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Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

The thing about doing plan Libya on Syria a couple years ago is if we did that, it's very possible that right now the world would be watching Alawites and Shias getting put in ditches, and the caption on most TV screens would be, with some justification, "the US made this happen."

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married but discreet
May 7, 2005


Taco Defender

My Imaginary GF posted:


No, it would benefit ISIS.

How would Turkey invading with a real army, presumably to fight ISIS, help ISIS other than in terms of propaganda?

My Imaginary GF
Jul 17, 2005

by R. Guyovich

IM_DA_DECIDER posted:

How would Turkey invading with a real army, presumably to fight ISIS, help ISIS other than in terms of propaganda?

Your presumption that they would be invading to fight ISIS is rather unfounded; they would be invading to advance Turkish national interests.

Is fighting ISIS in the Turkish national interest? I have yet to see strong evidence of Turkey acting like so of its own volition.

Turkey invades Kurdish Syria, controlled by PKK elements fighting ISIS. You don't see how that drives a wedge between PKK and Turkey, and how that will affect Peshmerga operaions?

Assepoester
Jul 18, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Melman v2

Xandu posted:

So Iraq is now bombing ISIS with food, water, and ammunition.

http://bit.ly/1vst5Cr
http://www.timesofisrael.com/syrian-rebel-commander-says-he-collaborated-with-israel/

"In a video uploaded to YouTube Monday by the Executive Sharia Council in the eastern Daraa Region, an Islamic court established by Al-Nusra in southern Syria, Sharif As-Safouri, the commander of the Free Syrian Army’s Al-Haramein Battalion, admitted to having entered Israel five times to meet with Israeli officers who later provided him with Soviet anti-tank weapons and light arms. Safouri was abducted by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front in the Quneitra area, near the Israeli border, on July 22.

“The [opposition] factions would receive support and send the injured in [to Israel] on condition that the Israeli fence area is secured. No person was allowed to come near the fence without prior coordination with Israel authorities,” Safouri said in the video.

Israel has never admitted to arming moderate Syrian rebels, who have been engaged in battle against the Assad regime and its allies since March 2011. In June, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, head of Military Intelligence research, told the Herzliya Conference that 80 percent of Syria’s oppositionists are Islamists of various shades, indicating that Israel was reluctant to collaborate with them."

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
Is this new? I hadn't seen it posted here:

quote:

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.
http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-exempts-syria-airstrikes-from-tight-standards-on-civilian-deaths-183724795.html

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

My Imaginary GF posted:

Your presumption that they would be invading to fight ISIS is rather unfounded; they would be invading to advance Turkish national interests.

Is fighting ISIS in the Turkish national interest? I have yet to see strong evidence of Turkey acting like so of its own volition.

Turkey invades Kurdish Syria, controlled by PKK elements fighting ISIS. You don't see how that drives a wedge between PKK and Turkey, and how that will affect Peshmerga operaions?

Maybe they are willing to make an alliance with Kurdish elements to beat ISIL and redraw the borders that are already overwhelmed and contested.

If it goes bad enough you could invoke Article 5 :shepface:

V. Illych L.
Apr 11, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

The Turkish army is, bar none, the most formidable military force in the region. They could probably rough up the IDF for their lunch money. There is no way they'd get beaten in an open conflict by Daesh - the problem is, they'd suffer casualties, and opportunistic military types might use the situation for political purposes. This is a very delicate situation for the AKP.

pantslesswithwolves
Oct 28, 2008

Too long to copy/paste here, but Foreign Policy released a super fascinating article about Qatar's foreign policy and the Arab uprisings.

The TL; DR is basically "Throwing guns and money around and seeing who likes us when the dust settles" does not make for a good foreign policy.

William Bear
Oct 26, 2012

"That's what they all say!"
CNN had this images attached to a story about ISIS recruiters doing Q&A sessions onsocial media.




Almost reminds me of this propaganda video of footage shot in the style of a Grand Theft Auto game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhbX0Kt9s_I

Brown Moses
Feb 22, 2002

Here's the RAF blowing up a £10,000 pick up with a £100,000 Brimstone Missile in Iraq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP83VclSJXA

My Imaginary GF
Jul 17, 2005

by R. Guyovich

Brown Moses posted:

Here's the RAF blowing up a £10,000 pick up with a £100,000 Brimstone Missile in Iraq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP83VclSJXA

Yes, this war isn't too cost effective, now is it? I wonder what the best means of cost-saving measures would be.

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

Brown Moses posted:

Here's the RAF blowing up a £10,000 pick up with a £100,000 Brimstone Missile in Iraq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP83VclSJXA

When all you have is really expensive hammers ...

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

My Imaginary GF posted:

Yes, this war isn't too cost effective, now is it? I wonder what the best means of cost-saving measures would be.

Ask McDowell.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

My Imaginary GF posted:

Yes, this war isn't too cost effective, now is it? I wonder what the best means of cost-saving measures would be.

Reduce unemployment to the most minimal levels possible, and provide generous food subsidies.

My Imaginary GF
Jul 17, 2005

by R. Guyovich

double nine posted:

When all you have is really expensive hammers ...

You begin to sub-contract the labor to use less expensive hammers.

E:

Ardennes posted:

Reduce unemployment to the most minimal levels possible, and provide generous food subsidies.

Alternatively, define generous as 'no' and reduce unemployment to the most minimal levels possible now and in the future with no food subsidies.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

My Imaginary GF posted:

Alternatively, define generous as 'no' and reduce unemployment to the most minimal levels possible now and in the future with no food subsidies.

If you want that then you either have to provide A: a minimum wage law that works and is high enough to buy food or B: direct cash vouchers or food stamps.

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

Volkerball posted:

Ask McDowell.

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

My Imaginary GF posted:

Yes, this war isn't too cost effective, now is it? I wonder what the best means of cost-saving measures would be.

It'd be cheaper to do a strafing run, but if you lose the aircraft to a MANPAD you're going to wish you used the pricey guided missile instead.

Xipe Totec
Jan 27, 2006

by Ralp

CeeJee posted:

Every time Gadaffi is brought up as a criticism of Western intervention it's assumed that without that intervention Libya would be A-OK as Gadaffi would have killed all the nasty rebels and restored order in Libya. While Syria shows even killing hundreds of thousands won't put down a rebellion.

yea western intervention is great, the problem is we dont have enough of it

*peels off funding narcoterrorist chaos layer*

*peels off selling chemical weapons to pet dictator layer*

*peels off to find - eek! - minimal Intervention and Pretty Good socialist development layer*

*peels off again to find Late Victorian Steampunk Holocaust layer -- phew!! *

pantslesswithwolves
Oct 28, 2008

Oh Jesus loving Christ

quote:

The White House says it wants to work with Syria’s moderate rebels. But warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition came awfully close to striking one of their HQs.

Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria.

Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been no coordination between the U.S. military and its alleged partners on the ground, according to FSA leaders, civilian opposition leaders, and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the U.S. and allied military operation. It’s this lack of communication that led to an airstrike that hit only 200 meters from an FSA facility in the suburbs of Idlib. One source briefed on the incident said multiple FSA fighters were killed in the attack.

“Unfortunately, there is zero coordination with the Free Syrian Army. Because there is no coordination, we are seeing civilian casualties. Because there is no coordination, they are hitting empty buildings for ISIS,” Hussam Al Marie, the spokesman for the FSA in northern Syria, told The Daily Beast. “We have been getting promises that the coordination will be coming, but we have been getting promises since the beginning of this revolution and nothing has happened yet.”

The incident, which was not been previously reported, doesn’t just highlight the gap between the U.S. and its newly-endorsed allies in the moderate opposition, however. It also shows how complicated it can be to make alliances in the multi-factioned Syrian civil war. The coalition airstrike was targeting a base used by al Nusrah, the local al Qaeda affiliate. And the camp was, essentially, next door to the FSA facility. The al Qaeda fighters and the U.S-endorsed rebels were neighbors—and, at times, partners in battle against ISIS and the Bashar al-Assad regime.

“Because there is no coordination, [the U.S.-led coalition] hit an al Nusrah base in the Idlib suburbs that is only 200 meters from the Free Syrian Army,” Al Marie said.

There were 11 civilian casualties after the first day of U.S.-led airstrikes inside Syria, according to the FSA, and at least one more when the coalition struck a Shariah Court near Idlib two days ago that was under the control of al Nusrah. The U.S. government has said it cannot confirm any civilian casualties but will investigate any accidents.

“There are always civilian casualties when they are hitting al Nusrah because al Nusrah is just living among the people,” said Al Marie. “They didn’t do any real harm to ISIS, the buildings of ISIS were empty. Meanwhile, the main battle on the ground against ISIS hasn’t been supported yet. That’s the important thing, the ground battle.”

In the fight against ISIS in northern Syria, the FSA often fights alongside other rebel groups with varying levels of Islamic flavor: the Islamic Front, the Tawheed Brigade, and even the al Qaeda-linked al Nusrah Front. FSA fighters are moving around the area all the time and sometimes have to pass through al Nusrah checkpoints to get where they are going. And yet, according to the Obama administration, these moderate rebels can be trusted—despite their alliances of convenience with al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria. (On Sunday, the leader of al Nusrah made his first public statement in eight months, telling moderate rebels that his group, and not the United States, was their true partner.)

“Unfortunately, there is zero coordination with the Free Syrian Army. Because there is no coordination, we are seeing civilian casualties. Because there is no coordination, they are hitting empty buildings for ISIS.”
Now, in addition to the Assad regime and ISIS, they have to worry about getting killed by U.S. and coalition airstrikes on al Nusrah targets too. Already, one Syrian rebel group supported in the past by the United States condemned the aerial attacks, calling them “an attack on national sovereignty” and demanding that the West train its firepower on Assad instead. To make matters worse, some FSA leaders now say that the airstrikes are threatening to push many rebel groups—including al Nusrah—back toward the side of ISIS.

“Before there were terrorists fighting terrorists. Now, after the airstrikes, you could see them working together against a common enemy (the United States), which is not what we want to see at all,” said Al Marie.

In President Obama’s Sept. 10 speech to the nation announcing his new strategy against ISIS, the president said, “We must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to” ISIS. He then called on Congress to authorize a program to train and equip 5,000 rebels per year in Saudi Arabia, which they did. Sunday night on CBS’s 60 Minutes, the President defended his decision to avoid arming the moderate Syrian rebels for the last two years, as most of his top national security officials had recommended.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken said the FSA would be America’s boots on the ground in Syria and are a crucial part of the coalition strategy to defeat ISIS and then eventually work to oust Assad.

“The president has been very clear. This is going to be a long-term effort. It's going to be sustained and it's going to be more effective because we're going to be working with partners on the ground, not sending in hundreds of thousands of Americans,” he said.

But a week into the strikes, the FSA hasn’t heard anything from the Obama administration or the U.S. military about where the strikes are, how they can help make them effective, or even how to avoid getting killed by U.S. bombs and missiles. And because Obama doesn’t want American boots on the ground, there are no U.S. air controllers to guide in the strikes. Throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military found that such personnel were essential for minimizing civilian casualties.

‘This is really dangerous,” said Al Marie. “I really don’t know what’s the strategic plan for these airstrikes, how they are doing it. I can’t believe it, our friends are doing this big thing in our country and here we are, their friends, and they won’t coordinate with us.”

The U.S.-led airstrikes have not done any significant damage to ISIS, Al Marie said, because the group moved all of their command and control, valuable weaponry, money, and even family members to new locations after Obama announced publicly the airstrikes were coming.

Another civilian Syrian opposition official told The Daily Beast that the lack of coordination was such a big problem, Syrian National Coalition President Hadi al Bahra pressed National Security Advisor Susan Rice last week in New York to set up a joint coordination center with the FSA for the operations to fight ISIS. Rice was noncommittal, the official said, but the opposition leadership is trying hard to get the Obama administration to start working more with the FSA.

“The FSA is passing on solid targeting information about ISIS and Nusrah. We don’t know if they are using it or not,” the opposition official said. “We’re hoping that the campaign will eventually transition to one of close air support based on mutual intelligence sharing.”

Major Curtis Kellogg, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told The Daily Beast he could not comment on the FSA’s allegation that the coalition had struck an al Nusrah base right next to a moderate rebel headquarters.

"As a matter of policy, we’re not going to discuss the specifics of our targeting process, coordination or intelligence, but based on our ISR capabilities and careful evaluation, we have high confidence in the ISIL and Khorasan Group targets we have chosen,” Kellogg said, using the government’s preferred acronym for ISIS and its name for a cadre of veteran al Qaeda planners.

Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Obama administration is not coordinating with the FSA because it still doesn’t believe it can trust the FSA with sensitive information about ongoing military operations. But that also means the FSA can’t capitalize after the strikes by taking over the territory that has been cleared.

“Everybody knows you can’t bomb your way out of this problem, and if your game plan is for the moderate opposition to fill up that vacuum, then it would seem it’s important the moderate rebels benefit,” he said. “We need to win the opposition over to our side and this doesn’t help that at all. And if this continues, the Assad regime will be the main party to benefit.”

By announcing that U.S. airstrikes would be paired with help for the FSA but then not delivering that help quickly or even talking to the FSA, the U.S. is putting the moderate rebels in the worst possible position and needlessly harming the effectiveness of the mission, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American-based organization that works with the Syrian opposition, and political director of United for a Free Syria.

“You are helping alienate the FSA from their popular support on the ground and you are risking ISIS regrouping or allowing the regime to take over these areas, which contradicts the stated policy of the president of the United States,” he said.


Last week, Moustafa’s group brought a delegation of congressmen and congressional staffers who support arming the Free Syrian Army to the Turkey-Syria border and met with leaders of over a dozen Free Syrian Army brigades in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep.

After meeting with the rebel brigade leaders, Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger told The Daily Beast that the U.S. must speed up the training and equipping of the Free Syrian Army brigades that have been vetted.

“There’s always going to a risk… It’s not going to be a flawless process,” he said. “There were a lot of folks begging us to confront the Assad regime or at least create a no fly zone and stop the barrel bombs.”

Xandu
Feb 19, 2006


It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
Can't imagine why the US would be hesitant to coordinate with them

quote:

The coalition airstrike was targeting a base used by al Nusrah, the local al Qaeda affiliate. And the camp was, essentially, next door to the FSA facility. The al Qaeda fighters and the U.S-endorsed rebels were neighbors—and, at times, partners in battle against ISIS and the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Radio Prune
Feb 19, 2010

Xipe Totec posted:

Late Victorian Steampunk Holocaust

Mods

burnishedfume
Mar 8, 2011

You really are a louse...
So what is FSA up to in all this? I assume FSA fighters forming coalitions with AQ fighters probably means "Trying to be not dead, not doing too great", but does anyone have a map or something of current FSA territory (or at least territory FSA currently holds and is not contested)?

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008



lol

I'm sure glad the interventionism is working out great and completely avoiding the problems of all those other times

Miruvor
Jan 19, 2007
Pillbug
Don't worry, if the airstrikes don't work, we'll have 5,000 US-trained troops who'll turn the tide of the war on their pluckiness, grit, truculence.. Maybe abandon their weapons and run upon meeting any real resistance, but at least we're trying, right?

Coldwar timewarp
May 8, 2007



I`m sure that the FSA would try their hardest to get US planes to target regime forces. Very difficult to trust them when they want you to get entangled for their benefit.

Niedar
Apr 21, 2010

Brown Moses posted:

Here's the RAF blowing up a £10,000 pick up with a £100,000 Brimstone Missile in Iraq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP83VclSJXA

It gets even worse.


http://news.sky.com/story/1342768/how-much-will-airstrikes-on-is-cost-taxpayer posted:

According to a Ministry of Defence report to Parliament in 2010, each Tornado flight costs £35,000 per hour.

Typically, two Tornados fly each mission, lasting anywhere between four and eight hours.

So let's land somewhere in the middle: a six-hour mission costs a basic £210,000.

etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Niedar posted:

It gets even worse.

Well makes sense to try again since the last joint military venture with the USA went so well.

the panacea
May 10, 2008

:10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux::10bux:
Gotta spend money to make money (for the military industrial complex)

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Miruvor posted:

Don't worry, if the airstrikes don't work, we'll have 5,000 US-trained troops who'll turn the tide of the war on their pluckiness, grit, truculence.. Maybe abandon their weapons and run upon meeting any real resistance, but at least we're trying, right?

Are you referring to the deployment of 1st ID headquarters? Because I don't know if you've ever been around a headquarters battalion or anything, but those dudes are definitely not there for fighting. That's where they send all the failures from the infantry units who nobody wants.

Grouchio
Aug 31, 2014

Iraq's New Prime Minister, apparently, wants Arab strikes against ISIS to end.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29447201

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless
2 car bombs went off in front of a school in Homs. 29 dead, 110 wounded. I'm guessing ISIS but I have no idea why.

:nms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOHy44YFkWA&feature=youtu.be

Edit: Joshua Landis saying it's an alawite neighborhood, but he's not exactly the most objective about that kind of thing. Still sounds like ISIS. "Show one photo of ISIS killing children! You can't, it doesn't happen! :freep:"

Volkerball fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Oct 1, 2014

AllanGordon
Jan 26, 2010

by Shine

Niedar posted:

It gets even worse.

Wow I knew that there was real white privilege here but I didn't think it would show up in a way that posters here hold the belief that ISIS members (arabs) have no worth.

Not even factoring that into your calculations of if using a 100k pound bomb is cost efficient or not shameful.

kierrie
Jun 7, 2010

the panacea posted:

Gotta spend money to make money (for the military industrial complex)

The wonderful thing about america is that you too can make a profit from human suffering! https://www.nyse.com/quote/XNYS:LMT

Ersatz
Sep 17, 2005

AllanGordon posted:

Wow I knew that there was real white privilege here but I didn't think it would show up in a way that posters here hold the belief that ISIS members (arabs) have no worth.
It isn't racist to believe that people who have pledged themselves to violently eradicating entire ethnicities and religions, and who have systematically and horrifically abused human rights, have no worth.

I'm not defending a particular approach to breaking the back of ISIS, but arguing that advocating an organization's destruction makes a person racist simply because the majority of its members have a shared ethnicity is absurd. I don't doubt that posters in this thread who advocate military action against ISIS would advocate the same against Nazi Germany or the Khmer Rouge if they were still active threats.

Cippalippus
Mar 31, 2007

Out for a ride, chillin out w/ a couple of friends. Going to be back for dinner
What's the problem with killing ISIS members in a cost effective way?

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

AllanGordon posted:

Wow I knew that there was real white privilege here but I didn't think it would show up in a way that posters here hold the belief that ISIS members (arabs) have no worth.

Not even factoring that into your calculations of if using a 100k pound bomb is cost efficient or not shameful.

It's not a question of racism or privilege. The purpose of a weapon of war is to damage the enemy's ability to fight, either by killing the enemy directly or by destroying the enemy's weapons. In this respect, the worth of an enemy combatant's life is the worth that the enemy assigns to their combatants' life. If they're using suicide attacks to weed out raw recruits and claim in their propaganda movies that they love death, then that worth mustn't be very high.

In any case it's easier to compute values for materiel. If you destroy a Toyota Hilux, you destroy a Toyota. Maybe it was parked and there was nobody, causing no victims. Maybe it was transporting fifteen combatants and they're all dead now. It's often hard to tell with an airstrike just how many casualties it caused.

Niedar
Apr 21, 2010

AllanGordon posted:

Wow I knew that there was real white privilege here but I didn't think it would show up in a way that posters here hold the belief that ISIS members (arabs) have no worth.

Not even factoring that into your calculations of if using a 100k pound bomb is cost efficient or not shameful.

Well thats great and all but I don't think we should be killing ISIS at all so im not sure how pointing out how spending a ton of money killing them is bad is white privilege.

Berke Negri
Feb 15, 2012

Les Ricains tuent et moi je mue
Mao Mao
Les fous sont rois et moi je bois
Mao Mao
Les bombes tonnent et moi je sonne
Mao Mao
Les bebes fuient et moi je fuis
Mao Mao


Niedar posted:

Well thats great and all but I don't think we should be killing ISIS at all so im not sure how pointing out how spending a ton of money killing them is bad is white privilege.

Thanks for enabling GiP.

Edit: Is your issue that you don't think the coalition-of-dwindling-goodwill should be involved because of policy implications or are you implying that it is somehow wrong to be killing ISIS members?

Berke Negri fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Oct 1, 2014

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woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

AllanGordon posted:

Wow I knew that there was real white privilege here but I didn't think it would show up in a way that posters here hold the belief that ISIS members (arabs) have no worth.

Not even factoring that into your calculations of if using a 100k pound bomb is cost efficient or not shameful.

Interesting, would you like to take another dump in the form of words so I can smell that also?

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