Share what you wish your country would do wrt ISIS/Daesh.

[Charlie Don't Surf]

I'll go first.

1) Fire absolutely zero bullets, bombs, drone strikes, missiles, or anything that can remotely hurt another human being in the entire Middle East.
2) Remove every human being working for the USA Armed Forces from the Middle East.
3) Accept 100% of the Refugees that pass our current, rigorous screening process. Give them full healthcare, a free college education, and a pathway to citizenship if they desire it.

That about covers it.

 

[drifter]

Make them watch Do You Remember Love until they become inculcated in Deculture.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

Make them watch Do You Remember Love until they become inculcated in Deculture.

better than current international policy

 

[Terrik]

I'll go first.

1) Fire absolutely zero bullets, bombs, drone strikes, missiles, or anything that can remotely hurt another human being in the entire Middle East.
2) Remove every human being working for the USA Armed Forces from the Middle East.
3) Accept 100% of the Refugees that pass our current, rigorous screening process. Give them full healthcare, a free college education, and a pathway to citizenship if they desire it.

That about covers it.

So, you're essentially saying to the M.E., you're on your own, live or die?

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

I didn't say to stop sending aid that is not violent, burning death.

 

[PatrThom]

I wish we'd just ignore them, really.
Maintain an elevated amount of vigilance, sure, but these people crave attention, like the kid who stomps into the living room and knocks over a vase. Don't (publicly) give it to them.
Sure, keep an ear out in the relevant circles to be able to thwart their efforts when possible, but just let them dry up, already.

--Patrick

 

[sixpackshaker]

I'll go first.

1) Fire absolutely zero bullets, bombs, drone strikes, missiles, or anything that can remotely hurt another human being in the entire Middle East.
2) Remove every human being working for the USA Armed Forces from the Middle East.
3) Accept 100% of the Refugees that pass our current, rigorous screening process. Give them full healthcare, a free college education, and a pathway to citizenship if they desire it.

That about covers it.

I'd like to see us steamroll Daesh first, then follow your plan. They are too murderous to be allowed to become a functioning state.

I know we have killed many over there, but we don't line up minorities and murder them into a ditch.

 

[Dave]

You can't steamroll an ideology. You just can't. Every time you try you do nothing more than create other little Daeshites.

Other than than some changes to #3, I think Charlie is 100% correct. We can NOT put boots on the ground and everything we do to make things better is done so half-assed that it ALWAYS makes things worse.

 

[GasBandit]

Thing is, they're already getting the oil wells up and running in their occupied territory and are financing themselves with the sales. The fungibility of oil means that we basically are now as good as buying oil from them and funding them. So simply isolating and ignoring them until they go away is a very pie-in-the-sky pipe dream. If there's any lesson we should have learned from France recently, it's that there will be a fight. If we don't fight them where they are, they will come to where we are and fight us here.

It'd be nice if some of the other nations in the area would put something toward this fight, but they're not, and it's because they assume we'll do something about it at some point, because we always end up doing so.

The major mistakes we made in the iraq war were pulling our punches too much in the beginning and running away to leave a power vacuum at the end. All these years and we're still trying to make the Armed Forces be police, when their only mission should be to kill people and break things. You can't steamroll an ideology, but you can sure do it to infrastructure. It's hard to bankroll and organize a global terror network when you can't manage to keep one stone resting upon another.

 

[Dave]

And that's the crux of it. We either go isolationist or balls to the wall all-out war all the time. We know what the politicians want and since that's what THEY want I'm a'gin it.

 

[GasBandit]

And that's the crux of it. We either go isolationist or balls to the wall all-out war all the time. We know what the politicians want and since that's what THEY want I'm a'gin it.

And if we go isolationist, that means we build Trump's wall and take in no more refugees and start rounding up the illegals ASAP.

 

[Dubyamn]

So, you're essentially saying to the M.E., you're on your own, live or die?

Fits in my craw better than siding with the women abusing decapitators against the other women abusing decapitators.

The ME is a god damn pit that we need to stop hurling blood and treasure down. It's bottomless we're not going to fucking fill it no matter how many trillions we burn or young lives we ruin.

 

[AshburnerX]

You can't steamroll an ideology. You just can't. Every time you try you do nothing more than create other little Daeshites.

No, you can, but you have to commit yourself to systemically wiping it out with absolutely zero tolerance for it. We're talking about burning every town you come across, killing everyone in your way until you stop hearing about them. We generally regard the people willing to do that as "history's greatest monsters".

 

[CrimsonSoul]

I pretty much have to agree with Charlie here. Bombing and fighting them is exactly what they want and we keep falling for it over and over again

Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk

 

[Eriol]

No, you can, but you have to commit yourself to systemically wiping it out with absolutely zero tolerance for it. We're talking about burning every town you come across, killing everyone in your way until you stop hearing about them. We generally regard the people willing to do that as "history's greatest monsters".

Generally I agree with you, but how did Nazism get mostly stamped out post-WWII? I'm not asking fesciciously (however it is you spell that word), but actually, how did that happen? It's back in MUCH SMALLER WAYS, but how did the mass support go away?

As for the original question of the thread, I already posted on the "everything sucks" aspect of that in the paris thread. The link from that post: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/opinions/isis-no-military-answer-paton-walsh/index.html

 

[AshburnerX]

Generally I agree with you, but how did Nazism get mostly stamped out post-WWII? I'm not asking fesciciously (however it is you spell that word), but actually, how did that happen? It's back in MUCH SMALLER WAYS, but how did the mass support go away?

It didn't. There have always been people who hate people for stupid, ignorant reasons... it simply became impossible to display such activities in public because you didn't know who was and wasn't hunting down Nazi sympathizers. You know... the people who were dragging women who slept with Nazi officers into the street and shaving their heads or worse. Businesses were burned. People were straight up murdered, many of whom were unwilling conspirators. It was NOT a smooth transition in Germany, especially with the Russians mostly in charge. Eventually everyone was just too busy trying to survive to participate in the system anymore... and really, the Nazi Party only rose to power to begin with because the Germans were being excessively punished for World War One anyway. People make poor decisions when they can't buy bread.

 

[Necronic]

Oil isn't nearly as fungible as you guys make it out to be. Part of the Iran nuclear deal was to allow their oil on the open market. This expected supply boost has had significant effects on the oil markets. If it was so easy for people to bypass sanctions and whatnot then that wouldn't be the case. Sure, some of their oil will hit the open market, but not as much as you might think.

Also, as for what I think should be done, we need to be working with Kurdish forces and consider them the most stable platform from which to expand outwards. I think we need a substantial NATO presence there, boots on the ground and all that jazz. We also need to build local "safe zones" where refugees can flee to. These will have to be managed by NATO forces. The most important thing though isn't how we beat ISIS or whoever, its what you do next. The world needs to spend some serious capital in building these regions up. We will need schools and hospitals and all that stuff. And we will need to retain a significant presence in the governing bodies of the countries for at least a decade but probably more. We will need to maintain large troop presences as well for a very long time. The longer we occupy and rebuild the more we will see the cultural shifts that we need to see over there for a peaceful future. If there's anything to learn from the last decade it's that half measures are not enough.

The only times we have been really successful in nation building have been when we understood the real cost, and need to do so. In the case of West Germany we had the Soviets banging on the door so we were very motivated to do this, and with Japan we recognized how alien their culture was and maintained an intense occupation for quite a while and still to this very day keep troops on their soil and restrict their military presence. However in both of these cases you had a strong infrastructure, culturally if not physically (since we bombed most of it). This is not something we have in Afghanistan.

The reality is that the only way to really fix those countries on our terms will be to expend a serious amount of capital and time. It will require boots on the ground, and will require trillions of dollars.

The alternative is that we hope for the locals to do it. This has almost never worked. Africa is a good example of this. At the end of the colonial period pretty much ever european country just up and left and turned over the keys to the locals. This has led to decades of warfare which has stunted the growth of the countries. Which is sadly a positive feedback loop as it causes a local brain drain as the best and brightest often leave the country at the first chance. There is a chance that the Kurds could successfully expand their influence outwards and build up a functioning state, but at the end of the day even if they are one of the most stable governments in the region they are also still fairly dictatorial and have some pretty rough spots about religious freedom. There isn't anyone there we really want running the show.

 

[strawman]

I don't think we can "fix" the middle east. They have such a distinctly different culture that there's no way we can come up with a solution for them that is modeled anything like what we have here, or have done elsewhere.

What we can do, though, is offer aid and refuge in the region, and protection to those people and countries that need it. What I'd like to see is NATO working with those already in the region to provide nearby protection and safe places for those fleeing bad situations.

Think east/west germany, or north/south korea, or china/rest of asia.

We don't go in and "save" East germans, chinese, north koreans from the actions of their government. We simply help those who leave, and provide a safe space for them to go to in adjacent countries.

So we need substantial support and military presence at the border of the unstable regions, and welcoming arms and hearts for all those who go through the risky process of leaving.

We let the unstable countries do their terrible deeds, we decry them publicly, and we put in place economic and other measures to try to force them into compliance with Human Rights standards.

Eventually they'll figure it out themselves, or we end up with tenuous but manageable relationships with them that might yield long term results.

Fewer sticks, lots more carrots.

Regardless, this is a "long haul" project. We can't expect this to work unless we commit to an indefinite amount of time and resources, stretching perhaps across 2 or more generations. We can't work only towards immediate results.

If we are not committed to the long term, we shouldn't engage.

 

[Bubble181]

The only case I can remember of a mostly peaceful transition from a horror state to an acceptable one is South Africa with its Truth Commission. Sadly, even there things are steadily going downhill again. Germany was very definitely not a "calm" or orderly or peaceful passage.

As for working with the Kurds and in a NATO form, impossible. Turkey is NATO, Turkey considers any and all armed Kurd forces terrorists still. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are supposedly two of our biggest allies and are also two of the strongest forces keeping the conflict going, in different ways and for different reasons.

Close the external EU frontiers; have large, military camps near the borders to accept and help refugees, education, food, medication, and so on; have the refugees slowly divided over the EU and fuck those Eastern Europeans whose countries are still mostly monocultural and won't want to accept anyone; close off our oil and weapons deals with anyone in the Middle East; send humanitarian aid and nothing else. This will be horrible for most of the local population, but no war's ever gone by where that wasn't the case. We can't and won't bring peace by invading or by bombing more. We may be able to destroy Daesh, we will never be able to stop resentment and hate because of former colonialism and cultural appropriation, nor will we ever be able to stop young guys who don't feel accepted in our society from joining organisations where they're given an identity and a feeling of "belonging" - be it street gangs or terrorist groups.
Possibly, once things have settled down enough, try to reconfigure national borders - the crappy borders there are part of the reason things keep going straight to shit over there.

 

[PatrThom]

how did Nazism get mostly stamped out post-WWII? I'm not asking fascistiously (however it is you spell that word)

FTFY

(It's actually "facetiously," btw, which is famous for having all the English vowels in order including "y")
--Patrick

 

[Necronic]

I think it's reaching a bit to even refer to South Africa as having been a success. That country is still a terrible mess.

 

[Bubble181]

I think it's reaching a bit to even refer to South Africa as having been a success. That country is still a terrible mess.

Comparing the fallout of the Apartheid vs the results of even just "normal" colonization in most of the rest of Africa, especially Zimbabwe with a very similar history, or compared to the Nazis, or Stalinism, or Maoism, or Israel/Palestine, or... well, take your pick. The only slightly similar situation I can think of that may have ended "better" is Northern Ireland, and really, that's quite a stretch to fit it into "similar". An oppressive regime that had just-barely-not-slavery, stole all of the riches, made hundreds of thousands of people disappear, gave the majority no voice or vote,.... and pretty much no-one died after the transition? There's a reason they got a couple of NPPs there, and it's not because of Obama's "I'm better than the last guy" syndrome.