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  1. #1

    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    Don't be so quick to see it that way. Iraq had a chance to retain over 10,000 US troops after the pull-out, if they had only signed an agreement saying our Soldiers retained their immunity from the Iraqi court system. They absolutely refused, and so this is the bed that they made for themselves. As a nation, we made the choice to let this happen in 2010. Pretty much everyone knew it was going to happen, and said it was going to happen, and it all rested on the security agreement.
    Your dignity or your security. It was their choice of course, but the options were ones we decided upon.


  2. #2

    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    That's fair.
    I disagree.


  3. #3

    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    I meant your analysis. As to the situation, fair or not, it is what it is. 8 years should have been enough to get them ready to govern themselves again, but it wasn't. Should we have given more? Without that immunity, they would have spent more time prosecuting Americans for political reasons than anything else. We were right to keep that in the agreement, and they had every right to not sign it. I wouldn't call the current situation fair, but I wouldn't call it all that unfair either. Maliki was fairly elected.
    My mistake for misinterpreting you. I don't think any amount of time would have had Iraq become what we imagined it to be. I am just mad that we destabilized an entire country and worked against our own efforts for literally nothing. Nothing that can be done at this point but let Iraq fragment and see if we can work with the Kurds and Shia's.

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  4. #4

    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    You and me both. I like to think some day I'll be able to visit Baghdad and hang out in the palm tree forests without the threat of war, but its looking like that may never be. Its a total waste.
    That sums it up perfectly. What a waste. Is it any wonder why millennial's are apathetic when the US started the 21st century under the policies of Bush?

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  5. #5
    Praefectus Fabrum Senior Member Anime BlackJack Champion, Flash Poker Champion, Word Up Champion, Shape Game Champion, Snake Shooter Champion, Fishwater Challenge Champion, Rocket Racer MX Champion, Jukebox Hero Champion, My House Is Bigger Than Your House Champion, Funky Pong Champion, Cutie Quake Champion, Fling The Cow Champion, Tiger Punch Champion, Virus Champion, Solitaire Champion, Worm Race Champion, Rope Walker Champion, Penguin Pass Champion, Skate Park Champion, Watch Out Champion, Lawn Pac Champion, Weapons Of Mass Destruction Champion, Skate Boarder Champion, Lane Bowling Champion, Bugz Champion, Makai Grand Prix 2 Champion, White Van Man Champion, Parachute Panic Champion, BlackJack Champion, Stans Ski Jumping Champion, Smaugs Treasure Champion, Sofa Longjump Champion Seamus Fermanagh's Avatar
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    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    We do not have what it takes to be a Great Power.

    We need to vacate the field for the real contestants: China and Russia.

    Go back to the Monroe Doctrine and spend a couple of decades building real relationships with the rest of the New World.

    The Old World will get along just fine without our boorish efforts.
    "The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman

    "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken

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  6. #6
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    It only gets worse.

    The US arms sent to Syria that helped arm these guys and this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...years-ago.html


    We are Imperialistic. It is all about the money of course and making a safe business environment for the banks and corporations funding our politicians and directing policy.


    Education: that which reveals to the wise,
    and conceals from the stupid,
    the vast limits of their knowledge.
    Mark Twain

  7. #7
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
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    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
    Go back to the Monroe Doctrine and spend a couple of decades building real relationships with the rest of the New World.

    The Old World will get along just fine without our boorish efforts.
    A decent take from today:

    I’d say eight years of blood and treasure and failure in Iraq is enough. Unless, like Wieseltier, you see the entire planet as a patient and America as the only nurse. [...]

    So let me put this as kindly as I can. We lost 5,000 young Americans trying to keep this centrifugal country in one piece. After eight years, and huge expenses in training and equipping the Iraqi army, we bear no blame and never have for the pathological sectarianism of so many Arab countries, culturally or politically. And it’s time to have enough self-respect to say so. The sanest, wisest way to wriggle out of this trap is precisely to do nothing – again and again – until the pathology of dependence is finished.

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  8. #8
    Part-Time Polemic Senior Member ICantSpellDawg's Avatar
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    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    A decent take from today:

    I’d say eight years of blood and treasure and failure in Iraq is enough. Unless, like Wieseltier, you see the entire planet as a patient and America as the only nurse. [...]

    So let me put this as kindly as I can. We lost 5,000 young Americans trying to keep this centrifugal country in one piece. After eight years, and huge expenses in training and equipping the Iraqi army, we bear no blame and never have for the pathological sectarianism of so many Arab countries, culturally or politically. And it’s time to have enough self-respect to say so. The sanest, wisest way to wriggle out of this trap is precisely to do nothing – again and again – until the pathology of dependence is finished.
    Hey, you guys won 2 elections. Let's try it your way for a while, see how it goes.
    "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
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    "If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
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  9. #9
    Voluntary Suspension Voluntary Suspension Philippus Flavius Homovallumus's Avatar
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    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    A decent take from today:
    I’d say eight years of blood and treasure and failure in Iraq is enough. Unless, like Wieseltier, you see the entire planet as a patient and America as the only nurse. [...]

    So let me put this as kindly as I can. We lost 5,000 young Americans trying to keep this centrifugal country in one piece. After eight years, and huge expenses in training and equipping the Iraqi army, we bear no blame and never have for the pathological sectarianism of so many Arab countries, culturally or politically. And it’s time to have enough self-respect to say so. The sanest, wisest way to wriggle out of this trap is precisely to do nothing – again and again – until the pathology of dependence is finished.
    Translation: Filthy WOGs.

    Let's be clear, America, along with the UK and France, is directly responsible for every stage of this mess. The partitioning after WWI, the establishment of Israel after WWII, the toppling of the relatively progressive monarchs in favour of Tyrants during the Cold War, and then the post-Cold War invasions, along with the Soviet-Afghan War which has created not one but two generations of Jihadist fighters, and the failure to support Israel even when it tries it's best to emulate Nazi Germany.

    Before you disagree with the last, remember the Israelis state was sterilising "Black Jews" to keep the race pure.

    Now, let me quote the bit right before the bit you quoted:

    I love this formulation: hegemony means inaction is action, so there’s no difference between the two!

    Yes, that is what it means. If you have the power to act and choose not to, then you have chosen and becomes responsible. What the writer is saying is that Iraq is not worth dead Americans, implicit in this is that Americans are, as individuals, worth more than Iraqis. If he had said, "intervening will not help" then that would be one thing, but what he said was "we have already expended enough blood."

    Oh, and Vietnam was winnable, had the NVA been crushed in the North.
    "If it wears trousers generally I don't pay attention."

    [IMG]https://img197.imageshack.us/img197/4917/logoromans23pd.jpg[/IMG]

  10. #10

    Default Re: ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    We can be great without being imperialistic. Pacifying another nation requires true hatred and brutality,
    This. You understand how to supplant a culture/nation, you just don't have the will.
    Extermination of the existing population and declaring the land open for settlement worked well in the past; selling such a policy to your citizens is much tougher.
    Ja-mata TosaInu

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