citizen work and question U.S. and Britain war in Iraq and S

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The work of citizenship is not just to blithely go along with a war, but to question it, and it's a difficult thing to do.

And it's not enough to make a case that the other side is bad. That would justify almost every war in human history. We need to be reasonably sure of improving things enough to be worth running the risks of war --- to me that's more the standard.

So, what do people think of the my country the United States, along with the United Kingdom, and other coalition countries beginning to engage in war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria? And let's try and be respectful of each other as we discuss this. And if we make mistakes in this regard, let's try and back off and recover from these mistakes. That is, let's try and let a medium mistake just remain a medium mistake.

If the criteria is reasonable chance to improve things long term, then I think nearly all of the times western nations have gotten involved militarily would not have met it, nor would the current conflicts. Actually I can only think of one, the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, that would.

I think its a waste of time and money and lives of our troops.

That region has been fermenting this brew for a very long time. Even if it is stopped militarily it will continue until it can burst once again. The societies there have historically only been able to exist as nation-states if there is a brutal dictator of one sort or another in power (this goes all the way back to even prior to Roman times). Remove that dictator and things devolve into hundreds if not thousands of tiny tribal and sectarian divisions that hate each other and will eventually try to stomp each other out. ISIS is no different in that regard...except they're getting tons of logistical and experiential help from Putin (oh yes, he is behind all this mess) that is allowing them to be effective militarily when compared to the local, horribly corrupt and ineffective local security forces.

Want to know why the Saudis are crapping their pants to the point where they've actually sent their own combat forces into this? They know that once ISIS reaches their borders the great majority of the saudi military will not even bother to resist. They're not loyal to the country or the house of saud, they're only loyal to the better-than-being-poor pay and status being in their military provides. No common foot soldier is going to risk his neck to protect the interests or the heads of the rich SOBs in power. This is the very thing that ISIS has been exploiting nonstop in their 'great' capture of land..the local forces simply dont put up much of a fight because the bulk of the defenders simply walk away or defect.

You can't defeat this problem by physical means. You can only use physical means to protect the interests you have in the region (aka oil) but even then you're just delaying the inevitable and giving it more fuel over time in the long run.

Pacification of the region can only be achieved either by allowing a genocide to happen at the hands of 'their own' or by changing their social mentality. Neither method can be achieved through military means.

When innocent aid workers are being kidnapped and butchered on U-Tube and total populations are wiped out because they don't belong to the particular extremist branch of Islam that these thugs and murderers belong to, then the rest of the world can't sit idly by and let this movement grow and kill more and more innocents. So yes, the world must step in and stop these terrorists with physical force, because physical force is the only means to get bullies, thugs and murderers to stop murdering more and more innocents. The world tried to negotiate with the thugs and murderers who took over Germany in the 1930's. When that didn't work, they ignored the problem and hoped it would go away. When the world finally awakened it was too late to prevent 40 million deaths and most of Europe reduced to bomb craters.

You can't compare ww2 with these people. Completely different historical and cultural factors. You're fighting an idea that has gotten physical... defeating the physical portion leaves the idea behind and like weeds it will simply grow back up again. There is a reason why the middle east can only function when led by brutal dictatorships. It has nothing to do with religion itself.

As cold as it sounds, if the locals do not stand up and defeat this then there's no point in defeating it for them. Once we leave the region will fester again. Are the locals standing up to them? Not really. What we're seeing are the local elites moving money and resources sending cannon fodder masses to fight ISIS so that these fat cats can stay in power. These elites desperately want and need western support because they know their own forces are grossly inept (you cant keep a very effective or smart armed force to keep you in power...for they'll take power for themselves) and would likely desert or defect given the chance. This is why arming the locals is such a bad idea, those weapons will simply end up pointed back at us later on.

In some ways you can consider ISIS taking over the middle east as being a good thing for the west. Once all the old power structures are wiped out THEN we can go in and thump them and re-organize the region.... say, disband existing nations and re-allocate land and people based on their own sectarian/tribal lines in a way that there would be the least friction. The middle east would become dozens and dozens of very small, manageable nations where none can invade the other else they get UN forces arranged against them.

One thing, we can draw lessons from the medical profession, even when a situation is really bad, don't make it worse. Take smart risks, not reckless risks.

And then, frankly, we can draw a lesson from mafia dons. Just because another crime family does a hit on your family, does not automatically mean all-out war. It can just mean a hit back, that is, keeping it at low-level war.

So maybe we can have targets geared up in advance. If they do something like behead an American, we can do an air strike in like two to six hours. If we do it right away, we don't need to do it as big.

Now, a Quaker might say, hey, all you're going to do is kill people who had nothing to do with the original tragedy we're trying to respond to. And the Quaker or the just the nonviolently oriented person is kind of right. But if we want to do something, the quick medium strike may be the way to go.

Look, none of this is easy. There's ethical tension, and emotional tension. But like a poker tournament, don't just make a clunk move because you don't know what else to do. Play the hands. Make medium decisions.

And there's something I remember about John Walker Lindh. Remember, he's the young man from 2001 who was supposedly the American Taliban. Well, he joined a military unit because he wanted to stop Muslim women from being attacked and raped. And he probably joined the unit before we were at war with them. Did he learn when we later went to war against them, was he prepared to fire upon U.S. soldiers? A lot of issues.

Here's the detail I remember. As a sixteen-year-old kid in California, he became very religious. Like several people I remember from my high school, but only several, at least that I knew of, most people were not that religious. John's dad knew that he was sincere and wanted to support him. So, John went to a religious school in Yemen and was disappointed! Because most of his fellow students were not particularly religious. Most of his fellow male students were either interested in futbol and cars, or futbol and girls, one of the two, but futbol (soccer) was definitely part of it. Well, John really wanted to dive into religion and philosophy, so he started looking for a more religious school.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/11/world/mea ... ?hpt=hp_t2