Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

I don't know how you can blame Bush when Obama inherited a relatively stable Iraq. Who's going to be willing to fight without our full support? Who's dumb enough to take on a war that liberals claim we can't win? What happens if ISIS kicks their asses?

FWIW, the CIA doesn't think we can win this either, and I don't mean the political appointees either. All people get pissed when outsiders come into their villages and homes, and tell them what to do and how to live. They'll be quiet about it if the outsiders are there in force, but they still think it. Once the force is reduced, the attitudes come out ... but they were there all along. We never learned how to do the hearts-and-minds thing, because it not possible to do from the outside. If we ever get invited in by the people, then the people will cheer and support us ... but only then.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Yes, a stray fish here and there (i.e. Paris, Copenhagen) but puny relative to the 1000s getting their asses blown up in the Syrian/Iraqi butthole deserts.

And its more than likely that many of the latter would be pulling off events in the West if not preoccupied with getting their asses blown up in butthole deserts.

I know you guys on the Right like to have all that tough Mission Accomplished talk, but the rest of us are okay with Obama's more subtle approach that actually gets the job done.

It has to do with your right amygdala hijacking your cerebral lobe thinking -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-amygdala.html

It's a primitive thing that us cerebral types will just need to accept about you until you all eventually die out and become a minor part of the human genome.

Well, as long as you're content with thousands of poor brownish colored civilian folks being terrorized and slaughtered while your boy twiddle his thumbs and does little just to claim he's doing something is good enough for me. It's a primitive thing to accept and be content with allowing nature to take it's coarse and giving emotionally guided cerebral types like yourselves enough political rope to hang yourselves. So, as your twiddling your thumbs and waiting for us to grow old and die, we are actively doing things on our own and allowing things to continue now that will seal your fate in the future. My advice, you should pray that your dead because what happens to well to do blues ain't going to be pretty.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

FWIW, the CIA doesn't think we can win this either, and I don't mean the political appointees either. All people get pissed when outsiders come into their villages and homes, and tell them what to do and how to live. They'll be quiet about it if the outsiders are there in force, but they still think it. Once the force is reduced, the attitudes come out ... but they were there all along. We never learned how to do the hearts-and-minds thing, because it not possible to do from the outside. If we ever get invited in by the people, then the people will cheer and support us ... but only then.

FWIW, I don't think we can win either considering the current state that we're in. We don't have effective leadership. We don't have deep enough pockets. We've got to many rules that we must follow. We don't have a strong enough reason to engage and completely destroy them. I'd never send my kid to war with the idiots that we currently have in Washington. My parents voted to end Vietnam because they had no faith in the idiots in Washington at the time and weren't willing to send their son's to fight in an endless war.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Sure -- but they can establish the ground rules of combat and administration. Lincoln and FDR could both establish that slaves would be free (Nazis were even more brutal slave-masters than Confederate planters), and that occupied territory is to not be exploited. Ultimately the generals and admirals are accountable to civilian control, and lawyers are the intellectual generalists who can best do that. That may decide whether one has taken the desire to strike back out of a recently-defeated people.

Do you really think that the horrible deeds that occurred in Abu Ghraib would happen with a trained attorney respectful of precedent (like Obama) as President? Not in the least.

Obama had an embassy attacked and the ambassador murdered under his nose. What makes you think Abu Ghraib wouldn't have happened under his nose too? The result would have been the same with much less publicity under Obama.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

FWIW, I don't think we can win either considering the current state that we're in. We don't have effective leadership. We don't have deep enough pockets. We've got to many rules that we must follow. We don't have a strong enough reason to engage and completely destroy them. I'd never send my kid to war with the idiots that we currently have in Washington. My parents voted to end Vietnam because they had no faith in the idiots in Washington at the time and weren't willing to send their son's to fight in an endless war.

Most of us who spent any time in the military during the Vietnam era came to the uncomfortable conclusion that a win meant never leaving or killing them all. Now, I don't know about you, but that's not feasible nor is it moral or ethical. The same applies in the middle east. Being tough gets you nothing, because these folks are 100 times as tough as you are. They've lived with fear and uncertainty all their lives. Rich or poor, they can deal with it. So changing the palace guard won't do squat. Unless he's willing to put boots on the ground forever or kill them all, picking a different 'decider' is meaningless. If he is willing and we actually do it, we've ceased being America.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Obama had an embassy attacked and the ambassador murdered under his nose. What makes you think Abu Ghraib wouldn't have happened under his nose too? The result would have been the same with much less publicity under Obama.

We lose diplomats under every President, but Benghazi is different, of course.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Obama had an embassy attacked and the ambassador murdered under his nose. What makes you think Abu Ghraib wouldn't have happened under his nose too? The result would have been the same with much less publicity under Obama.

A sneak attack happens due to a lapse in security, however excusable. The FDR administration could have never foreseen the Pearl Harbor attack unless an American equivalent of the CIA had a mole within the Japanese military. A culture of corruption takes corruption from the apex or near-apex of power.

Imagine that I am the general in charge of Abu Ghraib. Sure, I well know that the people incarcerated there are senior military, diplomatic, judicial, and secret police officials -- some of them the worst of the worst, including serial mass killers. Our custody of them is not formal punishment, in view of the well-recognized principle of presumption of innocence. They don't need any humiliation by us. The criminal courts of the reconstituted Iraq can do that. Murder of an ayatollah? To me that would be about like murdering a Catholic cardinal... well, that's why the fellow is under detention. The Shiites can deal with that at their necktie party.

Interrogations? Let them incriminate themselves. Maybe someone in CID might get some suggestions on how to deal with liberal Democrats whom the interrogator suggests are betraying our Great and Glorious Leader George W. Bush... and as a general who owes everything to Dubya I might want to protect him by a little bloodletting in America (such would be a lie on my part; I really want to know how it was done in Iraq so that I can get incriminating statements). Oh, don't concern yourself with any guilt about killing people who will not and have never done anything? Maybe, in view of someone trying to ingratiate himself with me, he will tell me to assassinate several cardinals.

The Shiites will be far more interested in how to structure purges and persecutions in Iraq than I will be in structuring those in America. They will use what I hear and record as testimony in a courtroom.

Murder of an ayatollah? To me that would be about like murdering a Catholic cardinal... well, that's why the fellow is under detention.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We lose diplomats under every President, but Benghazi is different, of course.

It's different because most administrations don't spin it, blame it on something else and then attempt to cover up evidence.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Imagine that I am the general in charge of Abu Ghraib. Sure, I well know that the people incarcerated there are senior military, diplomatic, judicial, and secret police officials -- some of them the worst of the worst, including serial mass killers. Our custody of them is not formal punishment, in view of the well-recognized principle of presumption of innocence. They don't need any humiliation by us. The criminal courts of the reconstituted Iraq can do that. Murder of an ayatollah? To me that would be about like murdering a Catholic cardinal... well, that's why the fellow is under detention. The Shiites can deal with that at their necktie party.

First of all, if they were presumed innocent they wouldn't be at Abu Ghraib. Second, if you were the general in charge of Abu Ghraib, you'd be in charge of prisoners of war with information, assigned the task of obtaining their information and you'd understand that time is your enemy at that point. As the general, you wouldn't have the time to wait for Iraq to establish its new courts and law enforcement. You wouldn't have time to earn the respect and trust of your prisoners and become their buddy. You see, time allows those that you seek to hide and get away. Time allows your enemies to regroup, arm and organize further resistance. Time allows WMD's to be hidden, taken or transferred across borders.Time allows American lives to be lost. As general, you'd be spending the bulk of your time managing information and not enough time spying on your troops, making sure they're always behaving themselves and not having fun humiliating scum bag prisoners who terrorized and humiliated people for a living.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

First of all, if they were presumed innocent they wouldn't be at Abu Ghraib.

Still, not to be tortured, abused, or summarily executed. All such behavior violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It applied to postwar captives of Germany, Italy, and Japan -- even to the absolute worst, Holocaust perpetrators and those who had committed atrocities against Allied prisoners of war.

Second, if you were the general in charge of Abu Ghraib, you'd be in charge of prisoners of war with information, assigned the task of obtaining their information and you'd understand that time is your enemy at that point.

Such information might be available in the field, but not long afterward. Do you really believe that Saddam Hussein or Izzat al-Douri (the highest-ranking member of the Saddam Hussein regime still not captured) would be feeding information to prisoners of the US at Abu Ghraib?

As the general, you wouldn't have the time to wait for Iraq to establish its new courts and law enforcement.

Wrong. To be sure, there was a huge difference between Germany with its absolute surrender and the formal defeat of the Ba'ath regime in Iraq. At the end of the Second World War there was no German state left with any continuity to the Third Reich. The only symbol allotted to any vestige of the German state (typically government property) was the C-banner. The coalition to defeat and overthrow Saddam Hussein had no desire to eliminate the Iraqi state.

The Allies tried major Nazi war criminals -- and some lower-ranking or unranked German war criminals (concentration camp personnel, Germans who had lynched Allied prisoners, participants in medical crimes) and did not leave the responsibility for trying and punishing those to Germans. The Coalition left the trials of Saddam Hussein and others to Iraq as soon as it could reestablish a judicial system. But until the courts and jails of the new Iraq could be established, officials of the Ba'ath regime were under US custody.

You wouldn't have time to earn the respect and trust of your prisoners and become their buddy.

How profound! (Irony intended). Sure, American military officers are going to get chummy with murderers. Maybe they will use flattery as can the FBI to induce incriminating statements -- like "What masterful killings!" to a murder suspect, "You must be a real stud!" toward a serial rapist, or "You really know how to pull off a heist" to someone who has committed a series of bank robberies. But that is intended to betray a criminal.

CID, not to be confused with CIA, is the Criminal Investigation Division of the US Armed Forces. It exists to investigate criminal behavior within the armed forces and among people under military custody. If you are in the military, you don't want it near you even if you aren't culpable.

You see, time allows those that you seek to hide and get away. Time allows your enemies to regroup, arm and organize further resistance.

Time also allows fugitives to make mistakes that lead to them and to allow the pursuit of those fugitives to close off means of escape and close in on the fugitive. Saddam Hussein was using US $100 bills that he took from the Central Bank of Iraq in a robbery that got him $750,000. Those led to him. He was caught with proceeds of that robbery.

Time allows WMD's to be hidden, taken or transferred across borders.

The UN did an excellent job of destroying WMDs and dismantling the potential for atomic, biological, and chemical warfare by Iraq/Saddam Hussein. The Soviet Union and in turn Russia both had good cause to seek the destruction of Iraqi missiles as those had the range to strike Soviet and Russian cities.

Time allows American lives to be lost.

Sure -- and the prisoner-abuse scandals put more Americans at risk. It is difficult to be an occupying power, but being a hated occupying power is even more precarious for American troops. This stuff did not happen in Germany or Japan. Maybe Americans had more conscience in the 1940s than in the Double-Zero decade.

As general, you'd be spending the bulk of your time managing information and not enough time spying on your troops, making sure they're always behaving themselves and not having fun humiliating scum bag prisoners who terrorized and humiliated people for a living.

Not even those accused of being Holocaust perpetrators got that sort of treatment. Would it have done any good to subject Irma Grese (brutal Nazi guard who set half-starved dogs upon prisoners; dogs have obvious similarities to tigers) with rape? I can imagine a well-fitting eternal punishment for her in a new installment of Dante's Inferno... it is all too explicit for inclusion here.

The tenth bolgia, the one that Dante could have never foreseen any need for, exists for Nazis, Stalinists, Ba'athists, and now ISIS, at least in my imagination.

Ideologues and academics make poor generals, this we have seen in every president since 1993, who was either an ideologue or an academic. Baby Boomers ignore the implication of such a findings as it casts an ill shadow on how their leadership as a generation would be remembered.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

It's different because most administrations don't spin it, blame it on something else and then attempt to cover up evidence.

Isn't that more or less the definition of what politicians do?

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

Ideologues and academics make poor generals, this we have seen in every president since 1993, who was either an ideologue or an academic. Baby Boomers ignore the implication of such a findings as it casts an ill shadow on how their leadership as a generation would be remembered.

Lev Trotsky was a superb general... and about as pure an ideologue as there ever was. Too pure, of course, an ideologue.

Our Presidents are rarely soldiers. Not many fault Woodrow Wilson, the only President ever to hold a PhD, as a wartime leader. For other stuff, yes... but American entry into World War I decided the war.

Was Bill Clinton an ideologue? No. An academic? Not really.

Dubya was a weak leader devoid of principles, and that combination made him a horrible President. He got America into an unnecessary war and he handled it badly. Ideologue? No. He pushed the real estate bubble based upon subprime lending instead of pushing the usual conservative Republican agenda of thrift and investment with huge tax cuts for investors.

Barack Obama taught a course in Constitutional law, which is not enough to make him an academic. Barack Obama has no military record, but I can just imagine what sort of military officer he would be. He'd be insufferable in peacetime for spit-and-polish demands of any soldier, but if he ever commanded troops he would be the sort who has a low casualty rate for his own troops as opposed to a high casualty rate for enemy forces. He would be a George S. Patton... except maybe more diplomatic.

The President is not expected to lead troops in the field. Lincoln didn't; Wilson and the crippled FDR certainly couldn't have.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Lev Trotsky was a superb general... and about as pure an ideologue as there ever was. Too pure, of course, an ideologue.

Our Presidents are rarely soldiers. Not many fault Woodrow Wilson, the only President ever to hold a PhD, as a wartime leader. For other stuff, yes... but American entry into World War I decided the war.

Was Bill Clinton an ideologue? No. An academic? Not really.

Dubya was a weak leader devoid of principles, and that combination made him a horrible President. He got America into an unnecessary war and he handled it badly. Ideologue? No. He pushed the real estate bubble based upon subprime lending instead of pushing the usual conservative Republican agenda of thrift and investment with huge tax cuts for investors.

Barack Obama taught a course in Constitutional law, which is not enough to make him an academic. Barack Obama has no military record, but I can just imagine what sort of military officer he would be. He'd be insufferable in peacetime for spit-and-polish demands of any soldier, but if he ever commanded troops he would be the sort who has a low casualty rate for his own troops as opposed to a high casualty rate for enemy forces. He would be a George S. Patton... except maybe more diplomatic.

Obama comes across as the type of general who would run a loose ship and wouldn't be a be a huge stickler as far as details. He'd be a great low level one star general who sits at a desk, organizes parties and does PR for a five star general like Patton. The dude can't manage people outside his comfort zone, he obviously lacks authority, he prefers to avoid challenge because he comes from liberal easy street and he's intimidated by people who have more wisdom and character than him. He's strongly suited for competing and excelling in a the world of charlatan's. As charlatans go, he's be viewed as non threatening and considered a farce by someone like me. He's very limited as far as the range of his power and therefore not viewed as threatening. I'm familiar with his type.

It strikes me that the old cliche holds ... without a viable POLITICAL solution in sight, warfare makes no sense at all. What kind of political solution can possilby be on tap for Syria, anytime in the near future, given the plethora of factions?

Originally Posted by TnT

It strikes me that the old cliche holds ... without a viable POLITICAL solution in sight, warfare makes no sense at all. What kind of political solution can possilby be on tap for Syria, anytime in the near future, given the plethora of factions?

Greater Islam is going to have to become active and become highly involved in the process. Unfortunately, we need a politician who has the balls to challenge Islam by pointing the finger at them and connecting terrorist activities to the teaching of Islam. This isn't going to happen with a liberal in the White House.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Still, not to be tortured, abused, or summarily executed. All such behavior violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It applied to postwar captives of Germany, Italy, and Japan -- even to the absolute worst, Holocaust perpetrators and those who had committed atrocities against Allied prisoners of war.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice only applies to soldiers in uniforms.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Most of us who spent any time in the military during the Vietnam era came to the uncomfortable conclusion that a win meant never leaving or killing them all. Now, I don't know about you, but that's not feasible nor is it moral or ethical. The same applies in the middle east. Being tough gets you nothing, because these folks are 100 times as tough as you are. They've lived with fear and uncertainty all their lives. Rich or poor, they can deal with it. So changing the palace guard won't do squat. Unless he's willing to put boots on the ground forever or kill them all, picking a different 'decider' is meaningless. If he is willing and we actually do it, we've ceased being America.

Sounds to me a lot like what I've been saying recently: that this country hasn't had the stomach to do what needs to be done since WW2. Seeing as we've already kicked the hornets nest, the only alternative to suffering their anal jihad for the next millennium is to nuke the whole region into the ground. Perhaps this is what will happen after they smack us again. I also don't think we should be allowing them in our country and should get rid of the ones we have here now as it is only a matter of time before we realize how many of them are just sleeper agents. They're barbarian zealots of a false religion and should be treated accordingly. We need to stop letting them use our laws against us and we can start by removing any sort of lawful protection of them.

Does anyone here honestly believe that the same country that can not reform its healthcare system without a Supreme Court case threatening to overturn the reforms every few years, can not come to peace over social issues like abortion and gay rights and can not curb the influence of corporate money in our elections is going to unify to enough to nuke a billion people and make over half of the world's oil resources unexploitable for several years at a time?

Get Real.

This is NOT the same country that fought WWII. The geographic landmass is the same but The Bomb, Vietnam and the rise of fourth generation warfare, amongst other things, ensures that that nation is as gone as the solders buried at Arlington.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

Does anyone here honestly believe that the same country that can not reform its healthcare system without a Supreme Court case threatening to overturn the reforms every few years, can not come to peace over social issues like abortion and gay rights and can not curb the influence of corporate money in our elections is going to unify to enough to nuke a billion people and make over half of the world's oil resources unexploitable for several years at a time?

Get Real.

Well, you shouldn't expect Democratic reform of the private sector healthcare system to be imposed without running into and impacting the Constitutional rights of others who have as much of a right as you to enter a court and change things. As far as abortion, if liberals were willing to put their money where their mouth is and privately fund, peace would come. As far as gay rights, if liberals were able to recognize that homo's and hetero's are different and the term used shouldn't be the same term as each other, peace would come.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Well, you shouldn't expect Democratic reform of the private sector healthcare system to be imposed without running into and impacting the Constitutional rights of others who have as much of a right as you to enter a court and change things. As far as abortion, if liberals were willing to put their money where their mouth is and privately fund, peace would come. As far as gay rights, if liberals were able to recognize that homo's and hetero's are different and the term used shouldn't be the same term as each other, peace would come.

Thank you for the off point partisan diatribe.

Now, back to the point.
In terms of ''nuking'' anyone, we were a country that was willing to nuke another country ONCE. The very same president, Truman, was pressured to use nukes in Korea. He refused. It was too late to ''nuke 'em 'till they glow'' by 1950. It was likely already too late after American troops occupied Japan and began to see the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in late 1945.
And that is, I believe, a part of how this cycle works. We left on saeculumn and entered another in 1945. Now, we are about to be one one saeculumn away from using ''the bomb'', but two.
We aren't going to go back to a 1945 world anymore than we will ever be back to an 1865 or a 1776 world. Time moves on.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Greater Islam is going to have to become active and become highly involved in the process. Unfortunately, we need a politician who has the balls to challenge Islam by pointing the finger at them and connecting terrorist activities to the teaching of Islam. This isn't going to happen with a liberal in the White House.

The Detroit News had an article on ISIS and its attractiveness to the large Arab Muslim population in Greater Detroit... basically, almost none. ISIS has its strongest appeal to recent converts to Islam, often to people who know little about Islam.

What ISIS does is not Islam. Saudi Arabia and Iran, countries at odds on about everything other than a desire for the 'Zionist Entity' to disappear, concur in their excoriation of ISIS.

The Kurds fight ISIS in the name of Islam. Shiite Arabs in Iraq fight ISIS in the name of Islam. I doubt that you saw the decision of a large body of Islamic scholars that ISIS' behavior as fighters and administrators violates Islamic law...

ISIS is about as Islamic as Nazism was Christian.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

The Uniform Code of Military Justice only applies to soldiers in uniforms.

...but laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity apply to all Americans. You and me, too, even if we never don a uniform. The President, the Vice-President, cabinet members, the CIA, and civilian contractors, too. For good reason Dubya and Undead Dick do not leave America -- the elder Bush is welcome practically everywhere, as are Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

By trying Germans and Japanese for war crimes and turning accused war criminals to the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia we set the precedent for ourselves should America go bad.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

Thank you for the off point partisan diatribe.

Now, back to the point.
In terms of ''nuking'' anyone, we were a country that was willing to nuke another country ONCE. The very same president, Truman, was pressured to use nukes in Korea. He refused. It was too late to ''nuke 'em 'till they glow'' by 1950. It was likely already too late after American troops occupied Japan and began to see the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in late 1945.
And that is, I believe, a part of how this cycle works. We left on saeculumn and entered another in 1945. Now, we are about to be one one saeculumn away from using ''the bomb'', but two.
We aren't going to go back to a 1945 world anymore than we will ever be back to an 1865 or a 1776 world. Time moves on.

I always found this line of thought to be quite odd. Are you seriously saying that some nebulous but inexorable change brought by the passage of time alone will prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used again in the future history of the world? Is this the same "force of history" that prevents countries from annexing pieces of other countries by force? How's that one working out?

For the record I think using nuclear weapons to resolve the present issues in the Middle East is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but I think your argument is bad nonetheless.