Islamic State vs. The World (except Canada)

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I was going to say "let the panty-wasting" commence... buuuut I see it already has.

Sadly, Sanchez's understanding of this is very very thin and is a pretty typical knee-jerk Libertarian reaction.

"Not our problem" ... it's remarkable how simplistic the Paulite (etc) philosophy is.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Brushing that under the carpet under the banner of "it didn't work, therefore we should let these people be hunted down and massacred" is the height of moral cowardice.

But I get the attraction of "not my problem"... it's simple, clean it just happens to be completely morally bankrupt. But of course in that Universe, "I've got mine (healthcare, education, security)... f*** them" is the all-encompassing credo.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

What about the fighters in ISIS? What about their moral conscience? I mean, if we can just declare ourselves the good guys, can't they?

That's moral relativistic nonsense.  ISIS can declare themselves the Queen of England, but it doesn't make them so.  Nobody who engages in mass genocide and forces conversions to their particular religion by the sword can claim the moral high ground in the 21st century.

Can we really claim moral high ground?

Brushing that under the carpet under the banner of "it didn't work, therefore we should let these people be hunted down and massacred" is the height of moral cowardice.

But I get the attraction of "not my problem"... it's simple, clean it just happens to be completely morally bankrupt. But of course in that Universe, "I've got mine (healthcare, education, security)... f*** them" is the all-encompassing credo.

We are not letting them get hunted down and slaughtered. If we can drop food and water, we can surely drop in equipment for them to defend themselves much like we did in Syria.

Most of these people would not know what to do with the equipment necessary.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Sanchez, you really think that we can't claim moral high ground from ISIS? This is a group too extreme even for Al Qaeda- a group that cuts heads off for fun...

Do I personally feel that? No. But from a policy stand point, who is the arbitrator of who is and who isn't right and wrong these days? Radical Islam are more complex than “they kill those who disagree” and “they hate freedom.” We are never going to stomp out radical Islam, and we might just fan it’s flames like we did when we first invaded in ’03.

I hope this backfires. I really do. We need to learn a lesson. I guarentee that when the bombs begin to fall we are going to nail a hospital or a school, and ISIS's ranks will only continue to swell.

Ok Snowstalker.

The great irony is that he is likely the one person who is going to be making sense in this thread.

OK... this is not 2003, this is not the same engagement at all.

Saying the US made a big mistake in invading Iraq is one thing, and something I generally agree with, but it is not a reason to not provide aerial support against a force that had nothing to do with the Iraq War and is perpetrating horrid crimes against humanity. This lot are actually quite simple - they're about establishing a new state under their laws, including forced conversions, mass executions etc etc, basically it is a case of "you're with us... or you're dead".

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

That part of Iraq isn't so many sparsely populated, they have population pockets.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It's people like Chairman Sanchez and Deus Naturae here that are turning me into a foreign policy hawk. In a vacuum, a foreign policy of nonintervention seems sound, but just like many ideas that are "good in theory" they just aren't workable or reasonable in the nuance of real life.

While sectarian tensions in Iraq aren't new, we're the ones who toppled their government overnight, destroyed the existing social power structures, and forced them into a decade of foreign military occupation as a rumbling insurgency wrought havoc throughout the nation taking countless lives. We're the ones who effectively pulled out overnight and washed our hands of the matter while that insurgency transformed into a brutal sectarian revolution. ISIS is killing thousands of innocents whose only crime is practicing the "wrong" religion (or even practicing "right" one in an inadequate manner). This is our mess and we should be responsible for cleaning it up because we left the nation of Iraq in shambles. If we have the capacity to act and prevent death and oppression there's only one moral solution.

ISIS is rapidly advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil, the current home of the United States diplomatic mission to Iraq and the heart of our only real ally east of Jerusalem. If Iraqi Kurdistan falls then Baghdad falls because ISIS would no longer need to hold two fronts in Iraq. If Baghdad falls without America lifting a finger, then the rump Shia Iraq that's left will beg Iran for assistance and intervention. At that point ISIS's self-styled "Caliphate" would probably step up the killing of Shia civilians to the point of outright genocide.

This has the potential to go very wrong very quickly in so many ways. Fretting about ideological righteousness and partisan squabbling is outrageously ridiculous when there's tens of thousands of a minority religious group holding off on a mountainside. There faced with options of rescue or genocide- but that choice isn't for them to make. That choice gets made by people in Washington DC who are so out of touch that they weigh the chance to prevent a slaughter of thousands of innocent lives against a "public relations backlash" that would result. They're forced into such a situation by people like you, with righteous indignation about how that genocide "isn't our problem to stop!" People like you are why the Rwandan Genocide was allowed to happen. The boneheaded isolationist ideology you represent is the single greatest flaw of American democracy because it equates self-dependence with utterly immoral selfishness.

The combat airstrikes were visible from the Kurdish side of the front line- the front line that's been steadily pushing towards the Kurds for the past week. It's an active combat zone and was literally the no-man's land just a few days ago. Any civilians would have evacuated from the area well before the bombs fell, although I'm deeply sorry that your masturbatory delusions of exploding hospitals did not come true.





(drunk effortpost, sorry if not legible, things just struck a chord with me. not proofreading so my bad for typos)

This... just... this.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Given the current context of ISIS and its immediate threat to certain minority groups, I'm not entirely opposed to the strikes in and of themselves; however, anything beyond this is almost certain to backfire, as have plenty of "police actions" in the past.

Be careful. Warning that this is certain to backfire automatically means you want a hospital to explode.

... except that you literally said that.

I hope this backfires. I really do. We need to learn a lesson. I guarentee that when the bombs begin to fall we are going to nail a hospital or a school, and ISIS's ranks will only continue to swell.

emphasis mine

I know you're smarter than this. I did NOT hope that we would hit a hospital, but I know we will. I'm hoping that we learn a lesson about meddling in the Middle East. I'm hoping the powers that be will get burned on this, but it's there choice on how that will happen. They can stick their hands into fire or they can stick it into boiling water.

No, you said you hoped the strikes would backfire, with hitting a hospital among the options.

I would suggest that you're smarter than 'this'... but your horrendous reasoning and navel-gazing suggests otherwise.