t hole.

Says someone who's probably never left the US. They may be having issues right now, but the ME is actually a rather nice place when it's not under threat from extremists.

 

[T.Lex]

Where I align (I think) with Kirk's world view is that people tend toward democracy. Give people a chance to have a voice in their gov't, they will take it.

America shouldn't be about world domination, but about world democracy.

Sometimes, that will mean groups like the Islamic Brotherhood get elected. If it was a fair election, then so be it. It is about the process.

 

[Henry]

ME is actually a rather nice place when it's not under threat from extremists.

Which is virtually NEVER.

Been there a number of times....it's a sh$t hole.

 

[mrjarrell]

Which is virtually NEVER.

Been there a number of times....it's a sh$t hole.

Lived there for 6 years. You're dead wrong.

 

[Henry]

Lived there for 6 years. You're dead wrong.

No. We simply disagree.

 

[Henry]

America shouldn't be about world domination, but about world democracy.

.

World mob rule?

 

[JeremiahJohnson]

Says someone who's probably never left the US. They may be having issues right now, but the ME is actually a rather nice place when it's not under threat from extremists.

Been to Afghanistan and spent plenty of time all over the southern region - you can cross that one off the list - one big s#@t hole. Believe it. No comparison to say UAE - very rich area, westernized, strong economy. Depends where you go.

 

[hornadylnl]

Where I align (I think) with Kirk's world view is that people tend toward democracy. Give people a chance to have a voice in their gov't, they will take it.

America shouldn't be about world domination, but about world democracy.

Sometimes, that will mean groups like the Islamic Brotherhood get elected. If it was a fair election, then so be it. It is about the process.

So who won our freedom for us from the Brits while we dropped our rifles and ran?

 

[Kirk Freeman]

So who won our freedom for us from the Brits while we dropped our rifles and ran?

The French.

Kirk in Lafayette