Military So ISIS & the Middle East

Where is the rats nest? What cities do you want to take out? Because that is all that a nuclear weapon is really good for--hammering a city. What about the rags out in the sticks? Are we going to space nuclear explosions evenly all over the place--about a thousand of them! How would we deal with the Russians or the Chinese, then? What about the legitimate owners of Iraq and Syria? The folks who have had to flee ISIS. Should we destroy their countries in order to save them. What about the friendly countries down wind. They won't mind a little dusting with fallout. What about the fallout reaching Russia? That should make them real happy, too. And all the remaining religious fanatics will just give up and become happy farmers.

Real simple, eh? Childishly simple.

Let me remind you that we had a friggin' World War leading up to those city-busting attacks. Four years of destroying their navies and armies in the field, interdicting all of the sea lanes and supplies, burning the top 70 cites to the ground using conventional bombing, and systematically destroying their national infrastructure. They could no longer function as a country when those weapons were used. They were beaten already. The atomic bombings of Japan were to back down the Russians who were sitting with a huge army in the middle of Europe and tempted to take the rest of it.

ISIS is not a country. They have no infrastructure, no sea lanes, no economy, and no population. They are a guerrilla insurgency inhabiting whatever place they can get a foothold. They have no great big targets for great big weapons. There aren't enough special weapons to kill them all. Even if we put an army in the ground, they will revert right back to guerrilla warfare with IEDS, ambushes, the whole familiar scenario we are familiar with from 10 years of fighting them in Iraq already. It's not the right target for nuclear weapons. These people are not as smart and prudent as the Japanese. They are religious fanatics.

Seeing in black and white is the problem here. It's a complex 3-D Technicolor situation with a lot more players than just ISIS. Revenge fantasies are for children and nut jobs.

Even if we decide to take on these guys with everything at our disposal, not one military professional is going recommend nuclear weapons against this particular enemy. It's just not a prudent move.

 

Wanna bet? It's already happening.

The Saudis can crush ISIS

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — "As ISIS continues to grow, many commentators have been pointing to Saudi Arabia as the source of the group, and most assume that the United States is the only force that can stop it. Both of these assertions are incorrect.​

Saudi Arabia is not the source of ISIS, it’s the group’s primary target.

ISIS’ core objective is to restore the caliphate (an Islamic empire led by a supreme leader), and because Saudi Arabia is the epicenter of Islam and the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, ISIS’ road to the caliphate lies through the kingdom and its monarchy. Indeed, ISIS has even launched a campaign against Saudi Arabia, called qadimun, or “we are coming” to take over the country. Saudi Arabia has put the group on its list of terrorist sponsors, declared that funding ISIS is a crime with severe penalties, and arrested ISIS supporters and operatives over the past several months.

ISIS emerged not from Saudi Arabia but from postwar Iraq and the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s senior officer corps and their local support networks in Iraq and Syria. This has enabled ISIS to capture large swathes of land in these two countries and seize valuable economic, financial and energy assets, thus becoming financially self-sufficient. Now they are after Saudi Arabia’s riches."​

Saudi Arabia will lead the Arab league to join a coalition against ISIS soon. NATO will make moves in this direction as well. It took Bush 41 six months to gather a coalition and deploy forces to defeat Saddam in Kuwait. This will take some time to put together as well.

 

Pretty good chance they are telling us what the Royal family thinks, wouldn't you say? It's not like the royals hold press conferences. The point is that The Saudi Government is NOT the funding force behind ISIS and it fears ISIS more than it feared Saddam. ISIS wants the holy cities and that is something that the Saudis will fight for.

Check todays news. the Arab league is lining up against ISIS.

What is this evidence?

Are you serious or just prejudiced? What has Saudi Arabia done that matches ISIS? Genocide? No, they aren't a Jeffersonian democracy, but no one in the Arab world is. They are definitely a US ally.

Those members are in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia arrested terrorists in their own country. The point, of course, is that Saudi Arabia is an enemy of ISIS not their supporter as you maintain. They are an ally of the US, whether you approve of their religion or not. And they recognize the need for other Arabs to fight ISIS, which we will need if we are to fight ISIS without troops on the ground.

 

I don't care what you believe. I'm pointing out that the government of Saudi Arabia doesn't support ISIS for very good reasons.

Is it possible that you don't recognize the difference between private donors and the Government of Saudi Arabia? Hell, bin Ladin was a Saudi but he was an enemy of its government. Do you hold the United States of America responsible when Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates spends money on overseas causes? There is no evidence that The Saudi Arabian Government supports ISIS. In fact, these experts in Saudi policy have clearly laid out the reasons why the Saudi Government is an enemy of ISIS.

The Saudi Arabia is threatened by radical islam. There is a huge difference between the conservative Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and the radical jihadist insurgents and terrorists.

We all know what slightly means. When has Saudi Arabia gone on jihad? When have they beheaded Americans? What neighboring countries have they overrun, executing thousands of prisoners of war. They have not. They are educated in American universities and their fortunes are largely invested in America. They are not Mormons, I understand. I don't like them much either, but I know the difference between allies and enemies. They have exploited us and we have exploited them to the benefit of both. We do not have to agree with them and sing Kumbaya. We just need to work together on matters of common interest. And it gives us some leverage to promote some human rights to them.

Nobody does. They discriminate against Shia in many ways like they do every other religion including Christianity. Their human rights are horrible. But no, they have not practiced genocide. Even Human Rights Watch does not accuse them of this. 18 protesters have been killed by the police in 4 years. Our own record is worse.

Who cares? We don't have to trust them. Israel and Germany cannot be trusted either, but they are allies. We don't have to love our allies. We form alliances because it is in our interest to do so. We have had a long alliance with Saudi Arabia going back almost 100 years. They sell us oil cheap. They help break OPEC efforts to use oil as a weapon. They spread their money around doing things we approve of in the region. They have huge empty bases designed for forward American deployment, we got to use them in 1991. They are the only nearby Arab country NOT to have ever invaded Israel.

I can't imagine any reason we would not want them, their money, and the Arab league on our side in this conflict. Any effort to use American power against ISIS will require secure forward bases. Those will likely have to be in Saudi Arabia or Turkey or Egypt, two more vital allies that we neither like nor trust very much. But we have many mutual interests. You cannot ignore this.

They wanted the non-jihadist rebels to over thrown Assad and they still do. ISIS coming to Syria was unexpected. It is the independent Sunni tribes that are fighting ISIS in Iraq that the Saudi government is supporting. They are also concerned with the Sunnis under the thumb of ISIS-occupied fighters who did not ask to be there. I repeat, the Saudis are NOT jihadists and the radicals are a threat to them. A worse threat than Saddam.

I knew you would come around.