IS

If governments would stop propping up the rebels it seems like Assad would eventually finish that battlefront off. I am not sure what the solution in iraq is though, even with strong american support the Iraqi military was a laughable farce that runs as soon as its confronted. I am not sure how such an outfit will ever maintain the peace in such a sectarian nation.

The Iraqi military, like the ANA doesn't really have any solid motivation to stay and fight. There are those who are there for the cause and will fight if necessary, but they get completely overshadowed by the guys who literally just pick up and go home as if its no there problem. Sending more of us over there is certainly not the solution, although the government seems to think so. Some odd amount of marines and 500 special forces operatives have already been sent to "defend the embassy".
 
well , this or tomorrow is the day when the Turkish Parliament votes to officialize the involvement . Must be a good time to see how little changes in so little a time . My post with the required ridicolousness . The whole page also serves , right ?

america sez they have received guarantees from Turkey and stuff to act in "unison" . Well , certainly not from me ; as far as Starfleet Admirals count .
 
One time I heard on CNN that Turkey can never intervene in Iraq because of Ottoman Empire background. As an ethnic Turk, even though born in Bulgaria, I think, do you find it as a ridiculous obstacle?
 
One time I heard on CNN that Turkey can never intervene in Iraq because of Ottoman Empire background. As an ethnic Turk, even though born in Bulgaria, I think, do you find it as a ridiculous obstacle?

I think the point is more what Iraqis think of it.
 
Countries, if they are mighty, rarely care about what others think, unless it is damaging themselves. Let's examine what the current government thinks about IS. IS fights Assad=good. IS fights Kurds=good. IS has border with Turkey but trades cheap gas, gets new fighters, gets hostages back and does not turn against apostate secular Turkey. All is good. Why fight?
 
One time I heard on CNN that Turkey can never intervene in Iraq because of Ottoman Empire background. As an ethnic Turk, even though born in Bulgaria, I think, do you find it as a ridiculous obstacle?

the New Turkey is all about giving Kurds a country so that the Kurds in "generousity" or else give back control over oil ; it was quite hard to keep the New guys out of Syria and Iraq -conducting something that would have matched the Crusades against the Shia . Hence the Ottoman background is much referenced in Turkey to the oldies to show how they should fight while the New will come later and reap the benefits of a "benevolent" management , to the benefit of the old . ı have read it in some 1960s book that when Berlin fell to them Russkies all the rapists came with the rear echelons ... This is a balanced answer , ı would say . Never minding am so much for the amphibious invasion of the US , now that people don't let me go orbital on day one , hour one , minute one , second one .

means ı would like to have a second post for the day's rant .
 
and people ask why ı despise the "Americans" soooo much . Take this hardly disputable operations against ISIL . Costs so millions of US$ a day . And what does that achieve ? It destroys refineries to cut income for ISIL . Turns out the said refineries belong to tribes and when destroyed the tribes are even more in the clutches of ISIL as we all will one day know the Saudis and the like are "paying"; never minding reports that ISIL is now stealing harvests , directly from the fields ... They stole cars from the Turkish border as their now refugee-in-Turkey owners watched from 100 meters away. What does the operation also do ? It slows down the advance of ISIL . Never minding the two - three week long siege of Ayn-al-Arab which we watch daily on TV , generally live ... As already posted carried out with 2000 men and 20 tanks . Admittedly funny old stuff like T-55s , each almost 50 60 years old ; at least in design . And what's the importance of a tank in such a scenario , even a death-trap like the '55s ? It's protection from small arms fire allied to "useful" firepower combined with "acceptable" mobility . The Jihadists are slowly grinding the seperatist resistance and as we all know they are not the kind of people to fear negative PR from a burn-everything-down way of Urban combat .

and am old enough to have watched CNN in 1991 when American jets were tank plinking 20 or 50 a night . There's no need for me to remind that ı truly hate any notion of seperatists controlling any territory , but America is supposed to be conspiring to divide Turkey and conspiring to kill us all ; using the seperatists as a proxy . Those 20 tanks would last like 20 seconds if Pentagon put its back to it . So why Washington is clearly avoiding what it should have been done totally like 20 days ago ? Part of the answer lies in the conspiracy that brought Turkey to these dire straits . Kurds were supposed to be "free" , free from the evils of the scum of the world (better known as Turks) and Kurds were supposed to literally steal some prime oil territory for the New Turkey . Despite the rhetoric the theft of Iraqi oil is not that guaranteed and Ankara feels unsecure . Another part lies in the fact the daily travails of the area sharpens Kurdish "anger" at Ankara . As usual in every single conspiracy that involves Turks we are supposed to be dumber than anything and in this case supposed to fight and die for 'stan in enough numbers so that the heroic warriors of the glorious 'stan can wipe us out in the end without too much effort . Serves the American designs like totally well . And the all important , the decisive aspect . America believes the Gulf Arabs are a better bet . A better bet as the rulers of the Greater Middle East that will like totally cleansed of anything and anybody America feels like destroying . Meaning Jihadists hence Arabs can not be allowed to defeated . Especially by a spoiled bunch of dudes who like walk on water by like defeating the Turkish Army . Or something . Since it's obvious the Gulf Arabs will also find themselves in figurative gas chambers when they are done , but that's like looking into late 2020s .

oh yeah , the timetable gets delayed once again . America instead of doing what Britain failed to do in 1914 meaning a quick victory so that the boys would be home by Christmas is apparently now talking of 1917+100 . Also gives a chance to have a Bush in the White House , after all !

and that's why there are now TV series in Turkey that talk of reactions to this glorious conspiracy that's like almost entirely destroyed the chance for an actual agreement to end the "bloodshed" . Instead of individual rights for all , Ankara has created an environment where the seperatists act as an equal and when Ankara can not accept -'cause , you know , it's gross- seperatists threaten "action" and the result will be -of course- a coup ... During the Party-Congregation fight we have "learned" there are like thousands of traitors who conspired against the country while posing as "Muslims , Islamists or good people" ... 1984 is a fact in Turkey . And of course , the TV series do certainly do not show any kinds of stepping back . When the symbol of the old , the Special Forces officer , infiltrates the Palace where the symbol of the New works and puts a gun to the head of the Intelligence Chief , the chief doesn't even blink . Though the way he waved his pen just reminds of Santa Turgut , the Prime Minister of the 1980s . Considering the father of the Voice of the Counter-Revolution is a consultant , this must surely be related to some heroism Özal showed when confronted with claims that he was establishing a Gladio of his own under the cover of organizing foreign operations against Armenian terrorism . And ı was wondering who were like sabotaging all the intel against the seperatists so that they could one day defeat this country ...

the show of course makes it clear the Congregation people are not men or stuff . The Chief baddie punched and slapped an entire police station load of people all by himself ; this is realism now ? The reality is my jaw doesn't fall down at all to hear the son and the wife of Santa Turgut have long been under investigation for his murder , right at the time the son declares he will start a party . Today's loop is 1984 is a fact in Turkey ...

and ı have no clue on the whys . Now that ISIL benefits from the "lack" of scholarship of Islam , Ankara offers to give education to masses of the Middle East . Since Al Azhar of Cairo is now an "enemy" we are supposed to provide college education to 120 to 160 thousand people . Will no doubt require a few adjustments to Turkish education system so that the sensibilities of Brothers in Faith will not be assailed ... When ı was a kid there was one thing in Turkey that stood uncorrupted no matter what and that was the system that ran the University entrance exams . You might be rich and privilidged but you would be equal with the masses less fortunate when you sat and took that damned exam . Hardly surprising that it was a casualty of the "New" . And woe will betide the guy who declares this is the way to recoup the losses Turkey will have -soon ; and influence abroad , soft power and stuff are sooo coool . We have 2 or 3 decades of hearing how superlative and stuff the international schools of the Congregation were ; it turns out they have been all traitors . We don't have 2 or 3 decades for a repeat peformance ...
 
Meanwhile IS shaytans did it again:

British prime minister David Cameron has vowed to “hunt down” the “repulsive” terrorists responsible for the beheading of the aid worker Alan Henning.
A video showing the brutal murder of the 47-year-old former taxi driver from Salford – who was kidnapped last December in Syria by IS militants – was posted on the internet by the group last night.
Mr Cameron said the killing “shows just how barbaric and repulsive these terrorists are”, and promised to “do all we can to hunt down these murderers and bring them to justice”.
The footage shows Mr Henning kneeling beside a knifeman dressed in black in a desert setting.
It is the second such murder of a UK hostage after fellow aid worker David Haines was killed last month. Two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, were also beheaded by the terrorist organisation.
 
Cameron is just another lame POS politician anyway, it's not like he honestly cares.

Also wondering if that was done by shadowy splinter/other groups, or just another hit by vanilla IS.
 
I can't help feeling that beheadings are being judged as somehow more barbaric than bombing people indiscriminately.

The effects are much the same though. People wind up dead.
 
I can't help feeling that beheadings are being judged as somehow more barbaric than bombing people indiscriminately.

The effects are much the same though. People wind up dead.

If anything, bombing these days is done too discriminatingly: rules of engagement are tight enough that a lot of situations in which the infantry would like artillery and air support to assist them are forced to a resolution by other means because of the risk of causing civilian casualties and the resulting PR disaster.
 
OK. OK. I'll change that to "bombing people discriminatingly", then.

Either way, people wind up dead.
 
It's difficult to find a way of saying that it's ever right to kill people for your own benefit, but I think we can say that it's more wrong to kill civilian aid workers than it is to kill the people who kill them. I always subscribed to a kind of contract theory of military killing; everyone in a firefight has decided to be there, and believes that the reason they're there is worth dying for. If one side kills the other, it doesn't reflect badly upon them morally: they are just the logical consequence of what the people killed were seeking out. Killing people who are not part of the fighting is totally different, in my view.
 
Hmm. I can see your logic, there.

But I wonder just how much people do choose to be there. Bearing in mind they are usually young men, who likely haven't made an informed choice to take part at all, beyond having some vague sense of adventure (for first world soldiers, that is; other fighters might be doing it for a living, or because they've been coerced or conscripted into it, or they simply know nothing else). And an abnegation of responsibility to the politicians who have "decided" they should be there.

And, again, how do we determine the people who truly are not part of the fighting? It might seem obvious in the case of children (below the age of what, though?). But for others it's a lot less obvious. Every tax payer contributes directly, willingly or unwillingly, to the prosecution of a war by their tax-levying governments.
 
I can't help feeling that beheadings are being judged as somehow more barbaric than bombing people indiscriminately.

The effects are much the same though. People wind up dead.

Well, you know, it's the civilized thing to do: an eye for an eye and all that sort of thing.
 
But I wonder just how much people do choose to be there. Bearing in mind they are usually young men, who likely haven't made an informed choice to take part at all, beyond having some vague sense of adventure (for first world soldiers, that is; other fighters might be doing it for a living, or because they've been coerced or conscripted into it, or they simply know nothing else). And an abnegation of responsibility to the politicians who have "decided" they should be there.

I do believe that the ultimate responsibility for war lies with the people declaring them rather than the people fighting them - that's a side-effect of having a professional army subordinate to the civil power. You're right that such a moral argument falls apart when you're dealing with conscripts, but all that you can do in such a situation is try to get them out of the way with the minimum amount of damage. At least then you know you did the best you could have done: remember after all that they're shooting at you.
 
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