I will never vote for anyone who trusted Bush to wage war but refuses to trust Obama to wage peace.

[geek tragedy]

I don't care what their position is on guns, or single payer, or the TPP, or free ice cream on sundays, or banning Nickelback.

The people who voted for Bush's war, and are now lining up to torpedo Obama's peace, precisely because they want another war, are beneath contempt as human beings. They cited the need to "trust the President" when it was an idiot Republican who wanted a war, but now that it's an intelligent Democrat who wants to pursue diplomacy and peace, they all of a sudden are all about not trusting the President, but rather wanting to blow up diplomacy so they can get another war.

Republicans, Democrats, no difference if they behave this way.

[Kelvin Mace]

1. This Obama who is waging peace

is he the same Obama who is about to ratchet up the war with ISIS and has plans to launch massive attacks to drive them out of a 25x60 mile area?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/war-on-isis-enters-new-phase-with-turkey-base-492247619637

Because if it is, I have seen this movie several time before and it ends badly for us.

It doesn't really help the cause of peace for Obama to strike a deal with the Iranians, then get into a massive fight against ISIS while getting in between Turkey and the Kurds, who will then draw Iran into the fray.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-conflict-with-kurds-was-approving-air-strikes-against-the-pkk-americas-worst-error-in-the-middle-east-since-the-iraq-war-10417381.html

I agree with you on not supporting war mongers, but I am afraid that Obama doesn't make the cut.

[geek tragedy]

2. there's middle ground between warmongering and pacificism.

There's no credible "leave ISIS alone" scenario. ISIS needs to be crushed, and completely removed from power everywhere, otherwise our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be fighting them all over the world.

The Turks have behaved irresponsibly, because Erdogan.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. I don't see how we win other than not to play

Attacking their stronghold will just kill more civilians than "terrorists", while the Kurds and Turks use it as an excuse to kill each other. Great recruiting tool for ISIS, with the risk of dragging Iran into it as well.

"ISIS needs to be crushed, and completely removed from power everywhere, otherwise our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be fighting them all over the world."

Yeah, this tactic has worked so well in the past.

You can't talk about peace in one sentence and then advocate the "crushing" of a subset of people who are only pissed off because we stuck our nose where it didn't belong 10+ years ago.

ISIS is the direct result of the illegal American invasion of Iraq. If we "crush and remove them, they will simply be replaced by another group, just as dedicated, while millions die horribly. Rinse and repeat.

[geek tragedy]

5. ISIS is not an anti-imperialist movement. They arose AFTER we left the region.

They are not "only pissed off because we stuck our nose where it didn't belong."

They are fanatical fundamentalists and imperialists. They are inflicting MASSIVE damage on civilians in the area, mostly Muslim.

They're so bad the US and Iran are cooperating to fight them.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. Again, had we NOT invaded Iraq

(a war crime) they most probably would not exist.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq

Now we are going to launch a de facto invasion of Syria and get mired down in another hornet's nest of sectarianism.

The enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend. You would think that after about a century of this tactic the U.S. would have finally figured out it NEVER works in the long run.

Try and remember that we are responsible for The Shah and Saddam Hussein being in power. We backed the Shah while he butchered his own people, as we did Saddam. When the Shah was overthrown, we gave Saddam the ingredients for chemical weapons and looked the other way while Saddam committed war crimes. When Kuwait got in a dispute with Iraq, we turned on Saddam and declared him an enemy. Then we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq for a terrorist attack carried out by mostly Saudi nationals. We then propped up the corrupt regime of Pakistan with money and weapons, while they sold nuclear tech to North Korea and Iran, while at the same turning a blind eye to Osama bin Laden hiding in their back yard.

And the band plays on...

[geek tragedy]

8. there are downsides for actions taken, and for those not taken.

we're not invading Syria.

We're not sending in our own troops.

This is Turkey's backyard, they can provide the troops to secure that area.

We can't un-invade Iraq. What's been unleashed there is not going to go away if we just look away.

[Kelvin Mace]

16. There is the old saying

when you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING.

No matter what the administration claims, we WILL be involved in Syria. It starts out with advisers and observers, then air strikes and artillery strikes, then recon missions, then recon in force, then incursions and pretty soon we are all in.

The best thing the U.S. can do is get the hell out of the Middle East and stay out.The Iraq/Afghan war is now the longest war in U.S. history and the longer we hang around, the more likely we will do something stupid like pick a fight with Iran. A war with Iran ends one of two ways: A decade of war, trillions wasted and millions of dead, and us losing. Or in a nuclear war that brings in the Russia, China, Pakistan and India, and we lose.

[geek tragedy]

17. remember that the entire point of this thread, before it became about how awful Obama is,

was that we need to avoid a war with Iran.

[Kelvin Mace]

19. No arguments here!

But part of avoiding war with Iran would be getting out from under foot. The longer we are there, the more tempting a target we are to extremists who don't like us. The region is aflame with sectarian violence, and pasty-assed white guys slathering on gasoline-based sun tan lotion is not going to help matters.

[geek tragedy]

20. my tendencies are towards isolationism when it comes to military matters.

However, I don't think the US can say to the people of Iraq "yeah, ISIS is totally our fault, but not our problem."

Should we get mixed up with Yemen, Syria, Libya? No.

But, ISIS, especially with regard to western Iraq, I would say we do have an obligation to deal with that.

We're cooperating with Iran on ISIS (Israel and the Saudis are on the other side of that conflict).

Once ISIS gets dispatched, pull up stakes and get the f@ck out for sure.

[Kelvin Mace]

23. And we want to be in a fight that has SA and Israel against us?

And us in an alliance with Iran?

How many ways can that go horribly, disastrously wrong?

Who decides that ISIS is "dispatched"? We haven't finished with Al Qaeda yet and we're starting another fight?

[geek tragedy]

24. We're not allied with Iran, we have a common interest with Iran.

If you want to see how horribly wrong things can really go, ask the infidel tribes that the ISIS monsters have conquered.

[Kelvin Mace]

27. And we will defeat the monsters by being monsters ourselves?

Again, we have committed war crimes. How are we better than them other than we have a better PR team? Is cutting off someone's head on video worse than burning people alive with white phosphorus in the dark of night and denying we use "chemical weapons"?

[geek tragedy]

28. I am not interested in proclaiming us better than anyone, at the end of the day.

What matters is what we do, or don't do, and what the consequences are of action and of inaction.

[Kelvin Mace]

32. The consequence of action

is we fan the flames of sectarian and regional wars that will inevitably spread and kill ten of millions, possibly billions. Inaction means the war stays local, the locals deal with it, and a hundreds of thousands or millions die.

Both are bad decisions, but both could have been avoided had we stayed out of it in the first place. People insisted back in the day that we HAD to back the Shah, or back Saddam, or back the Mujahadeem to prevent a great evil. And in so doing we created evils orders of magnitude worse.

[geek tragedy]

34. the consequence of doing something other than nothing is millions dead?

That's a pretty tall jump on pretty short evidence

"if we stayed out of it in the first place"

but we didn't, and we can't live in the world where we did

[Kelvin Mace]

39. but we didn't, and we can't live in the world where we did

Correct, but we can refuse to pour gasoline on the fire.

[J_J_]

10. +10000

nt

[Admiral Loinpresser]

11. But avoiding a nuclear Iran is a good thing, wouldn't you agree? n/t

[Kelvin Mace]

18. Absolutely!

And the best way to avoid provoking the Iranians is not hanging around and getting into the middle of yet another sectarian blood bath we cannot win.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

30. +1 n/t

[WDIM]

4. Obama is just as complicit to the war profiteers as any of them.

He is proposing increasing defense spending. His drone war in the middle east while keeping our soldiers out of harms way (which is good) is killing civilians and creating more radicals to fight us. The military industrial complex is alive and well and racking in huge profits of death. Waging peace does not include dropping bombs.

[Kelvin Mace]

7. People need to remember that murder is murder

even when "our guy" does it.

[geek tragedy]

9. killing members of ISIS is 'murder?' nt

[WDIM]

12. Killing civilians is even as collateral damage.

I know many have the mindset that those things happen in war and thats just the way it is. Many believe there are acceptable levels of civilian casualties. That is wrong. But we choose to wage this war. Rejecting violence amd commiting to nonviolence is the way to peace. The more we get sucked into regional disputes the worse it gets.

The people of the middle east must solve their own problems. The US needs to withdraw all troops and all weapons we have created from the world. We need to declare peace and vow to live as the greatest teachers have all taught us to live in Nonviolence, compassion, and love.

[geek tragedy]

13. So, Pacificism will defeat ISIS? nt

[WDIM]

14. The people of that region must defeat their extremist

Just as if we had roaming bands of mass murderers in our country the people of this country would be working to defeat them.

The US disengaging from that region would end one the recruiting tools and justification for these madmen and that is the fight against what is seen as an imperialistic external force manipulating their governments and their way of life.

We need to make the statement: through peace brotherhood and love we reject your violence and refuse to be a part of it. We recognize the free will of people to live as they chose and the will of the people to live in peace will over come the wicked and their violent ways.

[Kelvin Mace]

21. So we are believing everything our government tells us again

about who the bad guys are? How did that work out last time? I believe you called it "believing Bush"

"Hey, he is with ISIS, it's okay to kill him."

"What about that wedding party?"

"Oh, they are support staff, trust us."

Name one person in your life who can hand you a gun, point to a stranger and say "He is a bad man. Kill him", and for whom you will pull the trigger, no hesitation, no question. If you can't, then why would you do so on behalf of a total stranger who is a politician, a profession of known liars? Better still, why would you expect people you don't know, to kill other people you don't know on the word of the same known liars, just because the known liars claim that "national security" is at stake?

You know if France had invaded the U.S. in 2001 to take out the Bush administration for their illegal coup of the U.S. government and killed my family in the process, the fact that I agreed with their intentions wouldn't make a damned bit of difference to me. I would be hunting French soldiers and would kill everyone of them I could find. I would be a "terrorist" as far as the French were concerned.

This country is guilty of war crimes. Of murder, torture, and waging an illegal war of aggression. How the hell do we have the moral right to pass judgement on other people while Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al are outside of a prison?

[geek tragedy]

22. Is the US government the only entity descrbing the atrocities committed by ISIS?

I think for myself, and don't rely on what the government tells me. One didn't need to disbelieve the accounts of Saddam's atrocities in order to oppose the invasion.


On the other hand, if we simply assume that the government is lying about everything, that leads us to Rand Paul's world, not that of Bernie Sanders.

[Kelvin Mace]

25. No, my point is we have ZERO moral authority

to lecture ANYONE on morality, never mind wage war against them. Our government has a LONG history of lying us into wars. How many wars must they lie us into before we step back and say "ENOUGH!".

I don't assume the government is lying about "everything", just anything where they use words like "national security" "WMD", "terrorist", and other such provocative terms. Since when are the warders of Abu Ghraib the people who get to pass judgement on "atrocities"?

When this country's government can go a single year without murdering a single innocent person, then maybe I will entertain discussion about its fitness to sit in judgement of other nations.

Oh, and just so you know where I stand: Fuck Rand Paul and everyone like him!

[geek tragedy]

26. I don't care about moral authority. Means nothing to me.

Moral authority isn't going to save people from genocide at the hands of ISIS. It won't save 4000 years of cultural legacy from ISIS.

I do not care whether the US passes judgment on atrocities. I do care whether it does something to prevent them.

[Kelvin Mace]

29. And they see their job as preventing U.S. atrocities

We have killed at least 500,000 Iraqi civilians in the last decade, so ISIS has a LONG way to go to catch up to our level of genocide.

And yes, I do make a distinction between their actions and ours. Their's are intentional and on a small scale. Ours is indifferent and on an industrial scale. They kill people up close and personal with a few dollars worth of steel, we kill people with million dollar weapons at thousand mile distances like we are playing a video game.

[geek tragedy]

31. No, ISIS does not see their jobs as preventing US atrocities.

That's a cute play on words, but it's completely factually false.

They're religious nutjobs and sadists and nihilists, not anti-imperialists

[Kelvin Mace]

38. Really, and you know that how?

And let's assume they are. How is that any different from the religious nutjobs we have in this country? We have sadists and we give them badges and guns and sic 'em on the poor and dark-skinned folk.

You dream of a heroic American military waltzing in and killing the bad guys. Trouble is, we ARE the bad guys by any reasonable moral definition.

ISIS is made up of people who have been lied to and told they are doing heroic things to protect their homeland, their religion, and their culture from invading monsters who hate them for simply existing. Kind of like what we told our soldiers when we send them to illegally invade Iraq.

[geek tragedy]

40. "ISIS is made up of people who have been lied to and told they are doing heroic things "

Welcome to my ignore list.

People who praise ISIS as "doing heroic things" --well, I will avoid further comment.

[Kelvin Mace]

41. Wow, English? Can you read it?

Where did I praise ISIS? That deliberate misreading of my words is worthy of a top level Republican.

[NobodyHere]

15. "I will never vote for anyone who trusted Bush"

That right there is my litmus test.

[libodem]

33. I can get behind that

It is uniting sentiment. Nice call.

[geek tragedy]

35. It's really that simple. If someone was wrong about Iraq, they should explain

what they learned and how they're applying it to Iran.

[libodem]

37. Absolutely

[BeyondGeography]

36. So much sniffing at a pro-peace, anti-nuclear weapons proliferation accord in this thread

Barack Obama obviously has so much to learn.