On 9/2/14 4:38 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 9/2/2014 4:24 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 9/2/14 3:53 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 02 Sep 2014 15:26:29 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:
On Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:04:09 -0500, Califbill
wrote:
"Mr. Luddite" wrote:
ISIL has reportedly beheaded another American journalist.
Says they do not care what the world thinks about them. Makes them
even
scarier to a sane person.
===
Yes but it will also make it easier to marshall world opinion against
them. No civilized society goeas around beheading journalists. They
are not exactly an invincible force if everyone stands fast against
them. Somewhere they have a source of funding and supplies. Without
that they could not last long. If nothing else it should be
relatively easy to kill their telecom, media and internet. Where do
they go after that, carrier pigeons?
I like the line from "Alien".
"Nuke them from orbit"
Unfortunately, we didn't learn the lessons of Vietnam and we didn't
learn from the Russian disaster in Afghanistan. These modern-day
terrorists have no real hometown or territory anymore. They might take a
town for a while, and then they'll give it up for another town. If you
bomb the town into the stone age (where it probably is already), you end
up killing lots of non-combatants and you make lots of converts. The
only real way to fight these guys is to have the folks whose towns they
take over fight back. But then you don't know what you are ending up
with.
Unfortunately air strikes alone won't help much other than providing a
minor moral booster to those locals willing to fight, IMO. It's going
to require "boots on the ground" at some point.
Many "expert" commentators claim the USA lacks the "stomach" for a
serious, boots on the ground retaliation. I'd suggest they survey those
who would actually do the fighting ... namely members of the US armed
forces. I'll bet the answer would be unanimous.
Ideally it should be a multi-national coalition, but the USA needs to
lead the way.
Boot on the ground was a failed policy in Afghanistan for Russia and the
United States, and it was a failed policy in Iraq for the United States.
Toppling Saddam only made Iraq worse than it was.