How do you bomb the shit out of ISIS? Russia appear to be trying to do that and they are bombing hospitals on behalf of a president who used chemical weapons against his own people
This is no longer about who did what, to whom, and with what. It is not a game of Cluedo.
You keep on bombing until they give up. In order not to allow such a situation to arise again, you do not start or support uprisings against sitting presidents in a region that is extremely vulnerable to Islamic fundamentalism. No matter how odious the tinpot dictator may be, you do not cause destabilisation unless you are willing to put troops on the ground and finish what you started, if revolution or a coup or 'regime change' (aka interference in the affairs of a sovereign state) is what you want. You do not delegate to amateurs in the country yourself and seek to limit American expenditure of lives and money, playing games in other countries on the cheap.
Russia is doing the right thing in Syria in seeking to stop the insurgency and restore government by a person who will owe Russia a huge debt once the dust settles and may be amenable to persuasion on matters like civil/human rights, stance on Israel, etc.
Like it or not, the US supports Israel, first and last, in the middle east. Allowing ISIS to take over Syria would put Israel in immediate jeopardy, and this is the enmity that has a chance to ignite WW3. Israel is governed at the moment by a bunch of utter yahoos who are only stopped from nuclear intervention because Russia has taken action.
'Obliterate Iran' is in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. It's not a general policy to combat terrorism You are right. It's a general policy that would result in nuclear annihilation, with life as we know it going up in a mushroom cloud, solving all of our global warming and terrorism problems and MIL /Christmas problems with one fell swoop. If this is her only answer to the very complex questions posed by the middle east then we should all be worried.
ISIS must be stopped, and it is truly a tragedy that hospitals are being caught in the crossfire, but the only way to stop them is by physically wiping them out.
Sense about NATO?
NATO is not a way to combat terrorism. It is a hangover from the Cold War that has outlived its purpose, in which decision making is chaotic and carried out at tortoise pace. In practical terms, NATO troops in exercises do not co-ordinate or communicate well. All members should pay their own way. None of this is controversial. Barack Obama himself referred to some US allies as 'free riders'.
www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/30/the-fatal-expense-american-imperialism/teXS2xwA1UJbYd10WJBHHM/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos2 Food for thought from Jeffrey Sachs on 'guns vs butter'. Or 'bread vs circuses'. (This is also an interesting read for those convinced that Russia is a threat to world peace, has imperial ambitions, etc.) It is not popular to talk of ending America's imperial pretensions, but someone has to.
'THE QUARTER CENTURY since 1991 has therefore been marked by a perpetual US war in the Middle East, one that has destabilized the region, massively diverted resources away from civilian needs toward the military, and helped to create mass budget deficits and the buildup of public debt. The imperial thinking has led to wars of regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, across four presidencies: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The same thinking has induced the United States to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, despite the fact that NATO’s supposed purpose was to defend against an adversary — the Soviet Union — that no longer exists. Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has emphasized that eastward NATO expansion “was certainly a violation of the spirit of those declarations and assurances that we were given in 1990,” regarding the future of East-West security.
There is a major economic difference, however, between now and 1991, much less 1950. At the start of the Cold War, in 1950, the United States produced around 27 percent of world output. As of 1991, when the Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz dreams of US dominance were taking shape, the United States accounted for around 22 percent of world production. By now, according to IMF estimates, the US share is 16 percent, while China has surpassed the United States, at around 18 percent. By 2021, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund, the United States will produce roughly 15 percent of global output compared with China’s 20 percent. The United States is incurring massive public debt and cutting back on urgent public investments at home in order to sustain a dysfunctional, militarized, and costly foreign policy...
...Many American conservatives will sneer at the very thought that the United States’ room for maneuver should be limited in the slightest by the UN. But think how much better off the United States would be today had it heeded the UN Security Council’s wise opposition to the wars of regime change in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Many conservatives will point to Vladimir Putin’s actions in Crimea as proof that diplomacy with Russia is useless, without recognizing that it was NATO’s expansion to the Baltics and its 2008 invitation to Ukraine to join NATO, that was a primary trigger of Putin’s response.'