[quote=joec]Isn’t military service or defending the US a requirement of being a US citizen?[/quote] Its a bit more nuanced than that.
[quote=joec]The problem with a lot of these foreign military campaigns is that people see it as serving certain special interests or political parties (oil, etc).[/quote]Some of that blame can be laid on our own Main-Stream-Media. Some of that can be laid on poor focus. Some of that can be laid on jingoism that the BushII initiated action used. “Shock and Awe – how corny. They ended up burning a resource that would have identified all of Saddam Hussein’s closest, underground supporters were. I could go on with how that was all F**Ked up..
[quote=joec]Looking at Iraq now and what’s going on, I wonder if the US is going to start taking a back seat to a lot of these foreign campaigns since no one wants to see US boots on the ground. Without troops on the ground, you can’t really hold or maintain territory, or really build allies for intelligence/etc…[/quote]I think they are going to take the approach of ‘remote’ or a ‘button press’ war.
[quote=joec]Longer term, for the terrorists, it looks like they will slowly gather strength since no International power looks to have the will to do anything to send troops in a foreign hostile country. I wonder if this is just the start of a cold/contain war where terrorists start slowly building up strength…and is normal for a while.[/quote]Could be. Looks ok to the politicians, but eventually you will have to deal with the increased internal pressure. I think the best approach if this continues is to bring a strike team in with oil well professionals and deep-plug all the wells that we fixed when over there. Use Carbide and Epoxy mix so that it will tear up drill-heads. Then just walk away. Let them fight over that stupid piece of sand. They have not comp’d us for fixing the wells that Saddam destroyed, new military equipment that they are just abandoning and running away from etc.
[quote=joec]I heard Iraq lost near 1.3 billion in military equipment that the ISIS group has now including hundreds of tanks, a couple helicopters, thousands of rounds of ammunition.[/quote]Something like that. They elected a totally incompetant Shiite, (wanted to drop that extra i) who filled their military command with nepotistic drones who don’t know how to even fight a simple skirmish. The ISIS groups tactics are very simple and they are taking a simple path. A little guerrilla tactics along the road they are using will bring them to a screeching halt.. but now it may even be a little to late for that. It looks like current Iraq military command is planning to fight them IN Baghdad. Dumb. They need to push the battle towards the insurgents and get it away from the populace that can be harmed.
