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> It's perfectly sound to criticize Obama for not doing anything to improve the situation and to actually add new conflicts, instead of trying to wrap up our in

by mtanski 10y ago

> It's perfectly sound to criticize Obama for not doing anything to improve the situation and to actually add new conflicts, instead of trying to wrap up our initial two as cleanly and quickly as possible (Afghanistan and Iraq) I have no problem with you or the OP criticizing Obama. And if we judge my the standard of the campaign progress, clearly it didn't happen. Personally I wish we could put the whole regional issue to bad. Sadly we went a destabilized the country and the region beyond what was going on already. There's no "trying to wrap up our initial two as cleanly and quickly as possible". When we tried that, that's where the insurgency turned into what we know as ISIS. How do you suppose "trying to wrap up our initial two as cleanly and quickly as possible" should have happened? Now that we have ISIS, how do you suppose we deal with it? Clearly we can't just withdraw since last time when we did under "Iraq Status of Forces Agreement" that also extended we ended up with a vacuum that lead to ISIS. We can't just Carpet Bomb / Nuke them because there's a lot of innocent civilians there. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place of our own doing. I'm most certainly don't know what how to solve it and neither does the Pentagon and I'm sure they had lots of people working on it. So given magnitude of the quagmire I think it's both unfair and simplifying the situation to lay the blame squarely at Obama's feet. > Obama is a failure at best -- a war criminal, at worst. On top of the above, platitudes such as this without really much concrete supporting points force to me to disregard your whole point.

lend000 10y ago
> When we tried that, that's where the insurgency turned into what we know as ISIS. We did not try that; we never had fewer than 40,000 troops in "the region." We shifted a large number from Iraq to Afghanistan but we were still very active in counter-terrorism within Iraqi borders the whole time. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf If we had kept more troops in Iraq at constant levels, would ISIS exist? Perhaps not as a 'country' with semi-permanent settlements, but certainly as another terrorist organization, which is not much different from the perspective of our national security interests. And of course we can't afford it, not that it matters to anyone. > How do you suppose "trying to wrap up our initial two as cleanly and quickly as possible" should have happened? It's a difficult question, no doubt. I'm not disappointed that Obama didn't make everything perfect -- it's the fact that he didn't try anything at all. He just stuck to the playbook and expanded things we know are bad, like providing weapons and training to everyone and their mother in war-zones: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/08/2-us-backed-groups-clash-in-northern-syria.php http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/08/2-us-backed-g... Decades of intervention and breeding dependence and hatred cannot be so easily solved -- so please do not dismiss this answer because it does not result in a perfect scenario. President lend0 would cut off all drone strikes. Get the US troops out. Lift all economic sanctions. Recognize one government per country, and return ownership of resources such as oil rights to said government. Then, let organic self-government/revolution arise. Do not try to prop up any government, even the one we originally recognized. It will not be easy, and probably not fast, but we already know that occupations do not work, and it is absolutely not a long-term option financially regardless. But the most obvious thing is: do not get into any NEW conflicts. We did not need to get into Syria. We could have let Russia deal with propping up the dictator we originally supported. > On top of the above, platitudes such as this without really much concrete supporting points force to me to disregard your whole point. Were you expecting Wikipedia-style citations for every point? Which part are you having trouble with -- I will elaborate with evidence. Anyway, this could be said about your entire comment, which provided much less evidence/counter-evidence than mine. I dislike these comments that are purely arguments for the sake of argument, and I have a bad habit of responding to them.

by mtanski 10y ago

lend000 10y ago

> When we tried that, that's where the insurgency turned into what we know as ISIS. We did not try that; we never had fewer than 40,000 troops in "the region." We shifted a large number from Iraq to Afghanistan but we were still very active in counter-terrorism within Iraqi borders the whole time. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf If we had kept more troops in Iraq at constant levels, would ISIS exist? Perhaps not as a 'country' with semi-permanent settlements, but certainly as another terrorist organization, which is not much different from the perspective of our national security interests. And of course we can't afford it, not that it matters to anyone. > How do you suppose "trying to wrap up our initial two as cleanly and quickly as possible" should have happened? It's a difficult question, no doubt. I'm not disappointed that Obama didn't make everything perfect -- it's the fact that he didn't try anything at all. He just stuck to the playbook and expanded things we know are bad, like providing weapons and training to everyone and their mother in war-zones: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/08/2-us-backed-groups-clash-in-northern-syria.php http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/08/2-us-backed-g... Decades of intervention and breeding dependence and hatred cannot be so easily solved -- so please do not dismiss this answer because it does not result in a perfect scenario. President lend0 would cut off all drone strikes. Get the US troops out. Lift all economic sanctions. Recognize one government per country, and return ownership of resources such as oil rights to said government. Then, let organic self-government/revolution arise. Do not try to prop up any government, even the one we originally recognized. It will not be easy, and probably not fast, but we already know that occupations do not work, and it is absolutely not a long-term option financially regardless. But the most obvious thing is: do not get into any NEW conflicts. We did not need to get into Syria. We could have let Russia deal with propping up the dictator we originally supported. > On top of the above, platitudes such as this without really much concrete supporting points force to me to disregard your whole point. Were you expecting Wikipedia-style citations for every point? Which part are you having trouble with -- I will elaborate with evidence. Anyway, this could be said about your entire comment, which provided much less evidence/counter-evidence than mine. I dislike these comments that are purely arguments for the sake of argument, and I have a bad habit of responding to them.