Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Belgium and Denmark have joined the coalition against ISIS in Iraq.

Denmark, Belgium Join Fight Against ISIS In Iraq

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Putin got the word about 2 weeks ago ISIL was going go liberate Chechnya but so far can only imagine fighters going the other way.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

That will make a world of difference then, them young jihadists will handing back there AK47's and kitchen knives and heading home to resume there shelf stacking careers in Croydon or wherever!

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Even though they had retaken one neighbourhood after fierce fighting despite 4 days of air strikes against tanks and vehicles, Kurdish forces have been unable to dislodge IS from Ayn-al-Arab just over the Turkish border in Syria. Current news is showing another town where the front line is stagnant and they're yelling at each other across 80 yds of sand. Peshmerga commanders say they lack weapons required to advance. Looks to me like ISIL is winning so far, no real victories for coalition forces since the fight for Mosul Dam last month. As the men in black gain strength and numbers no-one on our side has been able to come up with an army of 300k or a half million well trained and equipped troops to stop them. Airstrikes that kill 4 or 5 enemy and cost $100,000 per body will defeat us before them. Arab coalition members concerned for their own security are hardly likely to send their own troops to Iraq and Syria and even if they could be persuaded defections would certainly be a problem.
At least the choices won't be difficult to make since negotiations with ISIL are out of the question and they aren't about to give up.

For some light relief
 

:rofl:

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Seems the opposition parties don't want Canada to be involved from whats been on the news, but with more countries joining the fight, wouldn't it look bad on Canada's part if Canada doesn't help as well?

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Technically, Canada is not/will not be doing nothing against ISIL-the parties just seem to be wanting different degrees of involvement. Trudeau wants to focus on 'training of Iraqi forces, humanitarian aid, and assistance with refugees' while Harper appears to support more direct action. He has been very vague about what those steps would consist of, however, but according to CTV news, we should hear updates about it tomorrow.

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So far it really only is the Americans who have stepped up to the plate. They have made 300 air strikes vs 2 air strikes by Britain. Military targets.

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Nothing personal toward Canada but a 'symbolic' offer of support would be enough.

Unless you would like to provide the boots on the ground?, that would be terrific!

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

We could send boots and possibly some other articles of kit, but other than our shakey old fighter-bombers and some more advisors for Iraq I doubt we'll send much (our $20 million humanitarian aid package will likely be increased). Ultrarunner's probably already there. Government scandal over soldiers with ptsd fired rather than treated means they'd be scared to commit troops because of potential embarrassment. The armed forces and the government was in denial far too long and quite a few returned soldiers commited suicide. The US could send it's soldiers back on tour after tour after tour because they take care of them (not denying it was hard though) but the Harper government doesn't have the credibility to do that.
edit: Now Turkey is in, and that will go further than anything Canada has. Look at the article on RT about Russia's 2 year old arms sales to Iraq - the $4.2 billion sale has a bit of everything but scads and scads of SAM's which ISIS would no doubt love to capture. The Turks authorised use of their property (there's a dandy airbase in southern Turkey) so all players (Australia now as well) will have somewhere to fly from.

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:lol: Where is that guy?

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So the happy chubby Brit cabbie was murdered I hear. This sickens me loads as he appeared to be a really nice guy. As for the ISIS murderers, they should just keep bombing till the whole place is flat, then start over again in that part of the world !!

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No, he wasn't a cheeky chappie....he was a man who cared enough to go to try to help.... and a father of kids, and I know you feel the same way too magnump:thumbup:

This is so dreadful, when can we ever foresee a time when this is going to get better?

I feel so useless, and I am sure there are many out there like me...I am not 'physically' in the position, but I would like to help in any way that I can?

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Well, the thing is that you're in Canada. A country which is totally insignificant and useless and which is not physically in the position to do anything at all, except possibly to help out in ways which don't involve making the problem even worse. (i.e signing up in a very very very minor way to alienating strange people even more, and thereby likely doing a great deal more harm than good to Canada's self interest and security).

These people (Conservative war hawks) never learn.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

There is nothing to feel useless about. Evil happens. Even though "evil" is a human construct, the Bible explained the phenomena well. In fact the "strange people" in IS merely have a different view, and one which directly conflicts with our own. In matters of women it is largely antithetical. The problem we have is that unlike Orthodox Jews or Amish, for example, these extremists want to impose their belief system on everyone else. They are expansionist and imperialist in the way we Europeans were up until about a century ago. We have moved on, they have not. What you can do, in my opinion, is be less accommodating of religion. It's religion that fundamentally divides peoples.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

They probably feel outraged at entire villages of Kurds having their men mass executed, then beheaded for full effect; their young women detained being given the choice of marriage or a "worse fate" by refusing. The hawks might even find that the threats are credible, particularly given the terrorist incidents that have been both conducted and planned over the past thirteen years.

Do beheadings not concern you? Does an organisation that is pulling in young Western Muslims and radicalising then against their own countries not concern you? Just because Iraq II was a wrong choice (and obviously so even at the time) does not mean this IS war (or every future war) is wrong. They're not going to sit at a table and negotiate, they're not interested in plurality, they are mad people (by our terms of reference). I occasionally self-check to see if my response is hysterical, but I then look at the evidence of what they are doing, read the victims stories, listen to their rantings and realise that no, I'm not being hysterical, these people are actually as mad as they seem. Mad death cultists.

Our Liverpool-supporting friend would form a vast army of psychologists and counsellors and try and rehabilitate the well meaning militants, but I'm afraid I'm on the side of the moustachioed private investigator and want them 'defeated' (to temper my language). Indeed martyrdom is what they desire so it really will be a win win situation.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

He's entitled to his opinion, free country and all that.
The ISIS fighters aren't just a rag-tag band of bandits; they're hardcore, experienced and well equipped so they may prove to be unbeatable on the ground without a massive invasion of new troops. Look at the weeks old battle for Kobani Syria- ISIS still in control despite US airstrikes helping the Kurds and in Iraq they still control towns near Baghdad. Official reports of Iraqi victories are beginning to look like thin propaganda and I'm thinking it may be an unwinnable fight without NATO ganging up on them. This partly because Iraq still refuses to allow other Arab countries to bomb anyone in Iraq. The feeling I get from the media now is that ISIS is growing faster that the coalition opposing them, and along with the territory they capture, besides those they kill or enslave they also gain new converts and capture more and better weapons.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Well of course they do (although beheading was good enough for Catherine of Aragon and Marie-Antoinette to name just two). The point is that bombing / drone attacks etc., etc., are such blunt instruments that the absolutely inevitable deaths of even more civilians are guaranteed, leading as it ever does to further outrage and revenge against the perpetrators. In this case, as in Iraq II as you put it, a ragtag "coalition of the willing" lead and in fact simply cover for the US.

Afghanistan was also a stupid mistake but at least it was a NATO lead mistake so Canada had very little choice in that case.

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+1.2

I would say also that it's highly complex. The US, which is traditionally a significant country, is just going to get hurt again in this process. I have heard that these highly well organized thugs want a ground war - where they can lay claim to decimating the evil Westerm alliances.. The US could never win the ground war in Afghanistan, and this time i'm afraid they may not either with initial fly by attacks, and just as you say, incite thousands more to violence through maimimg/killing of innocents.

Israel bombed Gaza with no repurcussions as far as I know, from the political and economic international community. The US grapples with an identity issue, IMO, and yes those conservative hawks have taken their country down from a might perspective, all IMO, not that they would see that..

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

+1

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Unfortunately civilian deaths are guaranteed, both there and here.

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Canada should become an Islamic state. It'd be much more fun than now, plus you'd get these 'bloody women drivers' off the road. :)

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Would work right up until opening time down the legion

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

And they'd have to consider women's rights more seriously.

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The legion here is quite progressive. Women have been allowed in the lounge bar for a few years now. Some of the old timers moan when they do though:(

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I heard that even in the 1980s the bars used to have a special "lady entrance." :blink:

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

I believe your "here" is not the same as my "here", but that aside, why is that the case?

And given the remark upthread from either caretaker or yourself that airstrikes in Iraq or Syria aren't making and won't make the slightest difference towards the marvellous euphemism of "degrading" the militants, why bother?

If the West (US lead in most instances) stopped behaving like the militants' caricature of them in the Middle East, could they break the eternal cycle of violence? I don't know until it's tried.

But, as usual, nothing is how it's portrayed. Why doesn't anybody ever think about the oil addiction?

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I thought this was the eighties

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Country hotel bars here still had the signs up over the doors then but the last place I was in that had the 2 rooms segregated "Gentlemen" and "Ladies & Escorts" and enforced it was the Marina Hotel in Thunder Bay about 40 years ago.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

The pub in Newcastle I drank in most often when I was about 19 or 20 had a men only bar and a ladies' & gentlemen's lounge with a separate entrance.

I think it was still that way well into the eighties.

We (the men & the gentlemen) all shared the same bog though.

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ISIS is hard on drinking.

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Oh, I don't know. After Newcastle I went to Oxford. There was a pub on the Isis river where I used to get blasted every weekend.
It was called the Isis and *shock* it's now on Facebook. Time to get the scimitars out, I'd say.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

It was still that way in Durham in the 70s. You could buy drinks for the lounge though a hole in the wall of the bar. I have only seen it once in Canada. An old hotel in New Westminster, BC still has a "Ladies Entrance" sign over one of the doors.

Back on topic, I think that a good start would be to stop trying to enforce the Sykes-Picot "national" boundaries and allow the Middle East to form new administrations that reflected the shared interests of the various groups of people who live there.

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Well yes. But the real effup started when oil was discovered and later when Israel was created.

You're right though..

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

My "here" was meant as the West: Canada, UK, Texas ;)

Can't speak for Caretaker, but personally I think air strikes will seriously weaken IS military capability and eliminate many of their soldiers.

This one is not about oil it's, about cultural dominance. We (West) are as guilty as IS in asserting our cultural values, but it is a case of defeat or be defeated.

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I don't want to come across as obsessed with oil and the politics and power surrounding it, but ISIS are selling oil to someone to finance their operations.

Do you know who? I don't.

How apocalyptic. Do you remember the domino theory?

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ISIS is the latest guise of what some politicos are terming death cultists. In their ambition to form a state oil is an invaluable resource. Is that economic threat the only or even main reason the US and others are risking a major war, unlikely. I think a formed IS would be serious existential threat to Israel because unlike Iran they have an expansionist stance. And they are mad/crazy; they are not merely proposing a fundamental interpretation of Islam they are undertaking and propagating jihad. This entire ISIS movement is about jihad.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

If they can't deliver within half an hour you get the pizza for free:thumbup:

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

It's a bit late at night, but you toss the term jihad around a bit lightly.

It means resistance or struggle.

Contrast the word crusade which was used by GWB when his father, GHWB, former Director of the CIA ,told his dummy son in 2001 to go and screw up the middle east and most especially Saddam Hussein in the sweet cause of revenge.

All recent events follow.

Re: US step up war on ISIL
 

Any thoughts on when that will start? The Syrian airforce has been bombing the piss out of them forever and they just keep getting stronger. The US has been bombing oil fields and refineries, banks, grain storage facilities etc trying to deprive them of infrastructure and income but they keep getting stronger. Drone attacks that kill a leader or 2 don't stop an army and carpet bombing kills all the civilians as well. They'll run convoys at night then set up a convoy of refugees to get hit to sway public opinion. Every hard target the US bombs only results in a few ISIS deaths and those positions are re-occupied by ISIS immediately. Syrian air force doesn't care about killing everyone (they're all enemies) so they drop barrel bombs right on them and still can't put down the revolution. It didn't work in Afghanistan or Iraq or for that matter in Vietnam. The last places a bombing campaign resulted in a decisive military victory were Germany and Japan and when ISIS starts shooting down those planes and helicopters (and they will) the plan will have to be re-assessed. The Iraqi army, the Turkish army, and the Kurdish Persmerga working in concert with coalition allies could potentially retake the territory ISIS has occupied but they'd need an unlimited supply of recruits (impossible) and unlimited air and logistical support from the west (unlikely) and success would also be dependant on political stability in all countries involved and even then it could take years or decades. Turkish leader Erdogan says the PPK (Kurdish worker's party) are terrorists no better than ISIS so it's safe to assume their cooperation will be conditional.