President's speech on ISIL- Full text here. Analysis welcome!

[row]

i thought berrie was going to promote the be-headings as a teachable moment similar to the allahu akbar work-place violence at Fort Hood. leftists would have bought it in a second, and our preznit coulda saved himself a war/conflict/kinetic action/whatever and not tarnished his well deserved noble peace prize.

sorta ot, but anyone got an idea how our 5 million soon to be new citizens will vote when they get the chance? wonder if they support armed conflict? if so, support with or without boots? or both? neither?

 

[MongGrel]

Article II lists the powers of the President. There is nothing there allowing a President to go to war without the direction of Congress.

Tell that to Dubya and several I won't backtrack and bother listing.

 

[MongGrel]

Re: The speech:

I'll give him some style points. He didn't stutter etc.

As to the content; this was a speech made necessary for his own political purposes by his recent blunder in admitting he had no strategy for ISIS. So, he had to tell us his strategy.

I don't find much strategy in his strategy speech. But of course one shouldn't be explaining their strategy in public. Informing one's enemies of their strategy is stupid for obvious reasons.

It was notably 'light' on content in other areas as well. E.g., who is in this so-called "broad coalition" and what will be their roles? (From what I've heard there are less than 10 countries currently in this so-called broad coalition and their roles are unknown. I.e., will they fight or just send money and stand on the sidelines with pom-poms?)

The strategy as we know it is to bomb ISIS from the air with no 'boots on the ground. Never mind that we do have boots on the ground. Obama seems the only person who thinks this will be successful. Many others believe troops are necessary.

Overall, I think this is 'too little, too late'. Air support etc before ISIS took control of large portions of Iraq may have been much effective. A standard case of 'a stitch in time saves 9' etc. Too late now.

More along the lines of 'too late' is arming the Syrian rebels. At the outset it seemed murky as best as to who should have been armed. And it looks much more questionable now. It's not hard not imagine that somewhere down the road we'll be fighting against our own weaponry.

Lately I'm thinking we (some sort of coalition) should kill or drive ISIS out of Iraq and right back into Syria and then seal it off containing the problem to Syria. They can kill each other there. But this requires ground troops so it won't happen while Obama is in office unless his hand is forced (and it may be before his term is up).

Fern

I kinda like the stopping and thinking about what you're actually gonna do approach.

Seems to have been actually working so far pretty well, ISIL might get a real big huge surprise one night in the near future.

 

[unokitty]

According to the LA Times, we have already spent $1.2 trillion dollars on the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first five weeks of US airstrikes in northern Iraq have cost $262.5 million. Obama has personally lobbied Congress to appropriate $500 million to help train and arm Syrian rebels at camps in Saudi Arabia.

It doesn't seem reasonable to me to think that spending an additional few billion dollars now will succeed when we have already spent $1.2 trillion dollars and failed.

Haven't we seen the President's airstrikes but no boots on the ground philosophy before? Tell me, how did that work out for the Libyan people?

Between '65 and '73, the US dropped 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam. Tell me, who won that war?

We already have over 5,000 Americans KIA in Afganistan and Iraq. And I don't see any of the hawks here volunteering to serve.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, my opinion is that sending a few hundred 'advisors' and authorizing a few billion in airstrikes isn't likely to produce a victory in Iraq now.

The President hasn't been able to persuade Iraq to sign the status of forces agreement, the President hasn't even been able to persuade other American political parties that he has a vision that will produce a victory. Playing whack a mole with terrorists until you run out of money isn't a strategy.

In war, there is no silver medal.

No doubt that ISIS are bad guys. But there are lots of bad guys out there. And we have already spent over 5,000 lives and $1.2 trillion dollars going after bad guys in Iraq.

If what we have already spent isn't enough, then that isn't enough. I'm not willing to support spending another 10 years, spending another $1.2 trillion dollars and getting another 5,000 Americans killed.

Time to bring the boys home. All of Iraq, to me, isn't worth the blood of one more American soldier or pilot.

Uno
Sentry Dog Handler
US Army 69-71

 

[Jaskalas]

Unokitty, that's why it makes logical sense to provide support to local "players". Instead of us returning on ground we build up an alliance of willing partners who isolate and slowly advance on ISIS, then victory can be achieved.

We need to be in the air so when a convoy moves in ISIS territory we blow it up. So that they cannot muster a military response to Iraqi or Syrian armies.

Now we just have to convince our dip !@#$ leaders that Syrian terrorists are not our allies. That we're making things worse if we don't support Assad. I suppose I actually have to suggest Congress oppose this action until we correct our Syrian policy...

 

[shabby]

According to the LA Times, we have already spent $1.2 trillion dollars on the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Didn't most of that money go into the military contractor economy? We're creating jobs...

 

[Angry Irishman]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/barack-obama-islamicstatestrategyspeech.html