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The Middle Eastern question - MillsT_98 - 05-10-2016
In Who are you voting in 2016, Kinser and I were talking about the situation in the Middle East, and I decided to post it to this thread so it doesn't completely go off-topic. How will we solve the situation with Syria and ISIS? If we fight the Assad regime in Syria and ally with the rebels (for lack of a better word), then ISIS might take over, and might be a threat to the US and the rest of the Middle East. However, if we fight ISIS instead, then Syrian government might win, leaving us between a rock and a hard place. What would the best course of action be? How would any of this play out militarily? And would any of this lead to World War III?
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-11-2016
Siding with the "rebels" is siding with ISIS because the "rebels" are ISIS. The only hope of ending ISIS is ending the civil war in Syria with the Assad regime intact. Given the choice between evil terrorists who want to take over the world, throw me off a building and put every woman I know in a burka and an evil tin pot dictator who only wants to kill some Syrians when they get upity...I know which I'll pick.
As for Assad starting WW3 that is only going to happen if he slips his leash and does something to piss off Russia which he isn't going to to do.
Personally myself I think a great deal could be done to starve Muslim Terrorism by starving the oil exporting countries economies except perhaps for Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Iran hates ISIS as much or more than we do. Of course this means we might have to let them have South Western Iraq...but those people are ethnic Persians anyway so why not.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Galen - 05-11-2016
(05-11-2016, 01:23 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Personally myself I think a great deal could be done to starve Muslim Terrorism by starving the oil exporting countries economies except perhaps for Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Iran hates ISIS as much or more than we do. Of course this means we might have to let them have South Western Iraq...but those people are ethnic Persians anyway so why not.
The Iranians may hate the US but its not as if they don't have a good reason but they are in many ways saner that just about anyone else in the region. Its about like dealing with Putin, you may not like him but he is a known quantity and disinclined to do anything stupid.
The US after nearly fifteen years of war is really not in a position to start another.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - pbrower2a - 05-11-2016
BAGHDAD, May 11 (Reuters) - A car bomb claimed by Islamic State in a Shi’ite Muslim district of Baghdad killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78 others on Wednesday, Iraqi police and hospital sources said, the largest attack inside the city for months.
Security has gradually improved in the Iraqi capital, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but violence directed against the security forces and Shi’ite civilians is still frequent. Large blasts sometimes set off reprisal attacks against the minority Sunni community.
The fight against Islamic State, which seized about a third of Iraq’s territory in 2014, has exacerbated a long-running sectarian conflict in Iraq mostly between Sunnis and the Shi’ite majority that emerged after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Such violence threatens to undermine U.S.-backed efforts to dislodge the militant group.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/baghdad-bombing-sadr-city_us_5732f9b5e4b096e9f09336c1
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-12-2016
(05-11-2016, 02:16 AM)Galen Wrote:(05-11-2016, 01:23 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Personally myself I think a great deal could be done to starve Muslim Terrorism by starving the oil exporting countries economies except perhaps for Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Iran hates ISIS as much or more than we do. Of course this means we might have to let them have South Western Iraq...but those people are ethnic Persians anyway so why not.
The Iranians may hate the US but its not as if they don't have a good reason but they are in many ways saner that just about anyone else in the region. Its about like dealing with Putin, you may not like him but he is a known quantity and disinclined to do anything stupid.
The US after nearly fifteen years of war is really not in a position to start another.
You don't have to convince me...it is the liberals and other neo-cons that need to be convinced. We've tried a saeculum of doing the exact opposite of what George Washington told us to do and what do we have for it? A declining economy, crumbling infrastructure, an empty treasury and being nearly universally hated.
Frankly I'm sick of it, and I've been an isolationist since the 1990s. The only reason anyone even cares about that wasteland, other than the people there, is because there is oil under the sand. We get off the oil as much as possible (reserving most of its uses for plastics and other better uses) and then buy what oil we need from people who aren't completely insane.
As for Iran's problems with the US, I actually trace that back to the US. The CIA backed a coup against Mosaddegh, and placed the Shah back in power, and then Shah in turn purged whatever moderates and democrats there were leaving only folks like Kohmeini around to pick up the pieces after the Shah was deposed a second time. In short messing around in other country's affairs backfired, and have always backfired and now we have to deal with the blow back.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Galen - 05-12-2016
(05-12-2016, 09:12 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: You don't have to convince me...it is the liberals and other neo-cons that need to be convinced. We've tried a saeculum of doing the exact opposite of what George Washington told us to do and what do we have for it? A declining economy, crumbling infrastructure, an empty treasury and being nearly universally hated.
Good luck with that. You are talking about two groups of people that have made careers out of ignoring the obvious.
(05-12-2016, 09:12 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: As for Iran's problems with the US, I actually trace that back to the US. The CIA backed a coup against Mosaddegh, and placed the Shah back in power, and then Shah in turn purged whatever moderates and democrats there were leaving only folks like Kohmeini around to pick up the pieces after the Shah was deposed a second time. In short messing around in other country's affairs backfired, and have always backfired and now we have to deal with the blow back.
That is the event I was referring to. Nice to know someone out there knows some history.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-12-2016
(05-12-2016, 03:52 PM)Galen Wrote: Good luck with that. You are talking about two groups of people that have made careers out of ignoring the obvious.
Truthfully I think it is generational. Boomers seem to be the only Generation with any great degree of political power remaining (yeah there are some Silents lingering in the Senate...but in the grand scheme they're not that important) that are infected with this particular brand of diplomatic-mental-illness.
Xers tend to be far more isolationist, and Millies seem to have no desire to die for obscure causes. In the Xer's case it seems to be the complete reversal that the Lost went through. Xers went from interventionist to isolationist, the Lost went from isolationist to interventionist.
Quote:That is the event I was referring to. Nice to know someone out there knows some history.
I've made it a point to study history. Kind of hard to come to the conclusions I have without studying history.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Galen - 05-13-2016
(05-12-2016, 07:40 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Truthfully I think it is generational. Boomers seem to be the only Generation with any great degree of political power remaining (yeah there are some Silents lingering in the Senate...but in the grand scheme they're not that important) that are infected with this particular brand of diplomatic-mental-illness.
In the general case you are correct. I must mention that the Silents were always pretty much non-entities after the Boomers started since all they ever did was try to placate everyone.
(05-12-2016, 07:40 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Xers tend to be far more isolationist, and Millies seem to have no desire to die for obscure causes. In the Xer's case it seems to be the complete reversal that the Lost went through. Xers went from interventionist to isolationist, the Lost went from isolationist to interventionist.
Good Point. This is one of the reasons that I suspect that the era of the total state is coming to an end. During their early lives the US actually won wars. Other than Grenada and the Gulf War all Generation X has seen is that the US is really good at losing them. Grenada was a joke and lets face it the Gulf War was the trigger that set the current series of wars into motion. Only an idiot or progressive, but I repeat myself, would continue with interventionism in the face of that record.
(05-12-2016, 07:40 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I've made it a point to study history. Kind of hard to come to the conclusions I have without studying history.
Most people have the comic book caricature that we get in school which is more indoctrination than history.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-13-2016
(05-13-2016, 03:48 PM)Galen Wrote: In the general case you are correct. I must mention that the Silents were always pretty much non-entities after the Boomers started since all they ever did was try to placate everyone.
Well on a congressional level the Silents held majorities from around 1976 to 1992, but in the first half the GI dragged them around, and the second half the Boomers pushed them around. They are perhaps the politically weakest Artist generation in US history. I'm unsure as to why that is, but I do suspect that part of that might be due to decreased birth rates during the Depression and WW2.
Quote:Good Point. This is one of the reasons that I suspect that the era of the total state is coming to an end. During their early lives the US actually won wars. Other than Grenada and the Gulf War all Generation X has seen is that the US is really good at losing them. Grenada was a joke and lets face it the Gulf War was the trigger that set the current series of wars into motion. Only an idiot or progressive, but I repeat myself, would continue with interventionism in the face of that record.
I have yet to see in my lifetime that I can remember a military action wherein the US was victorious where the supposedly mightiest military in the world was not fighting some third rate third world military. If anything things have gotten worse since the revocation of the Draft. But then again the older I get the more I seem to think that the basis of citizenship along the same lines as Starship Troopers might be a fundamentally good idea.
Quote:Most people have the comic book caricature that we get in school which is more indoctrination than history.
Orwell pointed out that who controls the present controls the past and who controls the past controls the future. I am not given to conspiracy theories, but I do think that there has been a conscious effort to make history classes little more than propaganda and as boring as possible by having teachers that are the least qualified to teach, teach those courses.
How much of that is a conscious conspiracy or is merely ruling classes acting in their own self-preservation is a matter of debate.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Ragnarök_62 - 05-13-2016
The Mideast question.
Answer.
1. Shut down all bases there.
2. Ship out all US troops.
3. Let it be.
If we need oil or whatnot, stop messing with Russia's neighborhood and build a pipeline from Siberia to the Alaska oil pipeline. Assorted Latin American countries are also good prospects [if we can ever stop meddling in their internal affairs as well. ]
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-13-2016
(05-13-2016, 08:32 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: The Mideast question.
Answer.
1. Shut down all bases there.
2. Ship out all US troops.
3. Let it be.
If we need oil or whatnot, stop messing with Russia's neighborhood and build a pipeline from Siberia to the Alaska oil pipeline. Assorted Latin American countries are also good prospects [if we can ever stop meddling in their internal affairs as well. ]
I wouldn't just limit that to the Middle East. Europe, Japan and Korea would be good places to close bases and withdraw troops from too.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Galen - 05-14-2016
(05-13-2016, 06:39 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I have yet to see in my lifetime that I can remember a military action wherein the US was victorious where the supposedly mightiest military in the world was not fighting some third rate third world military. If anything things have gotten worse since the revocation of the Draft. But then again the older I get the more I seem to think that the basis of citizenship along the same lines as Starship Troopers might be a fundamentally good idea.
This will occur over the time span roughly equivalent to the decline of Feudalism. It took five hundred years to get to this level of centralization. Just as the Church was in fiscal bankruptcy, so it is with the State now. This always happens to the preeminent institution when a certain way of organizing society reaches its limit.
You might like the Freehold a little better since it more fully develops the idea that Heinlein had.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Odin - 05-14-2016
I may be left-wing, but I am also a geopolitical realist. US isolationism will create a power vacuum that will only lead to horrific wars as various powers try to fill the void. Have we all forgotten what happened when the US refused to accept hegemonic status after WW1? The result was another world war. Isolationism is a idealistic ideology for the geopolitically ignorant.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - radind - 05-14-2016
(05-14-2016, 12:29 PM)Odin Wrote: I may be left-wing, but I am also a geopolitical realist. US isolationism will create a power vacuum that will only lead to horrific wars as various powers try to fill the void. Have we all forgotten what happened when the US refused to accept hegemonic status after WW1? The result was another world war. Isolationism is a idealistic ideology for the geopolitically ignorant.
I am conservative on many issues and try to be a realist. Power vacuums will be filled by something and the results could well be negative, so total withdrawal and isolation looks risky to me.
War should be avoided unless there is no alternative and our survival is at stake( or at least some real vital national interest). I don't think the modern so called 'wars' qualify.
After WWI, all the allies contributed to the causes of WWII, including extremely harsh treatment of Germany. The Great Depression was also a big factor.
There must be some approach that is more balanced than choosing to stay with our recent policies , or total withdrawal from the world.
(05-13-2016, 03:48 PM)Galen Wrote: In the general case you are correct. I must mention that the Silents were always pretty much non-entities after the Boomers started since all they ever did was try to placate everyone.
I think that the Silents as a group tried to make peace with other generations, but would not use the term placate. In any case the Boomers did take the lead and became the dominant force. It appeared to me that the Boomers as a group had a drive to tell everyone else what to do.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-14-2016
(05-14-2016, 12:29 PM)Odin Wrote: I may be left-wing, but I am also a geopolitical realist. US isolationism will create a power vacuum that will only lead to horrific wars as various powers try to fill the void. Have we all forgotten what happened when the US refused to accept hegemonic status after WW1? The result was another world war. Isolationism is a idealistic ideology for the geopolitically ignorant.
So then you're saying you have no faith in the EU, or even for that matter the UN in filling that vacuum. Now with the EU I can understand, Europe is pretty busy destroying itself which is why we should expect a Brexit this year. That being said, let us look at what the US has accomplished with it's hegemonic status...
More wars. Creating wars where there weren't any before the rise and promotion of ISIS, Al Queda and so forth. So yeah interventionism has had glorious results. Well if one is in the military-industrial complex perhaps, otherwise it hasn't.
This doesn't even get into the fact that eventually your debt catches up to you--even for currency issuers. I will grant MMT in that it states that currency issuers (like the Federal Government) cannot go bankrupt but if the currency inflates enough then foreigners are under no obligation to use our currency to purchase oil and resources. But what is most important for those who insist on interventionism is that in order to be interventionist we need a large military and that military has to be paid for by a large military which requires a large and strong economy--which is being systematically destroyed by these very same interventionists through globalist trade deals!
In short, I can only come to the conclusion that the highest form of patriotism is the insistence that the US go and be a normal country for a while. As for preventing war...forget that. Man's nature is such that wars will always happen, are perhaps unavoidable.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Odin - 05-14-2016
Faith in the UN? HAHAHAHAHAHA, the UN is a joke, geopolitically, in anything where the interests of the permanent members of the Security Council are in conflict. I remember seeing news stories as a kid of blue-helmets standing by doing nothing while Rwandans and Bosnians were butchered.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Ragnarök_62 - 05-14-2016
(05-14-2016, 04:04 PM)Odin Wrote: Faith in the UN? HAHAHAHAHAHA, the UN is a joke, geopolitically, in anything where the interests of the permanent members of the Security Council are in conflict. I remember seeing news stories as a kid of blue-helmets standing by doing nothing while Rwandans and Bosnians were butchered.
Whatever... Rwanda and the hellhole known as the Balkans have no strategic interest to the US. I see no reason to meddle in every sort of action other folks around the world are doing.
Odin Wrote:I may be left-wing, but I am also a geopolitical realist. US isolationism will create a power vacuum that will only lead to horrific wars as various powers try to fill the void. Have we all forgotten what happened when the US refused to accept hegemonic status after WW1? The result was another world war. Isolationism is a idealistic ideology for the geopolitically ignorant.
What is unsustainable will stop. I mean just look around. The residents of Fint are getting toxified by lead, the US infrastructure is 3rd world, and the US must get off fossil fuels. Also, if we don't dismantle the MIC , we'll end up in the terminal stages of empire. Wealth disparity will keep climbing and most of us will end up as peasants. Reality bites if we keep on the current course , the dollar loses reserve status and we'll have to actually pay for imports instead of just printing money like we do now. I do not want to live in a country that has gone bankrupt like Venezuela which is now literally starving and descending into mob rule.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article74794787.html
Now, add frittering away money on non productive stuff like an outsized military, a dash of government corruption/ineptitude, and a pinch of globalization and you get this:
https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2016/05/11/venezuela-looting-wounded-5000-supermarket/
Pigeons, the other white meat.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-14-2016
(05-14-2016, 04:04 PM)Odin Wrote: Faith in the UN? HAHAHAHAHAHA, the UN is a joke, geopolitically, in anything where the interests of the permanent members of the Security Council are in conflict. I remember seeing news stories as a kid of blue-helmets standing by doing nothing while Rwandans and Bosnians were butchered.
Honestly I'm not surprised that you didn't respond to the rest of the post. As for the UN the whole thing is an unworkable idealistic joke. Personally I'd love to see it dismantled and the Avenue of the Americas go back to simply being called Sixth Avenue. That is what New Yorkers call it anyway.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Odin - 05-14-2016
(05-14-2016, 07:02 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Honestly I'm not surprised that you didn't respond to the rest of the post.
Here is my honest opinion, when American hegemony ends, in spite of all it's horrible flaws and the stupid, terrible shit the US has done, it is going to be seen as a golden age compared to anything that comes after. On a global scale, the post-WW2 Pax Americana has been the least violent time in human history.
RE: The Middle Eastern question - Kinser79 - 05-14-2016
(05-14-2016, 09:48 PM)Odin Wrote: Here is my honest opinion, when American hegemony ends, in spite of all it's horrible flaws and the stupid, terrible shit the US has done, it is going to be seen as a golden age compared to anything that comes after. On a global scale, the post-WW2 Pax Americana has been the least violent time in human history.
In short the collapse of the American Empire will be as terrible as the collapse of the Soviet Union...surprising how closely your view mirrors Putin's yet I seem to remember you saying some pretty vile things about Vladimir.