What exactly was the problem he failed to recognize? Several years ago you wanted us to go to war with Assad in Syria. Now you want us to go to war to fight Assad's main enemy in Syria. I think it is obvious that you are confused about the complex issues here. Perhaps Obama recognized that neither side was an ally deserving of US support. The situation changed when ISIS turned and went after Iraq and Obama took the action required to blunt that attack. Watch and learn. The locals will never step up to the plate if we continue to do it all for them. Just as in Libya the President is pressuring the allies to take steps to protect their own national interests. This takes time. Who has provided more leadership than Obama? He got Assad's WMD's destroyed. He blunted the ISIS attack on Iraq with airpower. Syria has got nuthin' we need. Assad and Hezbollah are enemies. ISIS is an enemy, the so-called moderate Syrian rebels are allied with Al Qaeda. Going to war with any of them 2 years ago made no sense at all. Let them kill each other for as long as we can. We need to push ISIS out of Iraq and secure the border with Syria as alfredeneuman suggests. Then we need to let Syria stew in its own mess until the local allies get their shit together to create a ground army capable of occupying Syria with US air and logistical support. This takes time and we have time. Explain. Which of the three anti-American Syrian factions do you want to be in charge of Syria?
I think we should send a Brigade of Bimbos in yoga outfits to deliver nuclear weapons to ISIS in a stretch limo. That will show the bastards that we mean business.
She didn't make it. She was arrested and plead guilty to terrorism charges before she left. She converted to Islam and was going to meet her jihadist suitor that she met on the internet. http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/10/justice/colorado-jihadist-guilty-plea/
BS Red you take such liberties with the truth. Again I never advocated war with Assad. I did advocate helping a coalition against him...AS MANY OF HIS OWN INNER CIRCLE DID!!! 2 years ago there were potential moderate groups in Syria opposed to Assad that were available for support. Likewise Assad HAS AVOIDED conflict with ISIS as they have been fighting and been more successful against Assad's moderate opposition. Again Obama failed to recognize as you do letting ISIS metastasize created the problems in Iraq so he is having to backpedal on his withdrawal from Iraq. I wish I could say you were confused about what is happening but I think rather you are blind and so invested in defending the president that you ignore facts. Funny how supposedly creating pressure by creating a vacuum is as in conflict with political reality as it is with physical reality. You ignore report after report that the president is not respected or believed by his counterparts all over the world. You can't give him credit when other counties try to act when he refuses to. You either fail to understand or willfully ignore that leadership is neither being a war monger or refusing to provide the leadership required from the most powerful country in the world. We are seeing the proof of the axiom that "Nature abhors a vacuum". Again you try to claim lack of leadership as leadership. You don't know all the Syrian WMDs were destroyed as the UN team tagged with the responsibility isn't sure. Also to give him credit ignore the fact it was Putin who got it done and was conveniently timed to give Assad the breather he needed to go over to the offensive against his main opposition while ignoring ISIS. Again my comments are not partisan but are in AGREEMENT with HIS OWN security team. Your claim the border between Iraq and Syria is such a fantasy that it is laughable and destroys any argument that you are serious. BTW ISIS has seized US arms, Iraqi money and is funding itself by selling oil from captured oil fields and is more a pirate state than AQ ever was. NOT the JV the president claimed. He like you love to ignore reality with selected points. It is self evident Red. I said it was a sad situation with over 200,000 dead millions displaced. Are you glad this has happened to Syria Red. Do you take comfort in such desolation if it protects the US? That is the same attitude that has created horrors time and again over history. There was potential to lance that boil 2 years ago...now the infection is killing two states and threatening several others. Just about any faction other than ISIS and Assad would be preferable.
And we have been supporting them for over a year now. The CIA is training them in Jordan, they are getting arms and logistical supplies and equipment. All that they can handle. This is the element you fail to credit--the "moderate" groups in Syria have never been able to coalesce and select effective leaders. They are completely fragmented and none of them have the capacity to defeat Asssad, much less ISIS. They never did. Worse, they are allied with the Al Nustra Front which is an overt Al Qadea affiliate. Any advanced equipment like shoulder-fired missiles have the high likelihood of being captured by ISIS or diverted to AL Qaeda. The rebels cannot maintain and operate tanks, helicopters, advanced missiles and such. ISIS itself has many issues with this, which is why Toyota pickup trucks are their military vehicle of choice. We cannot count on these guys to defeat and occupy Syria even with all the airpower we can muster. We never could. Hindsight is keen, ain't it. All of the rhetoric from you and the Republicans about Syria has been for failing to take on Assad! Then ISIS overreached by trying to take over Iraq before even finishing the job in Syria and now Obama has been a failure for not fighting ISIS with Assad? Whenever someone starts trying to make it about me, then I know he has exhausted his logic. Is your blind opposition to Obama somehow better? It's a debate, Cochise. A debate about Obama policies that we disagree on. So lay out your arguments and quit pretending that you are shocked to find an opponent actually opposing you. What are these "reports"? You have cited conservative bloggers opinions galore. Even a poll that list what Americans believe about Obama's international respect. What actual evidence from our allies abroad have stated or even signaled this lack of respect or the lies that he is accused of? Have they been used against anybody? No. Was that the whole idea? Yes. Are they imaginary as they were in Iraq? Almost certainly. Talk about ignoring credit . . . You think Putin acted out of the blue? Ya' think it may have had something to do with the fact that Obama was about to destroy Syria's air defense system in order to destroy their WMD's? Putin is the one who blinked and told Assad to wake up and smell the coffee. More personal diatribe in the absence of facts and logic. Look, the border is real. It has existed for a hundred years. But its precise physical position isn't important. The important difference between Arabs who consider themselves Syrians and the Arabs that consider themselves Iraqis is ancient and significant. Alfredeneuman makes a good point that task one for the US is retaking Iraq and that means driving ISIS beyond the border and securing it. That will require Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces that will not fight in Syria. That border is about the limit of what we can expect from them. Al Qaeda has attacked the United States of America directly destroying towers in New York and attempting to demolish the fucking Pentagon. What has ISIS done to compare? Don't be afraid of their rhetoric. They have not seized US arms, they have seized Iraqi arms that the Iraqis had trouble maintaining and have little training in how to operate. ISIS has the same problem magnified. In time their oil shipments will be curtailed. They have few options to sell the oil with no pipelines that they entirely control and no seaports. They have no railroad and any trucks that they might sell small batches of oil in are highly vulnerable to US airpower. This is the kind of thing that Obama is pressuring local allies to do. In time ISIS will be starved of outside money and resources. Already Turkey has restricted allowing goods and people into Syria. ISIS cannot win a war of attrition. We can and time is on our side. Puhhleeeeze . . . In fact, I do. We have allies around the world that we owe and who owe us. Syria is not and has never been either of these. We take measures to protect our allies at great expense. Why is it suddenly important to protect enemies that hate us? They made this mess themselves. Don't pretend that you are a bleeding heart liberal about the people of Syria. We cannot preserve Syria and be an effective ally of Israel. We cannot be the worlds policeman. We are going broke trying to be. We have to harden our hearts and learn that there are situations beyond our control and beyond our best national interests to get involved in. Well, that is the key issue and the sticking point. We can drive ISIS out of Iraq with Kurdish and Iraqi forces, hopefully. We can strangle ISIS in Syria economically and hammer them with airstrikes and drone assassinations. But there is nothing we can do to drive them out of Syria without allied ground forces that can and will take them on on the ground. Right now there is only Assad and he has been weakened severely. We are not going to support Assad and Hezbollah. Who will occupy Syria and expel ISIS and help all these people that you care so deeply for? Turkey? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Probably not. Perhaps a coalition of all Arab League nations including Egypt might get it done, but there are huge political differences between them. In a strange way it might be good to allow ISIS to defeat Assad and control all of Syria. That might finally wake up Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League to take action before Israel does. And while Israel could certainly defeat Assad and take on ISIS, it is far from certain that they would overreach like that. They cannot afford heavy casualties and long wars. And they are prudent, as we should be. It is best to temper expectations when it comes to "solving" all of Syria's problems with terrorists, refugees, minority dictators, ISIS, Iranian backers, etc. And we must always ask ourselves, "Is this really our fight?"
Amazing. There are Muslim dating sites. I wondered how a girl with a name like Shannon Maureen Conley hooked up with a terrorist. Here are reviews of the top ten Muslim dating sites. http://muslim-dating-websites.no1reviews.com/ @tigerchick46 here's your chance to smuggle that nuclear weapon into the middle east and give them that Atomic Wedgie. You better be careful though. You will have to act like a Muslim woman long enough to fool them. Maybe this story will give you a clue about how to act. It was back in 2002 or 2003 in the summer when I went to see a friend who lived in an apartment complex so I could go swimming in the pool. I was standing outside the fence surrounding the pool talking to so people. We were standing by the door of an apartment where a raghead man and his wife lived. They weren't home at the time but the door was open because a maintenance man or a plumber was in the bathroom fixing the toilet or some pipes or something. The woman showed up first and she must have had to piss really bad because she made a beeline for the bathroom where the plumber was. She had gotten withing 4 or 5 steps from the bathroom door when her husband walked in and saw that she was about to enter a bathroom where a man was in it. At the top of his lungs he yelled "SIT!" and the woman immediately dropped into a squat just like an obedient dog. @uscvball will probably be riled up enough to help you push the button after reading that
Same ole song Red Obama's failure has been consistent. He didn't recognize the potential for chaos in the Syrian revolution and DID NOTHING. No one has called for fighting ISIS with Assad. You like to throw up a false analogy as a smoke screen but waiting for 200000+ deaths and chaos to envelop 2 countries while trumpeting how he was pulling out of Iraq and that ISIS was the JV is a failure. Like I said fantasy...the so called border exists on paper drawn by the Brits and Frogs after WW1 and in the 100years since the tribes that live there have crossed it and ignored with impunity. It was a source of problems for the US in Iraq and if you want to secure it send in a division of the Army (US)....oh yes you don't want us there. You made my point with "its precise physical position isn't important"
Doing nothing was the right call when both sides are our enemies. We did not have a dog in the fight. ISIS is fighting Assad. We either fight them both or we are fighting with one side. Geez, I shouldn't have to explain this. Nobody has cared about the Bedouin nomads. They cross all the desert borders. But the civil, political, and social differences between Syria and Iraq have been long-standing. The two governments care very much about every inch of turf. Just because ISIS crosses it without challenge from the current weak governments does not make the border go away. The point that you keep missing is that Iraqis won't fight for Syria and Syrians will not fight for Iraq. THIS is what makes the border important, not the actual line in the sand.
