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Does the US have a moral responsibility to help combat ISIS?

Does the US have a moral responsibility to combat ISIS

  • Yes, it's a moral imperative.

    Votes: 12 30.0%

  • No, they're not a threat yet worthy of confrontation

    Votes: 3 7.5%

  • Yes, but only in a limited and supporting role.

    Votes: 13 32.5%

  • No, it's none of our business

    Votes: 16 40.0%
  • Total voters
    40
iguanaman said:
Where do you get 200K? Is that what "curveball" told us? 5000 is more like it. Both Iraq and Iran used gas during their war the Kurds were likely just collateral damage.
Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?

The Kurds are fighting for their very existence now, Saddam was never so bold.
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Denying the genocide against the Kurds. Claiming only 5k died.

How disgusting. And your source is "informationclearinghouse", what scumbaggery.
 
ecofarm said:
Denying the genocide against the Kurds. Claiming only 5k died.

How disgusting. And your source is "informationclearinghouse", what scumbaggery.
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Where is your source for 200K? The Kurds where allied to Iran who was at war with Iraq at the time of these gas attacks. I bet you don't even know where that gas he used came from either.

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iguanaman said:
Where is your source for 200K?
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According to the HRW during the Anfal campaign, the Iraqi government:

Massacred 50,000 to 100,000 non-combatant civilians including women and children;[16]

Destroyed about 4,000 villages (out of 4,655) in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Between April 1987 and August 1988, 250 towns and villages were exposed to chemical weapons;[17]

Destroyed 1,754 schools, 270 hospitals, 2,450 mosques, 27 churches;[18]

Wiped out around 90% of Kurdish villages in targeted areas.[19]

Made 2,000 Assyrians, along with Kurds and others, victims of gas campaigns [20]
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Al-Anfal Campaign - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And that's not all he did to the Kurds.


I'm not surprised you followed up an "informationclearinghouse" article with a pic. Real strong evidence there. :roll:
 
iguanaman said:
North Korea also threatens the U.S. and we don't attack them.
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True but North Koreans doesn't have a history of hijacking our planes and flying them into sky scrappers--killing thousands.
 
The Baron said:
True but North Koreans doesn't have a history of hijacking our planes and flying them into sky scrappers--killing thousands.
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No it was Saudi's that did that. Should we attack Saudi Arabia now?
 
ecofarm said:
Saddam committed genocide twice, invaded neighbors twice, intentionally starved 400k children and institutionalized rape.
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Yet ISIS is still worse.

OR at the least WILL be worse if it gains the same power Saddam had.
 
a351 said:
Self explanatory thread title. What do you say?
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I do not think combating ISIS has anything to do with a moral responsibility. I do think the U.S. needs to take a good hard look at ISIS, to come up with a report that would show what the middle east would look like if ISIS was indeed able to capture Syria and Iraq and set up it vaunted Califat. What would be the threat to the other middle eastern countries as well as Europe and America.

Then weigh the results of that report with the situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq, decide if a few airstrikes and the Syrian and Iraqi armies can stem the tide and finally defeat ISIS. If not, is it time for action or not.

But whatever needs to be done if anything should be determined by the threat of ISIS and not by any moral responsibility. It would seem to me that Europe would have a higher moral responsibility to the middle east region than us since the middle east is in Europe's own back yard.
 
a351 said:
Self explanatory thread title. What do you say?
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I am not sure that states can have any moral obligations--at least not in the same sense that humans do.
 
Luftwaffe said:
The only combat I want U.S to do against ISIS is nuking. It is easy, effective, gets a message across and it's pretty instant while covering a huge area.
Well, I agree with Lizzie in terms of the question on whether we have a moral obligation to kill them.
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Good point.
Fighting genocide with more genocide will eventually eliminate all genocide.
 
iguanaman said:
No it was Saudi's that did that. Should we attack Saudi Arabia now?
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Too simplistic a thought process here. Terrorist are not always tied to their country and vice-versa. Yea, it was a bunch of Saudi's that attacked us but they were based out of Afghanistan.
 
eohrnberger said:
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
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Is there any lesson to be learned from the way that invading Iraq turned it into and even bigger godawful cluster**** than it was?

Or is that the kind of history that bears repeating?
 
No. Not moral... but it is the right thing to do for many reasons.
 
Ryan5 said:
...war is good for the US economy...
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That's why our economy is so rockin'--we've had two wars going for years to gin our economy up?

With this kind of prosperity, who needs hardship?
 
ecofarm said:
Al-Anfal Campaign - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And that's not all he did to the Kurds.
I'm not surprised you followed up an "informationclearinghouse" article with a pic. Real strong evidence there. :roll:
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Halabja chemical attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Halabja attack has been recognized as a separate event from the Anfal Genocide that was also conducted against the Kurdish people by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein.[SUP][6][/SUP]"​
 
ecofarm said:
No, it's not.



"Anything could be" is not an argument.
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Which is why I didn't make that argument.

I said that ISIS would be worse than Saddam if/when they had equivalent power. Because IMO their idea of how to run a place is far worse than Saddam's was, as bad as he indeed was.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Is there any lesson to be learned from the way that invading Iraq turned it into and even bigger godawful cluster**** than it was?

Or is that the kind of history that bears repeating?
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The Middle East, with it's secular strife, has been a cluster**** for thousands of years. I agree that it may not have been the best of decisions to go in their militarily, however, once 9/11 happened, would couldn't afford to NOT go in there militarily in a substantive way.

The US didn't have a substantive response to our African embassies being bombed prior, and this lack of response begat the 9/11 attack. I shudder to think what a lack of response to 9/11 would have begat.

And you could go further back. Had not the tragedy of Black Hawk down in Somalia never happened, and the subsequent withdraw in the face of the Somali war lord's opposition, the perception of the US being weak may never have been started.

So 20/20 hindsight is always a losing game, and the situation is now what it is. Do we wait for major western countries to fall and / or come into major conflict with ISIS before we intervene? When ISIS's power is greater? Or do we try to preempt and thwart ISIS before they gain too much power? A difficult choice to make.

Fundamental tactics is to not fight on the ground and time of your enemy's choosing, but on the ground and timing of your choosing.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Is there any lesson to be learned from the way that invading Iraq turned it into and even bigger godawful cluster**** than it was?

Or is that the kind of history that bears repeating?
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Next time we go in with the clear and sole objective of eliminating ISIS, no nation building or anything.

That waste lesson,the lesson was not never go in. The lesson was to have precise intelligence, will, determination, and a SOLE CLEAR OBJECTIVE.

Now of course the easiest way of doing all that is nuke dropping.
 
eohrnberger said:
Do we wait for major western countries to fall and / or come into major conflict with ISIS before we intervene? When ISIS's power is greater? Or do we try to preempt and thwart ISIS before they gain too much power?
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Without trading partners it is unlikely that ISIS will be able to govern in the long term let alone engage in imperialism.
Additionally, the area's petro infrastructure was **** under Saddam and has been variously looted, sabotaged, and neglected since then.
"Big Oil" has not been back into Iraq for quite some time because it has not been stable enough to risk the billions in capital it will take to fix Iraq's petro infrastructure.
No money means no empire.
They're not going to topple a "major Western country".
they will do an even crappier job of keeping their people fed and the lights on than Hussein did.

Why shouldn't some other "major western country" step up and engage in a "major conflict with ISIS"?
Why should we be in a rush to prevent that?

Luftwaffe said:
Next time we go in with the clear and sole objective of eliminating ISIS, no nation building or anything.
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We went into Iraq with plans to be out in six months.
We actually planned on being able to skip planning for the nation building part.
The plan was for Iraq to behave like Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR.
So going in w/o a nation building plan doesn't make you plan that much different.
Find and replace "Saddam Hussein" for "ISIS"...terrorists, 911, wmd, badabing bada boom--brand new war plan.
 
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Simon W. Moon said:
Without trading partners it is unlikely that ISIS will be able to govern in the long term let alone engage in imperialism.
Additionally, the area's petro infrastructure was **** under Saddam and has been variously looted, sabotaged, and neglected since then.
"Big Oil" has not been back into Iraq for quite some time because it has not been stable enough to risk the billions in capital it will take to fix Iraq's petro infrastructure.
No money means no empire.
They're not going to topple a "major Western country".
they will do an even crappier job of keeping their people fed and the lights on than Hussein did.

Why shouldn't some other "major western country" step up and engage in a "major conflict with ISIS"?
Why should we be in a rush to prevent that?


We went into Iraq with plans to be out in six months.
We actually planned on being able to skip planning for the nation building part.
The plan was for Iraq to behave like Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR.
So going in w/o a nation building plan doesn't make you plan that much different.
Find and replace "Saddam Hussein" for "ISIS"...terrorists, 911, wmd, badabing bada boom--brand new war plan.
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Quote me entirely, I said we need will as well.

The will to stick to the plan no matter what, not forge new ones out our ass like Iraq 2003.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
That's why our economy is so rockin'--we've had two wars going for years to gin our economy up?

With this kind of prosperity, who needs hardship?
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The US military is a Public-Private partnership that directly and especially indirectly employs or leads to the employment of tens of millions of Americans. For every 5 US military employees there are probably at minimum 20 US citizens somehow employed through contracts that wouldn't exist for their companies without US military sponsorship. Many Americans simply don't grasp this.

The truth is a great number of private sector US workers aren't actually private sector. Their companies exist thanks to business dealings with the US military.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Without trading partners it is unlikely that ISIS will be able to govern in the long term let alone engage in imperialism.
Additionally, the area's petro infrastructure was **** under Saddam and has been variously looted, sabotaged, and neglected since then.
"Big Oil" has not been back into Iraq for quite some time because it has not been stable enough to risk the billions in capital it will take to fix Iraq's petro infrastructure.
No money means no empire.
They're not going to topple a "major Western country".
they will do an even crappier job of keeping their people fed and the lights on than Hussein did.
Click to expand...

And all these reasons are why there were so uprisings during the Saddam regime, right? North Korea, and even Iran to some extent, are similar pariah in the world, yet they have trading partners, though many times by extortion.

Simon W. Moon said:
Why shouldn't some other "major western country" step up and engage in a "major conflict with ISIS"?
Why should we be in a rush to prevent that?
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Some EU nations have started to make noise and / or action in that direction, but we do have the largest, best funded, best equipped and best trained troops around. We are one of the last of the super powers left standing, hopefully to remain so, but that's yet to be seen.

Simon W. Moon said:
We went into Iraq with plans to be out in six months.
We actually planned on being able to skip planning for the nation building part.
The plan was for Iraq to behave like Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR.
So going in w/o a nation building plan doesn't make you plan that much different.
Find and replace "Saddam Hussein" for "ISIS"...terrorists, 911, wmd, badabing bada boom--brand new war plan.
Click to expand...
 
I think we, as the strongest military power in the world, should be using our military power to protect people from violence before any other duty. If we want to claim the moral high ground, then we ought to be intervening to save people from the massacres that ISIS is carrying out. Humanitarian intervention is one of the few reasons that fighting can be noble.
 
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