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US military pilots complain hands tied in ‘frustrating’ fight against ISIS

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"Hey guys, here are the burned bodies of the men who an hour ago were raping and beheading you, we regret that some of you were caught in the blast." Easy sell.

Throughout modern history you can find populations who will readily excuse the collateral damage that happened in the course of their liberation.

You can also find lots of examples in modern history where the US interceded in a conflict with the best of attentions yet the US was the enemy.

There are also lots of examples in modern history with a population that is fed up with a group deposes them from power.

If the Iraqi people hate Isis that much why exactly aren't they killing those guys? Why haven't they thrown those guys out? It's not as if ISIS is some powerful military machine. Why exactly should we swoop again after training the military that threw down their arms and installing the government that was very unpopular and act like this time will be different?
 
You can also find lots of examples in modern history where the US interceded in a conflict with the best of attentions yet the US was the enemy.

There are also lots of examples in modern history with a population that is fed up with a group deposes them from power.

If the Iraqi people hate Isis that much why exactly aren't they killing those guys? Why haven't they thrown those guys out? It's not as if ISIS is some powerful military machine. Why exactly should we swoop again after training the military that threw down their arms and installing the government that was very unpopular and act like this time will be different?

Im sure it will be worse than it is now. :roll:
 
Im sure it will be worse than it is now. :roll:

It may not be, it may.

I'll tell you one major difference...we will be spending a lot more money to put a lot more Americans in harms way if we expand it. That's a fact. It will definitely be worse for Americans.

Also...ISIS popped up after 10 years pretty much as soon as we left. So in your viewpoint that means ISIS is an abnormally strong force that is impossible to replicate? My view is that what was built in Iraq was rotten to the core and it only took a couple of fanatics with AK's to overthrow it.
 
It may not be, it may.

I'll tell you one major difference...we will be spending a lot more money to put a lot more Americans in harms way if we expand it. That's a fact. It will definitely be worse for Americans.

Also...ISIS popped up after 10 years pretty much as soon as we left. So in your viewpoint that means ISIS is an abnormally strong force that is impossible to replicate? My view is that what was built in Iraq was rotten to the core and it only took a couple of fanatics with AK's to overthrow it.

Fight to win, or don't fight. Either option is better than what the chump in chief is doing.
 
I'm not advocating killing civilians. Civilians are going to die at the hands of ISIS, it is a matter of whether killing ISIS will allow more civilians to live versus letting ISIS run amok.

If we are to retain anything near credibility, we will always have commanders assessing targets for "collateral damage" and acting appropriately, and the pilots can snivel all they wish. Even then, the numbers of civilians we've killed in the name of protecting civilians is unacceptably high.
 
U.S. military pilots carrying out the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are voicing growing discontent over what they say are heavy-handed rules of engagement hindering them from striking targets.

They blame a bureaucracy that does not allow for quick decision-making. One Navy F-18 pilot who has flown missions against ISIS voiced his frustration to Fox News, saying: "There were times I had groups of ISIS fighters in my sights, but couldn't get clearance to engage.”

He added, “They probably killed innocent people and spread evil because of my inability to kill them. It was frustrating."


US military pilots complain hands tied in

Talk about frustrating. The chump in chief puts our forces in harms way and then wont let them kill the enemy. The "JV" team WANTS to die, and I want our military to oblige them.

Nothing substantive is going to happen until Obama is out of the whitehouse-that dog wont hunt.

Put a Democrat in charge of a theater of operations, and this is what you get. Wasn't this the same problem with LBJ and Viet Nam?

Do. Or do not. There is no try
. It just baffles them.
 
You can also find lots of examples in modern history where the US interceded in a conflict with the best of attentions yet the US was the enemy.

And this wouldn't be one of them. Iraq is begging us to get more involved.

There are also lots of examples in modern history with a population that is fed up with a group deposes them from power.

Not when the population is unarmed and their opposition is conducting systemic bloody slaughter. The population of Ramadi is no more equipped to deal with ISIS than the German Jews were equipped to deal with Hitler.

If the Iraqi people hate Isis that much why exactly aren't they killing those guys? Why haven't they thrown those guys out? It's not as if ISIS is some powerful military machine. Why exactly should we swoop again after training the military that threw down their arms and installing the government that was very unpopular and act like this time will be different?

These guys haven't been thrown out because the Iraqi population is largely unarmed and afraid, the Iraqi soldiers retreat because the military is woefully equipped and corrupt. On the one hand, absent US support in the early days of the invasion the Iraqi government consolidated their army around Baghdad, and left the peripheral troops with insufficient ammunition to hold off a siege. To make matters worse, when equipment was delivered to the outlying towns before the ISIS invasion it had a bad habit of finding its way to the black market.

The Iraqi military was undisciplined and at this stage fully dependent of US logistics. Absent these logistics the capability of the army quickly deteriorated.

ISIS has the advantage of being able to consolidate its firepower on individual objectives while the Iraqi force is tasked with protecting everywhere at once. In that kind of war the aggressor will always be on the march and the defender will always be caught off guard.
 
If we are to retain anything near credibility, we will always have commanders assessing targets for "collateral damage" and acting appropriately, and the pilots can snivel all they wish. Even then, the numbers of civilians we've killed in the name of protecting civilians is unacceptably high.

They may not maintain credibility with YOU, but you aren't the one with a knife to your throat.
 
And I think "have a process to verify a target before dropping a bomb" is reasonable, don't you?

That depends on what that "process" is. If it required four hours' worth of obtaining approvals from one commander after another, for example, it would be a prescription for never attacking anything, because every time, the aircraft would run out of fuel before approval could be obtained and have to return to base. No doubt that kind of flaccid inaction would please Americans whose sympathies lie more with Muslim jihadists than with the country they are taking up space in. Like their president's fellow anti-Semitic statist Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, these drones loathe most things about this country and believe it is to blame for jihadism. For them, 9/11 showed that "America, your chickens have come home to roost."

The inhabitants of cities that shelter the enemies of this country can expect that some of them will be killed when our forces attack those enemies. That would be true even if the locals were completely friendly to us--about 40,000 French civilians were unavoidably killed in the process of driving the Germans out of their country after D-day, for example. In this case, it is clear many of the locals are sympathetic to ISIS or are even abetting it. A few thousand irregulars, even if they use the most brutal techniques of intimidation imaginable, cannot possibly take and keep control of a city of a million people, or even a half-million, unless quite a few of the inhabitants are willingly sheltering them.
 
And this wouldn't be one of them. Iraq is begging us to get more involved.

The Iraqi government...the same group that is pretty much reviled by their own people, put into power by the US, and set the stage for ISIS taking over by severely crippling their military's capabilities and stoking the fires of sectarian divisions.

Not when the population is unarmed and their opposition is conducting systemic bloody slaughter. The population of Ramadi is no more equipped to deal with ISIS than the German Jews were equipped to deal with Hitler.
How exactly are they "unarmed". There are AK's floating around in that country by the boatload.

Also....the situation with German Jews is nothing like ISIS in Iraq. The Jews were a minority in the country, we're talking about the "Iraqi people" here...we're talking 40 million or so people against a 30,000 or so ISIS guys. ISIS is not the German army either.

These guys haven't been thrown out because the Iraqi population is largely unarmed and afraid, the Iraqi soldiers retreat because the military is woefully equipped and corrupt. On the one hand, absent US support in the early days of the invasion the Iraqi government consolidated their army around Baghdad, and left the peripheral troops with insufficient ammunition to hold off a siege. To make matters worse, when equipment was delivered to the outlying towns before the ISIS invasion it had a bad habit of finding its way to the black market.
The "invasion" was a few thousands militants with mostly small arms...against a national army we trained for 10 years and supplied with weapons.

The military was woefully equipped and corrupt...due to the actions by the same government we would be fighting to keep into power.

he Iraqi military was undisciplined and at this stage fully dependent of US logistics. Absent these logistics the capability of the army quickly deteriorated.
Where do you get this from? It's not like they were fighting against a well oiled military machine. They weren't up against a foreign military with resources to bare. Those foreign fundamentalist seem to get built up in the press here...they are a mob. They can blend in to the population around them but they are not some military juggernaut. The disposing of a few thousand militants should of been well within the resources and capabilities of the Iraqi army we left behind.

ISIS has the advantage of being able to consolidate its firepower on individual objectives while the Iraqi force is tasked with protecting everywhere at once. In that kind of war the aggressor will always be on the march and the defender will always be caught off guard.
ISIS has taken and held cities...which means they are stationing a decent amount of troops. They taking cities and locations to hold. If they were attacking and melding back into the population and taking soft targets that would be one thing, they are fighting and taking over whole cities. The Iraqi army is THAT BAD! If ISIS attempted this while US soldiers were there they would be obliterated.
 
A common misconception is that ISIS is an actual state with any sort of substantial territory.

All they really have is a large area in which they conduct operations. The lands they truly control are few and far between.

AOs =\= controlled land

But some people will still take the rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. You just can't stop that.

When US Conservative doesn't know what he is discussing, he uses big words and hopes nobody will catch him. A de facto state takes a little bit more than having control over an area. If all it took was occupying lands, we'd have quite a few 'de facto' states all over the world led by terrorist organizations. The notion that ISIL is a 'state' in anything other than name is pretty laughable. It's precious knowledge from Travis007's School For Kids Who Want To Learn to Know Jihad Good.
 
They may not maintain credibility with YOU, but you aren't the one with a knife to your throat.

U.S. Commanders will always have the responsibility of calling targets with the safety of civilians as a priority consideration. By law and morally. If that frustrates pilots, so be it.
 
I hear another terrorist tried to strike in Boston today-likely the "JV" team.

That is just awful.
Boston allowing terrorists to operate in their city.
Hopefully, Obama has the courage to order air-strikes on Boston.
 
That is just awful.
Boston allowing terrorists to operate in their city.
Hopefully, Obama has the courage to order air-strikes on Boston.

Our president can't even admit theres a threat, let alone call out islamic terrorism by name. Reality is mugging him.
 
If the Iraqi people hate Isis that much why exactly aren't they killing those guys? Why haven't they thrown those guys out? It's not as if ISIS is some powerful military machine. Why exactly should we swoop again after training the military that threw down their arms and installing the government that was very unpopular and act like this time will be different?

This is the key point.
We are furnishing what we are really good at--air power.
That is a huge advantage for the forces fighting IS.
Let the oppressed Iraqis overthrow their oppressors.....if they really want to.
 
The Iraqi government...the same group that is pretty much reviled by their own people, put into power by the US, and set the stage for ISIS taking over by severely crippling their military's capabilities and stoking the fires of sectarian divisions.

Yep. So am I gathering form your argument that you posit the notion that maybe Iraqis enjoy being raped and murdered?

How exactly are they "unarmed". There are AK's floating around in that country by the boatload.

ISIS bans guns in the regions they have conquered and the people are defenseless against the brutal whims of ISIS.

Also....the situation with German Jews is nothing like ISIS in Iraq. The Jews were a minority in the country, we're talking about the "Iraqi people" here...we're talking 40 million or so people against a 30,000 or so ISIS guys. ISIS is not the German army either.

It's entirely the same thing. ISIS targets Christians and other non-Muslims first and then moves on to Muslims who to not follow the ISIS brand of Islam. This type of population control through fear is as old as humanity.

The "invasion" was a few thousands militants with mostly small arms...against a national army we trained for 10 years and supplied with weapons.

The defense forces of Mosul were ill equipped and the ISIS attack was well planned with coordinated suicide attacks against key defense positions and armories. Mosul also held many sleeper cells who aided in undermining defense attempts in the city.

The military was woefully equipped and corrupt...due to the actions by the same government we would be fighting to keep into power.

The alternative would be to let Iraq fall to ISIS. The Iraq forces were not prepared to mount an adequate defense across their entire boarder and lacked the intel and logistics that they had relied on the US for. It is entirely accurate to say that the Iraqi army was woefully equipped and corrupt. What I don't get is why that is used as justification for letting the Iraqi people, especially the Iraq minorities, be brutally murdered by ISIS.

Where do you get this from? It's not like they were fighting against a well oiled military machine. They weren't up against a foreign military with resources to bare. Those foreign fundamentalist seem to get built up in the press here...they are a mob. They can blend in to the population around them but they are not some military juggernaut. The disposing of a few thousand militants should of been well within the resources and capabilities of the Iraqi army we left behind.

They have toppled an army many times their size and grown on each victory, maybe you should stop parroting Obama's "JV" argument. :roll:

They would be easily dispatched by US forces, but absent US forces the Iraqis are demonstrably unable to cope.

ISIS has taken and held cities...which means they are stationing a decent amount of troops. They taking cities and locations to hold. If they were attacking and melding back into the population and taking soft targets that would be one thing, they are fighting and taking over whole cities. The Iraqi army is THAT BAD! If ISIS attempted this while US soldiers were there they would be obliterated.

What you are missing in this scenario is that the Iraqi army has to defend all cities in Iraq from potential attack. I am not arguing that the Iraqi army is that bad, they obviously are. That is not an excuse for sitting by while ISIS takes over Iraq.
 
This is the key point.
We are furnishing what we are really good at--air power.
That is a huge advantage for the forces fighting IS.
Let the oppressed Iraqis overthrow their oppressors.....if they really want to.

We aren't really providing much air power at this point, and we are REALLY good at land war too. Even ISIS knows this. Why do you think they waited until we left?

But as McCain pointed out last week, we have run something like 160 sorties against ISIS and 75% of the sorties return to base without ever engaging the enemy. So for all the talk about US air power, the reality is we are attempting to do little and accomplishing less.
 
U.S. Commanders will always have the responsibility of calling targets with the safety of civilians as a priority consideration. By law and morally. If that frustrates pilots, so be it.

False.
 
Yep. So am I gathering form your argument that you posit the notion that maybe Iraqis enjoy being raped and murdered?

No, my argument is that the Iraqi people are not begging for the US military to roll back into their country.

ISIS bans guns in the regions they have conquered and the people are defenseless against the brutal whims of ISIS.
The country is awash in guns. They may "ban" guns in their territory but there's a lot of territory they don't control. Rooting out weapon cache's is not easy....the idea that ISIS could effectively shut down access to weapons just doesn't strike me as likely.

It's entirely the same thing. ISIS targets Christians and other non-Muslims first and then moves on to Muslims who to not follow the ISIS brand of Islam. This type of population control through fear is as old as humanity.
The NAZI party had overwhelming support of their country. It wasn't a party that took over against the wishes of their people. From what you write you don't believe that...you believe that the vast majority of the country disagrees with ISIS control...unless I am getting your position wrong.

The defense forces of Mosul were ill equipped and the ISIS attack was well planned with coordinated suicide attacks against key defense positions and armories. Mosul also held many sleeper cells who aided in undermining defense attempts in the city.
It doesn't matter...let's say ISIS conducted this masterful attack on Mosul and Iraqi forces just couldn't hold up. The response is that the overall better equipped and better trained Iraqi army sweeps in and massacres ISIS militants.

The alternative would be to let Iraq fall to ISIS. The Iraq forces were not prepared to mount an adequate defense across their entire boarder and lacked the intel and logistics that they had relied on the US for. It is entirely accurate to say that the Iraqi army was woefully equipped and corrupt. What I don't get is why that is used as justification for letting the Iraqi people, especially the Iraq minorities, be brutally murdered by ISIS.
Because after a 10 year occupation and nearly a trillion spent we couldn't create a self sustaining government/military in Iraq? Are we forever committed to stationing armies in Iraq and policing their state? Why are you more concerned with Iraqi minorities than you are people anywhere in the world? Why is it so important that the one nation has US funded and created security at any expense?

They have toppled an army many times their size and grown on each victory, maybe you should stop parroting Obama's "JV" argument.

They would be easily dispatched by US forces, but absent US forces the Iraqis are demonstrably unable to cope.
Because the army they fought was ****! Those soldiers had as much faith and willingness to fight as Iraqi Republican Guard troops had to die for Saddam. It's a paycheck for them. They weren't going to die for the Iraqi parliment or the Iraqi nation. How is it that that the Kurds are kicking ISIS's ass so badly? 5,000 Kurdish fighters just swept across northern Iraq! 5,000!!!! The Iraqi military had 280,000 individuals in their military!

FOUR DIVISIONS collapsed in northern Iraq battling ISIS with few thousand. That is impossible....that are feats that only the US military could do with the help of US air power and our technology. The Iraqi army is just bad man. They had no will to fight or potentially die for their country. They were just in the uniform for a paycheck.

What you are missing in this scenario is that the Iraqi army has to defend all cities in Iraq from potential attack. I am not arguing that the Iraqi army is that bad, they obviously are. That is not an excuse for sitting by while ISIS takes over Iraq.
I agree with you to a certain extent...It's not like I'm completely disagreeing that ISIS is bad news and they do horrible things. I'm just curious how this same scenario doesn't play out again after we take out ISIS and hand over Iraq back to their own government. We would have to do something radically different...like split the country up with a Kurdish north and split Sunni's and Shiit's because nobody in that country seems to have a strong allegiance to the idea of Iraq.

I'm just worried that any rollback of ISIS will just create a vaccuum taken advantage of by another militant group. As I've pointed out....ISIS isn't special, they don't have capabilities that can't easily be replicated by any other group with a few small arms and some fantatics willing to die by the cause.
 
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