Thoughts on Presidents Speech about ISIS and US Actions?
i thought about this overnight before posting about it, because i was angry and disappointed. i still am. i almost didn't post this, because i have friends on this site who support intervention. i accept that this is a valid opposing view, i understand their reasoning, and i consider their motivations to be noble. additionally, i deeply respect and am grateful to those who have served. that being said, here is my position and what i thought of the speech.
i don't support the war. i'm not sure that there is non-regional military solution to this problem. whenever we kill one of these sick bastards, something worse pops up. we put regimes in place, they are toppled, and then replaced by something horrifying. we considered going after Assad, then this ISIL bull**** happens, and now we are actually going to be helping him. Osama Bin Laden is captured, and now we have new and ruthlessly violent terrorist organizations to fight. enough is enough. this is one big game of whack a mole. we have been at war almost my entire adult life, and problems in the region are still prevalent and even expanding.
the only solution i see is to unplug the whack a mole machine. we do that by replacing oil with something else, which will put a serious dent in their money supply. reform in that region is going to have to come from within, and Saudi Arabia is going to have to step up and fulfill its role as regional hegemon. it can no longer be allowed to abdicate.
as for his speech in particular, when he invoked the September eleventh attacks, i almost threw the remote at the TV. i found it to be an appeal to emotion on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of those attacks, and it always gets under my skin when a politician uses that as a tool.
as for part of what he's proposing, it has been done already. here is one example :
Operation Cyclone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
while we may or may not have financed or trained him personally, Bin Laden was part of the Mujahideen. and i'm supposed to believe the solution to this is more funding and training? seriously?
to add insult to injury, these bastards will be fighting us with our own weapons that we gave to the Iraqis, another example of the fruits of training and arming sectors of the country that we consider to be friendly. not to mention, if things need to be done, when will the rest of the world lead the charge? it can't always be the US. that isn't fair. i dislike these bastard asshole terrorist ****heads probably as much as any of you, but this probably won't work.
finally, i get the feeling that a lot of Obama's motivation is to appear to be doing something. i doubt anyone honestly thinks that this will solve the problem, and if it does work, it will likely lead to escalation and prolonged involvement. these wars are never short. and then in many years when we finally do withdraw, there's a good chance that another group of these snakes move in to fill the power void.
there is just no good side to take. either way we go, it's just an awful situation. we need to cut off their funding in every way possible, especially by eliminating oil as the premier transportation fuel. then we need to tell Saudi Arabia to handle this situation like we would have to if it was Mexico. Saudi Arabia has not lifted a finger to help us with the horrifyingly brutal Mexican drug gangs who roam our southern border. ****, they don't even pay for the gas for us to chase them around with. and now, they allow their own neighborhood to get so ****ed up that the world has had to go there again and again, decade after decade. this is their neighborhood, and they need to eliminate this particular cancer from it and make it clear that from now on, instability like this is going to result in them getting involved in a big way.