The US can drone and weaken isis, but a decade has shown, the US is not qualified to mediate sunni shiite divide.
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) September 11, 2014
Does anyone disagree with Mr. Engel here? I watched the speech last night. As usual, PBO seemed refreshingly rational. Unlike his predecessor, PBO doesn’t have grandiose delusions about the US stomping through the region all Godzilla-like to alter the course of history.
But, for me, at least, it keeps coming back to this: Is widening US involvement in the Middle East a good idea? Does it serve our interests? And, for me, at least, the answer is: NOPE.
Comrade Jake
I thought Juan Cole’s take was one of the more intriguing ones:
The whole thing is worth a read.
WereBear
We been “intervening” since Lawrence of Arabia. Can’t see that we’ve done any good. And that’s not even the purpose, most of the time.
Mustang Bobby
I know I’m not the only one to think this, but President Obama promised no American combat troops will be involved. Well, unless all the airstrikes are coming from drones, there have been and will be American combat troops involved in the fight. The fact that they’re not “on the ground” but in the air seems a semantic point at best. And when that first plane and crew is shot down, let’s see how long our combat troops will stay out.
Matt McIrvin
I’d have greatly preferred a containment strategy rather than vowing to crush them somehow: that’s setting us up for all sorts of failure. But containment doesn’t play in Peoria, I guess.
Matt McIrvin
…and Juan Cole argues that he is in fact proposing containment and phrasing it in expansive terms for the cameras. We’ll see, I guess.
Baud
My hunch is that the real goal will be to try to get ISIL out of Iraq and give their new government a chance to be successful.
Elizabelle
@Baud:
Exactly. And I think that’s a worthy goal.
Baud
BTW, I have no idea what this means with respect to what we’re doing.
Baud
Apart from the decision to invade in the first place, isn’t the root of all these problems Bush’s decision to de-Baathify Iraqi governing institutions?
debbie
I think Muslims themselves need to take an upfront role and really condemn these extremists who have twisted Islam into this violent, warped thing. Where are the religious leaders and the politicians in all this? Sure, intervention has made things worse, but the silence from the Muslim world makes them complicit in all this.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: We’ve been trying to give that government a chance to be successful for the better part of a decade, and the reason it keeps falling apart is the Sunni – Shia divide Engel was referring to in his tweet.
NorthLeft12
On the way in to work this morning I listened to a Detroit morning radio show where the three personalities all agreed that something [violent was unspoken] had to be done about these terrorists who wanted to destroy America because they are jealous and/or hate the American way of life.
One of these personalities did opine momentarily that maybe it was not a good idea to interfere in other countries internal affairs, but in a minute he was on the “they hate our way of life” schtick.
I never heard any mention of any ongoing meddling in the Middle East [ie. drone strikes, unqualified support of Israel/Saudi Arabia, military occupations/presence in other countries, other support of despised governments or groups, etc.], but they did lament that they should have got out of Iraq as soon as they caught Sadaam. Then presumedly none of this blowback would have happened.
History is very hard. So are current events for that matter.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Well, a large part of the problem was Maliki, no? They’ve only had one government since we left.
Bill E Pilgrim
@debbie: I think the Christians really need to take an upfront role and condemn these American extremists who have twisted Christianity into this violent, warped war machine. Where are the religious leaders in all this? Sure, extremism in the Middle East has made things worse, but the silence from the Christian world makes them complicit in all this.
Sounds pretty silly that way, doesn’t it?
On top of everything else, the idea that “the Muslim world” is silent about ISIS is really pretty ridiculous. Obama has entire countries now joining a coalition with him against them.
JMG
@NorthLeft12: Just a reflection of the mindset of most Americans which makes it impossible for the country to have a coherent foreign policy. We demand all the power and privileges of empire while rejecting the expenditures of blood and (especially) treasure that empires require.
jonas
@debbie: A bigger problem seems to be that when, in fact, Muslims and Islamic organizations around the world *do* routinely condemn ISIS and other radical groups, nobody seems to pay attention.
brantl
It’s really time for us to actually work in a humanitarian way, that we have always claimed were what motivated us in the first place. The Jekyll-Hyde of those “humanitarian” motivations with our “national security interests” have shown us to be obvously Machiavellian in our foreign policy, except that Machiavelli would have been more graceful. We constantly give the impression that we will step in anywhere if our “security interests” are in play, and that involves any military considerations, and any economic considerations, as well, and I don’t think that’s morally defensible. Other people are perfectly entitled to buy the short supply of whatever it is, that we want, instead of us being able to buy it.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: That’s the company line, but the divisions within that society are deeper than one corrupt politician. The reason ISIS was able to roll through such a large chunk of territory is that the Sunnis didn’t see any bank in opposing them. Think about that. They hated their own government so much they preferred those psychotic fucks to Baghdad.
debbie
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Actually, that doesn’t sound silly either.
seabe
Is there any talk whatsoever of lifting sanctions on the Kurdish PKK militia? You know, the only group with a lot of success in kicking ISIS ass? Stuff like that tells me how serious the president is about confronting this supposed threat to the US. Otherwise, it’s just more liberal interventionist hubris.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not saying there are no divisions or that it won’t be difficult for them to achieve stability. But I can see wanting to give this new coalition a chance before turning Iraq (including the Kurds) over to ISIL.
debbie
@jonas:
This should be getting a lot more press, I agree (and I”m not happy about the company I seem to be keeping).
Keith G
@Betty Cracker: Bush’s policy of de-Bathification effectively made the political class of Sunnis outsiders in their own land. After that, feelings of alienation spread throughout the Sunni population – helped by anti Sunni actions on the part of a Shia government propped up by the US.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: How many Friedman Units are you willing to invest in that endeavor? How much money? How many US lives? Not you personally — the US in general, I guess.
Me, I’m done pouring money and blood down that rat hole. In fact, I suspect that propping the various factions up will just string the problem along indefinitely.
WereBear
It’s a religious war, from a split that developed since Prophet Mohammed died. They have to learn tolerance, or continue to kill each other.
The only realistic goal is “They must learn tolerance,” and that’s an impossible goal, isn’t it? Militarily speaking. So intervening will do nothing except kill people.
Keith G
@Baud:
I think there might be a chance for short term success as a coalition strengthens to deal with a common threat. Of course, once the threat is mitigated, I doubt Kumbaya will be heard echoing throughout the land.
debbie
@jonas:
Though I can’t tell where it is that they’re speaking up. It needs to be said to and heard by people living in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, etc.
Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]
@Baud:
No, all these problems started because of Boy Blunders decision to invade Iraq in the first place. Debathhification was just the pustual cherry on his shit sundae.
Iowa Old Lady
This may be OT but maybe not. An article on self-affirming organizational stupidity in the Journal of Management Studies:
http://jourhavandesociolog.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/joms1072.pdf#
A sample: “we call functional stupidity are an equally important if
under-recognized part of organizational life. Functional stupidity refers to an absence of
reflexivity, a refusal to use intellectual capacities in other than myopic ways, and avoidance
of justifications. We argue that functional stupidity is prevalent in contexts dominated by
economy in persuasion which emphasizes image and symbolic manipulation”
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Do you just feel that way about Iraq, or all of the world’s problems? I don’t have chart that tells me when we should stop, but right now I’m not opposed to the current attempt to improve the situation.
Patricia Kayden
Laurence O’Donnell was asking the same thing: what would happen if the US did nothing about ISIS?
The bottom line is that fighting Al-qaeda or ISIS is a never ending story. It’s fighting an ideology and not an actual entity. But according to polls, it appears that Americans are okay with airstrikes so that’s where we are.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/09/what-explains-the-publics-support-for-air-strikes-against-isis-the-terrorism-nerve/
Hal
The never forgetters are up early and making sure social media users never forget. Gosh, 911 rings a bell, but I’ve forgotten why. If only someone would remind me.
Randy P
Why do you people talk as if Bush had any input in Cheney’s foreign policy? I’ll bet if you asked him point blank about “de-Baathification” he’d think you were saying something about removing the bathtubs from his house.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Military “involvement”? Other “involvement”?
NorthLeft12
@JMG: I will respectfully disagree with part of your response.. “reject the expenditures of blood and treasure that empires require.”
Your elected officials never seem to have a problem in sacrificing US soldiers or billions and billions of dollars to that end. And the US public continues to re-elect those same officials to continue that policy.
At least, that is exactly how it looks to an outsider [I am Canadian].
OzarkHillbilly
Amen.
D58826
It somehow seemed fitting that the speech was the night before 9/11. We seem to have come full circle in what is happening in the Middle East. It makes one want to take a Rip Van Winkle pill, pull up the covers and hope things are a bit better in 20 years.
This part of the world has been a swamp of conflicting political and religious ambitions for centuries. One hundred years ago the Ottoman empire was referred to as the sick man of Europe. We are still dealing with the fallout from the collapse of the Ottomans. In 1923 Churchill said that the occupation of Iraq was like siting on an angry volcano and paying 8 million pounds a year to do it. Richard Engel tweeted that the US has been unable to manage the Sunni/Shia divide. Why is that surprising since its only been in the last decade that the Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland has settled into an uneasy peace.
George Bush can’t be blamed for this Pandora’s box but he certainly bears full responsibility for having kicked the box open without a single thought to the consequences of 1500 years of history. Even if the Bushes had followed the State Dept. post invasion plan we would still be in this mess. It was our plan not the Iraqi’s. The Shia majority had their own ideas of what a post-Sadaam Iraq would look like and when given to opportunity they implemented those plans. Why are we surprised!!!!!
Why do we think that we can bring peace to this region when we can’t even bridge the gap between the red and the blue states in this country. For the GOP base Obama is a bigger enemy than ISIS. The knuckle dragger Gingrich last night aid that this was Obama’s most pro-American speech. What a flaming jerk. But this is the mindset of the GOP – Obama is a traitor, he is un-American, he is an ally of the jihadists. If we can’t bridge that gap, they getting to Sunni and Shia to play nice together is way way way beyond our ability.
Maybe I’ll take 2 pills and see every one in 40 years
D58826
@Iowa Old Lady: A long high faulting way of saying ‘I’ve made up my mind don’t bother me with the fact’.
Kay
@JMG:
They’re jumping the gun on that polling, though, don’t you think? They’ve been heavily promoting the threat for weeks, they got the polling result that validates their coverage and now they’re heavily promoting that.
This is a little too circular for my tastes. I’m not ready to go full-on ‘the American people are making irrational demands” just yet. I’m not clear we have evidence of a demand, let alone one so specific.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Each hot spot needs to be assessed on its own merits, but in general, I favor less world policing.
C.V. Danes
Just another game of whack-a-mole to keep the insatiable war machine fed. Nothing more.
C.V. Danes
@Kay:
Exactly. It’s been ISIS evil, ISIS beheading, ISIS evil, beheading, beheading, beheading, evil, evil, evil nonstop for weeks. Of course the people are going to react to that.
C.V. Danes
@Betty Cracker:
I favor no world policing at this point. We can work through the UN and similar global agencies, but being the world’s cop has to stop.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: Do you think it was wrong for Obama to help track down the group in Africa that is killing people?
Considering the fact that we fucked up the middle east with the actions of the last president, completely dropping out would not bode well either. And Obama is getting countries in the area involved.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with that principle.
D58826
@Comrade Jake: I was going to cut and paste the same piece from the article. It is well worth reading. We can’t bomb ideas out of existence. The society where the idea is flourishing has to root it out. The Shia-Sunni divide has to be worked out by the Muslim community. The proper power sharing between the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurds in Iraq have to be worked out by the three groups. Sure the US can offer some helpful hints and some technical expertise but the hard work of running a coalition government must be done by the Iraqi’s. And before we get to high and mighty remember that between 30-40 of the American electorate does not recognize the legitimacy of the Obama presidency and has spent the past 6 years trying to destroy it, regardless of the impact on the country. So why should we think the Iraqi, or Syrians or Egyptians can do any better
askew
I think Engel is way off base. He’s kind of lost the plot after his experience in Syria. He seems incredibly angry about the ME and sneers at any possible foreign policy actions by Obama admin. He was dismissive of Obama doing nothing in Syria. He was dismissive of Obama negotiating for CW surrender and humanitarian relief. He was dismissive of air strikes. He has zero solutions and an unending amount of bile for Obama. Now, I understand his experience in Syria was life-altering but at this point he isn’t adding anything useful to the discussion because he isn’t even listening to what the admin/Obama is saying or paying attention to what they are doing. Of course, that could be said of the entire MSNBC panel last night except for Al Sharpton. All of them had their talking points ready to go last night and none of them had anything to do with what the president actually said.
MomSense
As I understand the plan it is a huge gamble with a high chance of failure AND it is also the least worst option. Engel is being an idiot in his tweet as there are more interests at play than just the Sunni Shiite divide and if anything the administration has made an impressive effort to not be seen as taking sides in a Sunni Shiite divide. The whole reason for waiting to do airstrikes in Iraq was not because the President was keen to be seen as weak and dithering, rather it was to not be seen as Maliki’s air force.
I am cautiously optimistic about some of the coordination I am seeing with Iran. Also do not think that just leaving it alone is an option much as I would like it to be. I’m very concerned for Jordan for example if they are left to deal with an impossible refugee crisis after decades of impossible refugee crises.
Betty Cracker
@Belafon: I’m not sure which incident in Africa you’re referring to, so I can’t answer that question.
I understand your point about being obligated to remain embroiled in Iraq because of GWB’s massive fuck-up, but in my view, our continuing involvement isn’t necessarily helping. Yes, we screwed up that country. No, we can’t fix it, IMO.
The people who have a direct stake in the outcome in Iraq, i.e., Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kurdistan, Iraq, Turkey, etc. — they and the Iraqi factions need to sort this shit out, in my opinion. If we put our thumb on the scales in favor of any particular faction, that just delays the reckoning that must eventually happen among those factions.
Southern Beale
But … but … but … OIL!!!!!
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
“Policing” is a much-too-benign term for what American foreign policy actually does.
Unless maybe you’re thinking of the kind of “policing” we saw in Ferguson recently — but even that understates the problem.
Paul W.
@Comrade Jake:
This is my take as well, it will be much more akin to the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation (where we have quite approval to make strikes, but no ground troops) than to anything else we’ve seen previously.
PBO has been extremely firm on not making ground troop commitments, and while I respect Engel for his knowledge he is just not giving PBO enough credit for the fact that he has NEVER tried to make the argument that America can do this alone. Either we have willing partners in the region or we eventually get out (see Iraq before ISIL and see Afghanistan).
MomSense
@Belafon:
I’ve heard first hand some of the vile things that Al Shabaab does. Not a mistake at all to take that guy out.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: What about WWII? Do you think that the US involvement in the European theater was unnecessary too?
askew
@Belafon:
Obama is using U.S. military in a much more restrained way than the past 2 presidents and he makes sure that we are not going it alone on any intervention. That has worked so far. I don’t think we can pull back further than we have now in world affairs. And if anyone else was president right now, we’d have boots on the ground in Iraq and possibly Syria and Ukraine. I shudder to think of what the next president will do in foreign policy. I expect a lot more aggressive military action from whoever it will be.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
There used to be a pan-Arab movement. How it evolved — and how US policy-makers responded to it, and why — these questions may be worth re-visiting.
raven
@Betty Cracker: So you would have left those people on that mountain?
OzarkHillbilly
“It” didn’t start with Ws grand adventure. That was just the latest round of meddling in other people’s business for our own enrichment. Many like to pin point it with the end of WW! and England and France’s divvying up of the Middle East. I suspect it precedes that, but really, who cares? The whole Shia/Sunni divide strikes as just more class warfare by another name, or to put a different shade of lipstick on the pig, those in power play up and use the religious differences for their own low purposes (power and the desire for it)
I was thinking the other day, that our extremists (both right and left, Christian, other) are relegated to the very fringes of society, while their extremists are able to bring themselves to the very core of society. Our extremists are little more than jokes (dangerous on an individual level, but societal? Hee hee…) while theirs’ shake gov’ts to the core. The reason is pretty obvious: Egality. While our societies in the West are far from perfect, nearly all of us are invested in them to some extent with certain rewards bestowed, however unequally. The same can not be said of much of the Middle East (or Africa).
Much is made of the evils of ISIS/ISIL and the truly terrible things they have, are, and will do. But since their emergence, who talks about the evils of Assad, or Maliki or the truly terrible things they have, are, and will do? Crickets…. (Much the same dynamic plays out between the Israeli right and Hamas.)
The truth is that radical Islam is filling a void that those societies do not. Like it or not radical Islam is offering the poor, the disenfranchised, the abused, the hungry, the afflicted, the desperate something that their own gov’ts do not: Hope. They do it by reaching into an idealized past and saying they will bring it back. The Islamists are lying of course, they just want power like all the rest. Hope is just a tool they use.
But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that we are on the side of right in the ME. We aren’t. We don’t even care enuf face what the real problems are much less trying to solve those problems All we are doing is aligning ourselves with those currently in power because…. Oil I guess, tho whoever is in power will want to sell it too.
I certainly don’t know how to fix what ails the ME, but bombing the poor, the disenfranchised, the abused, the hungry, the afflicted, the desperate isn’t going to fix it. Bombing the House of Saud wouldn’t either… But it would be a start.
Paul W.
@askew: And let’s be honest, we were never going to intervene in Syria short of a major WMD usage (much bigger than the one that happened).
It is a civil war, and PBO no longer wants the US to get in the middle of those even if we have a preference of what side should lose… the fact of the matter is that picking a winner is never easy or even as beneficial as we think.
He accomplished the narrow goal of, successfully mind you, getting rid of Assad’s chemical weapons and really…. what else can we do until we have more actual allies in the region who aren’t undermining our every move?
Betty Cracker
@MomSense:
I think Engel is spot-on. Yes, the administration has taken pains to not be seen as taking sides, but it’s not perceived that way on the ground, as Engel well knows. There’s always more to any situation in the Middle East than the Sunni-Shia divide — oil comes to mind! But the divide is the axis on which it all turns, and like Engel says, we’re in no position to solve that problem for them.
Lady Bug
@askew:
Can’t add much to this statement, except that I agree 100%.
Cacti
I understand why the POTUS is doing what he’s doing, I just think that in the end, it will be as fruitless as just about everything else we’ve done in Iraq to date.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: So, to sum it up:
Private Eightball : Personally, I think, uh… they don’t really want to be involved in this war. You know, I mean… they sort of took away our freedom and gave it to the, to the gooks, you know. But they don’t want it. They’d rather be alive than free, I guess. Poor dumb bastards.
Animal Mother : Well, if you ask me, uh, we’re shooting the wrong gooks.
Cervantes
@raven:
The Yazidis were rescued, more or less.
But here’s a question: after they were rescued, how long did it take before the USAF was again “providing air support” in the vicinity?
D58826
@Betty Cracker: Look at the map of the region. ISIL occupies a l;andlocked stretch of desert surrounded by all of the countries that you mentioned. If boots onb the ground are necessary, then some boots from each of those countries squeerzing ISIL from their own border region might be a good tactic. Jordan handles the Jordanian border area, Turkey the Turkish area, etc. At the same time each country increase its border security to cut down on the flow of foeign fighters. The US provides intelligence, drones, airstrikes, high tech weapons and maybe command and control. But the boots will be Middle eastern Muslims fighting other Middle eastern Muslims not American Christian Crusaders. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick but it will keep ISIL occupied with enemies in every direction.
I do plead guilty to oversimplifying the military approach but it has to be a local solution.
raven
@Cervantes: Yea, we should have just split.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: No.
@raven: I think you could make a credible case for a limited action to avert a humanitarian crisis / stop a genocide. That’s a whole other kettle of fish, IMO.
Lady Bug
@Betty Cracker:
This may be my own ignorance here, but after watching the speech, and reading articles about the various backstage diplomacy that’s going on, I never got the impression that we are trying to mediate a Sunni-Shia rapprochement. In fact, what we are doing now (with the exception of possible air-strikes in Syria) is nothing different than what we’ve been doing for the past few weeks: 1). air-strike ISIS targets, 2). provide intelligence/weapons to the Peshmerga and other forces on the ground 3). Provide humanitarian aid 4). Intense diplomatic work in the region.
Cervantes
@raven:
Yes, and why didn’t “we”?
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Why not? The Europeans had been fighting and killing each other for centuries too.
El Caganer
@raven: Are you referring to the Yazidis’ escape from the Sinjar Mountains, or something biblical? ‘Cause the Yazidis were led to safety by the PKK, which we consider a terrorist organization.
Paul W.
@Betty Cracker: Honest to god, there is no way that is what PBO is trying to do.
Every statement he has made is about helping people in the region see that different nations and peoples would be better off if they stopped vilifying and attacking one another and instead moved to live and let live. This is in addition to strengthening the rule of law so that minorities get better protections and sectarian governments can’t/don’t prey on those peoples.
All of those are long term diplomatic goals, and the air strikes are supposed to give them that space by eliminating parties which try to amplify the sectarian violence and force violent reactions back.
Whether we succeed or not, and whether there is regional buy in by the governments is the only thing that matters. PBO should not be worrying about what the mood on the ground is at all, no offense to Engel.
Jado
@Baud:
“…Bush’s decision…”
While he may have stated outright that he was the “decider”, I don’t think anyone believes that Shrub had a strategy, as opposed to rubber-stamping the ideas of really cool Conservative wunderkind policy wonks who thought it would be easy to stomp thru the middle east all Godzilla-like.
I can just imagine Shrub saying something like, “That young guy has good ideas. We’re gonna do it the way he thinks. He’s a good conservative, great team player. This will work out just fine.”
Shrub’s Great Middle-East Adventure was magical thinking at it’s finest, and the only way we would EVER affect true change would be if we were willing to CONQUER and OCCUPY for at least 50 years, until the generations that remembered died out.
I don’t have a particular desire to do that.
raven
@Cervantes: Oh gee, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us. Obviously Obama is a bloodthirsty capitalist pig.
Betty Cracker
@Paul W.: PBO isn’t trying to mediate the Shia-Sunni divide as an ostensible goal, but that’s the only damn thing that will solve the crisis there, and he, unlike Bush, knows it, hence minority protections, encouragement of sectarianism, etc. I couldn’t disagree more about the relevance of the mood on the ground; it matters a great deal since it’s impossible to succeed if people don’t perceive you as an honest broker.
Lady Bug
@Comrade Jake:
Thanks for the link.
Cervantes
@MomSense:
As you say, there is a divide between the Sunni and Shiite communities, and there are other divides, e. g., between nationalists and sectarians in each community.
As for “tweets,” it seems to me they may have been designed to convey idiocy — in small doses, thank goodness.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: That would be a good question for a pacifist. I’m not one. If there’s a compelling national interest for war — a clear and present danger to the US, an enemy who can be decisively defeated, allies who are united in wanting and needing our help, etc., as there was in WWII — going in can be right thing to do.
Cervantes
@raven:
You agreed that we should have left after helping the Yazidis. I asked why we did not — and the question upsets you?
raven
@Cervantes: Who’s upset? I think it
Cervantes
@El Caganer: Right.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Which ground? Depending on which slice of ground you are standing on and the people on that slice of ground-you are going to hear different things. There is not one “on the ground” in the ME. If there were we wouldn’t be talking about divides.
I didn’t hear anything about solving that problem from the President. But look there have always been religious divides in that region and yet there have been trade relations and shared military interests as well–long before oil even came into the picture.
I just think that there are times when the risks in not acting are as great as risks to acting and this is one of those cases. I don’t see indiscriminate actions on the part of this President. Again, this is a huge gamble that is high risk. Not dealing with this however is not going to result in a better outcome which is why I would characterize the Obama administration actions as the least worst option.
Anya
I am seriously tired of the lefties always going to the default “Obama must be stupid” because he doesn’t get this simple statement I just made. POTUS knows the difference between Somalia, Yemen and ISIL (ISIS doesn’t make sense since “Al-sham” refers to a larger geographic area that includes Syria, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and some parts of Turkey.)
I can actually deal with the lefties who always think anything POTUS does is evil. They’re just wired that way and they mistrust all establishment, but they “Obama is stupid” camp hurt my soul. They are just consenting assholes. They don’t pay attention to where their believe that Obama is a stupid man who constantly needs to be schooled by them is coming from.
MomSense
@Anya:
Afuckingmen!
gene108
@D58826:
Turkey, Jordan, etc. are good at keeping the crazy from spilling into their borders, which is the totality of their concern. Lebanon had a 20 year civil war that was largely contained and did not become a regional conflict, because Lebanon’s neighbors kept it from spilling over into their borders.
Jordan once took a bunch of Palestinian/PLO refugees, but when the PLO’s actions seemed like it would get Jordan into a conflict with Israel, Jordanian security forces massacred the PLO.
There seems to be a good deal of IGMFY with countries in that region, where any large scale Arab League force – like the African Union uses in parts of Africa – seems unlikely to materialize.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@askew:
That can go for 99% of the Internet and the commentariat here as well.
@OzarkHillbilly:
If you call pretty much the entirety of rural America and a controlling interest in the Republican party the ‘fringe of society’, sure. I’d recommend getting out of your suburb once in a while and seeing what the rest of our country is like before you continue on with this line of thought, though.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: ISIL can seriously destabilize the Middle East, a major source of the world’s oil supply. Economies of most countries are fragile right now and an oil shock like the one in seventies could send everything into a tail spin. That is a compelling national interest, YMMV.
ETA: I don’t think the President has a choice here, he has to intervene, not doing so is also not exactly cost free.
Cervantes
@Paul W.:
The care and feeding of those “governments,” to the exclusion of what actual populations want, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Plus re Iraq and Syria, it may be a bit of an exaggeration to say that there are governments to begin with.
Anya
@Anya: fuck auto correct! Obviously, I mean to say condescending not consenting.
MomSense
@Anya:
I actually read it the way you meant and not the way you wrote it. Great comment!!!
schrodinger's cat
As for the Shia-Sunni divide? Don’t Sunnis outnumber the Shias almost everywhere except Iran and may be parts of Iraq? Speaking of religious divides, how much blood was spilled because of the Protestant-Catholic divide? As religions go Islam is quite young,so this too shall pass.
I also don’t think that all the troubles the middle-east and Pakistan-Afghanistan is having, and ISIL in particular can be reduced to religion. There are complex forces at play here.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: Hatred and mistrust of the U.S. is probably one of the few things the warring factions in the ME agree on.
@Anya: Por exemplo?
@schrodinger’s cat: I think if we kept our snouts out of it for a change, the parties who need to reconcile for lasting peace would have the motivation to do so. YMMV.
D58826
It seems to me that much of what has driven American policy and colored American opinion over the past 15 years is an over reaction to 9/11. Let me be perfectly clear, it was a horrible day and the US was correct in taking certain actions to punish the guilty and prevent it from happening again. BUT, AQ was never a major threat to the US homeland or interests in most of the world, unlike the Axis is the 1940s and the USSR during the cold war. Even in 2001, the average American stood a better chance of being killed by one of those bad guys with a gun that the NRA keeps talking about. And that guy would have been an American not some foreigner. I’m not trying to minimize the loss to the families involved but as a country we have to base our policy choices on facts and not emotions or one off events. At the moment ISIL’s threat to the US homeland is even less than AQ’s in 2001. It doesn’t mean that we bury our heads in the sand and do nothing but we have to fit the policy to the threat and at the moment ISIL is a bigger threat to the locals in Syria and Iraq than the US. It doesn’t help when Lindsey Graham talks about an existential threat to the US or Rick Perry talks about the ISIL invasion across the Rio Grande. I realize that is good red meat for the base but it creates a public perception that can push policy makers into making bad decisions because they don’t want to be seen as soft on terror. It appears that we haven’t learned from or progressed very far from the yellow journalism of the ‘remember the Maine’ days of 1898.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAA…. gasp….wheeze…. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAHAAHAHAAA…
Stop it, stop it, yer killing me over here.
You can’t be that stupid, can you?
schrodinger's cat
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: I live in a fairly rural area, with actual farms and such and the people here are more liberal than the exurbs of Boston.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: The Middle East is too important to ignore. We routinely ignore the horrible stuff in the world, for example Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, etc. etc.,
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t actually agree with that and it’s a vague statement. Which warring factions? Are all the factions in the ME warring?
C.V. Danes
@Anya:
I’m seriously tired of people punching lefties. Pick another straw man, please.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Again, I think this is the fallacy of thinking that every action we take is worse than no action. We were trying to keep our snouts out of Iraq when the ISIL shit hit the fan. I don’t think the US can solve every problem or create lasting peace by taking military action. I also don’t believe that the US taking no action will lead to lasting peace. I don’t think lasting peace is even in consideration right now.
C.V. Danes
@schrodinger’s cat:
The Middle East is too important because we’re too lazy to kick our oil habit. Perhaps we should start there instead of jabbing another stick into the hornets nest.
C.V. Danes
@MomSense:
Then let’s just annex the place and be done with it.
D58826
@schrodinger’s cat: I think there is a world of difference between ignoring the Middle East and running around screaming the sky is falling in the sky is falling in every time a group of thugs posts a beheading video on the internet. That is the exact emotional reaction that they are hoping for and emotional reactions, alas, lead to bad decision making.
MomSense
@C.V. Danes:
Why the fuck would we want to do that??
Cervantes
@D58826:
While much of what you say may be true, let’s not forget that the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq was contemplated before September 11, 2001.
On that day, a bare six hours after the towers fell, Condoleeza Rice was asking how we should “capitalize on these opportunities.” Donald Rumsfeld scribbled that we should “hit” Iraq: “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” Six days later, Bush instructed the Pentagon to complete plans for invasion and put them into motion. Soon afterwards he was secretly and illegally diverting towards his Iraq scheme hundreds of millions of dollars that had been allocated for a campaign against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
In short the invasion and occupation of Iraq was not a mere “over reaction to 9/11.” It was far worse than that.
schrodinger's cat
@D58826: I didn’t sense the sky is falling reaction from the President, McCain and his tire swing buddies are a different matter altogether.
Mike in NC
@D58826:
That set the standard of the media’s “if it bleeds, it leads” mindset, which hasn’t changed one iota.
This would be a very good day to not go anywhere near a TV, where they’re busy wallowing in the 9/11 p0rn again.
schrodinger's cat
@C.V. Danes: In the long run, yes that should be the strategy but we are not there yet.
BTW we import more oil from Canada than the middle-east. An oil shock would hurt other countries like India and those in Europe, for example much harder than it would the United States.
D58826
@Cervantes: I agree that the neocons had been itching for a war since 1991 but I’m not sure they would have been able to sell it as easily without the shock of 9/11. And since then every pipsqueak with an ak47 is painted as the next 9/11 mastermind
@schrodinger’s cat: It is McNutts an Butters that are leading the charge but more than a few Democrats are getting skittish. esp. in an election year, as well and may be pushing Obama a bit further than he would like to go..
Cervantes
@C.V. Danes:
The oil business utilizes politics — not excluding terrorism and war — to serve its own interests, and not only in the United States.
Still, ignoring all that and just looking at what individuals can do most directly, kicking the oil habit would be a good thing for various reasons, I agree.
schrodinger's cat
@D58826: Who is Butters? Graham?
catclub
@Baud: Between installing Maliki and the de-Baathification, the Iraq project under Bush was a rousing success.
And Bush has gotten a fairly free pass for those two bits.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Then let them deal with it. Personally, I think $6-per-gallon gas in the US would be a net-plus in the long run. Yes, people would freak the fuck out. They’d also use less gas. Good!
D58826
@schrodinger’s cat: yes
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I don’t think every action we (the US) take is worse than no action. I think in this case it is.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: If gas is $6 a gallon then food prices will increase too. When so many people are already hurting an oil shock induced recession will not be pretty.
ETA: Do you think China butting in would be better?
srv
Mr. Engel may be right – but who does he suggest mediate that divide? LoLcats? Underpants gnomes?
We broke it, we own it.
burnspbesq
Anybody else struggling with the idea that action against ISIS is authorized under the 2001 AUMF?
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/09/2001-aumf-isil/
burnspbesq
@C.V. Danes:
Then encourage your fellow lefties to stop saying stupid shit that justifies and invites the punches.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure that Obama has the ‘right’ approach mainly because I’m not sure there is a right approach. I think we have to be flexible and try and pick the least worst options as we move forward. This isn’t like WWII where the path to victory lead thru Berlin. There is no ‘Berlin’. We push the Taliban in Afghanistan and they move to Pakistan. We hunt down the Somali terrorists and they slip away to some other mountain to hide on. ISIL will be the same thing. As long as the Taliban are only a threat to their fellow Afghans, AQ in Yemen remains on the run from US drones and ISIL is confined to the desert region along the Syrian/Iraqi border, then I think that is about as good as the US can do. Now if we can get the Sunni’s in Anbar province to flip again and take on ISIL then maybe there will be a better outcome. Either way it is going to be a long term holding action in military terms and hopefully political and economic reforms by the regional players that takes the ‘romance’ out of jihad.
schrodinger's cat
@D58826: Obama’s approach is the least worst among a set of bad options.
KXB
The Middle East is too large for the US to have any coherent, consistent strategy. That, by itself, is not the main problem – the US made many mistakes by thinking Region A was just like Region B, so we should use similar methods. But, not only does the US have conflicting goals and interest, so do the nations in the region. The Iraqis, Iranians, Saudis, & Turks all have varying interests. Then, factor in the populations of these countries, which often carry themselves in ways the governments do not want. Saudi Arabia is only now starting to crack down on groups that fund ISIL. Yet, there are groups in Saudi Arabia that feel ISIL will prevent a rising Shia nexus of Iraq-Iran from taking shape.
More US military action is unlikely to solve any of this, Yet, even if we adopt a Yemen/Waziristan approach, and rely on droning our opponents, it is going to be a perpetual low-level war. That may be fine for US domestic politics, but it can create overseas problems that develop over time.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: No. One of my primary objections to OUR butting in is that it will prevent the combatants from sorting shit out for themselves. Meddling from any other outside power would have the same drawback.
Meanwhile, China is improving its infrastructure while we continue to pour billions after the $1 trillion already disappeared down the Iraq / Afghanistan rat hole. We’re used to our crumbling bridges, shitty public transportation and arguing over every nickel spent on education, welfare and healthcare.
D58826
@srv: The Shia/Sunni divide goes back to the 7th century. We may have broken 21st century Iraq but we are not responsible for the religious divides within Islam. While Christians may well live more or less in peace in Europe today, there was plenty of religious blood letting in the post reformation era. And just like then with Christianity, Islam has to find its own way to deal with the divide.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Power abhors vacuum, as long as the Middle East remains resource rich, someone else will butt in. Before us it was the British. I agree with you about infrastructure development. We should do it, even if it means deficit spending and raising taxes.
schrodinger's cat
@D58826: I think that’s what Obama is trying to do, let them sort out their own shit but contain it so that it does not become a global crisis.
Cervantes
@burnspbesq:
No, I don’t see how it is authorized by either of the AUMFs, 2001 or 2002.
The 2001 license to kill was issued against Al-Qaeda; ISIS is not Al-Qaeda at this point, nor did it even exist in 2001, so attacking it can’t be covered by the 2001 license. And the 2002 license authorized an attack on the state of Iraq; which is presumably not an action being contemplated or urged.
D58826
Well the ‘broad coalition’ just got a bit narrower. Turkey has announced it will not take part in combat operations against the militants nor will it allow the use of its airbases for military operations by others
Now I have a question for all of the neocon interventionists, well actually 2:
1. if the countries most affected/threatened by ISIL will not stand up and fight why should we?
2. Since there is no great rush to allow the US to use military bases in the region, exactly where do the neocons figure to base the avenging American army? You can only do so much with naval airpower and trying to launch sustained large scale land operations from the Med or the Persian Gulf is hardily practical. Remember ISIL occupies a chuck of real estate hundreds of miles from the ocean.
Elie
@D58826:
Excellent point.
To some of the other discussion around scope of this, I believe that the President plans to “manage” this threat rather than undertake a large scale, deep intervention. I think that he totally “gets” that containment is the best strategy and that ultimately, this is the work of Islam to figure out. It gets at the central issue of nation states — can they support Iraq’s and Syria’s existence. It is largely up to them, not us. Where they (ISIS and others), threaten our interests, we will act aggressively but in matters that aren’t central to that, you will see us and the West step back. That to me is appropriate. I think that this was what Obama has always wanted to do but he forgot to use threatenning and aggressive language to cover himself well enough and so had to do clean up yesterday. He is no fool. Frankly, I don’t even think that the stupid white boys on the right actually want some upscaling of boots on the ground either. I think that they want the US to look like we have the biggest dick in the room and to talk rough.
Anyway, that is my take. ISIS management and containment with theatrical language and posturing periodically for the homies.
Cervantes
@srv:
Sure. I’m all for sending Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bolton, Yoo, Kristol, Beinart, and their associated gang of thugs, murderers, and profiteers.
You want to add Clinton, Kerry, and the like? Sure, suit them up, too.
No troops, no money. Just send them over there, right now. They broke it, they own it. Right?
Lady Bug
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s my impression as well. As much as the President talked about ‘destroying’ ISIL, the program really sounds more like a program of containment-prevent them from spreading and taking over Iraqi Kurdistan, Baghdad, Riyadh,Amman, etc.
Paul W.
@Betty Cracker: I’m sorry Betty but I’m just going to respectfully disagree and point you to http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/9/10/215520/614
If you’re looking at the Middle East ONLY as a Sunni/Shia divide, which is of course important to see, but not questioning the WHY of how it is manifesting then you are doing it wrong. The governments in charge of the region’s nations are more or less not answering to the public but their own self interests, and they utilize ethnic divisions to A) control their own population B) insulate themselves from public opinion on their regime C) interact with/control other allies in the region. If you can convince them that their own self interests are furthered by eliminating IS and cooperating with each other just enough to prevent a new IS from arriving then we are making progress.
To throw up our hands is to condemn the region to another century of infighting, upheaval and expose ourselves to violence that would possibly come out of that region. The only way to improve these things is to continue to invest time and money in solving them, especially when we ARE getting progress made with Iran and with ousting the Maliki government.
You want to stay out, and I respect that, but I don’t think it is a good long term decision. I also don’t give PBO a blank check, if the region doesn’t seem to want to solve this problem and work together then fuck’em, lets get out. Iran is a better partner to have in the region than the Saudis, but if we can get back to being seen as not having an interest (aka, occupying countries in the region) we might be able to play broker to some improvement to the lives of the 100s of millions who live in the middle east. Just my 2 cents.
D58826
@Cervantes: From a very cynical perspective I think Obama should go to Congress and get the required authorization – make the GOP put up or shut up. They have been demanding action in the Middle East, complaining that Obama rules by decree and that he ignores Congress. Well if Obama goes to Congress on this then the GOP can vote to approve the actions and therefore become co-owners Or they can vote it down and the next time McCain or Gohmert or the King twin s opens their mouth, the WH can simply tell them to STFU!
Elie
@C.V. Danes:
I think that she explained why she said that.It was a more thoughtful comment than your “punching bag” statement implies.
Lady Bug
@D58826:
In Turkey’s case, it might be because ISIL is holding 40 Turkish workers in Iraq hostage right now. One article I read recently (sorry, can’t remember where-I think it was in the NYT. Yes, it would help if I could actually post a link!), mentioned that publicly Turkey is taking a hands-off approach to combating ISIL, because of concerns for the hostages, but in private they have pushing for greater targeting of ISIL.
El Caganer
@D58826: I don’t find that cynical at all. Congress should be the government branch authorizing the use of force, and if the Republicans were serious about the US putting the wood to ISIS, they’d be happy to vote on it…..HAHAHAHAHAHA.
MomSense
@D58826:
Ok, but Turkey has been launching air strikes against ISIL in Iraq since January. Saying that the US can’t stage out of Turkey doesn’t mean that they aren’t working with us.
D58826
@Paul W.: Complicated isn’t it. Certainly not the John Wayne western of the white hats vs the black hats.
@Lady Bug: Hope your right but at some point these countries have to put up or shut up. Sometimes you have to risk the lives of your citizens. It isn’t nice but that is war
D58826
@MomSense: The AP dispatch said they would not take part in combat operations. So maybe one more party playing 11 dimensional chess. See comment above about ‘complicated’
Elie
@Iowa Old Lady:
Pretty good article… thanks for sharing…
Manyakitty
Somewhat tangentially:
I keep hearing about how ISIL is bringing in billions of dollars in oil money every day. How is it that they can sell their oil, but the Iraqi Kurds can’t?
Cervantes
@D58826: How is it cynical to follow the law?
srv
@D58826: Nihilism Is Not An Option.
What Paul W. says. The Brits managed. Either be daddy or give them a common enemy to fight against (us).
Personally, I’m for a more pro-active approach. A military coup in Turkey, a mysterious car bombing of a Qatari Emir and threats to normalize with Iran might get the big players in line.
Patrick
@Cervantes:
Amen. I would also add sending the 66% who approved of the war back in 2003. They also helped break it. Let them deal with the consequences of their approval for this idiotic war.
D58826
The ‘cynical’ part is trying to getting the GOP to put up or shut up. and since they won’t shut up from CNN today:
So if the GOP doesn’t like the plan let them come up with their own and pass it in the House and try to pass it in the Senate. These people are great at running their mouths but seem to be real short when it comes details. If you listened to the elephant echo chamber you would think ISIL fighters are ten feet tall, can kill with x-ray beams from their super gizmo helmets and can walk on water.
Betty Cracker
@Paul W.: Booman hardly gives a ringing endorsement of the administration strategy in that post you linked. It could really bolster either position.
Ultimately, it comes down to how optimistic you are about the factions overcoming their urge to kill each other, and yes, along sectarian lines, though obviously other factors are involved. I am a glass-all-the-way-empty gal on that question, so yeah, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Cervantes
@srv:
How “personally” pro-active? Are you in Kirkuk?
srv
@Manyakitty: I doubt billions, but the Turks will take it from anyone.
Remember, Saddam got around sanctions by trucking oil to Turkey via Kurdish intermediaries. It’s the benefit of having two major Kurdish factions. You can gas one and bribe the other. When the other side gets too greedy, swap. Rinse, repeat.
MomSense
@D58826:
Everyone involved is going to say certain things for domestic consumption and ISIL has a bunch of Turkish hostages. Then there is the sticky situation with our arming Kurds in Iraq. Turkey doesn’t want ISIL to make any more gains though so I bet they will continue to take action but on the down low.
It’s complicated is an understatement.
El Caganer
@srv: Nihilism? Fuck me. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism….
Lady Bug
@Manyakitty:
Honest question here, if they aren’t allowed to sell the oil, then how are they able to financially support Iraqi-Kurdistan?
Emma
@Betty Cracker: Sure. If what you want is a Republican government for fifty years or so. If you think that the powers that be, political and economic, won’t go full blast “COMMUNIST COMMUNIST COMMUNIST” against any president that does that, you’re dreaming. And we, as a country, are easily convinced.
D58826
@MomSense: Yep. Turkey isn’t exactly in favor of the new country Kurdistan. Gives their own Kurds ideas. The entire issue of a Kurdish homeland cuts across several countries in the region.
Darkrose
@schrodinger’s cat: An important point, especially with food prices already on the rise due to the CA drought.
$6 gas hurts the working poor the most. When you need your car to get to work, $6 a gallon gas means that you cut back on other things, like going to the doctor.
Manyakitty
@Lady Bug: First, your nym makes me smile because it’s another of our many names for a most excellent cat, Madame Curie, who we also call Manya.
Otherwise, good question. I think that disruption has been one of their biggest issues of late.
@srv: Sigh. Yeah. No good answers anywhere.
Patrick
@Darkrose:
The gas is $10 in Europe. We need better mass transit, like the Europeans have.
C.V. Danes
@MomSense: Because at this point in time, what other option do we have? We’ve f’d up everything else, so might as well just own it. If we don’t want to do that, then just pull out and leave them alone.
C.V. Danes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Perhaps we should pass the baton to them then, no?
Lady Bug
@Manyakitty:
Thank you!
C.V. Danes
@Elie: That may be true, but if people had listened to the “lefties” prior to the invasion of Iraq, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now, as well as many others. If you want to punch someone, how about the people who have been consistently wrong, who continue to be consistently wrong, and yet seem to keep getting all the air time while people make fun of the dirty hippies.
Elie
The Republicans were always going to complain that the President is not doing enough and the media will echo that for him. No one will present a better alternative and truly no one wants us to send big time troops on the ground. They just want to beat him up (surprise!)
My counter to them is that the Republicans and George Bush own this and should be the last folks to argue for more intervention. They want the American people to forget that this was their shitpile and we can’t let them.
Elie
@C.V. Danes:
I hear you — but I don’t think that she was advocating for their position. She (I think) was stating that sometimes the left blindly criticize Obama almost as a reflex rather than to a well thought out reaction. Sometimes, the criticism is utopian to the point of ridiculousness — as though the US should have no international interests that we must influence. That is not realistic in this world.
srv
@Cervantes: Well, the royal we doesn’t need all those boots if we take out all the real actors.
Cervantes
@srv: Not what I’d call a straight answer.
chopper
@C.V. Danes:
you make it sound like we only get one punch.
MomSense
@Elie:
And Obama was one of the lefties opposed to the invasion of Iraq.
Cervantes
@Elie:
Except that she was asked for a specific example, and so far … nothing.
You have an example you’d like to share? I notice you have not provided one, either.
Betty Cracker
@Emma: Like the communist hellholes known as Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway, France, the UK, etc., you mean? Just to be clear, I’m not saying the president should raise gas prices to $6, which he can’t do even if he wanted to. I’m just saying that an oil shock isn’t all downside — it gets people to conserve energy, which is a good thing.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
All those communist hellholes have fantastic public transportation. Working people can get to work and home without having to drive long distances in their vehicles.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Doing nothing is not a risk free option, either. Gas prices is not the only thing that will go up if the price of crude goes up. It is the raw material for many industrial products including many plastics. Unpredictable gas shortages are not the same as a policy decision to increase the price of gas. It could send the global economy into a tailspin, which in turn could give rise a lot of conflict.
Pococurante
@Betty Cracker:
Exactly the perspective the world took towards Afghanistan in 1986,
ISIL is not the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
Emma
@Betty Cracker: Yes, just like that. Come on, where have you been? Any politician using Europe as an example will get blasted. Americans don’t like to be told another country has a better way. They certainly will not like to be told that they need to use public transportation as a matter of savings, especially since the US has shitty public transportation. They MOST certainly won’t like to hear that they can’t drive three blocks to the nearest Publix.
D58826
@Pococurante: ISIL may not be but it certainly seems to describe many members of the Congressional GOP.
Which really is what I find so frustrating about this issue. ISIL fighters are not 10 feet tall, they are not immune to bullets and they are not walking across the Atlantic Ocean to attack us in our beds.
Pococurante
Agreed. The only threat posed is should some return home fully radicalized and attempt another atrocity on home soil. More likely to happen to Western Europe though.
I think a lot of folks miss that there are those who joined early on thinking they were rebuilding a Sunni caliphate, only to find out how bugfuck crazy the core Chechen/Baathist ISIL is and that they will bring down more ruin on the cause. They went in thinking thinking Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb and instead found only Iblīs and Shayṭān .
Betty Cracker
@Emma: Somehow you missed it when I said I’m not suggesting that the president should raise the price of gas. I also never suggested that the president should go on national TV and praise the European Way. My point was that oil shocks have upside as well as downside. This is a documented fact.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I wonder why those countries chose to invest in massive public transportation systems. Could it be because they’ve always paid a lot more for gas than we do?
LAC
@C.V. Danes: and I’m seriously tired of lefties whinging about hippy punching when they are asked to be accountable for the basis of their opinions and hand wringing at the slightest provocation. And if you need an example, go back to the time concerning Syria’s chemical weapons on this board.
The Pandora’s box that the bush administration opened with its reckless war has never fully shut. This is what world we are living in now. The president made a measured narrow speech about proposed actions and to put the 24 news cycle of fear in perspective. That is what I heard in the speech. But maybe next time I will just wait to hear what the MSNBC or CNN panel or Richard engel have to say instead. Or maybe Luke Russert because, shut up…
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Um yeah, of course they invested in public transportation. We invested post WWII in the highway system. I guess I’m not sure where you are going with this. Higher gas prices still would be a hardship for working people both in terms of commuting costs and that prices for food and other essentials would increase, no?
I actually worked on a research project many moons ago that dealt with gas prices and how we could transition to greater use of public transportation so I get it. We couldn’t even get Gov. Christie to use federal funds for commuter rails from Jersey to NYC. I think all Emma and I are saying is that higher gas prices will hurt people who are already struggling.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Those countries are also much tinier. Public transport does not make sense in areas of low population density, that said it can and should be better in many midsized cities than it is now.
Elie
@LAC:
Well said
askew
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yep. Also, public transportation isn’t going to help in a lot of suburban areas where people live in one suburb and work in another, which is quite common in the U.S.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: You know what else hurts people who are already struggling? Pouring a trillion dollars down the Iraq / Afghanistan rat hole over the past 13 years. That’s money that can’t be spent on education or public transportation or pre-school or healthcare or climate change mitigation or college scholarships or healthier school lunches or better elder care, etc.
As for where I’m going with this, I was simply making the point that if the ME does go to hell in a hand-basket (which it seems determined to do), and one result is higher gas prices, that isn’t a 100% bad thing; there’s an upside too. I’m surprised that’s a controversial point since it’s a documented fact.
D58826
@askew: Having lived in a pre-WWII inner ring suburb with an extensive transit system and now in a post war sunbelt city trying to build a transit system, what people seem to forget is the word ‘mass’ in mass transit. It works in New York, Philly, Boston because of the population density in the city and the inner ring suburbs. New sunbelt cities with the population spread all over the map don’t have the density for mass transit. In addition in the older cities and suburbs there were quaint things called sidewalks because people walked to stores, schools, shops and transit stops. I live to far from the bus stop to walk and if there is no park and ride lot then it is easier to just bit the bullet and drive to the office.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
i think it’s seen that way because a crazy blow-up of the oil market would have far worse downsides than the upside of less gas usage, at least in the short-to-medium term (and at least from the point of view of most people here).
it’s like seeing a friend of yours in 2008 lose their job and their house and have to move their family in with mom and saying ‘well hey, you get to spend more time with your family.’ it’s true, but the dude isn’t likely to see it that way. and truth be told if you were in his place you probably wouldn’t either.
$6/gal gas is certainly good for curtailing consumption, but it would blow a hole in our country’s economy and cause no end of horrible shit to befall. and a bunch of people would suffer for it. it’s unfortunate both ways.
our country and its infrastructure was built on cheap gas and the premise that it would always be thus. we’re due for a pointy reckoning when that is no longer the case. personally (and i’m cynical), i’d rather it happen now than later.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: You are equating a policy decision of pricing gas higher to erratic and sudden changes in the global oil supply.
D58826
@chopper: there have been proposals, mostly in the 70’s before the anti-tax mania took over, that the gas tax be raised to $5.00 per gallon. The money would stay in the economy because it would either be funneled back into infrastructure construction or a tax credit to lower income folks. While it seems somewhat like taking money from your left pocket and putting it back in your right, the assumption was that seeing that 6,7 or 8 dollars per gallon at the pump would encourage folks to buy more fuel efficient cars. But then came the Reagan revolution and the SUV and the idea died an orphan.
If on the other hand we just let the ‘free market’ do the job then the money winds up in oil companies profits or some Saudi prince’s bank account.
chopper
@D58826:
the time to do something like that would have been long ago, unfortunately.
jesus, we haven’t raised the federal gas tax in what, 20 years? since it isn’t a percent or tied to inflation it’s the equivalent of back-then 11 cents/gal. the shit has gone down every year, not up.
askew
@D58826:
Yep, when I lived in Chicago I took mass transit to work every day. When I moved back to Minnesota and tried to take mass transit from my Minneapolis suburb to St. Paul. It involved 2 different buses and a van. In the end, I just drove. Now, I work at home so I don’t have to worry about that nonsense, which makes me much happier.
Cervantes
@D58826:
Didn’t just happen. It was a choice.
Not that you aren’t aware of that.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Nope, I’m really, really not. I never once said anything about a policy decision on gas prices; I just made the observation that volatility in the oil market wouldn’t result in ALL downside and ZERO upside as a counterweight to the suggestion that we should make policy decisions to keep oil prices artificially low.
Chopper’s right above when he says “we’re due for a pointy reckoning.” We can keep spending trillions to try to stave it off via military force and corporate shenanigans, or we can face facts and invest in alternate sources. It’s pretty clear what choice we, as a country, have made. It’s the wrong one, IMO.
Cervantes
@Elie:
Yet still devoid of a specific example.
D58826
@Cervantes: Yep it was a choice – see the usa in your Chevrolet!!!!!
Dave
@Lady Bug: I agree with this but I think they really can’t at least not for more than the immediate short term (which would be fairly awful for the residents of those areas). The Pesh for example used to be pretty tough the PKK still is. Any occupation by ISIL forces would create conditions where this was again the case. And would do so quickly. ISIL has the ability to be quite brutal and some pretty capable people at different levels but it can’t bring stable overwhelming force it would need to in order to hold these ares. Now I don’t want them to take these areas and agree with the president’s actions to prevent those but I admit it’s somewhat personal as I spent some time in the Kurdish provinces as well as Ninewa and know and like quite a few of the people that are living there and so it’s not a cold blooded analysis on my part.