Money is only the means to an end. It's about power. Islamic State is very serious about the "state" part of their name. They intend to supplant the countries of Iraq and Syria and eventually the entire Middle East.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Trouble is it's very hard to remove them from power either. If a US led coalition goes in there to attack ISIS has many Sunni towns under their rule. And Sunni's love ISIS so all we can do by attacking ISIS is create a bigger recruiting drive.
Best thing to do is to arm local armies as the armies and people form that region. Kurds, Syrians. Iranians blend in and understand the culture.
__________________
Last edited by One_Angry_Scot on Sep 15th, 2014 at 07:09 PM
ISIS funding is over 3 million a day from oil sold on the black market. As well as them robbing a bank in Iraq for 500 million. As well as it seems people are funding and donating to them.
Half a billion dollars and 3 million a day is not a lot of money? Thats an insane amount of money America is spending 7.5 million a day just on air strikes, and thats high tech weapons deployments.
This is not the JV league as we were led to believe, as shown they are not to be fcked with.
In the general sense, sure, that is a lot of money. In regards to trying to control an entire country through military force while fending off a coalition of attackers, it's chump-change.
If the US rolled in and they tried conventional war tactics, they would lose very quickly, they're best at guerilla tactics and winning through attrition when facing a none broken army. Even a country like Iran would steamroll them in a conventional war.
True, but we just did this, we rolled in Eradicated, left, and they crawled back. Also ISIS is nothing new, I was fighting ISIS/ISIL when I was there in 2005. This is our Afghanistan, just like Russia in the 70 and 80's.
I wonder if anyone else is alarmed by Obama's complacency? We may very well be living in the most dangerous times in history, and Obama has people believing that "Everything is Awesome"... It isn't.
Where exactly is the " everything is awesome" quote there?
I mean, every Obama speech I've ever heard has showcased a variation of "we've made considerable gains in X and Y, but we're not out of the woods yet.
__________________
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
I don't think it's accurate to say that Sunnis "love" ISIS.
It's probably more accurate to say that Sunnis hate and fear the Iraqi and Syrian governments, but many Sunnis also hate and fear ISIS as seen by all the tribal uprisings in ISIS areas.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Yeah I probably misphrased it there I admit. What I meant was pretty much what you said. ISIS are a Sunni uprising after governments in the region are Shia backed.
So while love was a bit strong. I mean to say that a Sunni man in Raqqa or Mosul see's ISIS and knows that they are Sunni so they have the same culture and believe the same thing. Whereas under Al Maliki when he was in power, they wouldn't have the same ideology.
The Kurds/Syrians won't do much damage, though.
The IS seems to be the superior army of we compare both.
The best solution methinks is a repeated air strike by US and allied forces in areas occupied by IS jihadists.
If it ever comes to it, innocent blood must be shed for the greater good.
__________________
"Farewell, Damos... Ash, Pikachu... And you. All of my beloved." -- Arceus
Last edited by AsbestosFlaygon on Sep 18th, 2014 at 01:16 AM
It's a difficult situation, sure ISIS are probably well armed. But don't forget Assad has been fighting ISIS, Al Nusra and the FSA among other rebel groups and for a time held his own.
In the end indiscriminate bombing won't help. All it does is angers the populace. Make air strikes where you know no civilians are located. Like the US has done with the air strikes on the dams.
I don't think the war can be won unless the Kurds are armed and the Syrians are assisted. You need boots on the ground without UK, US etc being there. And the only way for that to happen is by making sure the Kurds are armed. The Syrians are possibly armed plus given intelligence. And hopefully get Iran to assist as well.
I don't think it's like that. I think the Sunnis in ISIS-controlled areas either are intimidated by ISIS or think they're the lesser of two evils when compared to the Iraqi government.
If studying the Middle East has taught me anything it's that the only thing that really actually matters when it comes to life or death struggles is if you're Kurdish or not--they're the only group that seems to always be cohesive, even when they have such a broad range of political ideologies and approaches to seeking statehood.
Being Sunni means dick until a Shi'ite is in the room.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Logistically it is not feasible for an army in the middle of Syria and Iraq with 20-30k troops to maintain a fighting force for very long. Even with captured equipment they will run out of food and supplies if they cannot move significant quantities of resources. Especially with no air power they will be always limited and eventually will fail in a drawn out conflict. Those shiny truck tacticals are toast against any sort of armored vehicle if we provide them. They seem to have BMPs and some cheap T series tanks which all are pretty much targets for any drones.
basically my understanding is that he got rid of the stockpiles to comply with UN sanctions but kept up the appearance of having secret stockpiles as a sort of deterrent against the iranians. basically he was purposely acting like he did have weapons but was trying to hide it. but he always maintained the capability to produce said weapons at any time if they were ever needed. it just wasn't feasible at the time for him to have huge stockpiles. saddam's approach to geopolitical power relied pretty heavily on WMDs so i think it's a pretty arbitrary point that he didn't happen to have a stockpile at the time of the invasion. i know that the bush administration stressed the intelligence that he did have those weapons... which i'm not defending. but yea. imo dude loved WMDs and would have pursued them the first chance he got.
"i think it's a pretty arbitrary point that he didn't happen to have a stockpile at the time of the invasion"
Disagreed. We invaded a country and wrecked the shit out of it on a false premise. I'm not willing to look the other way because it happened to be the US that ****ed up.
Ignoring the false premise that lead us into Iraq for a moment, fast forward to 2014, look what our "freedom" actions have attained? Iraq is in a chaos and a hot bed for churning out new terrorist.
KMC Community Forums
Sep 15th, 2014 06:31 PM
