Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

Daesh is also fighting and gaining ground against the Taliban, al-Qaeda's ally, in Afghanistan. It's not that hard to understand why they've come to blows. Daesh claims the caliphate which is offensive to the vast majority of Muslims including many violent so-called fundamentalists.

 

Daesh also started out as Al Qaeda in Iraq under Zarqawi, but were kicked out for being too extreme. They've been at odds with Al Qaeda since their creation.

 

Yep. Quite right.

 

From one of Russia's state-paid media Twitter accounts..

Steven Seagal promises to make #Erdogan pay for the downing of #RussianPlane

 

Maybe Russia will decide to nuke us all and put us all out of damned misery.

 

The Organization is a bunch of insubordinate Al-Nusra fighters in alliance with ex-Baathist commanders. While there was a very brief period where Zarqawi requested that they no engage one another, they long since stepped on too many toes for that injunction to hold. They've been having hot conflicts on and off for some time now.

 

Did you intercept a text from the Jacksonville Jaguars?

 

Only if they wait until December 19th.

 

It was as if a million fanboys cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

 

Why we shouldn't ally with Assad:

 

IMHO, we should call Russia's bluff and take out Assad.

 

Well, maybe...but then we'd have to think about what happens when Russia tries to start something in Ukraine, Georgia or the Baltics...and increases defense cooperation with China and Iran.

 

I'm going to go a little bit Nietzche and probably get a lot of flack, but here goes:

All of us aspire for world peace, with functioning global institutions and a United Nations that actually works. Now, in recent years, we've shown an inability to deal with climate change, global finance and institutional reforms and reached the point that, globally speaking, our current system no longer works. And, to no surprise, we cannot even agree basic changes without one country refusing to cooperate. All deals are watered down to the point of becoming utterly meaningless and incapable of enforcing.

So, the controversial point:

If World War Three and the deaths of a few 100 million (if not billions) of people could achieve world peace, a powerful United Nation and geo-political system, which protects the environment, financial and political stability of the world then I'm all for it. If we need another global war to move us in the right direction, then so be it.

The end justifies the means.

 

The widespread destruction of infrastructure and complete societal collapse; the radioactive fallout rendering cities uninhabitable for centuries or millennia, seeping into all water, air, soil, and every living thing; the deaths of "a few 100 million (if not billions)" from the initial nuclear exchange-- yes, it would achieve world peace because most ("if not" all) of the world would be dead. Genius.

 

Okay well I'll just say that while I'm sometimes tempted to think that...at the end of the day, no. A nice side effect of World War II (the most destructive war in history) was that Japan and Germany became liberal democracies, but that wasn't the reason we fought that war. The war was fought to put an end to these two countries' aggression. If it was fought for human progress, well then the destruction wasn't worth it. And, that's not even going into the fact that China and Russia are stronger than Germany and Japan were, and both have nuclear weapons. A nuclear exchange would certainly set back the goal of human progress and democracy for several centuries. Also, much of the reason that Europe prospered in the post-war period was because America emerged from the war without taking much damage at all and was able to help rebuild the devastated continent. If America, Europe and all the rest of the civilized world were nuked...well there's no coming back from that.

 

IMHO most global powers would not use their nuclear arsenal.

Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are the wild cards, granted.

 

Yes, only the non-white countries are crazy enough. Except for all those times the U.S. and the USSR/Russia nearly fired missiles at each other mostly on accident.

 

I think if we're talking World War III and billions dead...that probably means nukes are involved. Anyway getting back on topic...if we take out Assad, and Russia retaliates, and we do something back to them...well that probably won't go to World War III, but it will make things pretty ugly on the world stage. The question is, is it worth making things ugly? Are we at the point where what Russia's doing is so intolerable that we have to do this?

 

And then what? You call their bluff, take out Assad, and replace him with who?

Every single nation with nukes you listed is doing so with self preservation in mind along with a desire to be one of the members of the nuclear club. The only one that concerns me is NK and that's mostly because they are very isolated. But the rest are doing it as a reaction to another states moves as well as wanting to increase their demonstrable nuclear capability.

 

Well, during the stand off with Pakistan in 1999/2000, India did publicly say "there would be no Pakistan" - if war broke out.

 

As I said a few pages back, implement what the US did with Japanese government after WWII

"do what we say, help build a democracy or be removed".

 

So we go in and attempt what we've tried and failed to do in both Iraq and Afghanistan?

Is Libya better off now? Tunisia? Egypt?

Are you working for the Rubio campaign?

 

How does a treaty for some new financial and environmental regulations somehow justify WW3?

I'm not even sure how that jump in logic was made.

 

Iraq and Afghanistan (especially the latter) failed because we gave them democracy too early. It's widely accepted the Iraqi state did not need to be dismantled after the invasion; a puppet government could've remained in place and the regular army kept intact.

Tunisia = regarded as the success story of the Arab Spring.
Libya = Gaddafi was a tyrant, who supported/financed terrorism.
Egypt = Egyptian revolution was down to the people; the army never went away and mounted a coup. Nothing to do with us.