Terrorists kill 15+ in Kenya

[WillBrink]

That doesn't work. They'll just throw a red herring. You say ISIS slaughters homosexuals, they'll point out that some Christians refuse to bake wedding cakes for gay weddings, and that's just as bad, if not worse, than anything ISIS does. You try to argue back, and the response is "ONE MORE WORD OUT OF YOU, AND I WILL CALL YOU A RACIST HOMOPHOBE!!!!"

Do we really need to go there in this thread? Is there not an existing thread thread for that topic? All caps, really?

[BoringGuy45]

Do we really need to go there in this thread? Is there not an existing thread thread for that topic? All caps, really?

My point was that when you point out their ridiculousness and they can't seem to counter, they go for personal attacks, usually in the form of bigotry accusations. My all caps was a humorous attempt at portraying some far left hipster-type losing their cool when they realized they had been outwitted.

[Sensei]

We aren't willing to kill enough of them to solve the problem. The only way this is going to end is if enough less radical muslims kill the crazier muslims. When they get bled dry in a Thirty Years War kind of way and they get tired of the dying, that's when it ends. In that way, ironically, BHO's lack of engagement brings out the repressed violence in the ME. That isn't his actually strategy, but his lack of engagement and willingness to engage ground troops leads to the outcome.

Where are these less crazy Muslims? Jordan? Egypt? Saudi Arabia?

The number of moderates is easily eclipsed by the number of militant Islamists, political Islamists, and conservative/orthodox Muslims. Keep in mind that these three groups that I mentioned collectively make up over 2/3 of the Muslim population, and none of those groups play nice in the global sandbox.

What we are seeing in the ME and North Africa are battle lines being drawn between militant Shiite and Sunni Islamists. There is no "less crazy," just flavors of batshit. As soon as they are done with each other, they will turn their attention toward the West. The worst case senario is if Iran emerges as the dominant power in the ME with a nuclear capability. That dramatically raises the risk of one or more of our cities going from 15 to 10,000 degrees C in less than a second.

I fundamentally disagree with the notion that we can't kill enough of them to make a difference. We've slaughtered millions of German's, Japs, et al in living memory. Our ability to rinse and repeat has only gotten better with time and technology.

[Averageman]

I'm not sure why we aren't cooking up a couple dozen Desert Storm era MOAB's and fixing positions with drones and dropping them in ?
I have no problem with wholesale slaughter or using assassination to take out the leaders at home with the wife and kids.
We seem to lack the political back bone to drop a hammer in a ruthless manner and would rather send a bunch of young men in to go door to door dying in order as to not piss off some Arabs, Persians, or Islamic Africans.
Yes we have gotten much better with drones, but I think we should be using sledgehammers rather than scalpels some times. They seem to understand it a bit better.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Where are these less crazy Muslims? Jordan? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Jordan is a pretty good place to start. King Abdullah has a nice 2:1 deal going with ISIS. Jordanians have machine gunned Palestinians when they got out of hand. I'll put them firmly in the 'less crazy column'. The less crazy column gains beef as more crazies are killed.

The number of moderates is easily eclipsed by the number of militant Islamists, political Islamists, and conservative/orthodox Muslims. Keep in mind that these three groups that I mentioned collectively make up over 2/3 of the Muslim population, and none of those groups play nice in the global sandbox.

What we are seeing in the ME and North Africa are battle lines being drawn between militant Shiite and Sunni Islamists. There is no "less crazy," just flavors of batshit. As soon as they are done with each other, they will turn their attention toward the West. The worst case senario is if Iran emerges as the dominant power in the ME with a nuclear capability. That dramatically raises the risk of one or more of our cities going from 15 to 10,000 degrees C in less than a second.

I fundamentally disagree with the notion that we can't kill enough of them to make a difference. We've slaughtered millions of German's, Japs, et al in living memory. Our ability to rinse and repeat has only gotten better with time and technology.

We have the ability to end this problem by supper time tonight. Nuke, chem, carpet bombing- all high effective and pretty much off the table. It isn't that we don't have the capability- it's that we lack the will. If ISIS takes over a city, you give the people 48 hours to overthrow them or you carpet bomb the city just like we did to the occupied countries in WWII. When we are willing to use a level of violence that would make most of us puke, that's when we start to change the balance of power.

[Sensei]

We have the ability to end this problem by supper time tonight. Nuke, chem, carpet bombing- all high effective and pretty much off the table. It isn't that we don't have the capability- it's that we lack the will. If ISIS takes over a city, you give the people 48 hours to overthrow them or you carpet bomb the city just like we did to the occupied countries in WWII. When we are willing to use a level of violence that would make most of us puke, that's when we start to change the balance of power.

Agreed

[T2C]

We have the ability to end this problem by supper time tonight. Nuke, chem, carpet bombing- all high effective and pretty much off the table. It isn't that we don't have the capability- it's that we lack the will. If ISIS takes over a city, you give the people 48 hours to overthrow them or you carpet bomb the city just like we did to the occupied countries in WWII. When we are willing to use a level of violence that would make most of us puke, that's when we start to change the balance of power.

This would work. It would put fewer of our military personnel at risk, which is what should be strongly considered when contemplating military solutions to a problem like this.

[WillBrink]

We have the ability to end this problem by supper time tonight. Nuke, chem, carpet bombing- all high effective and pretty much off the table. It isn't that we don't have the capability- it's that we lack the will. If ISIS takes over a city, you give the people 48 hours to overthrow them or you carpet bomb the city just like we did to the occupied countries in WWII. When we are willing to use a level of violence that would make most of us puke, that's when we start to change the balance of power.

I'd prefer the opposite approach. Continue to reduce our need for their oil, let the savages fight it out 'till they are back to the stone age. Those who learn to play nice, get to get trade and business with us, and the others can be isolated and grind themselves down to begging for assistance once the $$$ tit has dried up. We don't seem to jump into military options in Africa as we don't have essential national interests. If you're country is known to produce radicalized animals, you're on total no travel no fly, no sending your kids to school here, etc status until you get them under control or dead. Freakin' 911 dirt bags were mostly Saudi's. What did we do to the Saudis after 911? Shuttled them in private US airplanes to safety I recall. Way too much oil $$ influence there to make a big deal of the society that produced those creatures it seemed. OBL? None of his family or other Saudis new where he was hiding? I got that Bridge in Brooklyn to sell too.

It seems every time we go in and "solve" a problem, we just spread the cancer around some more as what we took out gets replaced by something even worse. Never should have gone to Iraq, but that's another topic I suppose. Had we gone there with the troop levels Shinseki at co (vs ruining his career due to having the nerve to tell them they needed a much larger force) recommended to not just win but keep the place from melt down, perhaps it would have gone far better. Total support for SOF directing precision bombing and working with the locals, etc in Afgan, but thought at the time, and only more so now, Iraq was a bad idea.

You want Democracy, Freedom, and Liberty, you earn it the hard way as everyone else did. Trying to foist it on people by force, people who are 1000 years behind the west socially and culturally gets you, well, what we have now in ISIS and other vile creatures. We in the west just can't seem to deal with the fact in that area of the world, only tyrants can seem to keep the place from going off the rails. Saddam was an angel compared to some of what's out there and spreading.

But, I'm with you and others on this: if in, go all in and make it very clear what happens to your place and people when you poke the giant. Stupid should hurt.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I saw a report that a lot of the victims were shot in the back of the head. We try not to kill civilians and they go out of their way to kill them.

[7.62NATO]

I'd prefer the opposite approach. Continue to reduce our need for their oil, let the savages fight it out 'till they are back to the stone age. The problem is that sooner or later the savages will hit us with a WMD. The only option is to ensure they never obtain WMD-capability. That means having an overt and covert presence in the ME, working with those ME nations that are least savage-like.Those who learn to play nice, get to get trade and business with us, and the others can be isolated and grind themselves down to begging for assistance once the $$$ tit has dried up. We don't seem to jump into military options in Africa as we don't have essential national interests. If you're country is known to produce radicalized animals, you're on total no travel no fly, no sending your kids to school here, etc status until you get them under control or dead. Freakin' 911 dirt bags were mostly Saudi's. What did we do to the Saudis after 911? Shuttled them in private US airplanes to safety I recall. Way too much oil $$ influence there to make a big deal of the society that produced those creatures it seemed. OBL? None of his family or other Saudis new where he was hiding? I got that Bridge in Brooklyn to sell too.

It seems every time we go in and "solve" a problem, we just spread the cancer around some more as what we took out gets replaced by something even worse. Never should have gone to Iraq, but that's another topic I suppose. Had we gone there with the troop levels Shinseki at co (vs ruining his career due to having the nerve to tell them they needed a much larger force) recommended to not just win but keep the place from melt down, perhaps it would have gone far better. Total support for SOF directing precision bombing and working with the locals, etc in Afgan, but thought at the time, and only more so now, Iraq was a bad idea.

You want Democracy, Freedom, and Liberty, you earn it the hard way as everyone else did. Trying to foist it on people by force, people who are 1000 years behind the west socially and culturally gets you, well, what we have now in ISIS and other vile creatures. We in the west just can't seem to deal with the fact in that area of the world, only tyrants can seem to keep the place from going off the rails. Saddam was an angel compared to some of what's out there and spreading.

But, I'm with you and others on this: if in, go all in and make it very clear what happens to your place and people when you poke the giant. Stupid should hurt.

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