All things Middle East related

[CRedskinsRule]

As I said, no terror tunnels were used for attacks. As for the rockets fired routinely, it's like a 50 lb weakling pounding on the bully's chest and saying that it's his fault that the bully smashed his face in. Hamas and the Palestinians could fire rockets forever and not cause 1/100th of the damage of the IDF.

Saying it's accountability, without holding Israel accountable for the death, destruction, and wholesale savagery of their inordinately extreme bombardments is, to me, mixed up.

To be clear, I am not saying the Palestinians are without fault, but to somehow say 70 dead Israelis, all but 3 of whom are soldiers is justification for the killing of over 2000 and wounding over 8000 Palestinians is horrific logic.

In terms of the ceasefire, if the rockets that Hamas fires were causing equivalent death and destruction to Israeli's then yes I would get that Israel had to respond to it, but they don't, and 60 rockets shot down and no-one hurt ought not give Israel license to go kill another 1-200 Palestinians. At somepoint, you have to tell Israel, put the attack guns down, we will supply your Iron dome, and help with defensive responses in any way possible, but there will be no peace if you continue the mass killings of Palestinian's. Those should be unacceptable. And if Israel can't accept that killing 900 innocent women,children, and seniors is an unacceptable response, than we ought to use our influence and ask them flat out, if we drop our support, how long will you survive.

[CRedskinsRule]

Back to the bully example.
A tiny kid gets angry, and throws pencils at a top athlete in school.

The athlete can:
A) break the pencils, walk over and pound the kid into the ground, and leave him disfigured for life.
B) break the pencil, get a drink and get help from others to get the kid to stop throwing pencils

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.

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Back to the bully example.
A tiny kid gets angry, and throws pencils at a top athlete in school.

The athlete can:
A) break the pencils, walk over and pound the kid into the ground, and leave him disfigured for life.
B) break the pencil, get a drink and get help from others to get the kid to stop throwing pencils

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.

we are just going to disagree, you can side with the terriost. Politically, both are wrong.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

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.

[CRedskinsRule]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

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.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

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.

[Chico23231]

Pentagon chief: ISIS 'beyond anything we have seen' - CNN.com

this is why ive grown to hate this administration. Hagel is trying to sell me on something Ive known about for about a year. And now instead of doing something about Isis initially, we've let them now come into Iraq and embed themselves in the region, gain iraqi support, more international support and prepare themselves for a fight. Hagel and Obama negligence will cost more civilian causalities and american soliders lives.

[CRedskinsRule]

Originally Posted by Chico23231

Pentagon chief: ISIS 'beyond anything we have seen' - CNN.com

this is why ive grown to hate this administration. Hagel is trying to sell me on something Ive known about for about a year. And now instead of doing something about Isis initially, we've let them now come into Iraq and embed themselves in the region, gain iraqi support, more international support and prepare themselves for a fight. Hagel and Obama negligence will cost more civilian causalities and american soliders lives.

We can agree on this. I also hated that they came out and said the special forces failed on the rescue attempt. I can't see any reason, other than covering political a** that you would put that in the world press.

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

We can agree on this. I also hated that they came out and said the special forces failed on the rescue attempt. I can't see any reason, other than covering political a** that you would put that in the world press.

Seriously. Hagel trys to cover his ass with the headline grabbing "nothing we've ever seen".

So Mr. Hagel, why havent you seen this coming and effectively prepared for it? Another failure

[tshile]

Originally Posted by Chico23231

Pentagon chief: ISIS 'beyond anything we have seen' - CNN.com

this is why ive grown to hate this administration. Hagel is trying to sell me on something Ive known about for about a year. And now instead of doing something about Isis initially, we've let them now come into Iraq and embed themselves in the region, gain iraqi support, more international support and prepare themselves for a fight. Hagel and Obama negligence will cost more civilian causalities and american soliders lives.

Yup.

Key leaders on the left (Hagel, Obama, Kerry, Clinton, Feinstein) are all saying how caught-off-guard they were about this, meanwhile anyone who has been paying attention has seen republicans lambaste the policies for withdrawal for YEARS for exactly this reason. They didn't say which organization would do it, but many of them, along with higher-ups in the military, said this is exactly what would happen with a time-tabled withdrawal.

We keep half-assing the whole thing. We need to decide if we want to continue to intervene in the ongoings of the middle east or not, and behave accordingly. This path we've been on for at least the last 50 years of funding/equiping one side to fight someone to only have power structures develop that are anti-US, or worse have the people we directly gave the money/weapons to turn around and uset hem against us, is not working.

It's. not. working.

[That Guy]

i wouldn't be lambasting libs while exonerating republicans over this. 10 years of unfunded war isn't sustainable either, and sanctioning torture isn't exactly a high water mark. plenty of blame to go around based on short term thinking and short sighted goals.

also, the spec ops team didn't fail, the intelligence did. the biggest failure we've had over there is the inability to create a good human intelligence network to provide accurate information.

[tshile]

Originally Posted by That Guy

i wouldn't be lambasting libs while exonerating republicans over this. 10 years of unfunded war isn't sustainable either, and sanctioning torture isn't exactly a high water mark. plenty of blame to go around based on short term thinking and short sighted goals.

also, the spec ops team didn't fail, the intelligence did. the biggest failure we've had over there is the inability to create a good human intelligence network to provide accurate information.

I'm not giving the republicans across the board credit here.

I'm just saying there's a whole lot of people in very important/high positions telling us they didn't see this coming when anyone who's been paying attention has watched certain people scream for years that this would happen. We also have a lot of normal people on a certain side of the aisle pretending this was unforeseeable.

Those same people pretending to be so surprised were the ones years ago lambasting the republicans for their concerns. So I find it ridiculous they now shrug and pretend this was not foreseeable.

Look, I wrote off those republican concerns at the time. I now fully admit they were right and I was naive/ignorant. But you wont catch me pretending people were not warning about this. They were. They were loud about it and they were chastised for it. Today it's clear they were correct all along.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by That Guy

sanctioning torture isn't exactly a high water mark.

waterboarding isn't torture, our Spec Ops go through it in their training....and that waterboarding of three high level terrorists directly attributed to stopping planned terrorist attacks and saved American lives.

also, the spec ops team didn't fail, the intelligence did. the biggest failure we've had over there is the inability to create a good human intelligence network to provide accurate information.

We had good intel networks in the ME until.....Clinton weakened the military and tore them down, then if you remember it was Bush's CIA Director (Clinton appointee) who assured him and Congress there were WMDs in Iraq, now Obama has done nothing but defund and weaken the military and Intel agencies further. This POTUS can't even get a decorated Marine with PTSD out of a Mexican jail...but there's "plenty of blame" for the Republicans? It wasn't Republicans who elected Obama twice.

[That Guy]

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.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by That Guy

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%