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I see that James Risen, who has also written about Palantir, has a new book out. Just started reading the chapter called "The New Oligarchs". Whoa. This is going to kill Winston.

y66, on 2014-October-15, 15:01, said:

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This doesn't make me happy either, to say the least. And especially since it was clear even before we attacked that the people in the region would sort things out for themselves when the US left, no matter when that was. Naturally the idiots in congress voted for the authorization -- along with the politicians on both sides that voted for it even though they knew it was utterly stupid to do so -- because they feared losing the votes of the morons who agreed with them at the time.

And the same thing is going to happen with the situation in Iraq and Syria now. Already we're hearing fools in Washington demanding that US troops be sent to do what only the people who live there can do. And, sure enough, polls are showing that the moron vote is moving in that direction.

y66, on 2014-October-15, 15:01, said:

And when I die, and when I'm gone, there'll be one child born in this world to carry on, to carry on.

PassedOut, on 2014-October-15, 16:10, said:

Well, my view does ot follow either of these lines. What I see our president saying can be summarized: ISIL is a grave threat to the interests of our country, to the Middle Eat, and to the world. We are going to degrade it and we are gong to destroy it. Unless of course it would require ground troops, in which case screw it, I'll be writing my memoirs.

PassedOut, on 2014-October-15, 16:10, said:

Here is my understanding of the President's position: ISIL is a grave threat to our interests, to peace in the Middle East, and to the world. We are going to degrade it and then we will destroy it. Unless of course it requires ground troops, in which case screw it.

This does not inspire confidence.

This (inevitably and probably superficially) has been compared to Viet Nam. Probably to no good purpose. But I do recall some advice given by a military person early in that war, when Johnson was picking and choosing his targets: "It really isn't a good idea to bomb people just enough to make them mad."

kenberg, on 2014-October-15, 17:10, said:

I think the President is simply acknowledging the limits of military intervention.

Winstonm, on 2014-October-15, 17:28, said:

No. it is clear how to say that, if that is what he wished to say. Announcing that we are going to degrade it and destroy it is not my idea of acknowledging the limits of power. There used to be this song: First you say you will, and then you won't, then you say you do, and then you don't. ....
His approach brings this to mind.

I have no idea what we should do. But I am not the President. It is worrisome that he seems to have no idea either. Or, if we go by his words, he has two ideas that unfortunately are in direct contradiction to each other.

Of course he has explained that there is no contradiction, he is completely confident that we will degrade and destroy ISIL without the use of our ground troops. Most predictions of military success fall short. "We will be greeted as liberators". "The troops will be home by Christmas". Etc.

It is completely fair to ask what the plan is if air strikes do not suffice. It is fair to ask how this will jibe with degrade and destroy.

This is very worrisome. I think that our current president and his immediate predecessor have not been adequately up to the job.

kenberg, on 2014-October-15, 17:10, said:

Yes, this double-talk is in line with the whole "global war on terror" meme in which we all fight it by going about our daily business unperturbed, to "keep the terrorists from winning."

I don't know all of the reasons why Obama and most other politicians simply can't be honest about the situation, but I can guess a few of them. Clearly the pants-pisser vote weighs heavily in the November elections, and the democrats are trying (pitifully) to pander. What is clear, as it was before the Iraq invasion, is that nothing good will come from sending in our ground forces. And nothing good will come of the airstrikes either, if no one who lives there cares to fight. The ISIL people are from that area. We are not.

It's true that lots of US mistakes after the invasion of Iraq made things worse. We didn't have to send all of the old Iraqi military off to form an opposing army, for example. But it was never going to end well, and everyone with common sense knew that.

There are two distinct threat types: one is a terrorist organization; the other is a enemy state. Against the first, ground troops do not succeed often according to the people who study these things (Rand Corporation). AT this point, there is no genuine enemy state to dismantle with ground forces.

I have always stated that this President had too little experience - and surrounding himself with Chicago cronies has backfired as well. It has been decades since we had a truly good President, and I see no reason to think that will change two years from now.

I am shocked that Winston finds any threat to the usa beyond the super rich or republicans.

Winstonm, on 2014-October-15, 21:03, said:

I am by no means arguing in favor of ground troops. My point is a different one.

If a president wishes to go before the nation and the world and announce that the Islamic State is a grave threat that we will degrade and destroy, then his next words need to be "and we will do whatever is needed to accomplish this". If he is not prepared to say this second part, and such restraint may well be right, then he should not say the first part.

We want people to join us. Why on Earth would they? Here is something to consider: I would expect that when our president announces the use of American power to degrade and destroy ISIL, or degrade and destroy anything, it woould prompt a great deal of discussion. Well, we now have some discussion here, but mostly, at least among people I know, this announcement is ignored. No one pays much attention to what Obama says, his words are not taken seriously. This is not a good state of affairs.

The President of the United States used to be acknowledged as "the leader of the free world". Some people still claim that, I suppose, but no one is paying any attention to Obama, so how can he lead anything?

kenberg, on 2014-October-16, 07:37, said:

Absolutely right.

Of course it is nonsense that the Islamic state is a grave threat. Over the years, we in the US have often been fed such nonsense -- about the menace of communism, about the need to fight Asians "over there" so we don't have to fight "over here," about the threat of terrorism, and so on.

But usually this stuff comes from the dolts who actually want to whip up war frenzy. Obama clearly knows that sending troops back in there would be stupid, so he debases his own credibility when he talks like that. In effect, he has put pressure on himself to do the wrong thing.

As dumb as those (and other) statements of Obama have been, it would be even dumber to give in to the idiots who are demanding that he send US troops back into that battlefield.

I think leaders have to put a positive spin on things like this, and speak optimistically. Acknowledging that we can't win just degrades morale. It may be true, but how does saying it help? The best he can do is explain that it will be long and tough, to avoid raising expectations too much.

blackshoe, on 2014-October-16, 08:01, said:

We're paying attention to him right now, and there is no way not to pay attention the holder of his office. It would be preferable for him to have better leadership skills, but mere leadership skill is not nearly so important as the ability to make informed decisions. In that department, Obama stands head and shoulders above his predecessor.

barmar, on 2014-October-16, 10:31, said:

They seem to feel that way, and I'm sure that their handlers keep pushing that. But the whole idea of the US winning or losing just doesn't apply here unless leaders set it up that way artificially. So why do it?

mike777, on 2014-October-15, 23:41, said:

There is a difference between "threat to the USA" and terrorist threats. No, I am not concerned about an invasion of the USA. Yes, I am aware that we have enemies and those enemies will create havoc when they can.

That doesn't mean we send in ground troops to pluck out the gnat, though.

I'm not happy with our current approach but I have pretty much said what I have to say on that. I want to say a few general words about our role in the Middle East.

First an analogy. I don't plan to go to Iraq. I also don't plan to climb Mount Everest or backpack through the Amazon Rain Forest. When I took me recent road trip, I passed by, but avoided going into, Detroit. Otoh, my older daughter, as part of her job, goes to some not so great places and sometimes is escorted by people with machine guns. or assault weapons. Or whatever, I don't really know about that stuff.

My point, since it may not be clear: With regard ot the Middle East, is this country more in the position I have, namely just stay away, or more in the position of my daughter, namely we actually have to go there and try to work with them?

I suppose that it is the latter, not the former. And that's too damn bad. I really am not prepared to discourse on how Shiites differ from Sunnis;. Or on how either of them differ from Alewites. I know very little about Kurds. They all want to kill each other, i got that part, and I have read a little here and there about why but I can't say that I really understand it. But I would be very glad to say that it is none of my business. Of course if they want to kill me, that's another story.

Do we really have the option of avoiding all of this? It seems to me that Israel accepts a continual state of war, no end in sight, as a condition of its existence. I am sorry that this is so for them, but I would like to not have the same fate befall us. I don't really see how to avoid this disaster, suggestions are welcome.

PassedOut, on 2014-October-16, 08:30, said:

That place is not a battlefield, it's a morass. We would do well to stay out of it. We'd have done better to have stayed out of it in the first place - that being back in about 1946.

John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, said (paraphrased) "we are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the defenders of it only in our own country." That strikes me as a pretty good basis for our domestic and our foreign policy. He also said that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," yet that's exactly what we've been doing for the past sixty-five years. It's past time we stopped.

Adams' address before Congress as Secretary of State, July 4, 1821, should be required reading for every American.

The world is a small place in this century. I don't think any nation can afford to ignore any significant part of it. If the turmoil in the Middle East is allowed to go unchecked, it will most likely spill over. This isn't just an isolated civil war that will eventually burn itself out.

I don't think you can apply 19th century policy to the 21st century world. When Adams said that, "over there" was a long way away.

We are stuck with an inter-related world. That is my view as well. I will now ramble on a bit more about this.

WW II was horrible. Forty million dead, or something like that. Massive destruction. I don't at all mean to be praising this cataclysm, but the fact is that it had an ending. Since 1945, we really are not expecting Germany to invade France or vice-versa. Europeans may express distaste for Americans, or for each other, but none of us plans to bomb the other.

In the case of the Middle East wars, I do not see this moving toward any sort of end. The 1967 war was, well, in 1967. I was writing my Ph.D. Thesis in Minnesota. A while ago. We have had the Iraq-Iran war. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Iraq-American war, the mother of all battles, aka driving the Iraqis out of out of Kuwait. The Syria Civil Was, or maybe we should call it the Syrian Chaos. The Arab Spring, which like all springs came with an expiration date. That's just the beginning of a long list. There has been strife there all of my adult life and presumably before it. Sometimes heavy strife,sometimes less so, but enough and of a nature that I do not see it ending any time soon.


The above is what I see as our real long term policy challenge. I don't wish to be engaged in an area that is permanently at war. I accept that we cannot just pack up and go home. We also cannot, we really absolutely cannot, impose our will on the region. Whatever people may think of us Americans, we really do not have the stomach for the brutality that would be required to impose our will, even if it were, with extreme brutality possible, to do so. Possibly ISIS has the brutality needed, and maybe it will develop the ability, to impose its will. Where does this leave us? I don't know. I really don't.