Do you support the bombing of ISIS targets in Iraq?

It depends. How much “collateral damage” are these bombings going to cause.

Yes and no… Yes because It is fun to watch CNN like a video game or movie… No because shooting people is wrong and doing it like a coward, from safety in jets, is just plain dishonourable. We need a Prime Directive to interfere in undeveloped nations like Star Trek.

I honestly could care less. I view it as mobsters taking out up and coming gangsters on the block.

I will just teach my son about how petty all of this is and hopefully he will go into education vs the military someday.

Let’s think about this… How long were we in Iraq? Since 01? What took a decade to train and establish an Iraqi military presence with U.S. training was wiped out with 3 years worth of planning from the ISIS. Again waste of time in the first place. Bin Laden was never in Iraq, Weapons of Mass destruction were never found, what was once a great and prosperous culture to one of the first known civilizations of man is now just a battle ground for oil and the west will always intervene.

What isn’t being reported is the fact that these people are fighting back in hopes to control the oil wells, and start turning their own economic surplus. Of course they will also keep it an extreme Islamic community to control the poor while reaping profits off oil. That is their dream.

@talljasperman Also one missile costs more than what the U.S. is shooting at. So I disagree again against ISIS, but the media is paining them as demons that need to be stopped. I think Americans are addicted to war news like a coin operated Video Lottery Terminal, sound when you win a few bucks, anxiety from day to day struggles goes away until the next hand is drawn from the one arm bandits.

I support the bombing because there is genocide taking place. A limited group of people that have been very loyal to the US have been chased up a mountain that only has one road out. We’re not just bombing Isis, but also dropping food/water/aid to the group being harassed.

I support the bombing in as far as it prevents ISIS from an embarrassingly easy rollover of Iraq. The United States is confronted with some rather stark realities in Iraq. There is really only one way to bring ISIS to heel, and it requires a brutal ferocity that would be political suicide for any politician in this country endorsing it. It’s strange that in the run up to the war in Iraq, no one bothered to ask the obvious question “Why are there not armies of suicide bombers lined up for the chance to take out Sadam”?

Yes with a capital “Y”.

I’m totally with @ibstubro.

But in bombing ISIS how many innocents are we killing (which we callously refer to as “collateral damage”), and how many more terrorists and suicide bombers are we creating because their father or brother or child were killed by one of those bombs?

No, I do not. Bombing is so indiscriminate. If we are going to go in and kill it should be hand to hand or long distance snipers picking off opposition leaders.

Yes.

1. We just aren’t killing innocent people in collateral damage. Look at the targets we’ve bombed so far. An ISIS convoy in the desert. ISIS mortar and artillery transport vehicles. We aren’t attacking militants in crowded cities, we aren’t bombing indiscriminately.

2. ISIS is pretty much the most evil organization on the planet. Usually, when a militant group kills civilians or seeks to wipe out an enemy, they don’t brag about it on Twitter. Search #ISIS and you will find pro-ISIS photographs of young infidel girls laying dead with their heads cut off. ISIS has made it clear that they want to commit genocide against the Yazidi, 40,000 of whom are now trapped on top of a mountain. ISIS has killed Yazidi men summarily and then taken their wives and daughters to marry off to fellow jihadis (if they convert to Islam) and killing them if they don’t.

3. The Kurds are heroes. As ISIS swept through northern Iraq, hundreds of thousands of innocent people fled. Kurds welcomed all of these refugees, no questions asked. Kurdish pesh merga forces have been sneaking into the mountains and rescuing Yazidi, at great personal risk. I would hesitate to bomb ISIS targets to help out Shia militias further south because those militias are not exactly good people, but there’s no question that the Kurds deserve the world’s help. We should not led the Kurdish capital fall to ISIS.

@talljasperman, I have to say that I find this “prime directive” sentiment a little repugnant. Iraq is not another planet, and the people who live there are not aliens. They are your fellow human beings.

Erbil, the Kurdish capital, is not “undeveloped,” it’s a modern, progressive city, and it is now home to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing a death cult. And this death cult, by the way, probably would not exist in Iraq were it not for America’s disastrous war there over the previous decade.

Yes. I think @Qingu laid out the case pretty well. The Kurds deserve all the help we can give them.

Assuming this headline is true…

*GENOCIDAL
At Least 500 Yazidis Killed By ISIS… Women And Children Buried Alive… Hundreds Of Women Kidnapped… Rape, Slavery Fears… TO THE RESCUE: Kurds Break Through, Thousands Freed… Many Still Stranded…*

how can we not send help?

@Darth_Algar “how many more terrorists and suicide bombers are we creating because their father or brother or child were killed” by Isis after supporting Western efforts for decades?

These are our allies in Iraq. Our past comes with certain obligations, like it or not.

Not by americans.
Nor by the UN to be honest.
Tho I do think the UN should bomb americans for an un sanctioned act of war on Irakies by the americans who aren’t a member of the UN security council.

But then again who care’s, they’re all just names and imaginary lines in the sand.

I bet you within 100 years we’ll be at war with martians.

Big corporations land humans on mars to mine resources.
Humans get horny and have offspring.
Offspring are tecnically martians.
New martian race get well pissed that they have to work for human corporations who also steal all there resources so they buy AK-47’s from the russians and form the first martian terrorist organisation and blow shit up.

America sends black water merc’s to sort them out.
Martians become human slaves.
(meanwhile the pleiadians giggle at the silly humans from alpha-century)
Humans use martian slave scientists to figure out warp drives and piss off the pleiadians who are no longer laughing.

Pleiadians send reptilian shapeshifters with fiat printed dollars and double the black water merc’s sallary who go onto overthrow the IMF and world bank allowing the martians to take over the world.

America moves to mars….....

And on, and on, and on, and on, ad infinitum….....

(the whole time god never shows up, but everyone says he’s on there side…..)

And thus the humans do what they’ve always done and fuck shit up.

@ibstubro

Are they? What happens when we’re no longer useful to them or they’re no longer useful to us? Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin were once our allies as well. Maybe it’s time we stop poking the hornet’s nest and let the Middle East sort out its own shit.

@Darth_Algar, The Kurds are secular, have welcomed hundreds of thousands of religious minority refugees into their territory, and have been America’s allies since forever.

Are you also worried that France will one day turn into al-Qaeda? Give me a break.

I also find it almost psychopathic that the ethnic cleansing of 40,000 unarmed Yezidi civilians, something America could pretty trivially prevent with limited close air support to peshmerga forces on the ground, is something that’s acceptable to you because “the middle east has to sort out its own shit.”

Ethnic cleansing happens lot. Why is it that we only selectively intervene? Where were we, for instance, when the Kurds were being subject to their own ethnic cleansing? We certainly weren’t their allies then.

So because we cannot logistically or politically intervene to prevent every ethnic cleansing, we should never act to prevent ethnic cleansing?

Does not compute.

Did I say that? No. What I want is for you to question why, exactly, this nation is so selective about when it chooses to intervene in events. And to consider why, if the Kurds have been our allies “since forever” did we not aid them when they were being ethnically cleansed by Saddam Hussein’s regime rather than allying with Hussein at the time? And do you think there are not Kurds who will remember that?

You are asking me to explain a decision made by Ronald Reagan’s national security team, which I will not even attempt to defend, because, needless to say, fuck Ronald Reagan.

What on earth does this have to do with the question of whether we should bomb ISIS now?

No, I’m asking you to question and consider (as I’ve explained), something you seem unwilling or unable to do. This refusal by most Americans to consider the longterm ramifications of, and near unwavering support for, this nation’s actions is a big part of what’s created this shitstorm we’re dealing with now.

I’ve considered the long term ramifications. And I’ve concluded that there is no meaningful strategic risk from providing close air support to pesh merga to save 40,000 Yazidi from genocide, nor is there a risk in helping them protect their capital.

If you think I’ve missed some strategic risk, please explain. Because it sounds like you’re just waving your hands to justify a knee-jerk opposition to airstrikes in Iraq, regardless of the actual details involved.

(That said, I don’t want to sound too harsh—I do not blame people for knee-jerk opposing airstrikes in Iraq because, as you correctly note, we have so often been sold bullshit to justify it. But this isn’t bullshit, and part of “questioning and considering” things like this means you also need to be prepared for the possibility that it’s not bullshit.)

10 years, trillions of dollars and 4,486 American casualties would suggest to me that American attempts to return stability to the region are warranted, especially if further American casualties are avoided.

For better or for worse America has taken upon itself to maintain some kind of stability in the Middle East. When it comes to genocide in other areas of the world, we may bow to the greater interests of our allies, such as England in India or France in Africa.

You break it you buy it… The United states should make Iraq its 51 state.

@ibstubro “For better or for worse America has taken upon itself to maintain some kind of stability in the Middle East.:”

And in doing so have only succeeded in making the region less stable than it was.

The region has been a war-torn hellscape for most of its 5,000 year history. What golden age of pre-US-meddling stability are you referring to?

Yeah, you’re right. Iraq under Saddam Hussein totally wasn’t more stable than it is now.

@Darth_Algar And in doing so have only succeeded in making the region less stable than it was.”

Agreed.

Now what?

Yes and no. Temporary relief in not a solution which means U.S aid will simply postpone the current situation to a later date unless aid becomes indefinite, however, my war stocks produced a 40% return since the bombardment began, so bombs away.

The real solution is to let nature run its course there. Same thing for the Ebola outbreak and the entire African continent as a whole. As a semi-similar example, just look at the foreign aid given to Africa. In the last 60 years Africa received $1 trillion and yet it miraculously ended up being even a bigger shithole than it was. You’ll continue to see the same nonsense in the middle east, so just leave it to nature.

@eno One of the hallmarks of the human race and our civilization it both the desire and ability to help others of our species. We don’t like to let nature run its course especially when we perceive nature as the big, bad guy and ourselves as the underdogs. Structure, laws, community, civilization are all part and parcel our way of trying to end such things as the slaughter you are calling for. Letting humans kill humans is a de-evolution of the species, not an evolution.

You misinterpret my message as an all or nothing case and in doing so you end up making an inaccurate statement that precisely falls under all or nothing.

What I’m saying, generally speaking, is the human race doesn’t understand how to invest, or more accurately, how to properly provide charity. This is evident based on the result of the investment/aid. The result is either the same shit as it always was, or it gets much more severe than the original conditions. In the cases I presented above, the evidence is historical.

To clarify that it is not an all or nothing case, in contrast to my previous examples of the middle east and the African continent, a good example of a good investment would be a country like Israel which receives its aid from the U.S. Here is a live example of a successful investment that is now not only benefiting the U.S but the world. The rankings speak for themselves – economic/science/technological powerhouse, human development, quality-of-life, standard-of-living, etc.

So in short, it is time the human race learns that not every human/country is worth investing/aiding and when you already made a bad investment, its time to sell, take your losses and learn from your mistakes.

What you fail to understand is that quality is important, not quantity. A quantity of animals can’t handle democracy, quality can.