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(08-26-2014 07:48 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

"I am not an interventionist but lets intervene"

Fuck that we will not do any good what do you want us to do? Take out IS' military capacity? Some other force will just replace them. Do you want to just kill everyone in the region? Thats barbarism and makes us infinitely worse than IS. Just let them be. Close the borders, police our countries, defend our actual homeland, but do not define our homeland as Everywhere and Anywhere

If there's a positive to the situation (which looks like one of the biggest geopolitical disasters since the Yugoslav Wars), it's that various national and local interests have realigned to the point where broad cooperation might be a possibility. Syria, Iran, Shia Iraq, the Kurds, Turkey, Russia and the US now (for probably the first time in history) have one major objective in common: opposition to IS. Iran is reportedly providing support in Iraq, Syria's signaled a willingness to help a potential US effort, and meanwhile Turkey seems far more open to accepting greater Kurdish autonomy (so long as it happens in Iraq and not Turkey) and apparently already has deals in place with Kurdish authorities in Erbil.

That's the big difference between 2003 and today...back then, there was zero groundwork in place to fill the vacuum left by Saddam and it was pure hubris for the US to think it could so unilaterally impose one, which led to what can charitably be described as an utter fiasco; however, we're now seeing at least some semblance of aligned interests that might congeal and stabilize. If it's done wisely, western intervention could help defeat the more zealous and belligerent parties while additionally buttressing more moderate authorities, some which even possess genuine local support.

By the way, Islamists just took control of Tripoli. The situation could be spinning even more out of control than previously imagined. There's no clear road ahead, and I absolutely agree the US needs to get out of the business of trying to police the world, but this would be a fundamentally different proposition from past US military actions.