Pres. Speech Sept 10, 2014

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I also tried to get back on topic.

Eh, I wasn't commenting on the OT-ness of the thread, more about how groups like ISIS really challenge the commitment of us non-interventionists, despite knowing better. If I'm completely honest, my gut usually wants to intervene, whether it's atrocities in Africa or dictators in the Middle East, or in the past Hugo Chavez shooting his mouth off, and it takes a lot of personal effort to remind myself of how poorly these things usually turn out. I blame too many Tom Clancy novels in my youth...

The speech proves that a talking monkey would make a better President than what we now have.

Air strikes, but no boots on the ground.

Um, we LOST Vietnam WITH boots on the ground. The VC easily survived our air strikes, many of which were routed through so much political oversight that by time a target was approved for destruction, the VC had moved on.

Arm and train the locals to fight.

Um, the "locals" haven't shown much of an interest to fight AGAINST ISIS except if they are personally threatened with death...and even then they would rather join and save their lives than fight and know they will be wiped out. Never mind that in time, these people WILL turn on us and they will be armed and equipped by our side.

Arm and train the anti-Assad rebels.

Okay, Assad isn't a good guy, but the "rebels" are Islamic fanatics and pretty much the opposite side of the same coin as ISIS. So, you want to give aid to the bad guys?

Help ISIS fight ISIL.

Hey, Obama, you moron. ISIS and ISIL are the SAME FREAKING THING. Granted, the average American doesn't keep on top of all these details, but ISIS (aka IS) and ISIL are the same organization. Changing what YOU call them doesn't fool those of us who are watching the situation unfold.

Hey, whatever gets the votes.....


Yeppers

Yes, but you dwell on it.


I bet your laugh doesn't sound as diabolical as mine.


You derailed it with your partisan attack on W the moment your boy Barry O came under criticism. Don't complain about the fire when you're the arsonist.

Now back to civil discussion on how Obama is mishandling the ISIS situation.

Yep. The Pentagon's PR department has formulated its propaganda really well this time. It's like a reset button on the whole Al Qaida-infinite war shtick that the Bush administration tried to set up, but f***d it up for themselves by being transparently corrupt, and not having a tight enough leash on the independent press. I wonder what new forms the eternal enemy will take in another 10 years, after the wider public catches on again.

Last edited by Stannis on 14 Sep 2014, 3:04 pm, edited 8 times in total.

Using my best Palin Palin imitation: "I betcha my laugh is loonier than yours!"
And I only jumped in with W when a certain poster (no, I'm not talking about you) started making irrational and questionable claims about the President. This person was the real arsonist. I think you know to whom I'm referring to.

/\ I'm not a disciple of Palin so that attempt kinda failed with me. You should know by now that my politics arent nearly as blindly partisan as you wish they were.
Criticism of the current leader during the present situation over there is not a derailment since it is actually germane to the topic.
Jumping in there with your 2 cents worth about W was what made the train fall off the tracks.

I was making the Palin reference solely to say "betcha."
And there is valid criticism, then there is just criticism of the President only because this particular poster doesn't like him - - basing that on spurious so called inside information.

Mm hmm.......

Obama isnt exactly a good Commander in Chief where anything military is concerned, period.
His speech video on page 1 of this thread was idiotic and contained 10X more fluff than substance. You'd think he were running for office again or something the way he took 14 minutes and change to say something that could have been said in 2-3 minutes at the most. He's not going to accomplish s**t with ISIS. Anyhoo, that's 14 minutes and 11 seconds I'll never get back....

Let the guy try to do something on the ISIS front first before you call his efforts a failure.
And if the President is hesitant at all in this new war, it's only because there is little support to jump back into that part of the world where we've wasted far too much life and treasure already. I thought it was conservative icon Ronald Reagan who had said never again would we become involved in a military conflict without the support of the American people.

Are you trying to imply that the US government is somehow behind the ISIS beheading videos? Cause I'm about as distrustful a person of the government as can be found, and I find it a bit of a stretch to believe that the state has orchestrated these videos as a means of drumming up support for a new war.

It'll be a token effort at best. At this point I don't see what can effectively be done without major commitment which aint gonna happen. He needs to come clean and just say that.


The first thing I notice is you predictably dragging old man Reagan into this in an attempt to appeal to the blindly partisan conservativism you still think I subscribe to. Reagan is passé; his value to me and other mainstream conservatives is the butthurt he causes the left, even from his grave.
The support of the American people lasts about as long as they are still mad about whatever we went to war over, or when football season starts. If it can't be wrapped up and done with nice and tidy before then, forget about it. I remember reading somewhere that the support of the American people was starting to wane near the end of WW2. That war was initially forecasted to last a lot longer than it did (1950 comes to mind). If America and her allies had not ripped into the European and Pacific theaters with all the finesse of a chainsaw massacre and made such progress in the time they did, it's at least possible that WW2 would have ended with the axis powers still intact. Sure, most of Europe and the Pacific would have been liberated or spared invasion but for how long?

Reagan couldn't win the Republican nomination today - he'd have been called a RINO. And I brought him up not to appeal to any partisanship on your part, but to point out that even he realized popular support is needed for any sort of sustained military conflict. And incidentally, the United States had had all the popular support in the War on Terror, until Bush had squandered it. And no, that's not partisan sniping, it's a statement of fact. Try to carry on a war effort without the country behind you.

And as I said in my last post, American support of any war is seasonal. You have to strike while the iron is still hot and strike hard enough to get things done before they get bored and change the channel.

"68 percent of Americans say they have 'very little' or 'just some' confidence that Obama?s goals of degrading and eliminating the threat posed by ISIS will be achieved," yet "62 percent of voters say they support Obama?s decision to take action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, while 22 percent oppose it," according to a recent poll.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-t ... ll-n202976

Yes, and the iron would have probably been hotter than it is now had Bush not wasted the will of the American people in a wasteful occupation.