Islamic State vs. The World (except Canada)

[Bacon King]

It's people like Chairman Sanchez and Deus Naturae here that are turning me into a foreign policy hawk. In a vacuum, a foreign policy of nonintervention seems sound, but just like many ideas that are "good in theory" they just aren't workable or reasonable in the nuance of real life.

While sectarian tensions in Iraq aren't new, we're the ones who toppled their government overnight, destroyed the existing social power structures, and forced them into a decade of foreign military occupation as a rumbling insurgency wrought havoc throughout the nation taking countless lives. We're the ones who effectively pulled out overnight and washed our hands of the matter while that insurgency transformed into a brutal sectarian revolution. ISIS is killing thousands of innocents whose only crime is practicing the "wrong" religion (or even practicing "right" one in an inadequate manner). This is our mess and we should be responsible for cleaning it up because we left the nation of Iraq in shambles. If we have the capacity to act and prevent death and oppression there's only one moral solution.

ISIS is rapidly advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil, the current home of the United States diplomatic mission to Iraq and the heart of our only real ally east of Jerusalem. If Iraqi Kurdistan falls then Baghdad falls because ISIS would no longer need to hold two fronts in Iraq. If Baghdad falls without America lifting a finger, then the rump Shia Iraq that's left will beg Iran for assistance and intervention. At that point ISIS's self-styled "Caliphate" would probably step up the killing of Shia civilians to the point of outright genocide.

This has the potential to go very wrong very quickly in so many ways. Fretting about ideological righteousness and partisan squabbling is outrageously ridiculous when there's tens of thousands of a minority religious group holding off on a mountainside. There faced with options of rescue or genocide- but that choice isn't for them to make. That choice gets made by people in Washington DC who are so out of touch that they weigh the chance to prevent a slaughter of thousands of innocent lives against a "public relations backlash" that would result. They're forced into such a situation by people like you, with righteous indignation about how that genocide "isn't our problem to stop!" People like you are why the Rwandan Genocide was allowed to happen. The boneheaded isolationist ideology you represent is the single greatest flaw of American democracy because it equates self-dependence with utterly immoral selfishness.

The combat airstrikes were visible from the Kurdish side of the front line- the front line that's been steadily pushing towards the Kurds for the past week. It's an active combat zone and was literally the no-man's land just a few days ago. Any civilians would have evacuated from the area well before the bombs fell, although I'm deeply sorry that your masturbatory delusions of exploding hospitals did not come true.





(drunk effortpost, sorry if not legible, things just struck a chord with me. not proofreading so my bad for typos)

[Bacon King]

Given the signals from the Security Council lately even a UN-sponsored mission isn't inconcievable

[Bacon King]

Given the current context of ISIS and its immediate threat to certain minority groups, I'm not entirely opposed to the strikes in and of themselves; however, anything beyond this is almost certain to backfire, as have plenty of "police actions" in the past.

Be careful. Warning that this is certain to backfire automatically means you want a hospital to explode.

... except that you literally said that.

I hope this backfires. I really do. We need to learn a lesson. I guarentee that when the bombs begin to fall we are going to nail a hospital or a school, and ISIS's ranks will only continue to swell.

emphasis mine