Hillary Clinton laid out her plan to counter Daesh/ISIS/ISIL in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in NYC today. Here are some highlights via articles up at the NYT and CNN:
Hillary Clinton is calling for more allied planes, more airstrikes and a “broader target set” — though no large-scale mobilization of U.S. ground troops — to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “That is just not the smart move here,” Clinton said.
She called on Congress to approve a new authorization of the use of military force against ISIS, saying that doing so would signal “that the U.S. is committed to this fight. The time for delay is over. We should get this done.”
She also called for a no-fly zone in Syria, saying, “we should retool and ramp up our efforts to equip viable Syrian opposition efforts.”
Clinton, in a major break from her GOP presidential rivals, called for the United States to continue accepting Syrian refugees despite reports that at least one of the Paris attackers entered Europe under that guise.
“Turning away orphans, applying a religious test, discriminating against Muslims, slamming the door on every Syrian refugee — that is just not who we are,” Clinton said.
Clinton sought to ramp up pressure on Iraq’s Shia-led government and on Turkey to set aside old grievances, saying that “the threat from ISIS cannot wait.” She said Qatar and Saudi Arabia “need to stop their citizens from directly funding extremist organizations.” And she acknowledged that the U.S. desire to see the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who she said has slaughtered more Syrians than terrorists have, isn’t a top priority.
In a shot at Republicans who have criticized her for not using the phrase, Clinton said that denouncing “radical Islamic terrorism” amounts to giving “these criminals, these murderers, more standing than they deserve.”
A mixed bag, IMO. I like that she called out the Republicans for fearmongering and echoed the president’s remarks on accepting refuges. I’m pleased she’s not going to cave in to counterproductive GOP language policing.
I was glad she said Qatar and Saudi Arabia need to stop their citizens from funding terrorism — it’s way past goddamn time somebody said that, though it’ll take more than words. I think it makes sense to ask Congress to authorize any further action, even if they are unserious toddlers.
I’m also encouraged that Clinton acknowledged that ousting Assad is a secondary to defeating Daesh. Sometimes I worry that the Obama admin has boxed itself in with the “Assad must go” rhetoric.
I’m concerned about the no-fly zone proposal and reference to arming moderates. What moderates? And do we really want to escalate our role in this conflict? Daesh’s new global terrorism campaign has changed the facts on the ground, so it makes sense to reassess our role. But I remain unconvinced so far that we should stick our noses in further.
PBO has been walking a tightrope, trying to do enough to contain and influence the conflict without violating the “Don’t Do Stupid Shit” doctrine, which was arguably the best of many bad options. Do you think the new turn in the Daesh strategy will cause the administration to review its stance and go hawkier?
What did you find worrying / encouraging about Clinton’s remarks?
UPDATE: Here are links to the CSPAN video of the speech and the transcript. After reading the part about the no-fly zone and objective of toppling Assad, I’m less optimistic than I was from just reading the media summaries. Le sigh.
Ryan
My read is about the same as yours; I don’t get how the no-fly zones would work. Unfortunately, this sounds like more of what we already have. My view on Assad is closer to Obama’s though.
Hildebrand
If nothing else, this reinforces the stark choice that confront voters – they either want an adult, whose brain clearly functions quite nicely, or they want a screaming toddler with a future in bullying behavior.
Irony Abounds
The No-Fly Zone is nuts. What worries me most is that Hillary must prove she has bigger balls than PBO and will only fall deeper into the snake pit. It will also disillusion Democrat voters and could just hand the election to the fear-mongering asshats that are the Republicans. I’m afraid America is no longer the home of the brave, but rather the home of the bedwetters.
agorabum
The problem with any additional commitment is ‘then what?’ After isis is gone, how do you bring peace? Assad is a huge block to that, but is explicitly supported by Russia. Who is in the country now.
And America has a pretty poor rep in that neighborhood of the world after Iraq.
Roger Moore
I agree that we need to set priorities on Daesh and Assad, and that getting rid of Daesh is a higher priority. My take on Assad is that he can’t remain the big man in charge when this is all done, but that the government they have after the civil war is over needs to include all the major groups in the country including the Alawites. I think that would be good enough, since a government like that is unlikely to leave Assad in charge. I would be willing to let him, and any of his followers who feel unsafe in a post-war Syria that’s not under their control, leave the country to a dignified retirement elsewhere.
goblue72
The rubber hits the road when it comes to money. Namely, how is this going to cost, and once we go down this path, where does it stop? Governments – both at the bureaucratic level and at the political level – are well known for having a blind eye to the principle of the sunk cost. (in government contracting circles, the phrase “get [insert public agency] just a little bit pregnant” is widely used)
Which means once in, we are in for a penny, in for a pound. Our civil infrastructure is falling apart, we are drastically need 21st century improvements like high speed rail, a smart grid, massive investments in renewable. We need spending in key areas to help the middle class – especially in the areas of child care and higher ed. Let alone bread-and-butter social welfare spending to deal with income inequality.
And instead, we are going to blow more of our Treasury on dropping bombs and flying sorties and sending weapons overseas to one more Middle Eastern rat’s nest?
JCJ
Overall not bad, but I am not sure I get the no fly zone. I saw a clip from Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a little while ago. His statement regarding Assad was that in Iraq Saddam is gone and that country has gone to shit and in Libya Gadaffi is gone and that place has gone to shit. I guess Syria is already there but I tend to agree with you, Betty. I think all of the “Assad must go” rhetoric has boxed Obama in a little bit.
Cermet
Clinton’s remarks are boiler plate; the issue is what do the Saudi’s desire we do or what they will tolerate (and keep pressure on Russia by flooding the world with oil) – they really call the shots about ISIL
Mike in NC
But JEB! wants to invade Syria and re-invade Iraq with a large ground force, because Family Tradition demands it.
Peale
I very much doubt the US is going to get approval from anyone remotely credible to put in a no-fly zone. Unless we do so unilaterally.
Congress isn’t going to vote on an AUMF because they will say her plan won’t work and they’re just protecting us from her, drumming up fear of the the ISIS is filled with the “most sociopathic” jihadis ever who must be completely destroyed immediately before something something something. I’m glad she brought up Congresses current underhandedness, though.
She hasn’t backed down on the refugees yet. I hope by November it won’t matter because right now if that were the central issue, I think the Democrats would be in for a thrashing.
Hoodie
Pretty crappy. Talking about expanded airstrikes and target sets and “retooling relationships with opposition elements” seems like a transparent attempt to create artificial distance with respect to Obama. It also plays into wingnut nonsense about fighting with our hands tied. My suspicion that it’s mostly bullshit, and the problem is more that there aren’t a lot of targets if you’re not supporting advancing ground troops and they can’t find anyone other than the Kurds to reliably serve as those ground forces, and the Kurds are not going deep into the Sunni heartland. The only good parts are no US troops and calling out the Saudis. No fly zones seem silly.
Fair Economist
We actually do have Syrian moderates to arm: about 800,000 refugees coming to Western Europe. Actually, given the size of the refugee camps in Turkey and the fact that there are friendly Kurdish areas to base trainees from, I think the failure to find moderates to arm is deliberate.
Sorry for the tinfoil business here, but the military-industrial complex’s financial interest is for us to be bogged down in unwinnable wars. Daesh has made them a mint, because they’re essentially getting paid by us to arm both sides (since Daesh has gotten huge quantities of military equipment abandoned by the Iraqi army). If the US can’t get loyal fighters out of camps with hundreds of thousands of people whose homes and lives have been destroyed by the Salafis, I don’t think incompetence is a plausible explanation.
low-tech cyclist
The main thing I’d like to see on any AUMF is an end date. It’s insane that our government still has powers under the AUMF that Congress passed the week after 9/11/2001.
Amir Khalid
No real surprises, I think. More or less what I expected Hillary to say; I doubt there’s much else in the way of real options for the West, or for the US in particular. I worry as always about the collateral damage suffered by innocent parties and the blowback, as I know many here do.
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: Good points, though I’m not convinced the call for expanding targets, etc., was meant to create an artificial distance from Obama. In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the admin is going to ramp up the offensive against Daesh in response to the apparently new tactic of attacking other countries rather than holding ground and behaving like psychos within the confines of its so-called caliphate.
NonyNony
@Fair Economist: Dude – the refugees aren’t fighters. If they were they’d be fighting with one of the rebel groups or with Assad’s forces.
The refugees are mostly people who don’t want to or cannot fight. That’s why they’re refugees. You don’t just hand refugees guns and send them back into the country they’re fleeing from – that’s nuts.
Hoodie
@Fair Economist: I imagine the Turks are not keen on forming armies in refugee camps. You might be able to do that in Europe, but the refugees have only shown up recently and it will take a long time to build up the capacity, assuming the Europeans go along with the plan.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: I only have the account of the speech, so maybe that’s what she meant, e.g., do what Obama’s obviously doing. The news report, however, leaves that to the imagination.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
I think this nails it. We can’t drop it, both because we fucked this up so badly we ought to do something, and because this affects all of our alliances and diplomatic positions worldwide. We can’t invade. That would be an insane disaster, making things worse in every way, including civilian fallout. ‘Try to find a not-completely-abhorrant local force to support’ with sides of ‘try to help refugees’ and ‘tell our backstabbing supposed allies to get their act together’ is all I can think of.
Germy
I find it interesting and sad that George W’s lasting legacy is we find ourselves with a “Don’t Do Stupid Shit” doctrine.
Like a sign on the wall of a kindergarten class: “Do NOT eat the crayons”
Peale
@NonyNony: You could conscript them – although that 800,000 includes women and children and I think conscripting young men in Turkey and Jordan will only increase the number of refugees in Europe.
I think one of the goals of Syria and Iraq at the moment should be ending the conflict as quickly as possible. It’s actually not a bad idea to remove fighting age men someplace else. The fewer of them the better.
Cervantes
@Germy:
Your shoe-mangling days are over?
Fair Economist
@NonyNony:
That’s not true; this refugee group actually tilts *towards* the young, the healthy, and males. They often come over without their families hoping to earn money to get their families fed. There are many refugees able to fight. They’re not fighting primarily because the choice is basically fighting for Assad or fighting for the extremist Islamic groups, and both are reprehensible monsters no decent person would fight for.
Hoodie
@Frankensteinbeck: Yep, this bed was shit twelve years ago. This is what is so exasperating about the wingnut frenzy about refugees, they undermine any reasonable effort to unshit it.
Tommy
People get pissed at me here when I mention my family, but I found it hard to get past the first sentence quoted above:
Dad kind of wrote the textbook on the use of air power. Well there were a heck of a lot of other people doing the same thing ….. but he will tell you and they will as well that if we want to stop ISIS air power alone will not do it.
Hillary is not dumb. Her husband is not dumb. Her advisors are not dumb. That she’d come out and say this, and not speak the truth but tell us liberals what she thinks we want to hear, pisses me off to no end.
We are going to have to put troops on the ground. Roll through some towns going door to door. It will be bloody and no matter how stunning our military is, we’d lose a lot of lives. But that is just reality if we are going to do it.
I opt for us not doing it BTW!
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Otherwise known as … terror?
JCJ
@Cervantes:
I had wondered the same. Perhaps he/she will switch to slippers?
Another Holocene Human
Fuck Daesh. (Btw, nice capital you got there in Raqqa, pity if anything should … ‘appen to it. ) Time to smash the fascist enemy at home.
beltane
@Peale: Under what auspices would the refugee army be fighting? Would they be fighting Daesh? Assad? Both? The refugees themselves seem to be drawn from disparate elements of Syrian society. Arming them and sending them back into Syria with a vague mandate to clean things up seems like a plan that might not work out to well.
Germy
@Cervantes: Had to have them all pulled out after the savoy truffle.
Another Holocene Human
The gray background sucks. I hope you whiners are happy.
Gin & Tonic
@Cervantes: I think he’s decided to go with just one name, like Oprah, or Cher.
Fair Economist
@Hoodie:
That’s an exaggeration. The Kurds have trained substantial numbers of Yazidi fighters in about 6 months. Unless you’re saying the timeframe is six months to a years, with which I’d agree.
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: I thought your dad was a Civil War expert.
mtiffany
Did you know: there were only 700 ISIS fighter when Geroge W Bush left the White House, but today because of Obama, there are 4000% more ISIS fighters.
I learned this today from Fox ‘News’ Andrea Tantaros. It’s from Fox ‘News’ so you know it must be true. Nevermind the fact that ISIS didn’t exist when Dumbya left office.
Germy
@Gin & Tonic: Elvis.
thank you very much.
Another Holocene Human
@Fair Economist: WTF, you’re going to draft refugees as cannon fodder for some pointless fucking war they were smart enough to run away from?
How many layers of immoral and human rights abuses is that?
Holy fuck.
schrodinger's cat
BTW did anyone read Nick Sanctimonious Kristoff this morning, blaming Obama for the Syria mess. Apparently it is Obama’s biggest foreign policy blunder.
beltane
To make matters much worse, we do not have any trustworthy allies in the region.
schrodinger's cat
Can someone change the block quote formatting, it is ugly and hurts my eyes.
Germy
“It would be a cruel irony indeed if ISIS can force families from their homes & then also prevent them from ever finding new ones.” —Hillary
guachi
House of Representatives passed a veto proof screw-the-refugees bill. Way to go, craven Democrats.
And you know Senator Schumer will go along with it.
Also, I don’t like the new gray background. I liked the previous gray background. Despite claims to the contrary, it wasn’t “blinding white” as could be easily shown by putting it next to something that was actually white.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: Kristof is insufferable, a caricature of a superficially well-meaning, though clueless, liberal.
schrodinger's cat
Is Vlad going in with ground troops?
Amir Khalid
@Fair Economist:
And it’s not enough to ask young Syrian men to fight against either Bashir al-Assad or Daesh. Under whose standard would they be fighting? That is, say they fight for some party, and they win. Who is this party that claims the win then, and what is its prize? That’s going to be the next big wrinkle in the fabric of the Middle East.
Hoodie
@Fair Economist: You might be able to train them that quickly, but you also have the logistics of basing them in the region (you can’t just drop them in) and deploying them to forward areas. The Kurds are not going to worry about Yazidis because they’re also a small persecuted ethnic group and have limited objectives. You train a big free Syrian army to take on ISIS in the Sunni homeland, the other players in the region may get antsy.
Fair Economist
@beltane:
They’d have to go in under the auspices of a government-in-exile, which would have to be created. But since we (as the West in general) would be funding and arming them we could exclude the nuts. This is exactly how the extremists took over the rebel groups, using Qatari and Saudi funding, except in reverse.
Syrians are like people everywhere – most are fundamentally decent. If you give them a way to fight for the good guys, enough will.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: That impression is on me since I just posted excerpts. If you read the CNN article, HRC specifically says that air power alone can’t do it and that ground troops — from Iraq, Syria, etc. — will have to step in. My post just has excerpts, but I’ll post a transcript to the whole thing when one is available.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
If we were the only people fighting Daesh, you might have a point. But we aren’t the only people fighting Daesh; the Iraqi army is at least trying to fight them, and the Kurdish Peshmerga is doing a credible job of it. The remaining loyal elements of the Syrian army are also decently capable, though to this point we’ve refused to have anything to do with them because we don’t like their boss. The point is that there are plenty of soldiers out there who can fight Daesh on the ground. Where we can help the most is providing them with the things they lack, like logistical support, intelligence, and air power. That approach has worked well when we’ve teamed up with competent fighters, like the Northern Alliance in 2001-2002 Afghanistan and the Peshmerga in Syria for the past year or so.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
If you want to put that name on damage inflicted by Western/pro-Western force.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Another Holocene Human: I have such a pale gray background it’s hard to think of it as gray, and alternating comment background colors to a darker pale gray. Have you even tried MBBJ? Or is it just more fun to bitch?
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
So, when do you expect to get an AUMF against RNC headquarters?
Sibelius
Sorry to interrupt, and also sorry if it’s been addressed elsewhere, but I have a site issue here. I have a brand new Macbook and on Safari when I go to balloon-juice.com I don’t get the current page. Instead I get the last site maintenance front page. I use the scroll arrows to click forward, but something’s not right. Help?
schrodinger's cat
Thank you for moving the most recent posts to the rhs.
Anoniminous
Here we go again.
Amir Khalid
@Fair Economist:
This is unduly optimistic, I think. Remember those beneficiaries of US sponsorship, the Taliban? How much pull with that lot did the US manage to buy?
Another Holocene Human
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): It’s supposed to be for FFX, and I don’t use that crap. The background was perfectly good yesterday but a bunch of y’all whined and whined for days and guess what, Cole listened. So I put it in the only terms the whiners and Cole can understand: fuck you, your precious gray background sucks.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
(Was seeking your opinion.)
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: He has the delusions of colonists of another era.
ETA: Did you see my response to you about Shia Muslims of the subcontinent.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: I don’t really have a “plan” per se. Open to suggestions.
Betty Cracker
@guachi: Of the 289 who voted in favor of the bill, 47 were Democrats, including Steve Israel, surprise, surprise. The only thing that surprised me was that Steve King opposed it! He must be in favor of a more draconian bill or something. Anyone know?
beltane
@Amir Khalid: Those are the very same questions I have. Under whose standard would they be fighting? is the big question. It’s not as though there is some form of legitimate Syrian government in exile directing operations. We are dealing with a textbook example of a power vacuum sporadically filled with whatever violent assholes are capable of seizing the day.
Germy
@Another Holocene Human: But we’ve got black bold finally. Rather than the blue “This Is Not Hyperlink” bold. Incrementalism, my friend, incrementalism.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: I don’t disagree. I know the region is so complex. Like the Kurdish Peshmerga. I get Turkey is a NATO ally so we are kind of stuck with their dislike of the Kurds. But from all I can glean from the area the Kurds have always had our backs in Iraq and they will fight. Tell then to charge that or this hill, they will most likely die, they will charge said hill. If I could snap my fingers and make us support somebody it would be the Kurds. I’d go as far to say if they help us here and win, I’d put my thumb in Turkey’s eye and offer then their own state.
Anoniminous
@Hoodie:
No Fly Zones are a non-starter. The USAF is going to shoot down Russian bombers? I don’t think so.
Elie
Hillary’s speech sounds pretty boiler plate.
Lets play “what-if”. What if this extended campaign in the international arena is not a sign of strength by Daesh, but reflects their need to adopt a new strategy because their revenue in Syria as well as oil, is drying up. They DO have payroll to meet and paying off the families of suicide bombers is pretty expensive. We don’t know yet how much this foray has required new fighter training, but so far it looks like they were relying on tried and true disaffected citizens of France and Belgium. So far we donot see evidence of a huge wave of new terrorist capability (note I say so far).
I say what we are doing is working, unless the analysis from this and other attacks prove different. One thing not mentioned beyond expanded bombings that I think is radically necessary and needs to be increased is the data/IT angle and plenty of money for informants to rat out these folks (which must have happened in France). I think that these fools have attacked and threatened Russia, and today threatened China — speaks to me of foolish desperation and true suicide desire.
Why do we need a “no fly” zone for people with no planes or aerial capabilities?
Naw, this calls for aggressive but well delineated, merciless bombing, policing in Europe and the world and serious serious IT/social media intervention. Not sure Hillary pointed any of the last part out. I also agree that some “intervention” needs to take place with the Saudi and other Arab sponsors of this shit. Maybe some very unpleasant intervention resulting in missing heads of royal houses? Just sayin…
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Another Holocene Human: My apologies for using FFX crap and being happy with what I see. Oh well. have a nice day anyway.
Fair Economist
@Hoodie: The Kurds would be supportive, and you could base from there. The only player not already fighting us tooth and nail that might oppose it is Turkey. But as a member of NATO, they’d have a really hard time directly opposing it.
The Iranians and Hezbollah actually might not be hostile. They could manage with a fairly secular Sunni regime in Eastern Syria. They get along pretty well with the Kurds.
beltane
Instead of a no-fly zone, it’s really a no pickup truck zone that is needed.
japa21
Unlike Iraq, a no-fly zone in Syria would guarantee losing US pilots. Syria has an active anti-aircraft ability and they would use it. Plus, Russia just happens to be flying a lot of war planes around the skies there and probably wouldn’t agree to a no-fly zone.
It is one of those terms that sounds nice but is basically nonsense in this case.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes I did, thank you.
Bobby Thomson
The no fly zone seems like sleeves off the vest, given that Daesh has no Air Force. Yeah, it reinforces a stupid narrative, but weakly.
schrodinger's cat
When is Saudi Arabia going to pay for its part in fomenting these nihilists, who kill in the name of Islam?
Taliban, ISIL, Zia in Pakistan and the list goes on.
Germy
Here’s a question: Is Israel part of the coalition? Are they doing any bombing or other military action? I haven’t heard them mentioned. Didn’t we recently provide them with many tons of armaments? Can someone provide a link?
NonyNony
@Germy: I think we mostly prefer to keep Israel out of coalitions that are bombing the crap out of Muslims. For PR reasons if nothing else.
Marc
I’d be curious to see what people who disagree with Clinton would rather see us do.
Daesh doesn’t seem like a crowd that would respond to candygrams, they’re killing a lot of people in the areas that they’ve conquered, and they’re hell bent on exporting their violence to anywhere that they can reach. I’ts hard to see at least an initial answer that doesn’t involve taking away their toys.
If your answer involves drawing moral equivalence between the US and Daesh, by the way, good luck on selling that outside of the bubble.
japa21
@Elie: Daesh is working hard to get non-Arab/Muslim countries more actively involved so they can say that it is a totally anti-Muslim crusade. It is the only thing that can bring them a sizable recruiting or , at least, more support in the native population.
To me, it is somewhat an act of desperation on their part. So I tend to agree with you, though they definitely are not toothless yet. Unfortunately, the bed-wetters and Islamophobes in the US are actually helping them more than hurting them.
Fair Economist
@Elie:
This is actually the opinion of a lot of analysts. Losing Sinjar is a major military blow; Daesh has been having setbacks in Iraq; and the attacks on the oil tankers are going to cause a lot of trouble for them. (And why haven’t we been bombing them earlier? More deliberate incompetence, I think.) The main issue is who’s going to replace them. The other Salafi rebels aren’t much of an improvement for us, and the Kurds don’t behave well enough in Sunni areas to occupy them successfully.
Germy
@NonyNony: Good point I hadn’t thought of.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: I made a huge mistake reworking this site. Why, I am an active user. If I had this chance to do over, I would not have touched this site with a ten foot pole.
The problem you have, and I have presented creative materials to clients for almost 30 years, is you have 5-7, ten max people that are very vocal. They are literally yelling and screaming to change this or that. I did listen when I thought they had a point and many things were changed.
But I am willing to bet many didn’t have the same issues they did, but they also didn’t come in the comments and yell “KEEP IT LIKE IT IS, I LIKE IT.” So the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
As I said last night the “wisdom of the crowd” is not always right.
p.a.
Wider target set= more civilian deaths, more possible IS-oids. If we do render Daesh ineffective but Assad survives, does that lead to ISIS v.2.o?
Would you prefer to grab the mamba in box 1 or the krait in box 2?
David Koch
I waiting for Baud!’s speech before coming to any conclusions
Germy
@Tommy: The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd.
Anoniminous
@Tommy:
The “wisdom of the crowd” |-> “how the hell did we end up in this mess?”
Or as Henry Ford said, “if I asked people what they wanted they would have answered a faster horse.”
Mike J
@Marc:
The answer I’ve seen most often is stand back and watch the murder from a distance. There are those who believe that if we aren’t the ones that pull the trigger, our hands are clean.
kc
NO.
Germy
Laura Rosenberger, Hillary’s foreign policy advisor.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
First, someone must work up the nerve to present the Saudis with the bill. They’ve done a lot of damage, but they’re still in a position of great economic power and religious prestige. I don’t know if much can be done about the latter, but the slowly reducing world dependence on oil and the fall in oil prices have started to reduce the former a bit.
Fair Economist
@Tommy:
I think you’ve had pretty good judgement. The rants about “unusability” were always ridiculous, but the have been a lot of improvements since the shift – comment numbers and the light gray background pop to mind. And although maybe it’s just getting experience, I find it easy to separate comments now – I don’t have to spend any mental effort figuring out who said what and what’s part of what comment. My only comment now is I wish there was a way to use some of the vast empty space on the right below the twitter feed and such. But maybe making comments wider would impair readability, so maybe not.
Ken
Hah! She said “radical Islamic terrorism” but the magic words are “radical Islamic terrorists“. It’s bad enough that she’s soft on terror, but now anything might happen – it’s like Ash saying “klatuu barada necktie” before taking The Book.
(ETA: Interesting, the <b> markup makes the text bold and blue; you have to use <strong> to just get bold.)
kc
Hillary just has zero imagination when it comes to this shit. She’s gonna fuck it up. She won’t fuck it up as bad as any of the Republicans would, but she will fuck it up.
Germy
@Anoniminous: Henry Ford should have been strangled in his crib.
Jeb should do it when he’s done with baby hitler.
David Koch
Also too: if Obama just used the bully pulpit this week in defense of Syrian refugees those spineless 47 Dems wouldn’t have voted against him. Oh, wait.
kc
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s better than the vast expanses of white. So fuck off.
Tommy
@p.a.: And there is the clear problem. I’ve read some pretty detailed analysis of our military targeting the Doctors w/o Borders hospital. We not only hit the hospital directly in a bombing raid that lasted 30+ minutes, we targeted people trying to flee because, if you believe our military, there were ISIS fighters there.
That is what an all out bombing campaign looks like.
Clearly I am not so OK with killing innocent civilians just because they are stuck there and can’t get out. But if our strategy is to just bomb the fuck out of them, and that seems to be our strategy, then this is what is going to happen again and again.
gene108
Other than personal preference of not wanting to get involved or as involved as little as possible, I do not think I find anything Hillary said to be a negative.
Whatever Obama is doing, with regards to the Middle East, is not working very well.
Maybe Hillary’s plan will work a little better.
I have a feeling the map of the Middle East maybe redrawn, like the map of the Balkans was redrawn in the 1990’s.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Germy: Word.
Germy
@kc: Balloon-Juice meet-ups must be lots of fun.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Fair Economist:
Then you don’t understand the Miltary Industral Complex – it wants Cold War 2 with an actual power that requires lots of expensive high tech equipement along with a prolonged arms race. Fighting a bunch twenty somethings armed with 1940’s era assualt rifes and machettes doesn’t require what the Miltary Industral Complex sells. If anything Syria distracts everyone from the conflict it wants with China.
Fair Economist
@Mike J:
It’s not impossible that in the long term that would actually be the best thing for the Syrians. Not likely IMO, but not impossible. But politically we can’t sit it out now. Americans won’t accept being forced to quit due to a terrorist act. Imagine the reaction here if Daesh took Kobani and massacred the inhabitants.
Starfish
@Another Holocene Human: I do not know why you do not enjoy our trendy new shade of greige other than the fact that the background up top for the balloon is white and needs to be fixed so that it is either transparent or this new trendy shade of greige.
gene108
@Tommy:
I like the new site design for the most part.
The only problem I have is the white “bold”, “italic”, “link” and “blockquote” buttons at the top of the post are set in a near white background and wash out, making it hard to see what those buttons are.
Otherwise the site runs faster and the front end changes seem somewhat minor.
I also like seeing John Cole’s Twitter feed on the side bar.
J R in WV
The blocks for formatting commands are pretty interesting now, blue fading to bright red, wow.
This whole mid-east tangle really pains me hard. Double-U and his cronies made a horrific mess in Iraq. Then helped DPRK (north korea) achieve nuclear capability after Clinton managed to keep the brakes on that for nearly a decade.
We attacked Iraq for an act of war committed and funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
It is such a tangle of enemies, cults, warlords, ancient hatreds, and outside interferences, I don’t know why anyone with a lick of common sense would expect anyone to be able to quiet things without the iron fist and the crushing boot. Like, say, the Ottoman Empire, or Joe Stalin. I don’t think Putin can afford the hobby. I don’t think we can pull it off either. Too bloody.
Cruz night be able to pacify the mid-east, by literally turning large parts of it into green glass that glow at night. I hope we don’t get to try that out. I hear Vancouver, BC is a nice place to live, if Cruz gets elected. FSM forbid!
Germy
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): If we can talk Jeb into traveling back in time and strangling grandpa Prescott we can kill multiple birds with one stone.
Fair Economist
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
Except they *are* selling the high tech drones and surveillance equipment and overpriced vehicles (for Deash to commandeer). They’re making lots of money from the fight against insurgents with 1940’s era equipment (except not entirely – they now have a lot of ours). And there’s no risk of a real danger to the US or their retirements fighting these guys. As much as they endanger the Syrians, they’re no serious danger to us. The worst outcome for us is 102 mass shootings a year rather than 100. A neoCold War with China? That’s actually dangerous.
beltane
@gene108: A map redraw is inevitable. I also think we need to be realistic in acknowledging the limits of what we can achieve. Maintaining an extensive military presence on the ground for a period of 50-100 years would likely lead to peace of a sort. It would also require re-institution of the draft and considerable diversion of resources to the military.
gene108
@Hoodie:
Might help reduce the amount of ordinance Assad can drop on his own people, in areas where he has lost some control or feels are supporting rebel forces.
Amir Khalid
@kc:
How are you so sure she will? Is it just a general distrust of her?
BobS
A no-fly zone is a great fucking idea — who isn’t anxious for a confrontation with the Russians? Every time she opens that bellicose mouth of hers I’m less inclined to vote for her next November when she’s the inevitable (lesser-of-two-lessers) Democratic candidate.
By the way, interesting stuff by and about two good friends of this blog Glenn Greenwald and Vladamir Putin
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
Getting the old behavior when using the back button working would be a big advance, also, too.
Cermet
@Tommy: Why in the hell do people believe that we want to defeat ISIL? The Saudi’s damn well don’t want us too and that is that. Face reality – we broke it and sure as hell can’t fix it (thank you ass wipe Nader and all those who said there is no difference between Gore and bush wack – the many tens of thousands of Middle East dead salute you); AGW will make it worse (as will this pumping of Saudi oil to drive the price down) and sure as hell will exhaust our selves financially long before we make a dent in all the “terrorist” movements that will come into being over the next 15 years as cheap liquid oil starts to fail. People need to learn other than military solutions if we are to survive without bankruptcy … but then the middle class is screwed regardless.
Germy
@Roger Moore: Tommy isn’t working on the blog anymore. He finished his part of the work, and now Cole and Alain are wrapping up.
JMG
The no-fly zone idea has already been rendered inoperative by the active cooperation of the French and Russian militaries this week. What are we gonna do, shoot down French planes? Throw that out, and Clinton’s plan is pretty much what we’re already doing. There aren’t many other viable options. Should a Republican win in 2016, the new President will run up against the same realities, reality one being that the large ground force required to “win” over ISIS would be very popular for about six weeks and the end of his administration thereafter.
beltane
@Tommy: I had no problems with the site before the redesign and I have no problems with it now.
Hoodie
@gene108:
The whole calculus has changed in the space of a couple of weeks because ISIS has changed its MO. The change of the MO has brought some more seriousness on the part of the Russians, the French and the Turks (and probably some others). Those assholes were pretty content to sit back and/or pursue their own agendas (Russians propping up Assad, Turks killing Kurds). The US and the Kurds were making progress, everyone else was standing on the sidelines or fucking up the program.
Now, if you want to say Hillary’s plan is better because she’s the one running for office and she needs to look tough for tactical political reasons, ok. But realize that’s mostly bullshit, and she’s basically saying do what Obama’s been doing, just do it faster because there was a terror attack in Paris, without any particular plan for obtaining the additional speed.
Ben Cisco
OT: That guy babysitting me on TV totally speaks for me, except when he doesn’t.
Ben Carson Distances Himself From Longtime Ally Armstrong Williams
Whatta maroon.
MomSense
@Germy:
I preferred the blue bold and the white background!
We all have spent the past couple weeks arguing about a website. Imagine if we had to deal with to depose or not to depose a dictator.
Germy
@Ben Cisco:
He’s a maniac being advised by maniacs.
Germy
@MomSense: I’m just glad it isn’t white text on a black background. Many places still use that template. And I die a little inside each time I encounter one.
MomSense
@Hoodie:
Daesh has lost a lot of territory recently which may or may not have anything to do with why they decided to branch out to European targets.
Americans find it hard to accept that we cannot make the world bend to our will as fast and neat as we expect.
Elie
@gene108:
I don’t think that you can say what Obama is doing is not “working”. Okay. If your measure of working is that Daesh is completely gone, there are no attacks outside of the ME and there are decreasing or returning refugees and Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lybia, Nigeria, are all terrorist free and building their economies again — well you are right — his policy is a failure if that is your measure. Whatever “plan” or approach is used, can we really expect that there will be no attacks, no setbacks of any kind? Did he have as a charge to fix the entire mess of ME sunni/shia and tribal factionalism that causes constant low scale conflict underneath this Daesh stuff? Well, no. How can we get the eff out of the ME when we have no margin for accepting that one of the consequences will have to be bearing witness to ongoing suffering that we cannot do that much about but at least we can stop adding our shit to it?
I do not know what the answer is for you, but I know what I believe. Its going as well as can be expected for a long term war of attrition …
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MomSense: The dictator would be somewhat amused, and not the least bit concerned, I’d imagine.
MomSense
@Germy:
I’ve stayed out of the arguments. It works much better for me now, so I’m happy.
beltane
@gene108: Our European allies are not going to support a no-fly zone that weakens Assad and indirectly helps Daesh. In fact, they are increasingly amenable to Assad.
scav
@MomSense: Honestly, it is also somewhat likely that arguing about web-design is partially a sublimation for the sheer utter uselessness of trying to fix this chillingly scary sea of neighbors and representatives we’ve got rampaging loose in a dangerous international situation. At least there’s some possibility of getting a site that doesn’t crash every half hour or so. I’ve no expectation of installing brains, hearts or basic humanity in a good chunk of citizens.
Ben Cisco
@Germy:
Maniacally!
David Koch
@gene108:
Not true at all. The guided air strikes have worked. Dash has lost 20% of their territory, just last week they lost a major supply route and Jihad John is dust. The reason they’ve turned to bombing foreigners is out of desperation – their control is shrinking. 60 minutes did an extensive segment on the effectiveness of the targeting. Gains would be even greater but Dash’s command uses human shields, making decapitation difficult. Also the majority of indigenous syrians are sunni and they are stubbornly focused on ousting the shia minority Assad than fighting other sunnis like Dash.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense: Blue bold has a fundamental problem, which is that in the visual shorthand that is nearly universal on the Web, some blue (or otherwise colored, but more often than not, blue) text in the middle of a paragraph indicates a link.
In fact, blue is also what this site uses for links, so if you make a link with bold text, it looked exactly like a non-link with bold text, until you mouse over it. I found myself constantly mousing over bold text to see what it linked to.
I don’t really care about white vs. light gray backgrounds, except that images with non-transparent backgrounds need to be updated for consistency with whatever they go with.
Doug R
I think the no fly zone is more aimed at Assad and any Russian air support attacking free Syrian fighters and any refugees that haven’t escaped yet.
Amir Khalid
@Ken:
Let’s see. bold strong
Yep, you’re right.
David Koch
@Germy: his full name is Robert Dees Nutz
Germy
@Ben Cisco: Cue maniacal laughter.
Germy
@David Koch: ok, that made me laugh. I’d forgotten about his insurgency.
Germy
blue black
BobS
@David Koch: And those guided airstrikes aren’t related to this or this.
p.a.
I think the site needs orange. Int’l orange.
David Koch
Tommy
@David Koch:
That is a very good question which I don’t have an answer for.
MomSense
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
If an amused dictator is a more benevolent dictator, I’m happy to sacrifice our blog arguments for the cause.
MomSense
@p.a.:
It is hunting season after all.
Southern Beale
I heard part of the speech on the radio, I liked what I heard. Agree that the “arming moderates” thing is BS. Probably pandering to the MIC crowd there — the Raytheon PACs. Whatevs. Arming the other side always works so well for us, doesn’t it? /sarcasm
Meanwhile my piece of shit, DINO Blue Dog Democrat congressvarmint voted for the SAFE Act. I’m so over his pandering BS.
Mary G
Cole said when he proposed this website redo that the previous designers refused to have anything more to do with it. Now I know why.
As to the speech, I haven’t read it yet, but being a dedicated fan of Daniel Larison, Juan Cole, and Dan Drezner, I think the no-fly zone is a bad sign. Getting on the Saudis’ case is fantastic. They have been dicking around making a terrible humanitarian crisis in Yemen while probably passing money and arms to ISIS under the table and are more responsible than we are at this point for the mess in the Middle East. I wish we would quit selling arms to anybody, including Israel, and putting the money towards refugee relief.
Brachiator
Unless we stop all operations against ISIS, they will target us for attack. “Sticking our noses in further does not mean much.”
Both Obama and Clinton face similar challenges in attempting to counter ISIS. I keep hearing media stories about Daesh/ISIS/ISIL as an entity, but nothing about who its leaders are. You cannot “defeat” ISIS if you do not know who its commanders are, and you cannot defeat ISIS without a strong local group leading local forces. Right now, the only reliable fighters are the Kurds, but they are distrusted by, and rightfully distrustful of, any Muslim allies.
And there is this, from a recent Washington Post story, about ISIS leadership (The hidden hand behind the Islamic State militants? Saddam Hussein’s).
I don’t know who these people are, or how connected they are with other governments and factions in the Middle East. Nor do I think that we can be sure that their supposed goals of a pure caliphate are genuine. And Western intelligence sources (not just the US agencies) seem to have been successfully stymied in understanding this group. It is very difficult to deal with (including peaceful negociation) an opponent you do not understand.
That former Iraqi officers are part of ISIS should also counter any arguments that we could have maintained the Iraqi Army as part of the Bush/Cheney folly, or found them to be a reliable. But it also leads me to be deeply suspicious about the prospects of identifying and neutralizing ISIS command.
Also, Bill Clinton never demonstrated much depth in dealing with foreign despots (although he was great with foreign allies), and I think that HRC is weak here as well. However, the Republicans are all fools. And Obama and the West are being undermined by Putin, which adds to the chaos.
I don’t think anyone knows what to do. But it is also clear that ISIS now publicly has declared its intentions of harming the West in retaliation. They appear to be intent on striking back even if we cut back on military operations. And France and Russia seem equally intent on pulling the West deeper into the conflict.
Mike J
@Matt McIrvin:
I hope in addition to fixing strong/bold/etc, they check up on other tags. H3 used to be blue and people would act pissy when you complained it looked like a link.
Mary G
@Southern Beale: Excellent rant on your blog. I would have left a comment there, but FYWP.
David Koch
@Brachiator: I’ve read many credible sources stating Bill Belichick is running Dash.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Ken
@Ben Cisco:
Wait, are we talking about Carson, Assad, Trump, or the website CSS author?
Bill
More bombs: Not so awesome. Lots of innocent deaths this way and the foundation for the next ISIS.
No Fly Zone: For what? That advanced ISIS Air Force.
Arming Opposition: I look forward to fighting whoever it is we are handing weapons to in five years.
Accepting Refugees: Outstanding!
Ken
@David Koch:
We could make a desert and call it peace. In fact according to some current candidates for President, we should do that.
(ETA: Interesting, <I> does nothing; you have to use <em> for italics.)
A guy
Hillary can’t handle comedians at laugh factory and she expects us to believe she can handle ISIS without getting an ambassador killed?
Yutsano
@Fair Economist:
Okay here is where I stop taking you seriously. Do you know anything about internal affairs in Iran? Their northwestern corner is majority Kurd. if Kurdistan gets declared as a state (beyond the sutonomus region we forced them into when we broke Iraq) that part of Iran will be clamoring to join up with their countrymen. Iran actually does have its own small Kurdish insurgency. Iran does not want an independent Kurdistan for the same reason Syria and Turkey don’t. No one likes giving up land.
Keith G
Distance form Obama may not be a bad thing. Our current President has a very big fact working on his behalf:
He will not be responsible for the current shit show much longer.
Other persons, specifically Hillary have a need to conceive of future-facing policies that walk a fine line. First, actions that move all the current players (many who are just not nice folks) with all their conflicting needs closer to cooperation – or at least just not being a pain. And two, actions that can pull a large enough block of the American public along with her.
If she fails to do the second part, the first will be hollowed out to the point of being useless as she is going to need to cobble some type of consensus from the Congress.
To have a chance of doing this, Clintonian triangulation, she will of necessity have to move away from Obama’s behaviors in this arena.
DCF
Senator Bernie Sanders also gave a speech this afternoon, centered on the legacy of FDR and the challenges posed by the ISIS organization:
Needless to say, the pervasive (entropic?) ‘disaster porn’ on the major cable networks (including MSNBC, the ‘new’ CNN) precluded live coverage of the speech.
The introduction/speech begins at 1:07:00….
Keith G
@David Koch:
Silly
Actually, Obama has been Bully Pulpiting quite a lot in the last year and to generally good effect. Not all efforts on his part are equal, and also not all policy debates are amenable to that type of influence.
Southern Beale
@Mary G:
Gah. Sorry.
Hoodie
@Keith G: No kidding, that’s obviously what she’s doing and I imagine Obama doesn’t really care. However, she hasn’t come up with anything new, and some of her proposals, like a no fly zone, are grandstanding nonsense and undermine whatever benefit she might get from triangulating. This isn’t putting fucking v-chips in televisions or similar triangulation stuff Bill did. She is not going to get any consensus from Congress except one that she be impeached before she takes the oath of office. Democrats live or die based on whether Obama is viewed as a success or failure, Hillary has an insufficient base of her own to warrant moving away from him. Honestly, I kind of wish Joe Biden had stayed in, he might have had enough sense to stay the fucking course, but Democrats can’t even stick together on the refugee issue, so I am very pessimistic they will be able to weather this. The only thing saving our asses right now is that Obama doesn’t have to give a shit and can keep trying to pull off a miracle. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this will be overshadowed by some blonde coed disappearance.
Peale
@Southern Beale: t some point, liberals need to come up with better counter arguments against people who scare people shitless after attacks than things like “more people die in car accidents” or “more people die in gun fights” or “more people have been killed by their spouses.”
Gin & Tonic
@Ken: You’re running up against a W3C “standard”, where they’ve been sort-of trying to deprecate the i tag for some time. The em is supposed to mean “emphasis”, which is not universally done by italicizing.
A guy
Hillary take naps mid morning and is often confused according to huma!!! She’s frickin old and can’t do the job. And she’s a woman!
Peale
@Hoodie: Or, sometime in the next year, there has to be a clearer sign that ISIS is being defeated. If your clear sign is “they’re attacking Paris now, they must be weak”, I don’t think people are going to accept your success metrics.
“Yay! A bunch of terrorists beheaded only 3 visitors to the Thanksgiving parade! It won’t be long now before Mosul is back out of ISIS hands.”
Gin & Tonic
@Peale: sometime in the next year, there has to be a clearer sign that ISIS is being defeated.
Does there also have to be a clear sign that Boko Haram is being defeated? If not, why not? They’ve killed more innocent people than Daesh has.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
The Saudi wealth is taking a huge hit from the current low international price of crude oil. According to Cost of Oil Production by Country the Saudi break even price for oil is $93.10 compared to a current Brent Crude price of $44 – so they’re losing money on every barrel they pump. I recall seeing higher break even prices for the Saudi production, over $105 IIRC. These are guesses, as their actual cost of production is a carefully guarded state secret. Or Royal secret in their case, I guess.
But they aren’t making money hand over fist, and won’t for years unless both world demand rises and world production falls. Russia is also hurting from the low oil price, and a huge cut in production somewhere, anywhere would benefit Putin and the rest of the Russian ownership class hugely.
If the Saudis, for example, couldn’t get their oil out of the Gulf, the world price of oil would rise quickly, and the Russians, who pipeline their oil to Europe, would be economically healed as if by magic.
So the strategic market position of our “ally” the Saudi Royal family, and that of the Russian bear are not synchronized at all.
From the CIA World Factbook, as of 2013 estimates:
The oil production of the Saudis is 11.6 million barrels/day
The oil production of the USA is 11.3 million barrels/day
The oil production of the Russians is 10.0 million barrels/day
The next largest production is from China and Canada at 4 million/day, followed by Iran and Iraq at 3 million/day
Iran’s break-even price is really high, at about $136! Iraq is also high at $116. So a lot of countries involved with Daesh are hurting for oil profits, like all of them. I can’t help but think that is a key part of this puzzle, along with the tribal and religious conflicts.
It is so complex that the current losses on oil production, while clearly a key issue, I don’t have a clue where it fits, what it might unlock, or how.
Heliopause
I found this YouTube which handily compresses the proposals of Hillary Clinton and all the other candidates into one brief video.
Keith G
@Hoodie:
There are, and will be, no miracles possible. What there will be is many years of work equivalent to pounding rocks in a Roman quarry. I do not think that any honest person can say they understand a workable process that will get to a solution because of all the moving parts involved and all the highly self-interested participants. If president, HRC may find herself needing to try a variety of approaches. That is one reason why I am not too hung up on her vocabulary right now.
It is gonna change.
I think it’s likely that similar to our experience during the Cold War, we may find some of the actions taken for our eventual success a bit…unappealing. Although, some things may move from unappealing to okay. One thinks the arguments against Obama’s drone war has lost some of it’s potency, at least for a bit.
No matter whose ideas are in the lead, it will be a tough road.
Brachiator
RE: I’ve read many credible sources stating Bill Belichick is running Dash.
No, Belichick is currently overseeing the changes to this website.
Keith G
Wow. The whole commenting design and process just changed in mid thread.
Interesting.
Brachiator
RE: Not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Nope.
And who’s running ISIS in Libya?
Brachiator
RE: Iran does not want an independent Kurdistan for the same reason Syria and Turkey don’t. No one likes giving up land.
If ISIS succeeds, wouldn’t an autonomous Iran, Syria and Turkey be subsumed into a new caliphate? What status quo should the Kurds be respecting?
Sherparick
@David Koch: He just is not @Brachiator: ISIS is the just the latest congregation to house Sunni and post-Saddamist discontent in Syria, Iraq, and the Muslim diaspora. If it is broken up, and the same combination of Sunni Arab resentment of an Alawite Government in Syria and Shiite Government in Baghdad, along with Saudi, Kuwaiti, & UAE fury with Iran and the Shia, will mean another group. The Saudis and Kuwaitis made a bundle selling to both the Americans and the insurgents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insurgency_%282003%E2%80%9306%29
So we have at least another 15 years of war to look forward to, with occasional terrorist attacks in Europe and America.
beltane
@Keith G: Thank goodness it just changed back. Paged formats are annoying.
schrodinger's cat
@Keith G: ,@beltane:If you say anything you are just a squeaky wheel, the silent majority loves the redesign.
Waysel
Yes. Startling. ‘Where’s my damn comment numbers?’
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
This is not the same thing as an effective moderate government or an effective moderate fighting force. These are just people fleeing oppression.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think I’ve seen 3 or 4 new re-designs just this afternoon.
The developers have my sympathies.
Peale
@Gin & Tonic: Yes or no. For better or worse, people associate ISIS with the group that’s in Syria and not Libya or Pakistan or Tunisia or Nigeria or the Philippines or Afghanistan or whomever is subscribing to their franchise at the moment. Like it or not, I don’t think “We’ve cut off their supply lines to most of Mosul” is going to convince people that there’s a lot of activity. “We destroyed a bunch of the trucks the Iraqi army left behind.” “We’ve hit their barracks so often that they now need to sleep outside in the cold.” “They only control the roads to the airport, but not the airport itself.” “The oilfields in Syria were out of operation for a week this time before Turkey sent them the parts they needed to fix em up again.” – A lot of what has been passing as “Victories” make sense to military planners, but they actually sound kind of things one puts in a year end performance review when the major project has been delayed.
If the group of thugs that is occupying parts of Syria and Iraq has only killed 7,000 this year, I guess we should commend them for their restraint and move on.
Brachiator
@Sherparick: From the WaPo story:
In other words, there are tons of theories about who is who and what it what.
Nobody really has a handle on what this means or what to do about it, either or 15 years from now.
Fair Economist
@J R in WV:
Either the site is confused or you’re misinterpreting it. That’s not the cost for Saudis to pump the oil, that’s the cost needed for their government budget to balance. Their cost to pump is very low – below $20 IIRC. It’s not that they’re losing money pumping, it’s that they’re not making enough to buy Rolls-Royces for the princelings and such. Right now they are drawing down their extensive foreign reserves. They can do this for years, but there is a limit, and of course there are long term consequences for depleting the trust fund since eventually the oil funds will run out.
Edit: yes, if you look on the site the Saudi marginal cost for production is actually only $3 per barrel. Yes, three dollars.
Cervantes
RE: Nope.
Why not?
mclaren
So Hillary is proposing to solve the middle east’s problems by burning more brown babies.
Good to know.
Say hello to George W. Bush’s third term.
Sam
The Sunnis need an alternative to Isil. The only one that worked before is to empower the tribes in that area. A long slog, and at the end a new polity, bit the only way to get rid of Isil.
mclaren
@Fair Economist:
Also the Democratic establishment’s political interest (they look tough on defense, get to pass more spending bills with pork in their districts/states), also the Republican establishment’s political interest (see above), also the U.S. tech industry (they get unlimited blank checks to spend money like drunken sailors of superweapons that don’t work), also the U.S. “national security” deep state’s political and financial interest (DHS, NRO, CIA, TSA, NSA, a whole alphabet soup of agencies that waste trillions of dollars per year on worthless junk like airport screenings that don’t work, sigint that can’t detect threats, giant multibillion-dollar surveillance satellites that can’t detect insurgents, drone fleets that bomb wedding parties by mistake).
Basically, war is now the health of the American state.
Source: “War is a Racket,” Brigadier General Smedley Butler.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bill: Turkey was calling for a no-fly zone in August and earlier. What seemed to be behind it was to prevent the Kurds from having more towns and strategic positions along the Turkey border, but it was framed in terms of humanitarian reasons.
HRC called for one at the first debate, or earlier.
I haven’t seen or heard Clinton’s remarks today yet. But we should be very careful about taking simple policy statements about the tragic and very complex situation in Syria and Iraq and Kurdistan at face value. There’s lots of stuff going on. I hope that Clinton isn’t simply triangulating here – trying to grab some Republican screaming about “do something” to appear reasonable and somehow “different” from Obama without thinking about the consequences.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: Spiegel says that Mr. Baghdad is a puppet:
Bakr was the (almost invisible to the rest of the world) power behind the Daesh throne, before he was killed…
Cheers,
Scott.
Donut
@Germy:
Thing is, if you’ve ever had a kindergartner in your life, you absolutely KNOW that the need for such a sign is essential.