Posted on 05/18/2015 9:14:16 AM PDT by TangledUpInBlue
It’s a legitimate question because we are asking our military personnel to lay down their lives defending some Muslims from other Muslims. We are requiring them to take sides ... and lay down their lives for one side or another.
As long as we are doing this to our military it’s only fair that everyone be asked to declare their allegiance to Sunni or Shia ISLAM.
Fist person who should answer that question is Obama, who seems to have been arming and training the “rebels” in Syria (read ISIS) and now sending our military to go in and fight the very people we armed and trained.
Next ask every person vying to be the next President.
It’s a more than fair question to be answered. It’s vitally important.
I’m asking people her on FR because I don’t think many understand what they have been asking of our military for over 14 years now.
Administration people were just on TV saying that they had conducted 32 strikes in 2 weeks. Doesn’t sound like much, one every 11 hours.
“You and the rest of FR can play for team Shia or team Sunni, whichever you prefer. I decline.”
GFY. I’ve had quite enough of your condescension today, and plenty others here seem to be in agreement.
Got it??
Oh I got it alright. Loud and clear.
People do not like to be challenged to explain why the hell we should be over there protecting Muslims from other Muslims. Very uncomfortable question to be sure.
That would be completely impossible, unless---
*YAWN* I can read posts by obnoxious punks over at DU.
They don’t pretend to be intelligent or tolerant.
We supported the Soviets against the Nazis without declaring allegiance to Stalin. This in spite of the fact that Stalin helped kicked off WWII by allying with Hitler so the Nazis could conquer the West without fear of attack from the East. If we could ally with the Soviets, the folks who that made the Holocaust possible, we can ally with Shiites, Sunnis or whatever the least of the evils of the moment is, given that the Middle East is where most of the oil in the world is located, and therefore as important in its own way as Europe was during WWII, if only to deny its resources to any would-be world-conquering power that may consolidate power out of the ruins of the existing states. The reason we're getting involved is to keep the states divided (i.e. prevent the creation of a unitary Muslim empire in the style of the ancient caliphates).
Muhammad created a massive empire because he made accommodations with the losers (Christians, Jews and pagans) in the kingdoms he conquered in exchange for their allegiance to him. This is why Muslim armies grew instead of shrank as you'd expect them to (from battle losses). ISIS will cut through the existing Muslim polities like a hot knife through butter if it isn't stopped, gaining adherents along the way. Why would it make sense to let ISIS gather the majority of the world's oil under its banner? ISIS is the second coming of Muhammad's conquering armies, except the territories it is fighting in are already receptive to its message, being Muslim themselves. The moderates in power will, like the Shah, be toppled if we stand aside the way Jimmy Carter did when the Iranian Revolution was in full swing. Bottom line is that it makes no sense to stand aside as ISIS attempts to unify the Islamic states under its rule, just as it made none to do so during WWII when the Nazis attempted to unify Europe under their rule and during the Cold War, when the Soviets tried the same thing.
yeah, but on the other hand we elected the first black president!
Now we have to elect the first woman president.
Those are the important things.
After the first woman president is done we elect Ru Paul.
Ok, then which side do you think is in our best interest to “support” for purely strategic reasons? Sunni or Shia?
If you’re going to use that WWII analogy it seems to me that we should be ‘supporting’ ISIS (Sunni) in the short term as Iran (Shia) is a more immediate threat and larger scale threat (nuclear).
In your analogy we team up with ISIS (Stalin) to get rid of the more immediate and dangerous threat of Iran (Hitler)? Then we deal with ISIS later?
“I think Ru Paul might make a better President than the current occupant...”
You are so right.
Read your stuff. I’m getting an education there for sure. Yes, this guy has lost the peace and it’s frightening.
Isn’t it time Obama was held responsible for this catastrophic failure in foreign policy and national defense?
You know, about that consensus thing ... 99% of scientist supposedly agree that man made globull warming is real and we better do something about it right now!
Yeah, I’m calling it propaganda. The “expert” and the consensus argument is not really that persuasive anymore.
ISIS can unify the Muslim world. It is hacking through great swathes of land without an air force, in the face of coalition air attacks. The Shiites are like Islam's Mormons. They will never be accepted as mainstream Muslims. Apart from Iran's nukes, Shiites are a nit (10%, at best of the world's Muslim population). Sunnis already have nukes (Pakistan), but no Sunni country has ever threatened to nuke Israel. What Obama needs to do is erase Iran's air force and institute a no-fly zone over the country that periodically rubbles any suspicious installations. But he won't do that because he's a dove. (GWB did not do it because he would have been impeached by Democratic majorities in both chambers). And that is why Iran will get its nukes.
Given Iran's inability to rein in ISIS, both in Iraq and Syria, I suspect even it, too, is vulnerable to conquest by ISIS. The long-term risk is that ISIS conquers Iran and Pakistan, thereby getting its long-sought nukes, in addition to the Gulf kingdoms, whose populations are far more radical than their current fun-loving moderate rulers (who make a show of public piety while drinking and whoring their way through the lands of the infidel), and therefore more than ready to join ISIS.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Sadaam had a "superhighway" supplying Kuwait too. Highway 80, aka the Highway of Death. Doubt ISIS is concerned about that.
OK but back to your WWII analogy? Which side should we be backing? Which is the greater threat, ISIS or Iran?
You seem to be saying that it’s alright to temporarily team up with a less than savory group short term in order to ward off a more immediate and/or greater threat.
And we ARE taking sides. We have been taking sides. We supported the Shia in Iraq. Are you suggesting we have been (strategically) supporting the wrong side? There is another article up on FR right now claiming that we are teaming up with Iran to go after ISIS. So which group is (strategically) the best one to team up with right now?
I tend to think neither one. But I’m trying to work within your WWII analogy. If we go with your analogy we should be supporting ISIS (and indeed it seems the Obama admin has been arming and training them in Syria).
Now we seem to be asking our military to risk their lives to fight ISIS which evidence is starting to suggest we armed and trained in Syria and Libya.
Others think our military should start a war with Iran to pre-empt nuclear capability.
My question, which I think is more than valid, is WHY are we supporting or teaming up with either side? Why are we there? What is our objective? For what are we asking our military to fight and die for over there.
If it’s national defense, then the only ones close to threatening that on a large scale right now is Iran. We can and should, of course, be stopping any terrorist group who is planning an attack on our home soil. But that’s not what we have been doing over there in Iraq. We’ve been setting up one group of Muslims to dominate over another group of Muslims. How is this 1) our business or 2) in our strategic best interest?
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