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[pa22word]

I agree with a lot of what you said man, but this:

When Saddam gasses thousands of his own people with chemical weapons- Which by international law warrants invasion and declarations of war for crimes against humanity, the US didn't do anything in 87' because Saddam, like many puppet regime dictators was a boon that played ball with US interests. The US might not have liked it, but those Kurds getting gassed in their own villages are worth less than the allure of lost oil revenues.

Is pretty untrue. The real reason the US didn't do much during that time had nothing to do with oil and more to do with the Iran Iraq war going on at the time in which the US, Israel, and others were playing both sides off each other (see: iran contra) in order to have them both stall out without a decisive victory. In the end it was ultimately a "winning" strategy, with both nations stalling out and ending the war much poorer and contained in their boxes in the end vs when it had started.

Like, okay you end support of Saddam after he does that and Iran wins the war and seizes half of Iraq. Now you have to put out even more brush fires after the war due to a heightened Iran having greater power projection and income to fuel insurgencies and terrorism abroad. There was really no good choices in the region at that time other than to maintain the status quo and hope for the best, which what the policy ultimately was directed to do.

 

[ProfessorLobo]

After 8 years of shrugging their shoulders, I'm sure democrats will start caring about this sort of stuff again.

Yeah that's the one positive thing that I can see coming out of this presidency.

 

[chadskin]

At least 240 dead:

Mosul municipality chief, Abdul Sattar al-Habbo, who is supervising the rescue, said 240 bodies had been pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings. Previous estimates from local officials had said around 130 people had died.

http://news.trust.org/item/20170325204241-707j3/

 

[MisterFalcon]

I'll do you one further. How many people do you think died in Iraq during Clintons precidency due to sanctions?

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-reports.html

When the maker of that report did a follow up two years she got numbers that were very different.

Sir
I, with others reported1 the results of a child mortality and nutrition survey I jointly conducted in Baghdad, in August, 1995, as a member of a mission sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Because of the high level of child mortality, I took part in a follow-up mission to Iraq, in April, 1996, with the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), a non-governmental organisation. The mortality rates estimated in 1996 were much lower than those reported in 1995, for unknown reasons.

http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)70470-0/fulltext

The data being supplied by officials of the Iraqi government who had a great deal to gain by showing a ghastly death toll was probably the reason. But this is water under the bridge, the retraction gets a fraction of the attention the original article got and with the infamous Madeleine Albright quote radicals all over the Middle East knew for sure The West had murdered half a million Iraqi babies and that would have to be avenged.

 

[Quixzlizx]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/03/24/airstrike-monitoring-group-overwhelmed-by-claims-of-u-s-caused-civilian-casualties/?tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.e3e441a7fbcc

It seems like US-inflicted civilian casualties have been ratcheting up for the past couple of months. I wonder what the difference could be.

 

[pa22word]

Yeah that's the one positive thing that I can see coming out of this presidency.

There's always a decent correlation upward of how seriously the left's take on dude's like Chomsky when they aren't in power. It's always been kind of the central hypocrisy of the democratic party: want to expand state power when you're around but then cry endlessly when that same power falls to the other guy after you lose and they start doing things you don't like. It's always rubbed me wrong too, but it is what it is. Journalists like Greenwald and Savage have been warning the left about Obama's expansion of the executive branch powers for the entire length of his presidency, but the left mostly laughed it off as if the Bush administration wasn't just right there to see how badly things can go when executive power goes off the deep end.

It's kind of one of the good things I can see coming out of the Trump administration in the end. If congress finds its balls again and starts seriously placing limits on the imperial presidency due to Trump just being a total dumpster fire for the next 4 years then I think long term our republic will be better for it.

 

[Puck Beaverton]

It's sickening that people honestly think this is 'worth it'. I can't and won't understand that mindset.

People thought it was worth it when Obama was in charge. "Casualties of war" or some bullshit.

 

[Hermii]

People thought it was worth it when Obama was in charge. "Casualties of war" or some bullshit.

It's easy to accept casualties of war when it's only people you feel no connection to who are dying.

 

[Skyzard]

I'll do you one further. How many people do you think died in Iraq during Clintons precidency due to sanctions?

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-reports.html

When Saddam gasses thousands of his own people with chemical weapons- Which by international law warrants invasion and declarations of war for crimes against humanity, the US didn't do anything in 87' because Saddam, like many puppet regime dictators was a boon that played ball with US interests. The US might not have liked it, but those Kurds getting gassed in their own villages are worth less than the allure of lost oil revenues.
The US only cared enough to stop Saddam when he invaded Kuwait which was a sign they couldn't control him anymore. In a massive blunder they decided to not remove Saddam while at the same time, telling the Iraqis to fight for a revolution, with the US withdrawing and leaving them to die in the hands of a genocide imposed by Saddam throughout the 90s.

It's not that a war against Iraq was not warranted. Saddam had broken every sort of violation you could think of. His sadism is the stuff of legends. People opposed to war because people didn't think that the US had the Iraqis best interest in their focus. If it did, there would have been an invasion after the chemical weapons.


The US looks the other way. It's why it sells for billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia, who gives them Sunni groups like ISIS who can then start proxy wars in Shia territories. The Shias themselves are distursting of the US after the CIA backed coup during Eisenhowers administration which overturned a conservative leader and replaced it with 20 years of ruthless dictatorship which turned Iran into a fanatical state that set that country back hundreds of years and regressed into a oppressive revolution.
Sunnis and Shias have fought since the days of Muhammed, but the escalation in recent years rest highly on Western imperalism. There is enough blame to go around with colonization, puppet states, drawing map lines. And then we have the nerve to see them as toxic enemies when our governments are the ones who've destabilized them.

You cannot blame Muslims not to buy it when western leaders talk about peace in the middle east, and sells so many weapons to groups and regimes who're going to use them. The disconnect is extreme.

Destabilize the Middle-East.

This is state sponsored terrorism being waged against the middle east. Sickening and evil.

Effectively it is.

Helping to terrorize all across the middle-east in order to divide and destabilize.

 

[Kurdel]

I presume the Eiffel Tower and Brandenburg gate will be lighting up to remember them.

Yeah, the whole "colored LEDs for solidarity" always came off as BS to me.

 

[CrimsonSquall]

Honestly fuck America for this if true

 

[Skyzard]

I'm starting to think of the possibility that the pilot aimed for the gas truck.

 

[Red]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/03/24/airstrike-monitoring-group-overwhelmed-by-claims-of-u-s-caused-civilian-casualties/?tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.e3e441a7fbcc

It seems like US-inflicted civilian casualties have been ratcheting up for the past couple of months. I wonder what the difference could be.

Trump rolled back restrictions on where strikes were allowed, and reduced oversight. Expect this sort of carnage to continue for a while.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

When the maker of that report did a follow up two years she got numbers that were very different.


http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)70470-0/fulltext

The data being supplied by officials of the Iraqi government who had a great deal to gain by showing a ghastly death toll was probably the reason. But this is water under the bridge, the retraction gets a fraction of the attention the original article got and with the infamous Madeleine Albright quote radicals all over the Middle East knew for sure The West had murdered half a million Iraqi babies and that would have to be avenged.

Right. But as your link mentions;

Thus, an accurate estimate of child mortality in Iraq probably lies between the two surveys.

Rather than discouraging rapid scientific assessments in crisis situations, these results highlight four lessons to be drawn from the experience in Iraq. First, the need for explicit on-site verification, even in only a small portion of the survey sample. Second, the training of local enumerators (and international experts) to underscore the need for objectivity even under difficult circumstances. Third, the need for survey organisers and government to ensure data quality (in Iraq the government would not provide census or birth and death registry data). Finally, the need for reliable indicators of the effects of sanctions2, 3, 4 on vulnerable sectors of the civilian population (eg, child mortality is difficult to assess and other indicators such as weight-for-age may be better).

It only really highlights the complicated reality of drawing up the tally combatants, and the truth being somewhere in between the two reports. As always, you also have to leave open for everything that goes unreported and undocumented.

If you a search for it, you'll see people who discredit TheLancedit for it's "over 1 million dead in Iraq". It's rather similar in accusations. The US armies tally is much, much lower, but TBF, the US Army has a strange way of counting what a combatant is, as what was marked during how US classifies that any brown person of a certain height is an appropriate target . So it's very normal regardless if it's the vietnam war, the korea war, the accusation is always that the side of the suffering are inflating their numbers to seem important and for victim points.

What to take away from it is that the sanctions were devestating for a lot of people. It makes me uncomfortable to argue the levy of the number like it is supposed to make it better or worse, although correct information and proportions are important.


Wiki Writes about the polarization between the two studies;

Controversy about regional differences[edit]
Some studies divided into two regions: the "south/center" under the control of the Saddam regime, and the "north" which had some protection from foreign air forces.[32][47]
The Lancet[47] and UNICEF studies observed that child mortality decreased in the north and increased in the south/center between 1994 and 1999 but did not attempt to explain the disparity, or to apportion culpability; instead it recommended that "oth the Government of Iraq and the U.N. Sanctions Committee should give priority to contracts for supplies that will have a direct impact on the well-being of children," UNICEF said.[32]

Some commentators blame Saddam Hussein for the excess deaths during this period. For example, Michael Rubin argued that the Kurdish and the Iraqi governments handled Oil For Food aid differently, and that therefore the Iraqi government policy, rather than the sanctions themselves, should be held responsible for any negative effects.[53][54] Likewise, David Cortright claimed: "The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned but UN-administered north, are the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief effort."[18] In the run-up to the Iraq War, some[55] disputed the idea that excess mortality exceeded 500,000, because the Iraqi government had interfered with objective collection of statistics (independent experts were barred).[56]

Other Western observers, such as Matt Welch and Anthony Arnove, argue that the differences in results noted by authors such as Rubin (above) may have been because the sanctions were not the same in the two parts of Iraq, due to several regional differences: in the per capita money,[57] in war damage to infrastructure and in the relative ease with which smugglers evaded sanctions through the porous Northern borders.[58] This argument was debunked by several UN-sponsored studies taken after the overthrow of Saddam's regime, which revealed that the previous childhood mortality figures for South/Central Iraq were inflated by more than a factor of two and that the childhood mortality rate in those regions was even lower than the rate in northern Iraq

I vaguely remember the oil for food program. This is the fund that is supposed to help pay for the rebuilding of Iraq? I belive the Bush government wanted to spend billions in this fund to rebuild the infrastructure.

I agree with a lot of what you said man, but this:
Is pretty untrue. The real reason the US didn't do much during that time had nothing to do with oil and more to do with the Iran Iraq war going on at the time in which the US, Israel, and others were playing both sides off each other (see: iran contra) in order to have them both stall out without a decisive victory. In the end it was ultimately a "winning" strategy, with both nations stalling out and ending the war much poorer and contained in their boxes in the end vs when it had started.

Like, okay you end support of Saddam after he does that and Iran wins the war and seizes half of Iraq. Now you have to put out even more brush fires after the war due to a heightened Iran having greater power projection and income to fuel insurgencies and terrorism abroad. There was really no good choices in the region at that time other than to maintain the status quo and hope for the best, which what the policy ultimately was directed to do.

I think you're right that the Iran-Iraq war took precedent over the oil revenues. Despite being more heavily reliant on oil back then, the US got a lot of its surplus from other places despite the east. But don't you think it's true that the US would not have gone for the gulf war had Kuwait not had any oil interests?

Kuwait was undermining Iraq by pumping amounts of oil with low prices, and this hurt Saddams regime who was hurting after losing the war.

When later asked why he invaded Kuwait, Saddam first claimed that it was because Kuwait was rightfully Iraq's 19th province and then said "When I get something into my head I act. That's just the way I am."[35] After Saddam's seizure of Kuwait in August 1990, a UN coalition led by the United States drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February 1991. The ability for Saddam Hussein to pursue such military aggression was from a "military machine paid for in large part by the tens of billions of dollars Kuwait and the Gulf states had poured into Iraq and the weapons and technology provided by the Soviet Union, Germany, and France."[56]
Shortly before he invaded Kuwait, he shipped 100 new Mercedes 200 Series cars to top editors in Egypt and Jordan. Two days before the first attacks, Saddam reportedly offered Egypt's Hosni Mubarak 50 million dollars in cash, "ostensibly for grain".[77]

Saddam detained several Westerners, with video footage shown on Iraqi state television.
U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was the Persian Gulf monarchy that had the most friendly relations with the Soviets.[78] On the other hand, Washington foreign policymakers, along with Middle East experts, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, were extremely concerned with stability in this region.[79] The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's price of oil, and therefore control of the world economy, was at stake. Britain profited heavily from billions of dollars of Kuwaiti investments and bank deposits. Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who happened to be in the U.S. at the time.

Despite Kuwait being enemy of Israel and most likely to be radicalized by soviet intersts, Kuwait was ultimately a tool of British imperialism, and in the end it was the western financial stakes that prompted a response.
Had Kuwait been economically insignificant, I don't think anybody would have batted an eye.

 

[elrechazado]

There's always a decent correlation upward of how seriously the left's take on dude's like Chomsky when they aren't in power. It's always been kind of the central hypocrisy of the democratic party: want to expand state power when you're around but then cry endlessly when that same power falls to the other guy after you lose and they start doing things you don't like. It's always rubbed me wrong too, but it is what it is. Journalists like Greenwald and Savage have been warning the left about Obama's expansion of the executive branch powers for the entire length of his presidency, but the left mostly laughed it off as if the Bush administration wasn't just right there to see how badly things can go when executive power goes off the deep end.

It's kind of one of the good things I can see coming out of the Trump administration in the end. If congress finds its balls again and starts seriously placing limits on the imperial presidency due to Trump just being a total dumpster fire for the next 4 years then I think long term our republic will be better for it.

That would be nice, but the power will continue to expand unabated. And both sides will continue to be principled about it only when the other side holds power

 

[Skyzard]

Saddam even asked for permission from the US and they gave it to him through the UN states ambassador to Iraq.

We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.

Then:

The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a 15-year-old girl who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H.W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-Ṣabaḥ (Arabic: نيره الصباح‎&#8206 and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.

...Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".[6]

In her emotional testimony, Nayirah stated that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.

Seven senators cited Nayirah's testimony in their speeches backing the use of force.[Note 1] President George Bush repeated the story at least ten times in the following weeks.[53] Her account of the atrocities helped to stir American opinion in favor of participation in the Gulf War.[54]

Iraq's godawful situation for over 2 decades and to this day is strongly to blame on America.

Any chance they get, it's time to fuck up Iraq.


There will be instability in the Middle-East until all the oil dries up.

 

[AstroNut325]

This will only radicalize more people. What can I do to help convince our current administration to seek a different approach/strategy?

 

[Skyzard]

This will only radicalize more people. What can I do to help convince our current administration to seek a different approach/strategy?

Nothing.

 

[Future]

So what goes on in these bombing runs? How could you ever have 100% intel for a perfect strike?

If you are the president, and intel is given to you that a person of interest that has been responsible for many atrocities is located at X location, a location where he is bound to leave soon. They explain there has never been an opportunity like this for 5 years, and success here would put a significant dent in terrorist activity. They think there is an 80% chance that everything will go smoothly

Do you simply always refuse? Or do you elect to send boots on the ground putting soldiers at an 80% chance of survival? Do you just do nothing and don't pursue any action since it is impossible to know anything for sure? If so, and there is a new terrorist attack against your killing thousands, do you hold your stance?

Fucking tough decisions man

 

[UberTag]

There will be instability in the Middle-East until all the oil dries up.

Kind of makes you wonder why civilian renegades in the region don't actively go out of their way to destroy their own oil reserves.
I mean, that's the best way to make the United States go away and terrorize someone like Saudi Arabia instead, right?

 

[Skyzard]

Makes me think the only way for there to be peace in the Middle-East is for it to be by the Middle-East.

There's no hope for relying on the international community to prevent military intervention, even from outside sources without a real cause.

America stoops to torture and is basically willing to do anything short of dropping a nuke (so far) in order to fuck them up.

Religious ties are going to be the first hurdle now.

Hopefully the War on Islam never becomes the next president's slogan.

 

[Dopus]

This will only radicalize more people. What can I do to help convince our current administration to seek a different approach/strategy?

It wouldn't have been much different under Clinton. Liberals are quick to forget the crimes of the Obama administration, or at the very least ignore them as much as possible because the democrats policies are fairer domestically. The truth is though that US foreign policy has been disastrous for the regions it has intervened in, and the current policy, though it is more lax is a continuation of the norm. Blowing people into little bits without regard for civilians isn't much of a solution.

 

[Puck Beaverton]

I presume the Eiffel Tower and Brandenburg gate will be lighting up to remember them.

Too brown and poor for us to give a shit.

 

[Jazzem]

arewethebaddies.gif

Seriously, this is fucking disgusting. There will be no apology or accountability for this. No headlines. No nothing. No international mourning. No Facebook pictures.

Just more persecuted brown people dead.

Goddamn, how chilling

 

[commedieu]

At least 240 dead:

http://news.trust.org/item/20170325204241-707j3/

These can't all be human shields. This is fucked.

 

[Pomerlaw]

This is terrible.

Honest question though, how do you get rid of ISIS without casualties? More men on the ground, less imprecise bombings?

 

[Linkup]

240 killed so far. Each of them have family and often the extended family can be close. How many of them are mourning the death of those 240? 1000 maybe? 2000?

 

[Skellig Gra]

RIP. More of the same from Obamas cowardly drone strategy.

 

[Durrzerker]

Whatever comes after this life, if anything, I hope that it's gentle and welcoming to the people who died in this attack. They deserve better than to be fodder for an agenda dependent on hate and fear.

No matter what administration condones it or perpetrates it, this is government sanctioned terrorism. No civilian in any country should ever be forced to wonder if death is going to drop from the sky on them for no reason beyond vindicating the selfish ideology of a foreign nation.

I wish this wasn't the way the world worked. It is sickening, hypocritical, cynical, and hateful.

In the end it's the people that are just trying to live their lives who pay. They deserve to be safe and cherished not only by their country but by the global community. Dropping bombs on the people of another country is to drop them on those of your own. We are all human and there is no difference.

I hope their families can find absolution and peace. I hope this is remembered as the atrocity it is. I hope that I can keep hoping that things will change.

 

[Coriolanus]

So what goes on in these bombing runs? How could you ever have 100% intel for a perfect strike?

If you are the president, and intel is given to you that a person of interest that has been responsible for many atrocities is located at X location, a location where he is bound to leave soon. They explain there has never been an opportunity like this for 5 years, and success here would put a significant dent in terrorist activity. They think there is an 80% chance that everything will go smoothly

Do you simply always refuse? Or do you elect to send boots on the ground putting soldiers at an 80% chance of survival? Do you just do nothing and don't pursue any action since it is impossible to know anything for sure? If so, and there is a new terrorist attack against your killing thousands, do you hold your stance?

Fucking tough decisions man

You consider the fact that you've picked "bomb them" for the last 16 years and have nothing to show for it, with a very strong argument that you've made the problem of regional instability even worse. Then you clearly determine what your goal in the region is, and how to achieve it.

Can always go for a UN joint op, fwiw, but then you run the risk of having some asshole like hans blix carefully explaining to you why your intel is shit.

 

[K.Jack]

Obama and Trump will create more terrorists than any Bin Laden memorial speech.

You "accidentally" drop a missile on my family, and I'd be coming for your fucking head too.

It's so disgusting.

 

[Goodstyle]

I may have been hasty when I said all presidents do this kind of thing. They do, but apparently things have gotten worse under Trump.

Iraqi officials are saying rules of engagement have been relaxed under Trump.

This is a HUGE story if true. It's supposedly the largest massacre of citizens by US forces since Vietnam. That's crazy.

 

[Matrix XII]

Those poor people. Man this makes me sick.

 

[crazy monkey]

I presume the Eiffel Tower and Brandenburg gate will be lighting up to remember them.

Don't forget rallies. Facebook things.

 

[Dingens]

This is terrible.

Honest question though, how do you get rid of ISIS without casualties? More men on the ground, less imprecise bombings?

Or how about simply not fucking with their communities?
Don't give people a reason to hate you by destroying their homes, their families, their sheer existence. The damage the US caused in that region isn't going to reverse itself over night. It may take a generation or two, but it certainly isn't going to change if you're not changing your bad habbits of revenge-killing for what was already a revenge-attack to your last revenge attack... it's an endless cycle.
But I somehow doubt that the American public would be willing to accept responsibility and just endures "terrorism" for a few years until they cool down - and with IS, it may not even be an option anymore... basically ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Usobuko]

It's not just an accident strike that happens once in a blue moon.

It's a persistent decades of fear living under the threat of death where the foreign culprit by and large do not care and take responsibility for their actions.

You, your family and your people lives are completely expendable to them for their interests. And because of the cultural reach of the perpetrators, your religion has a huge stigma associate to it and people of the faith are being dehumanized.

It will take some kind of exceptional control and will to simply walk away rather than retaliate.

 

[Quixzlizx]

Trump rolled back restrictions on where strikes were allowed, and reduced oversight. Expect this sort of carnage to continue for a while.

Yes, I was providing the link for the benefit of the "both sides are the same" contingent.

 

[DontBeThatGuy]

I may have been hasty when I said all presidents do this kind of thing. They do, but apparently things have gotten worse under Trump.

Iraqi officials are saying rules of engagement have been relaxed under Trump.

This is a HUGE story if true. It's supposedly the largest massacre of citizens by US forces since Vietnam. That's crazy.

Just the beginning.

 

[MisterFalcon]

240 killed so far. Each of them have family and often the extended family can be close. How many of them are mourning the death of those 240? 1000 maybe? 2000?

Or they can blame ISIS for building their truck bombs there.

Dozens of residents were buried in collapsed buildings in the Iraqi city of Mosul after an air strike against Islamic State triggered a massive explosion last week and rescuers are still recovering bodies, civil defense agency officials and locals said on Thursday.

The exact cause of the collapses was not clear, but a local lawmaker and two local residents said air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition targeting Islamic State militants may have detonated a truck filled with explosives, destroying buildings in a heavily populated area.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-idUSKBN16U2OF

 

[jellies_two]

I may have been hasty when I said all presidents do this kind of thing. They do, but apparently things have gotten worse under Trump.

Iraqi officials are saying rules of engagement have been relaxed under Trump.

This is a HUGE story if true. It's supposedly the largest massacre of citizens by US forces since Vietnam. That's crazy.

That's what I have been saying don't listen to the whatabotism it's a smoke screen. Yes Obama used drones. No he didn't authorize shit as easily. Yes the USA has dirty hands and has a terrible system - except for all the other systems. But trump is a wannabe dictator and only getting crushed in public opinion and pesky laws are stopping him from doing insane stuff like re-invading Iraq for their oil or using nukes. so stop using the past to whitewash him and get active, donate, write your representative, do something don't just be a bystander.

 

[Sunster]

US needs to just get the fuck out. No one there wants us and our fucking planes. Give guidance to local players fighting ISIS, not weapons.

 

[GillianSeed79]

Stuff like this is why people in the Middle East hate us and why war in general is fucking stupid. This is going to create tons of people who hate our guts and more terrorists. Can you imagine if an Iraqi warplane dropped a bomb over some U.S. city or town and killed 200 civilians? Americans would go apeshit.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

First off, I don't get why people keep saying everyone has been fine with Obama and drone strikes. He's been heavily criticized for years for those policies, but people put up with it because they don't want troops on the ground. Saying that troops don't cause huge civilian casualties is also a total joke; happens all the time and soldiers die too not to mention we have to occupy ground to do it. We try to pull out like in Iraq and shit like ISIS rolls through or Syria happens throwing refugees everywhere literally causing a lot of the nationalism we've seen sweeping through in retaliation. Not to mention pressure from places like Isreal and the pressure cooker the entire region is that threatens to destabilize half of Europe.

I mean, it sucks, but I honestly believe there's no good option here. All I can say is that drone strikes were already bad enough, but to have Trump loosen rules on engagement just makes a terrible situation that much worse and I think it will get even bloodier very quickly.

 

[Dopus]

First off, I don't get why people keep saying everyone has been fine with Obama and drone strikes. He's been heavily criticized for years for those policies, but people put up with it because they don't want troops on the ground. Saying that troops don't cause huge civilian casualties is also a total joke; happens all the time and soldiers die too not to mention we have to occupy ground to do it. We try to pull out like in Iraq and shit like ISIS rolls through or Syria happens throwing refugees everywhere literally causing a lot of the nationalism we've seen sweeping through in retaliation. Not to mention pressure from places like Isreal and the pressure cooker the entire region is that threatens to destabilize half of Europe.

I mean, it sucks, but I honestly believe there's no good option here. All I can say is that drone strikes were already bad enough, but to have Trump loosen rules on engagement just makes a terrible situation that much worse and I think it will get even bloodier very quickly.

How about neither boots on the ground nor drone strikes. Perhaps supporting regional allies and supplying the Kurdish forces with intelligence and weapons. Encourage talks with Assad to establish some degree of order and stability until the time comes for a peaceful transition. Don't do it in the way of Libya, like when Hilliary Clinton rejected Saif Gaddafi's plea for a transition to democracy in favour of 'precision' strikes. Shit like ISIS happened as a direct result of US interventionism and hegemony for decades upon decades, not because the United States pulled out. Don't try and frame it in that manner because it is completely untrue.

And yeah, Obama gets criticised. But not nearly enough for the acts he has sanctioned. That is to say the murder of thousands of civilians and further destabilisation of these regions. It's actually disgusting. You'd think by now the US would adopt a different policy instead of the usual smash everything up, but nope. They're brown people, so who cares.

 

[RandomHopeInc]

I would end up hating America too if I were them, we deserve it