Obama

[Minimalist]

I wasn't thrilled with his speech tonight on two counts.

1. Just do it. Don't tell them how you are going to do it. If I were an ISIS fighter tonight I'd be busy digging air raid shelters and not laying anti-personnel or vehicle mines in front of my position.

2. History. Vietnam began with a couple of hundred military advisors and steadily expanded. No matter what his intention is as soon as the Iraqi army fucks up again everyone will be looking to us.

[tjakey]

First, I have been opposed to America's wars in the Middle east for as long as I can remember. This is just more of the same, but ...

Obama claims there will be on "boots on the ground". I guess by that he means no combat troops on the ground. It is a very fine distinction that means nothing. There are already nearly a thousand pairs of "boots on the ground" and please, be stupid enough to tell me that air ops. are not combat operations. If I were a pilot landing after a strike and heard the Commander in Chief say "no boots on the ground" I would be pissed. My risking my ass doesn't count? Fuck you.

[ShaMan]

[Minimalist]

My risking my ass doesn't count? Fuck you.

ISIS has virtually no anti-air capability but there are always operational losses or mechanical problems. How'd you like to be a pilot who parachutes into ISIS controlled territory?

[stonedape]

Bomb one get two free. Send an army after them and they'll get new weapons. Chase them out of Iraq, they'll go to Syria. Chase them out of Syria, they'll go to Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait.

Check out Scahill's twitter
https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill
Obama: Congress, give us money to give to a bunch of groups we don't know that much about in Syria
yeah. But Bush and Bush used Republican missiles. These are Democratic bombs.
Obama inherited a HUGE mess... from Obama's first term.
Remember how awesome our Libya intervention was?
The intellectual dishonesty of partisan Democrats is amazing. (Flashback to same statement about Republicans under Bush).
Dude who wrote Obama's speech is probably playing beer pong with Luke Russert now
Newt Gingrich thinks it is a "strong speech." That seals it: GREAT POLICY.
"Let me be clear: everybody made a huge fucking deal out of this ISIS thing, and now I have to do something stupid about it, ok?"
"We stand for freedom, justice, dignity." I wish we had a live feed of Guantanamo prisoners (not) watching this speech
Obama: We need to stop flow of foreign fighters to Middle East. Obama: We are sending foreign fighters to Middle East
Washington has a rake in its war policy backyard. It steps on it repeatedly & never remembers it is there. http://youtu.be/tbd4t-ua-WQ

[Whateverist]

How'd you like to be a pilot who parachutes into ISIS controlled territory?

I'd try to keep my head.

[Anomalocaris]

The key to success is to understand a non-western mentality, interests and outlooks of the Arabs and Iranians, and be able to assemble a coalition of Arabs and Iranians to deny ISIS the conditions they need to have appeal, and to bleed them dry, starve them out, and cause them to dissolve.

The west must not appear to lead this effort.

Look at Obama's coalition. All western nations. No Arabs. No Iranians.

He is doomed. He may lack bush's idiotic bluster, he might yet avoid all of bush's clumsiness and encouragement of nepotism and profiteering as part of conduct of war.

But he is repeating essentially the same fundamental grand strategic mistake. He is setting up a war of the West vs Islam against a force that could only gain strength an durability through any perception that it is the champion, however flawed, of Islam.

What is more, he is starting a war with 2 years to go in his administration. American politics is such that the z2nd administration of the war would have to be elected on the premise of ending the war, which translate to losing the war in a face saving way.

So Obama has essentially given the US two year to win conclusively, or lose it.

Now he might have intelligence to which others are not privy, that gives him assurance that ISIS is either weaker or more fragile than it appears, so it may not matter that he wrong footed himself at the beginning with the premise of the war, and left himself with but 2 years to win it. We'll see.

[Mudhammam]

Obama's foreign policy is a mess... on top of airstrikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and who knows where else, did he really mention intervention in Syria?

[Minimalist]

So Obama has essentially given the US two year to win conclusively, or lose it.

Sadly Americans don't seem to mind dropping bombs on Arabs. As long as they are in no position to shoot back.

I think his big mistake is thinking he can arm some as-yet horribly unsuccessful group of rebels in Syria and think that they will shoot at ISIS instead of at Assad. Pretending that we can "train" these people and that they will do what we want is a wish. They will do what they want.

[A Theist]

So Obama has essentially given the US two year to win conclusively, or lose it.

I think his big mistake is thinking he can arm some as-yet horribly unsuccessful group of rebels in Syria and think that they will shoot at ISIS instead of at Assad. Pretending that we can "train" these people and that they will do what we want is a wish. They will do what they want.

Yeah, I'm apprehensive about that one too. We don't know who those so-called rebels are except that they hate Assad. Who knows whether we'll be arming and training another future terrorist group who will turn our own weapons against us later on.