ISIS question

[CathyA]

Why aren't other countries involved in the fight to stop ISIS?

[Gregg]

Right now they're operating in a swath across Syria and Iraq. Lebanon is pretty much surrounded by Syria except for a southern border with Israel. There are a lot of players in a very small space in Lebanon right now. Hezbollah and the State are the big boys so far and Saudi Arabia just gave the State $1B or so to strengthen the army. Too much risk for not enough reward for IS.

Turkey is between a rock and a hard place. IS is holding Turkish nationals hostage so they can't rock any boats by letting US or UN military operations base there. There is something like 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey which has to be a strain. I've heard that they turned away Turkmen refugees who are now in camps in northern Iraq.

Iran is to the east and has sent forces into Iraq to help defend Shiite territory against IS.

To the south you have (east to west) Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. You have to figure those are off limits because of the resources and deep, oil based, international relationships those countries have. Remember what happened when Saddam invaded Kuwait?

Jordan is, by a lot of accounts, basically a giant refugee camp. People from Syria, Iraq and Palestine have all fled there. Since Jordan is strategically important there would probably be a strong international response if it were invaded.

Then there's Israel. If IS targets Israel there will be nothing left but the martyrs.

[CathyA]

Thanks Gregg. It's just such a huge mess. I wish we hadn't wasted our military resources on the last 10-15 years and have more to focus on this horrible band of animals.
I just have to shake my head in disbelief and sadness, that this is in the name of a "religion"...........but that's been going on since the beginning of time...........
I would love to let them all take care of it within the middle east, but in today's world, it could so easily and quickly reach us.

[KayLR]

I read this morning that Germany and France were talking about lending artillery/arms to the cause.

[CathyA]

The thing about that that bothers me is that the enemy can end up with all that equipment. ISIS is using alot of U.S. equipment. :(

I'm glad I don't have to be the one to make these decisions.

[razz]

All of a sudden Saddam Hussein doesn't seem quite as bad, does he? It is a very difficult problem to keep the Shiites and Sunnis working together so it takes a brutal dictator which everyone hates but at least people can then go about their business earning a living and raising families with stable energy and water supplies working. It has been that way since forever according to the history that I have read - so tragic!

[Gregg]

Chuck Hagel seems to be setting things up for a (near) future confrontation with IS. More than anything it gets the conspiracy theorist in me going. We don't have a real war going on right now so the military industrial complex is just idling along. The "war on terror" proved to be a little too vague for even apathetic Americans to stomach after a decade or so. We need a real target, but it can't be anything so well defined (read: limiting) as a specific country. All just conjecture, of course. But IF an IS cell all of a sudden pops up inside the US and/or there is an incident on our soil, including embassies, with IS claiming credit, well, at that point the conspiracy would be more than theory IMO.

[pinkytoe]

It does seem like a new bogeyman coming out of nowhere. War is too profitable to leave alone.

[creaker]

Chuck Hagel seems to be setting things up for a (near) future confrontation with IS. More than anything it gets the conspiracy theorist in me going. We don't have a real war going on right now so the military industrial complex is just idling along. The "war on terror" proved to be a little too vague for even apathetic Americans to stomach after a decade or so. We need a real target, but it can't be anything so well defined (read: limiting) as a specific country. All just conjecture, of course. But IF an IS cell all of a sudden pops up inside the US and/or there is an incident on our soil, including embassies, with IS claiming credit, well, at that point the conspiracy would be more than theory IMO.

There are probably a few pushing on the conspiracy front - there are a lot of players out there - but I think it had a lot to do with agendas. Whenever you have more than two parties participating in one issue, you can end up indirectly supporting a side that you would not support on its own merit.

Our government appeared to support unseating Assad - which meant supporting, or at least not hindering those working to make it happen. And one of those factions was ISIL. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think I heard squat about ISIL until they entered Iraq, even though I doubt they operate any more humanely in Syria. I think if ISIL was not working towards the ends our government was pushing for, breaking that when they invaded Iraq, Americans would have been presented a much more solid (and unacceptable) picture of them a long time ago. The upshot of my response being that ISIL behavior was accepted until they took a course that went contrary to the one our government wanted them to take.

[Gardenarian]

It does seem like a new bogeyman coming out of nowhere. War is too profitable to leave alone.

+1

[Rogar]

Our government has cried "wolf" so many times, it gets a little hard to separate truth from politics. ISIS seems like a pretty radical group of extremists with little regard for human life when it comes to those who disagree with them. Past history seems to show that our involvement in the middle-east has a greater interest in oil supplies and the global economy over humanitarian interests. There are probably examples of much more brutal taking of lives and genocide in Africa that we conveniently ignore.