I think its a combination of the lack of political will and the nature of the enemy. ISIS can be described as amorphous, lacking in definite form or boundaries. I see it much like the VC in the 60's and 70's.
I am under the impression that if we can't beat them on the ground we should think about use if our nuclear arsenal. I am just sick and tired of the citizens of the USA being the whipping children of the world terrorist organizations. Our government is truly gutless!!
Do you think our Citizens should be in Syria/Iraq??? What business does any citizen have in that area, esp since 2001?
The simple answer is because Special Forces don't or can't, in reality, do what you probably imagine they do.
That is not meant as an insult in any way, it is just true that most people have a TV or Hollywood driven idea of Special Forces that does not reflect reality.
Having said that, SOF could be part of an overall way of dealing with ISIL along with judicious use of combat airpower, cooperation with the more effective Iraqi ground forces (and there are indeed some of those), cutting or freezing of ISIL/ISIS/IS funds around the globe and perhaps arming the Kurds better to defend themselves.
Of course, there are whole threads on OSA debating that issue.
The most important reason we haven't done anything, IMHO, is that our current Commander-in-Chief does not have a strategic core to his thinking - he doesn't like foreign affairs, wasn't elected on a foreign affairs platform, and frankly, doesn't have a consistent or thought through policy for dealing with crises, so everything is a pick-up game.
Well I don't know if "lack of balls" is the word for so much as the lack of a million man army. So are you saying just send those guys back into that area where most have 3-7 tours already and begin kicking some butt? We don't have the "balls" or the female counterpart in sufficient supply to do that. I will tell you that the young men we have now that have been in combat for 3-7 tours are going to be a MESS when they get my age. Hell I did one tour with the big red one in Vietnam in combat and my family and friends will tell you Im a mess. For that matter the VA thinks so too.
All you that want us to go kick some ass over there line up and enlist. If you don't want to then get ready to pay for a million man army to do it because these brave young men and women have done their part. Its the politicians and zealots turn. Kick ass and take no names is easy to say but hard to carry out against an enemy such as we have had from vietnam to today with 400,000 troopers in uniform.
My opinion, as a non military guy who has basically only read a bunch of books....
We made war against Nazi Germany in an unrestricted way for the most part, I know we were cautious at times, but we leveled French cities and even killed French civilians (not to mention other occupied countries) at times because we knew winning the war had to take precedence. We fought unrestricted warfare against Imperial Japan, leveling whole cities and killing hundreds of thousands of theirs so we didn't lose hundreds of thousands more of ours. Since then we have not had to fight the Nazi's nor the Imperial Japanese as far as I know...
My take is that we have become fools thinking we can just make "lite war" on people and they will learn their lesson. Unless we do that which is hard, and ugly, as in kill every last one of them with vengeance and little thought as to the "innocents" who may die, then in the long run more innocents will die, both theirs and ours. Look at the predicament Israel is in, every 3-5 years they have to do what they have been doing for the last few months. We will be in the same situation until, and some could argue we already are, just not directly yet.
Ever seen the original Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon"? Look it up on Netflix. I am not ever going to say that the wars we have waged did not have ugly consequences for numerous people, but war should be a terrible thing for both sides, them for what we do to them, and us for what they have forced us to have to do. Otherwise people won't think of it as a terrible thing to be avoided, and enough of them will survive to regroup and come back over and over and over again....
We made war against Nazi Germany in an unrestricted way for the most part, I know we were cautious at times, but we leveled French cities and even killed French civilians (not to mention other occupied countries) at times because we knew winning the war had to take precedence. We fought unrestricted warfare against Imperial Japan, leveling whole cities and killing hundreds of thousands of theirs so we didn't lose hundreds of thousands more of ours. Since then we have not had to fight the Nazi's nor the Imperial Japanese as far as I know...
My take is that we have become fools thinking we can just make "lite war" on people and they will learn their lesson. Unless we do that which is hard, and ugly, as in kill every last one of them with vengeance and little thought as to the "innocents" who may die, then in the long run more innocents will die, both theirs and ours. Look at the predicament Israel is in, every 3-5 years they have to do what they have been doing for the last few months. We will be in the same situation until, and some could argue we already are, just not directly yet.
Ever seen the original Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon"? Look it up on Netflix. I am not ever going to say that the wars we have waged did not have ugly consequences for numerous people, but war should be a terrible thing for both sides, them for what we do to them, and us for what they have forced us to have to do. Otherwise people won't think of it as a terrible thing to be avoided, and enough of them will survive to regroup and come back over and over and over again....
So do I but even that was not enough to defeat the N. Vietnamese and Vietcong.
they may be lacking in form, etc but read what a special ops soldier of ours thinks of them http://news.yahoo.com/isis-incredib...s-sources-183719521--abc-news-topstories.html
He seems to think they are a formidable foe.
Really? You think that's really a good answer? Think about what you just proposed...if the nukes were selective in who they killed and/or what they destroyed, that would be one thing. But, unfortunately, nuclear weapons are not selective at all. I'd like to see us just get the hell out of the rest of the world's problems and concentrate on solving our own. I'm sick and tired of innocent people being killed and wounded...for what cause?
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