PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: Little Joe on June 06, 2016, 07:25:39 AM
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/06/19-yazidi-girls-burned-alive-for-refusing-to-have-sex-with-their-isis-captors.html?intcmp=hpbt1
Nineteen Iraqi Yazidi girls who refused to have sex with their Islamic State captors were placed in iron cages and burned alive in front of a crowd of hundreds in Mosul on Thursday, activists and witnesses say.
We should not be the World's policemen. On the other hand, who should be?
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/06/19-yazidi-girls-burned-alive-for-refusing-to-have-sex-with-their-isis-captors.html?intcmp=hpbt1
We should not be the World's policemen. On the other hand, who should be?
Why should the US go it alone and be the "world's policemen"? How about other countries in that region stepping up and helping out?
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Why should the US go it alone and be the "world's policemen"? How about other countries in that region stepping up and helping out?
Good idea and I agree.
How's that working out?
If as a country, we can look at articles like the one I posted and sit back and watch, I can abide with that. And be ashamed.
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Good idea and I agree.
How's that working out?
If as a country, we can look at articles like the one I posted and sit back and watch, I can abide with that. And be ashamed.
Just so we're clear, here, we are fighting against ISIS.
But atrocities like this happen all over the world every week. While it'd be great to eradicate the issue, we can't and never will. One thing that Obama has been rightly pissed about is how other countries, even within our coalitions, refuse to act until the US does so first, and even then do so tepidly. We can't be the world's boots-on-the-ground police force. It's not good for us as a country.
When will the people of Iraq become so enraged at this evil that they rise up in numbers so great that ISIS is forced out? Shouldn't they lead the charge before we put our sons and daughters in harm's way?
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Just so we're clear, here, we are fighting against ISIS.
But atrocities like this happen all over the world every week. While it'd be great to eradicate the issue, we can't and never will. One thing that Obama has been rightly pissed about is how other countries, even within our coalitions, refuse to act until the US does so first, and even then do so tepidly. We can't be the world's boots-on-the-ground police force. It's not good for us as a country.
When will the people of Iraq become so enraged at this evil that they rise up in numbers so great that ISIS is forced out? Shouldn't they lead the charge before we put our sons and daughters in harm's way?
You won't get much of an argument from me. I do give Obama a little credit, but just a little.
For one thing, I don't think this "leading from behind" strategy can work. And Obama's history of throwing allies under the bus and negotiating with the enemy under a shroud of weakness and apologies will not work either. The wackiest strategy I have ever heard of in my life, or even read about in any history books or fiction, is setting a withdrawal date in advance before we have won on the battlefield. It would be better to just admit defeat and withdraw immediately.
If we truly want to take on the evil in this world then we have to take the lead, and we have to show the world that we will stand behind our friends and allies. If we do that, then I think they will respond. If we sit around and say "you go first", nothing will get done. But then at least, we can't be blamed.
If we do NOT want to take on evil, then we need to regroup and build that wall, really high, with gun turrets and anti-missile shields.
It is a tough situation and which ever strategy we choose, we MUST have a strong leader providing clear direction. Obama has not shown that.
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You won't get much of an argument from me. I do give Obama a little credit, but just a little.
For one thing, I don't think this "leading from behind" strategy can work. And Obama's history of throwing allies under the bus and negotiating with the enemy under a shroud of weakness and apologies will not work either. The wackiest strategy I have ever heard of in my life, or even read about in any history books or fiction, is setting a withdrawal date in advance before we have won on the battlefield. It would be better to just admit defeat and withdraw immediately.
If we truly want to take on the evil in this world then we have to take the lead, and we have to show the world that we will stand behind our friends and allies. If we do that, then I think they will respond. If we sit around and say "you go first", nothing will get done. But then at least, we can't be blamed.
If we do NOT want to take on evil, then we need to regroup and build that wall, really high, with gun turrets and anti-missile shields.
It is a tough situation and which ever strategy we choose, we MUST have a strong leader providing clear direction. Obama has not shown that.
False dichotomy. There are more choices than world police or walled-off loners.
PS - The world waiting for us to do the dirty work pre-dates Obama's term.
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False dichotomy. There are more choices than world police or walled-off loners.
PS - The world waiting for us to do the dirty work pre-dates Obama's term.
I don't think he was claiming just two choices. I believe his main point was the need for clear strong leadership from the President of the United States. Something that has been lacking for the past 7+ years.
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I don't think he was claiming just two choices. I believe his main point was the need for clear strong leadership from the President of the United States. Something that has been lacking for the past 7+ years.
Thank you. Also, thank you for adding the 7plus years.
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I don't think he was claiming just two choices. I believe his main point was the need for clear strong leadership from the President of the United States. Something that has been lacking for the past 7+ years.
Maybe.
I see two choices he outlines, though: take on evil by leading the charge, or don't and wall off our country. Our range of options is not limited to those two extremes. (And again, we are fighting ISIS. )
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Maybe.
I see two choices he outlines, though: take on evil by leading the charge, or don't and wall off our country. Our range of options is not limited to those two extremes. (And again, we are fighting ISIS. )
I can see where you could have gotten that impression when I said:
If we do NOT want to take on evil, then we need to regroup and build that wall, really high, with gun turrets and anti-missile shields.
But I was writing a forum post, not a thesis. Of course there is a middle ground. But I was trying to point out that someone needs to take the lead. If not us, then who? So far, the volunteers seem to be countries like Iran, Syria, China, Russia etc. I don't want to live in a world where they are the leaders. If we take the lead, then we can possibly get the middle countries to follow and to share the responsibility. If we don't, then who knows what will happen.
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Oh, and you might take a look at this article (http://www.pilotspin.com/index.php?topic=657.msg10776#msg10776).
It's a good read, even if you dislike Obama, and there are some excerpts pertinent to this thread:
“I am very much the internationalist,” Obama said in a later conversation. “And I am also an idealist insofar as I believe that we should be promoting values, like democracy and human rights and norms and values, because not only do they serve our interests the more people adopt values that we share—in the same way that, economically, if people adopt rule of law and property rights and so forth, that is to our advantage—but because it makes the world a better place. And I’m willing to say that in a very corny way, and in a way that probably Brent Scowcroft would not say.
“Having said that,” he continued, “I also believe that the world is a tough, complicated, messy, mean place, and full of hardship and tragedy. And in order to advance both our security interests and those ideals and values that we care about, we’ve got to be hardheaded at the same time as we’re bighearted, and pick and choose our spots, and recognize that there are going to be times where the best that we can do is to shine a spotlight on something that’s terrible, but not believe that we can automatically solve it. There are going to be times where our security interests conflict with our concerns about human rights. There are going to be times where we can do something about innocent people being killed, but there are going to be times where we can’t.”
He goes on to describe his frustration with the "free riders" of the world.
If Obama ever questioned whether America really is the world’s one indispensable nation, he no longer does so. But he is the rare president who seems at times to resent indispensability, rather than embrace it. “Free riders aggravate me,” he told me. Recently, Obama warned that Great Britain would no longer be able to claim a “special relationship” with the United States if it did not commit to spending at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense. “You have to pay your fair share,” Obama told David Cameron, who subsequently met the 2 percent threshold.
Part of his mission as president, Obama explained, is to spur other countries to take action for themselves, rather than wait for the U.S. to lead. The defense of the liberal international order against jihadist terror, Russian adventurism, and Chinese bullying depends in part, he believes, on the willingness of other nations to share the burden with the U.S. This is why the controversy surrounding the assertion—made by an anonymous administration official to The New Yorker during the Libya crisis of 2011—that his policy consisted of “leading from behind” perturbed him. “We don’t have to always be the ones who are up front,” he told me. “Sometimes we’re going to get what we want precisely because we are sharing in the agenda. The irony is that it was precisely in order to prevent the Europeans and the Arab states from holding our coats while we did all the fighting that we, by design, insisted” that they lead during the mission to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya. “It was part of the anti–free rider campaign.”
The president also seems to believe that sharing leadership with other countries is a way to check America’s more unruly impulses. “One of the reasons I am so focused on taking action multilaterally where our direct interests are not at stake is that multilateralism regulates hubris,” he explained. He consistently invokes what he understands to be America’s past failures overseas as a means of checking American self-righteousness. “We have history,” he said. “We have history in Iran, we have history in Indonesia and Central America. So we have to be mindful of our history when we start talking about intervening, and understand the source of other people’s suspicions.”
Maybe his rationale is misguided, but he does have one.
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Just so we're clear, here, we are fighting against ISIS.
But atrocities like this happen all over the world every week. While it'd be great to eradicate the issue, we can't and never will. One thing that Obama has been rightly pissed about is how other countries, even within our coalitions, refuse to act until the US does so first, and even then do so tepidly. We can't be the world's boots-on-the-ground police force. It's not good for us as a country.
When will the people of Iraq become so enraged at this evil that they rise up in numbers so great that ISIS is forced out? Shouldn't they lead the charge before we put our sons and daughters in harm's way?
I personally like the idea of hurting ISIS with air power, and refusing to invade.
My thoughts are, spot them, bomb them, remind their psychopathic, pedophile leaders that we will do it again and again until they arr all dead, out of toys, or just give up, then continue do what we said we'd do.
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I personally like the idea of hurting ISIS with air power, and refusing to invade.
My thoughts are, spot them, bomb them, remind their psychopathic, pedophile leaders that we will do it again and again until they arr all dead, out of toys, or just give up, then continue do what we said we'd do.
I like that idea too. But what do you suppose that costs on a "dollar-per-terrorist" basis?
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I like that idea too. But what do you suppose that costs on a "dollar-per-terrorist" basis?
The cost is less than ground forces, both monetary and mortal.
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I personally like the idea of hurting ISIS with air power, and refusing to invade.
My thoughts are, spot them, bomb them, remind their psychopathic, pedophile leaders that we will do it again and again until they arr all dead, out of toys, or just give up, then continue do what we said we'd do.
The problem is that we aren't just fighting people, we're fighting an ideology. Without some form of counter-insurgency forces on the ground (it doesn't have to be ours), ISIS will use every bombing of ours as propaganda for recruitment. They aren't going to just give up.
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I like that idea too. But what do you suppose that costs on a "dollar-per-terrorist" basis?
A lot less than the current regime is giving out in taxpayer funded gifts to our enemies.