Military So ISIS & the Middle East

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by LSUpride123, Aug 29, 2014.

  1. shane0911

    shane0911 Helping lost idiots find their village

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    Remember that when Ahmed is fitting you for your keffiyeh
     
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  2. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    I'll be sure to remember that, Abdul.

    Meanwhile I won't lose a nanosecond of sleep worrying about raghead propaganda.
     
  3. shane0911

    shane0911 Helping lost idiots find their village

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    I'm just gonna let the hen deal with you. She is funnier.
     
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  4. Bengal B

    Bengal B Founding Member

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    He had better sleep with one eye open. FEAR THE HEN!
     
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  5. Winston1

    Winston1 Founding Member

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    This article sums it up pretty well. http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-is-defending-anti-semitism-to-spin-his-iran-deal-2015-5 The president may have inherited a mess in the ME but his actions have been consistently wrong footed and puts our allies off and at risk while chasing the chimera of peace with Iran. He has done the impossible and made our position in the ME and world in general worse than W did.
    In negotiations it is said the fool doesn't know who is being played. Our president doesn't know Iran, Russia and the Chinese are playing him like a fine violin.
    It also show how morally corrupt he is allowing anti semitism to flow from those he is dealing with.
     
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  6. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    That article is a load of partisan crap. Tony Badran is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neo-conservative think tank and, being Lebanese, is obsessed with Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Iran. In the article he ignores everything else that is involved with Iran, such their nuclear weapons program, their hostility towards ISIS and AL Qaeda, and the fact that they are a major regional player that cannot be ignored.

    “The fact that you are anti-Semitic,” Obama said of the Islamic Republic of Iran, “doesn’t preclude you from being rational.” Most subsequent commentary focused on whether the president actually understood anti-Semitism — by definition, a marker of unreason."​

    In fact the definition of anti-semitism has nothing to do with rationality at all, it is simply racism against Jews. The Iranians may be hostile to Israel (and vice versa!) but they are not stupid, naive, or irrational. To imagine so is itself naive and foolish. He goes on to suggest that Obama is "aiding Hezbollah" because the US shares intelligence on Syria with the Lebanese Armed Forces, who of course are NOT Hezbollah. Hezbollah is fighting with Assad to make Lebanon part of Syria, which the Lebanese government opposes, of course.

    He says that "the Camp David summit is a polite, public announcement of divorce between Obama and the countries of the Gulf'', which is utter nonsense. We have long-standing formal alliances with the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia including US military forces based there. We don't even have diplomatic relations with Iran and have them under crippling sanctions.

    He says, "The function of the president’s studied comment on Iranian anti-Semitism, therefore, is to whitewash Khamenei and the hardliners." How can you take this tripe seriously? What Obama has said all along is that a treaty with Iran strengthens Iranian moderates and diminishes Iranian radicals. Ahmadenijad is already gone, Iranian youth are increasingly west-leaning and it is the islamic nationalism spurred by decades of anti-Americanism that is endangered by opening up Iran to more western influences and more importantly, reducing their capacity to develop nuclear weapons. All Obama said was that their anti-Israel rhetoric does not make them irrational, which is the truth. Iran cannot beat the US nor Israel in a nuclear war and they know it better than anybody.
    Negotiating away Iranian nuclear weapons will be a great boon to Israel, obviously.

    Explain this one to me. How exactly are Russia and China "playing" Obama? China is barely involved in the middle east and Russia is the biggest threat to Iran and has been for 80 years. Russia borders Iran and covets Iranian warm-water ports and oil wealth.

    How can he stop Iran from being hostile to Israel when they are under a threat of military pre-emption from nuclear-armed Israel. The very idea is preposterous. He can stop them from developing nuclear weapons and enable the moderate elements in Iran to gain more power and eventually return to the secular state they were before 1979.
     
  7. dudley

    dudley oops!

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    What is going on in the middle east is almost too complicated to understand and I certainly don't, but there is a war going on between the Muslims themselves. Sunni Muslims vs. Shiite Muslims. It has been going on for centuries but it boiled over when that idiot George W. Bush was duped into fighting Iran's war. Saddam Hussein (Sunni) and Iran (Shiite) were at each other's throats. Iran in the greatest covert operation in history (remember Curveball) duped dumbass George into taking out Hussein which left the Shiite, who are allied with Iran in control of Iraq. The tables were turned. Instead of the Sunni who are dominant in northern Iraq committing atrocities against the Shiite in southern Iraq, the Shiite were committing atrocities against the Sunni in northern Iraq. Then along came ISIS, who are Sunni, now slaughtering the Shiite.

    So who are our friends and who are our enemies. Remember Bin Laden was Sunni as are the Taliban in Afghanistan. The answer is we have no friends, only interests and they should be OUR interests and no one elses. Should we engage diplomatically with ISIS, who are no friends with Iran. That may already have happened. One of the ISIS leaders said recently they would not engage in terrorism against the West. Weak evidence for sure but still... There is some opportunity here for us to play ISIS against Baghdad who we do not want to completely abandon or Iran could possibly move in. There is also that nuclear treaty thing with Iran to consider.

    Anyway, I applaud Obama for not sending US troops into that mess even though the Navy is flying missions against ISIS. That should stop in my opinion and may already have. I'm not sure.

    So what do you think? You still want to invade Iraq?

    edit- here is a point of reference on who's who in Syria.
    1. But it is the quintessential proxy war, with the Alawite (an offshoot of Shia Islam) Assad regime backed up by Shia allies Hezbollahand Iran, as well as Russia and China. TheSunni rebels are supported by the Islamist rulers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, as well as the U.S., France, Britain and others.May 10, 2012.
    So, we are on the side of the Sunni rebels in Syria, but against Sunni ISIS in Iraq? How do you play that?
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2015
  8. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    There is no united Sunni front. Far from it. We support the Syria rebels who happen to be Sunni. We fight ISIS because they are jihadists who happen to be Sunni. When the rags are fighting each other, they aren't fighting us. Right now Assad and Hezbollah are fighting ISIS and we should go on letting them kill each other. ISIS is fighting the corrupt Iraqi Shia and we should go on letting them kill each other. We support the Kurds, who are the only players in Iraq that are friendly to us and who will fight for their own turf.
     
  9. dudley

    dudley oops!

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    A Sunni front? I don't know if you could call it a "front" but the Syrian Sunni rebels gave birth to ISIS, who were then quickly joined by the northern Iraqi Sunnis, so there is definitely an alliance. I would not even call them jihadists, at least not yet. They are fighting for their own turf just like the Kurds. The have not committed any terrorist acts against the west, at least not yet, and they have said they would not. They are not our friends though. I do think we ought to engage with them though, make deals with them like for instance, you leave us the fuck alone and we'll leave you the fuck alone. They are the only buffer against Iran in that area and maybe we ought to play them that way.
     
  10. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    Don't confuse the Syrian rebels with ISIS just because both are Sunni. Most muslims worldwide are Sunni. The Syrians are fighting a Civil War against their government. They range from moderates to jihadists radicals but their agenda is the overthrown of Assad.

    ISIS was born in Iraq and is composed mostly of Iraqis who fought the US as Al Qaeda in Iraq until their atrocities and beheadings caused a rift between them an Al Qaeda. They took advantage of the civil war in Syria to grab territory for themselves on both died of the border. They have no interest in a new moderate Syrian government. They intend to establish their caliphate in its place. As soon as Assad is gone, they will turn on their Syrian rebel counterparts.

    Are you talking about ISIS? I cannot agree. If you are talking about the Syrian rebels . . . it depends. There are hundreds of different rebel groups and no central leadership. Many of them we cannot trust. Some of them, like Khorasan are definitely terrorists plotting against the West. But some of them have been vetted and are being trained by the CIA in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. We can't just give the advanced weapons without training or they will simply fall into the hands of ISIS, who can't do much with them either. I think we will support Syrian groups like we did the Kurds if they are willing to fight and will accept training.

    But honestly, even the best Syrian rebels are anti-American for the most part and would never make a democracy out of Syria. It's in our best interests to let them kill each other for as long as we can.
     

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