All things Middle East related

Yeah the kid shouldn't be throwing pencils, and yeah maybe one gets the athlete good in the ear, or worst case eye. But at no point does throwing ineffective pencils justify the athlete using his superior strength to mercilessly abuse the weaker kid.Problem is the weaker kid has sworn to kill the big kid and based on past history has shown the ability/will to kill when able. And if another kid (Iran/NK/Pakistan) on the playground give the little kid a grenade (suitcase nuke) and he sneaks it into the big kids backpack (via sleeper cell, tunnel, etc.) the big kid is hurt real bad or dead.

My original point in all this is for the U.S. to take seriously, target, and eliminate terrorist groups who have directly declared war (jihad) on us. If we keep looking the other way and not taking the fight to them, we will have another 9/11, or worse.

Problem is the weaker kid has sworn to kill the big kid and based on past history has shown the ability/will to kill when able. And if another kid (Iran/NK/Pakistan) on the playground give the little kid a grenade (suitcase nuke) and he sneaks it into the big kids backpack (via sleeper cell, tunnel, etc.) the big kid is hurt real bad or dead.

My original point in all this is for the U.S. to take seriously, target, and eliminate terrorist groups who have directly declared war (jihad) on us. If we keep looking the other way and not taking the fight to them, we will have another 9/11, or worse.

I get taking them seriously; I get the embargo, basically; I get destroying the tunnels (though I think it was an excuse more than necessity); I get a lot of it.

I don't get carte blanche approval of killing 2000+ people nearly half of whom are on the extremely innocent side (women although they aren't nearly as innocent as they claim!;) , babies, kids, and seniors). I don't get using the fallacy of the cellphone/soft bomb warnings, in an area where you can't reasonably seek shelter from the hundreds/thousands of airstrikes that have been carried out.

If you think beating the little kid to a pulp is gonna make him want to make peace with you, I think you are wrong, I think it's going to make other little kids want to gang up on you so that they can take you it.

I get taking them seriously; I get the embargo, basically; I get destroying the tunnels (though I think it was an excuse more than necessity); I get a lot of it.

I don't get carte blanche approval of killing 2000+ people nearly half of whom are on the extremely innocent side (women although they aren't nearly as innocent as they claim!;) , babies, kids, and seniors). I don't get using the fallacy of the cellphone/soft bomb warnings, in an area where you can't reasonably seek shelter from the hundreds/thousands of airstrikes that have been carried out.

If you think beating the little kid to a pulp is gonna make him want to make peace with you, I think you are wrong, I think it's going to make other little kids want to gang up on you so that they can take you it.I don't agree with the amount of civilian casualties either, I just don't know how Israel can get to Hamas targets without them. They can't go full-scale invasion into Gaza, civilian deaths would increase ten-fold along with Israeli deaths.

I don't want to beat the little kid (Palestinian people, because for the most part they want some concessions not Israel's elimination), but we've got to get after the other kids (Iran, Hamas, Mus BroHood, Turkey, etc.) that are giving the little kid the pencils (or grenades) and force them to stop, either diplomatically or by maybe some "accidents" to their military infrastructure.

ukraine is obama's fault? if it were up to you, we'd be involved in yet another unfunded war, this time vs russians in crimea. that sounds... awesome.

and no, we already send spec ops teams and drones anywhere and everywhere doing "things". obama has increased the use and size of specs ops and drone programs a billion times over. if you don't know where your targets are, it doesn't get you the results you want, and it doesn't work against large movements or prevent invasions. it also makes plenty of people mad that your operating inside their borders without consent, and makes them feel like returning the favor.

and i wasn't talking about waterboarding, i'm talking about CIA black sites doing things with our permission for our money on our behalf.

and our lack of ME intel is clinton's fault? come on now. it must be nice to have such a simple world view where republicans are always right and military actions don't cost money or create blowback of any kind.

"however what needs to be done is for the POTUS to go to Congress and obtain a declaration of war on any groups which openly have declared war/jihad on the U.S. or are involved in genocide.

you can;t declare war against non state actors, and dumping troops into countries without their consent is a very stupid idea.

Once obtained, use Spec Ops and drone strikes to wipe these animals out whenever they raise their f-ing murderous heads.

already being done, you and obama seem to agree on tactics, but again, that wouldn't work in crimea, in syria, in saudi arabia or many many other places where the local government objects to troops/flyovers, where we don't have the intelligence to find and hit targets, and it doesn't stop invasions, large scale movements, etc. and it's also not cheap or fast (the strikes are, getting the intel to make sure you have a good target and locate them are not). also, spec op teams can't hold/occupy/garisson towns/cities/etc. which means no real security and insurgents just moving back in once they leave.


To do what I stated would not require an increase in current DoD funding.

if you wanted to actually get involved in sudan/crimea/etc like you say, f yeah it would. we can't afford to deploy the military we have now, and we haven't even really started paying back china the money we used to go into afghanistan and iraq. so, the current level of activity you're not happy with that's already doing the things you suggested (which wouldn't work in most of the places actually you want them) is already unsustainable, and to think that going to war everywhere and all the time would magically not be is silly.

clinton's shrinking of the military to cut out the US's ability to provide it's own logistics means that deploying is REALLY expensive, since contracted bus drivers and termite exterminators in war zones make 100k+ compared to privates that get 40k or less total comp per year.


I don't know enough detail about these protests to state a strategy, but non-military/diplomatic/economic pressure should be applied to the Saudis to become better on Human Rights and crack down on jihadis within their borders.


they've been trying, but kuwait and SA are two of the biggest outside funders, and if americans show up, donations go up. it's like the perfect self propagating endless war. politics aren't so cut and dry, and i'm not going to dump 500 pages to try explaining why things are the way they are, but the saudi's and others have a lot of competing interests that aren't "do whatever the americans tell us to do."


Darfur/Sudanhmmm do we see a common theme of violent Muslim actions???? I wonder if it was a Christian or Jewish gov't attacking a Muslim subculture what the world reaction would've been?


like israel vs palestine? world reaction is pretty damning vs israel. US going into iraq wasn't well liked either. but no one seems to care about africans.

and again, your logic for endless war isn't much different than the jihadii's. in a way it's treating the symptoms.

40 Maps That Explain The Middle East (http://www.vox.com/a/maps-explain-the-middle-east)

Good and informative history on the Middle East. (via maps)

40 Maps That Explain The Middle East (http://www.vox.com/a/maps-explain-the-middle-east)

Good and informative history on the Middle East. (via maps)

Excellent presentation. Thanks for linking that. It's a great starting point for any discussion of the region.

Couple of things that it emphasized to me:
1) the ethnic tensions aren't solely due to western influence, within the middle east there are equivalent nationality tensions that led to the European conflicts throughout 1600-1950 culminating in the 2nd world war.

2) Western and Russian arbitrarily drawing lines of demarcation, has certainly exasperated the factional divisions of the region.

3) the 1947/1948 map of the creation of Isreal, and the subsequent map showing recognition of israel and or palestine are stark evidences of a) the western intervention in the area, and b) the absolute rejection of that from almost the whole former muslim empire of 750 (map 20 compared to map 5)

ukraine is obama's fault? if it were up to you, we'd be involved in yet another unfunded war, this time vs russians in crimea. that sounds... awesome. and if it were up to you we'd just all get on our prayer mats and convert to Islam under IS rule.

and no, we already send spec ops teams and drones anywhere and everywhere doing "things". obama has increased the use and size of specs ops and drone programs a billion times over.You are incorrect. SOCOM funding for FY2012 was 5.091B (an additional $ 2.5B was added as a supplemental to support Iraq/Afghan), funding for FY2014 is $ 5.261B. Funding has increased 3%. In FY2012 SOCOM has a total of 73397 FTEs (Civ/DoD/Contractor), in FY2014 the total is 75985, an increase of 3.4%

and if it were up to you we'd just all get on our prayer mats and convert to Islam under IS rule.

You are incorrect. SOCOM funding for FY2012 was 5.091B (an additional $ 2.5B was added as a supplemental to support Iraq/Afghan), funding for FY2014 is $ 5.261B. Funding has increased 3%. In FY2012 SOCOM has a total of 73397 FTEs (Civ/DoD/Contractor), in FY2014 the total is 75985, an increase of 3.4%

How much straw did you use to make that strawman???

I think the budget is a little more complicated than that. There's quite a few departments with access to those resources and lots of budget games are played to hide the true cost.

I seem to recall higher-ups specifically saying they obfuscate the spending specifically citing keeping adversaries from being able to tell what our abilities are by looking at spending by department/project as the reason. In addition to that there's a quite a history of the government admitting to 'off the books' spending specifically in this area.

I'm not exactly well educated on the issue, but I have a feeling simply looking at SOCOM funding would be quite misleading.