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[Strife26]

Impossible
Next to impossible


Somewhere slightly between the two



But hey, if you want a rescue corridor to the Elbe, just give me a c5 ride and some tan spraypaint for my baby. Mind you, that's going to be a helluva lot of destruction inherent is establishing any sort of ground corridor like that. But y'know, no matter what the United States does, it's the wrong option.

Maybe we'll learn to stop watering rabbits with our blood sometime.

[smjjames]

Yeah, I was exasperated, felt like Ai Shizuka thought we could just tear through them like wet paper with minimal losses.

[Strife26]

I mean, ground-wise, we could, for classical if not modern values of minimum. No half-assed middle eastern stands against a thunder-run, but that would be a horrible, bloody, awe-inspiring cluster fuck. Killing people acting like soldiers and taking ground is much, much easier that holding ground against the iffy population of Iraq. Besides the massive logistical footprint required and all that, of course.

The idea of massive berlin airlift type apocalypse now rescue from the air is the kind of thing that I couldn't even accept in a fun, b-grade technothriller novel.

[Frumple]

Hell, states might even be able to, if you're only counting losses re: US military forces. It'd just, y'know, probably leave a great chunk of the countryside as naught much but rubble. More rubble. Rubblier.

Maybe if we just level the mountains we wouldn't have to worry about getting people off 'em?

[Leafsnail]

I'm not sure why you're hand-wringing about how impossible a corridor would be, that seems to be basically what they're planning.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/us-ground-troops-direct-role-evacuate-yazidis-iraq
Incidentally IS tends to operate in concentrated and obvious military units, I don't think civilian casualties in air strikes are actually a major concern (unless the US decides to try assassinating people who aren't currently in combat).

[Heron TSG]

Aid officials in the region said that any operation to open a land route would probably require significantly greater number of soldiers, American and peshmerga than are currently available in the region, as they would have to fight their way across Isis controlled territory to reach Mount Sinjar. That would represent a political problem for Washington. US officials have stressed that the American troops in Iraq will not be involved in combat.

That doesn't seem to be what they're planning.

[Baffler]

I don't have a link, as I saw it in the newspaper (*gasp*) but it seems that the US is also giving weapons to Kurdish fighters. And as much as I feel we should go and deal with this, my head says that the quagmire will only get deeper and the condemnation will only intensify. That said, I don't see any rush from Europe to do a damn thing except to complain about the US doing/not doing things in the Middle East some more.

[DJ]

AFAIK USA didn't send conscripts to Iraq. Yeah, I bet a lot of the soldiers joined the military not expecting to ever go into an actual war, which was a pretty stupid bet to make, but they made it of their own free will and they lost it.

And yeah, my position was that if you break something you're responsible for fixing it. Propping up the corrupt and ineffective Iraqi government was a half-assed ductape job at best.

[Strife26]

Better than propping up a half-assed dictator.

But y'know, Iraq as a country either gets chaos or dictators. They're not socially developed for anything better. I say that without rancor or social Darwinism, the people just don't *think* that way right now. That's a very large reason of why the Kurds are a reasonable army and the Iraqis aren't. Lord knows that we proved that neither time, nor money, nor expertise pumped into a country can turn them professional if there isn't some kind of core to it.


And the United States hasn't had the draft since Vietnam, so, y'know, learn your terminology.

[MonkeyHead]

Yeah, a country is just not going to switch to a working democracy after a long dictatorship or a history of imperialist oppression/absolute monarchies/military dictatorships. The mindset of a society or its social nature takes time to develop away from wanting a strongman at the helm and towards an empowered social determinism. Those of us in the West seem to forget how long and hard the road to more open and freer societies was - we can not make it happen in places not ready for such systems.

[Strife26]

Yep. And it's especially telling when you look at the historical perspective. The Middle East was damn nice, better than the rest of the world, for long periods of time.


So, at the end of the day, it ain't going to be a nice place in the next twenty years. But there's still a chance for it not to be a caliphate that beheads kids for shits, giggles, and likes.

[10ebbor10]

Also, it's hard to get a decent support for a democratic system when coups happen as frequently as they happen in the Middle east.

[MonkeyHead]

In western democracies, most of us have lived under a system we voted against. We would not have been happy, but we know how the system works - there will be another election, and until then we are allowed to voice displeasure and opinions, and even protest if we must. Those who only know totalitarianism do not understand this - opinions are absolute, dissent is not tolerable so is backed and met with violence, and regular, peaceful regime change reflecting the will of the majority is unknown. Hence the descent into violence of so many so called "new democracies" in the middle east.

[Duuvian]

Free Syrian Army affiliated forces in Aleppo province surrounded by IS on one side and Syrian government forces on the other.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/fighters-capture-towns-syria-north-2014813134018291760.html

[Leafsnail]

The main issue with Iraq as a democracy isn't a lack of "social development" (whatever that's supposed to mean), it's the fact that its borders were arbitrarily drawn with no regard to the people within.  This means that you have sects and ethnic groups that are largely opposed to each other , and just handing them a majority-rules system will clearly lead to a tyranny of the majority (Saddam's oppression of Shias didn't exactly help either).

I don't think that means democracy in Iraq is impossible, it just means that you need to have some mechanism in place to prevent the Sunnis from being shafted (either greater devolution in their areas or some requirement that a party has support from both sectors of society).