The Glade 4.0

So, what exactly do we do when ISIS causes another 9/11? We can't exactly do nothing. I don't really see any other option other than the $4 trillion war. ISIS is pretty unique in that the entire organization is only about 80,000-100,000 men strong, yet they're managing to control an area that has a population of tens of millions. Rooting them out from amongst that is pretty much impossible without a protacted military campaign.

He wouldn't have lasted forever. Look at where Assad is, and he's never been invaded or thrown out of office.

Saddam would be 77 years old this year if he were still alive, and his method of governance really calls into question any orderly succession. Uday or Qusai, maybe? Maybe not. If we hadn't invaded, there's a very good chance we'd be looking at something else in Iraq just as unpleasant as ISIS.

Also, Canada ostensibly wasn't in Iraq, so you're not really in the "our 4 trillion" there.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, here's the thing - ISIS is focused on trying to consolidate territorial control in that area. Another 9/11 is a possibility if they're just that determined, but unlike AQ they now have a defined military force and territory they control that can be attacked with the full weight of our military power. Another 9/11 is likely to turn them into another Taliban - shoved off into the mountains somewhere trying to remain relevant - except they don't have a convenient Pakistan to retreat to. Turkey is not going to tolerate them, nor the Kurds. Neither is Iran, nor the Assad government, nor would Kuwait or Saudi Arabia with aren't even contiguous with the area they presently control. It doesn't take a protracted campaign to simply smash ISIS's conventional forces they use to fight the Iraqis or Syrians - it's a matter of do we stick around to clean up afterwards?

The question isn't what we do then; it's what we do now, and moaning and groaning about the last 13 years are not a course of action. They are what they are.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

*cough*JTF2*cough* What? No they don't exist. I have no idea what anyone is talking about.

Nevertheless, we were "in Iraq" in spirit -- and cost -- by the way it all unfolded. Canada held the fort, so to speak, in Afghanistan for America while you moved everything to Iraq. It was a job that needed to be done. If canada had gone into Iraq, it would have been our troops in Afghanistan that got moved (it's not like we have a large enough military to occupy both countries at once), and American troops would have had to stay in Afghanistan instead, so we were participating in every way except officially.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Pretty sure you didn't have 4 trillion dollars worth of them there



We still had vastly more troops and money in Afghanistan than you did at any given time, and you guys weren't the only ones holding the fort. Not that Canada's troops weren't invaluable - they were, but you guys really got to fight on the cheap compared to us. There's nothing wrong with that; your population is way too small to support a military large enough to do what ours does, and no one with an ounce of common sense should think Canada gave anything other than a sincere maximum effort. Still, you like to tell me how financially sensible you are compared to us, and part of the reason you get to be that way is that you aren't us.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, it sucks that the last 13 years have been expensive and that no solution presented itself that would result in peace, harmony, and prosperity. Remember folks, when dealing with the present crisis, the most important thing to do is ***** about the past events that created it, and oversimplify them as much as possible, while conveniently ignoring the difference between hindsight, and how things looked at the time.



At what point did we "go hunting muslims" and was there ever actually a question as to how to handle Sharia law here?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh, we weren't the only ones, but between 2004 through 2009, Operational Control of the majority regions in Afghanistan was handed over to the Canadian military, who led the allied forces occupying Afghanistan both strategically and tactically (including the massive Taliban hunt during the resurgence between 2006-2009.) It wasn't until Obama relocated 30,000 troops back into Afghanistan at the end of 2009 that Canada scaled back its role.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

In an argument over who wasted the most time, money, and manpower in Iraq and Afghanistan, nobody is coming close to the United States except possibly Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

There's some truth in this, but also remember that it was always a U.S. commander for the overall operation, and from 2004 to 2009 U.S. troop levels were generally consistent in trending upwards, from 20,000 in 2004 to around 35,000 in 2009. In 2009 they started to spike. There were small dips in there, but the overall trend was always upwards. Obama didn't relocate those 30,000 troops "back to" Afghanistan, they were in addition to what was always there. The U.S shift in focus to Iraq never involved a mass shift of physical assets there (mainly because Rumsfeld, in his "do more with less" mania of running the DOD like it was a corporation, ran it on the cheap to begin with.)

By contrast, Canada has only 67,000 total active personnel in all branches of the Canadian Forces and only 21,000 active personnel in the army component of that, with a similar number of reservists.



Repeating this mantra will never produce a satisfactory solution to the ISIS problem.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Let the IETF deal with it. The US government shouldn't be making policy decisions about routing protocols used by network backbones.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn