Time for Obama to admit he was wrong

[Dan and Judy 614]

Isis is our enemy, Turkey doesn't want to fight Isis. Assad is fighting Isis. A simple about face on our part would stabilize the region and squash Isis in no time.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

ISIS isn't Cobra and the USA isn't GI Joe.

Why is everyone wanting to rush into yet another war in the middle east that offers no clear goal and no real promise of long term stability?

[Dan and Judy 614]

squashing Isis is a clear goal

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Why? Because they're not very nice people?

As an American you should have probably learned by now that short sighted objectives very often make things worse not better. We got to ISIS because the US and UK meddled in Iraq and caused a chain reaction of violent revolution across the middle east. Was it worth it to remove Saddam and Gaddafi?

[Póg mo 1,749]

Isis is our enemy, Turkey doesn't want to fight Isis. Assad is fighting Isis. A simple about face on our part would stabilize the region and squash Isis in no time.

Not a bad place to start, but I also would like to see some form of long term plan.e.g. some form of plan that isn't just about securing oil fields for western business interests.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Isis is our enemy, Turkey doesn't want to fight Isis. Assad is fighting Isis. A simple about face on our part would stabilize the region and squash Isis in no time.

Obama admit what. Lol

[Sousuke 1,214]

Much of ISIS is just 'Al Qaeda in Iraq'.

[bowens44 214]

You want Obama to clean up another of GWs messes?

[Dan and Judy 614]

ISIS isn't Cobra and the USA isn't GI Joe.

Why is everyone wanting to rush into yet another war in the middle east that offers no clear goal and no real promise of long term stability?

I think we're already in another one, we're just saying we want someone else's boots on the ground. Assad can supply the boots. Apparently no else wants to.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

So you're suggesting that we make a 180 and support Assad forthwith? Sure thing. I mean, honestly, what could go wrong?

[JohnR! 5,495]

The OP is suggesting that Obama was wrong by being right... Go figure...

Obama would never have the necessary support for such a move. Not too long ago, the GOP was clamoring he should act against Assad...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/28/republicans-urge-obama-to-enforce-red-line-oppose-deploying-troops/

Congressional Republicans said Sunday that President Obama must stick with his vow to take action should Syria cross a “red line” by using chemical weapons on citizens, amid such mounting evidence, but cautioned against sending in troops.

"The president has laid down the line, and it can't be a dotted line,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told ABC’s “This Week.” “It can't be anything other than a red line.”

U.S. officials said last week that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad probably used chemical weapons twice in March, amid a two-year civil war in which more than 70,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced.

“For America to sit on the sidelines and do nothing is a huge mistake," Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain has been among congressional Republicans most critical of the president’s stance on Syria.

He argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the red line strategy has given Assad a “green light” to do almost everything up to that point -- including the use of missiles, helicopter attacks and other civilian strikes that have resulted in “atrocities on a scale that we have not seen in a long, long time.”

However, he joined a bipartisan call this weekend against sending U.S. troops into Syria.

"The worst thing we could do is put boots on the ground," McCain said.

I think we're already in another one, we're just saying we want someone else's boots on the ground. Assad can supply the boots. Apparently no else wants to.

Edited October 13, 2014 by JohnR!

[Dan and Judy 614]

So you're suggesting that we make a 180 and support Assad forthwith? Sure thing. I mean, honestly, what could go wrong?

U.S.-Soviet Alliance, 1941–1945

Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. Without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany.

Department of Defense Pro-Soviet Poster

As late as 1939, it seemed highly improbable that the United States and the Soviet Union would forge an alliance. U.S.-Soviet relations had soured significantly following Stalin’s decision to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August of 1939. The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in September and the “Winter War” against Finland in December led President Franklin Roosevelt to condemn the Soviet Union publicly as a “dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world,” and to impose a “moral embargo” on the export of certain products to the Soviets. Nevertheless, in spite of intense pressure to sever relations with the Soviet Union, Roosevelt never lost sight of the fact that Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, posed the greatest threat to world peace. In order to defeat that threat, Roosevelt confided that he “would hold hands with the devil” if necessary.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/us-soviet

[Dan and Judy 614]

The OP is suggesting that Obama was wrong by being right... Go figure...

Obama would never have the necessary support for such a move. Not too long ago, the GOP was clamoring he should act against Assad...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/28/republicans-urge-obama-to-enforce-red-line-oppose-deploying-troops/

Congressional Republicans said Sunday that President Obama must stick with his vow to take action should Syria cross a “red line” by using chemical weapons on citizens, amid such mounting evidence, but cautioned against sending in troops.

"The president has laid down the line, and it can't be a dotted line,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told ABC’s “This Week.” “It can't be anything other than a red line.”

U.S. officials said last week that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad probably used chemical weapons twice in March, amid a two-year civil war in which more than 70,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced.

“For America to sit on the sidelines and do nothing is a huge mistake," Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain has been among congressional Republicans most critical of the president’s stance on Syria.

He argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the red line strategy has given Assad a “green light” to do almost everything up to that point -- including the use of missiles, helicopter attacks and other civilian strikes that have resulted in “atrocities on a scale that we have not seen in a long, long time.”

However, he joined a bipartisan call this weekend against sending U.S. troops into Syria.

"The worst thing we could do is put boots on the ground," McCain said.

Actually congress seems pretty happy to sit on the sidelines.

The ball is in Obama's court.

[Dan and Judy 614]

t’s been over two months since the United States started launching airstrikes against Islamic State targets, and the preliminary results aren’t encouraging. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the military offensive “has gotten off to a rocky start, with even the Syrian rebel groups closest to the United States turning against it, U.S. ally Turkey refusing to contribute and the plight of a beleaguered Kurdish town exposing the limitations of the strategy.”

These might ordinarily be the sort of developments that would warrant scrutiny from Congress. Is the U.S. policy effective? Is there a smarter approach? What can the public expect in the way of results in the short- and long-term future?

But that scrutiny, at least for now, is nonexistent. Congress gave itself another 54-day vacation, and members have never authorized the military campaign that’s currently underway – a detail that most lawmakers seem to find irrelevant. Maybe Congress will have a debate during the lame-duck session in November, but as far as the House GOP leadership is concerned, it can wait.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ernst-theres-no-sense-congressional-vote-isis

[rlogan 2,036]

ISIS is representing the disaffected Sunni. It is that simple. We overthrew Iraq, booted out the Sunni minority running Iraq before, put the Shia in control, who promptly began persecuting the Sunni.

We fought this pre-ISIS faction in Anbar province, suffering the heaviest U.S. casualties. So then we about-faced just like OP suggests doing, and started BRIBING them. Lol. They called this the "awakening". Woke up to the truckloads of cash the US was giving our enemy in order not to fight us any more.

Historically, this is called tribute. It is what the losing side pays the winning side. We withdrew from everywhere except the Green Zone, the tribute is no longer being paid, and the Sunni have risen up against the corrupt US puppet government of the Green Zone. Ranked at the very bottom of the barrel for most corrupt governments on the face of the earth.

You have to remove the source of the problem, not fight its symptoms. You can kill every ISIS leader, just like we killed a parade of Al Qaeda leaders, and the movement just got bigger. It went from hijacking planes to nearly taking over entire countries. We never listen to what they are so pissed off about, which is having the USA bombing and superimposing corrupt governments upon them. Saddam was bad, sure - but he government we installed was ranked as more corrupt than he was and death squads were running around torturing and killing people as we looked the other way.

It is not our place to rule the world. We can't even rule little patches of desert in remote Afghanistan where their fighters carry WWII hand-me-downs and eat a handful of rice for rations. The Taliban leads in electoral popularity there, but we deny them the right to run for office. Can you imagine China coming to the USA and disallowing the Democrats from office? Likewise with Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq: we are painting ISIS in "worse than Hitler" terms, carefully leaving out of the propaganda memes the fact ISIS is supported by the Sunni. It is straightforward logic: ISIS represents the Sunni against the corrupt, oppressive US puppet Shia government of the Green Zone.

We fought the Sunni in overthrowing Iraq. Then we paid them tribute. Now we are fighting them again. We were fighting to overthrow Assad until now, and as OP suggests: fighting ISIS on behalf of Syria's Assad government at this very moment. Doing airstrikes for him.

We were fighting Al Qaeda, then backing them in Benghazi against Libya's Gaddafi. Now we are fighting them again, except where they are on our side in local skirmishes, where we back them. We are on both sides of at least two civil wars - and incredibly the same geniuses of Democrat and Republican alike are arguing about which side to back and how much. Not whether to be there at all. The one thing Americans can agree on is our right to rule. We are the modern day Rome. We only disagree on how. Airstrikes or Ground troops? Arm moderate Jihadists and drown them in money, or arm the crazies. Or fight them both.

Oh well. Not much I can do about this.

Edited October 13, 2014 by rlogan