Send Boots on the ground to deal with ISIS?

Glad we have folks advocating for a second Holocaust on the boards…

@Redleg13A:

There is such a thing as rushing to failure…I� honestly would prefer more time to give guys like me more time to prepare and train…rushing over their, letting our emotions drive us and then lead to failure would be exponentially worse than creating a solid plan, mobilizing the needed forces, establishing lasting alliances, and ensuring proper funding and support so the slaughter can come to a stop in full. If it sounds cold and calculated, it is…it also saves lives.

Oh, I do agree. Calculation over rash action 98% of the time. I would not advocate going over there just to show action to our public or to the world; that is inefficient, disingenuous and dangerous. Either way, politicians stalling or rushing or deflecting creates problems and is not in the best interests of victory or saving lives. That is what I have a problem with: wasted and misguided action/inaction.

From today’s NY Times.  I can’t post a link, so here is the text.

FIFTY years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized a strategic bombing campaign against targets in North Vietnam, an escalation of the conflict in Southeast Asia that was swiftly followed by the deployment of American ground troops. Last month, President Obama expanded a strategic bombing campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Middle East, escalating the attack beyond Iraq into Syria.

Will Mr. Obama repeat history and commit ground troops? Many analysts believe so, and top officials are calling for it. But the president has expressed skepticism about what American force can accomplish in this kind of struggle, and he has resisted the urgings of hawks inside and outside the administration who want him to go in deeper. Mr. Obama, his supporters say, is a “gloomy realist” who has learned history’s lesson: that American military power, no matter how great in relative terms, is ultimately of limited utility in conflicts that are, at their root, political or ideological in nature.

It’s a powerful, reasoned position, amply supported by the history of America’s involvement in Vietnam. But that history also shows that a president’s attitude and analytical assessment, no matter how gloomily realistic, are not necessarily an antidote to ill-advised military action. Foreign intervention has a logic all to itself.

Today we think of Lyndon Johnson as a man unwaveringly committed to prevailing in Vietnam. But at least at first, he shared Mr. Obama’s pessimism. He and his advisers knew they faced an immense challenge in attempting to suppress the insurgency in South Vietnam. “A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere,” he said privately in early March 1965. “But there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam.”

Johnson also knew that the Democratic leadership in the Senate shared his misgivings, and that key allied governments counseled against escalation and in favor of a political solution.

On occasion the president even allowed himself to question whether the outcome in Vietnam really mattered to American and Western security. “What the hell is Vietnam worth to me?” he despaired in 1964, even as he was laying plans to expand American involvement. “What’s it worth to this country?”

At other times Johnson was quite capable of arguing for the geopolitical importance of the struggle — he was adept at tailoring his Vietnam analysis to his needs of the moment. But the overall picture that emerges in the administration’s massive internal record for 1964-65 is of a president deeply skeptical that the war could be won, even with large-scale escalation, and far from certain that it was necessary even to try.

So why did Johnson take the plunge? In part because he was hemmed in — not merely by 15 years of steadily growing American involvement in Indochina, but, more important, by his own and his advisers’ use of overheated rhetoric to describe the stakes in Vietnam and their confidence in victory. Moreover, he had personalized the war, and saw any criticism of its progress as an attack on him, compromising his ability to see the conflict objectively.

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We know the results. In the very week in which he professed to see “no daylight” in the struggle, Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder, the graduated, sustained aerial bombardment against North Vietnam; also that week, he dispatched the first combat troops. More soon followed, and by the end of 1965, some 180,000 men were on the ground in South Vietnam. Ultimately, the count would top half a million.

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Recent Comments

R.
3 hours ago
Syria is Obama’s Rwanda.

Mike Roddy
13 hours ago
Your last quote from Johnson is correct, and applies to today’s situation in Iraq and Syria. Deploying ground troops there would be a…

Ed
16 hours ago
To compare President Johnson to President Obama is ridiculous. Personalities do matter; personal life experiences do matter. Johnson was in…

See All Comments

True, it’s hard to imagine Mr. Obama ordering a Johnson-style surge of combat forces to Iraq or Syria. The circumstances on the ground are dissimilar, and he sees the world and America’s role in it differently than Johnson did. By all accounts he is less inclined to personalize foreign policy tests, and less threatened by diverse views among his advisers.

In these respects he is much closer in his sensibility and approach to another Vietnam-era president, John F. Kennedy. He consistently rejected the proposals of civilian aides and military leaders to commit combat forces to Vietnam, but he also significantly expanded American involvement in the conflict during his thousand days in office, complicating the choices open to his successor. Whether he could have continued to walk that line, as Mr. Obama is trying to do, is an unanswerable question.

But the point is not about biography; rather, it’s about the inability of a president, once committed to military intervention, to control the course of events. War has a forward motion of its own. Most of Johnson’s major steps in the escalation in Vietnam were in response to unforeseen obstacles, setbacks and shortcomings. There’s no reason the same dynamic couldn’t repeat itself in 2014.

And there is a political logic, too: Then as now, the president faced unrelenting pressure from various quarters to do more, to fight the fight, to intensify the battle. Then as now, the alarmist rhetoric by the president and senior officials served to reduce their perceived maneuverability, not least in domestic political terms. Johnson was no warmonger, and he feared, rightly, that Vietnam would be his undoing. Nonetheless, he took his nation into a protracted struggle that ended in bitter defeat.

“I don’t think it’s worth fighting for, and I don’t think we can get out,” a sullen Johnson told McGeorge Bundy, his national security adviser, in 1964. One can only hope the same sentiment is not being expressed in the Oval Office today.

@MightyChris:

Glad we have folks advocating for a second Holocaust on the boards…

You mean the ones advocating a holocaust of the arabs and palestinians?  I don’t think it right for America or Israel to go around bombing anyone.

You need to look up the definition of a Holocaust, buddy.

Do you honestly not understand the difference between targeted strikes using precision munitions, and advocating using nuclear weapons to wipe an entire nation “off the map” in order to get the whole mess resolved “once and for all?”  Your words–eerily reminiscent of a “final solution” even.

@LHoffman:

I really despise politicking, plausible deniability and optical maneuvering… really despise it. I keep banging my head against a metaphorical wall wishing it would stop, but I think it is an unfortunate eternal reality. And it isn’t just politicians but executives and lawyers and anyone in a position of power with something to lose/gain because of it. It is a cycle of deception and/or head-in-sand mentality that is trickling down to the general public.

Politics are inevitably messy, and as you say they’re one of those unavoidable frustrations in life – but if it’s any consolation, politics in truly democratic states (I’m excluding states which claim to be democratic but actually aren’t, like the various People’s Democratic Republics of Whatever that existed a few decades ago) are at least messy in some better ways than they are in totalitarian dictatorships.

As just one minor example: several years ago, when Saddaam Hussein was still in power, he ran for reelection as President (or whatever his nominal title was), and afterwards he boasted that Iraq’s democracy was far better than that of the United States because in contrast with the US, where many eligible voters don’t bother to cast ballots, the Iraqi people had participated with a 100% turnout at the polls, and had reelected him with a 100% majority.  Roughly around the same, as I recall, there was a US Presidential election and the incumbent (I can’t remember who was in office at the time) lost his bid for reelection.  As the law stipulates, he handed the White House over to his successor a couple of months later on inauguration day.  No shooting, no coup d’etat, no revolution, no troops or tanks deployed in American streets to quell disorder – and nobody taking any special notice of this peaceful transition of power, because everyone is accustomed to seeing matters handled in that way when a new American President takes office and few people stop to think that, in many parts of the world, such a routine changeover in such a powerful elected office would be unthinkable.  Washington DC continued to be a very messy place, of course, and it will always remain so – but at least it’s not run by dictators-for-life like Saddaam Hussein who add insult to injury by claiming that they were reelected fair and square by 100% of their country’s citizens.  I think Winston Churchill once said that democracy’s only redeeming feature is that it was better than all the alternatives, which is an interesting way of looking at the subject.

@variance:

You mean the ones advocating a holocaust of the arabs and palestinians? �I don’t think it right for America or Israel to go around bombing anyone.

I don’t think anyone here is advocating that and you are a sharp enough guy to know better. You are just baiting a political argument. Actually, I did vote for the nuke 'em option in this poll, truth be told. But that conveys a frustration of “Oh, F–- it all… I don’t know what to do anymore.” rather than an actual desire to kill everyone over there.

As for Israel, they are not posting videos of beheading civilians, executing mass numbers of prisoners or deliberately suicide bombing school children. ISIS/Al-Qaeda/Hezbollah/Boko Haram etc… do.

I would say it is pretty clear who the bad guys are.

@CWO:

I think Winston Churchill once said that democracy’s only redeeming feature is that it was better than all the alternatives, which is an interesting way of looking at the subject.

And he was right.

@LHoffman:

I would say it is pretty clear who the bad guys are.

Not so clear who the good guys are.

So says the guy who is literally advocating using nuclear weapons to “wipe out” a race of people “once and for all.”

@variance:

@LHoffman:

I would say it is pretty clear who the bad guys are.

Not so clear who the good guys are.

Correct also. However, we at least have guarantees on a couple of the known good guys. And the bad guys end up showing themselves at some point.

I say let the middle east burn itself to the ground…That part of the world, the people, the religion, their societies, their culture cannot be saved by anyone but themselves……

I say we stop having our people rush into that burning building….

And if some remnant of a society emerges over there, great, if it happens to be the religious nuts that want to live in the 10th century and force their societies to live in the middle ages, so be it….the people in that part of the world get what they sow….

And if this 12th century, islamic fundamentalist backwards society emerges from the ashes and attacks any democratic modern nation….for any reason, including jihad etc….well then we do what the Romans did to the Carthaginians. Kill everything, salt the earth…Job done

@JWW:

I say let the middle east burn itself to the ground�That part of the world, the people, the religion, their societies, their culture cannot be saved by anyone but themselves�…

I say we stop having our people rush into that burning building�.

And if some remnant of a society emerges over there, great, if it happens to be the religious nuts that want to live in the 10th century and force their societies to live in the middle ages, so be it�.the people in that part of the world get what they sow�.

And if this 12th century, islamic fundamentalist backwards society emerges from the ashes and attacks any democratic modern nation�.for any reason, including jihad etc�.well then we do what the Romans did to the Carthaginians. Kill everything, salt the earth�Job done

Because that is so easy to do over there….and it’s not like there isn’t any national interest over there either. We all know isolationism works, just put our heads in the sand…while true evil prevails, because good men with the right equipment will do nothing…doesn’t sound very American to me…but in practice it so is…

@Redleg13A:

Because that is so easy to do over there….

What is so easy to do over there?

@Redleg13A:

it’s not like there isn’t any national interest over there either.

what political interest are you referring? Please don’t say oil….we currently don’t import any from the middle east…so gas prices world wide would rise…we are currently paying crazy money per day just to bomb the savages now…there isn’t a justifiable fiscal comparison to be made and this doesn’t even take into account the human, american toll such action would have.

@Redleg13A:

We all know isolationism works, just put our heads in the sand…

I don’t believe I advocated that…Perhaps this later point wasn’t clear….Kill everyone, salt the earth?

@Redleg13A:

while true evil prevails, because good men with the right equipment will do nothing…

It sounds like in your estimation, only “good men” can be found in this country? I don’t agree. There should be good Turks, Saudi’s, Egyptians, Iraqi’s, Jordanians etc…etc…They certainly have the equipment. We bought it for them and gave it to them already.

Utilizing your logic, there shouldn’t be any place in the world where we should not intervene militarily to thwart evil……This argument is naive and this objective unachievable.

@JWW:

@Redleg13A:

Because that is so easy to do over there�.

What is so easy to do over there?

@Redleg13A:

it’s not like there isn’t any national interest over there either.

what political interest are you referring? Please don’t say oil�.we currently don’t import any from the middle east…so gas prices world wide would rise�we are currently paying craizy money per day just to bomb the savages now�there isn’t a justifiable fiscal comparison to be made and this doesn’t even take into account the human, american toll such action would have.

@Redleg13A:

We all know isolationism works, just put our heads in the sand�

I don’t believe I advocated that�Perhaps this later point wasn’t clear�.Kill everyone, salt the earth?

@Redleg13A:

while true evil prevails, because good men with the right equipment will do nothing…

It sounds like in your estimation, only “good men” can be found in this country? I don’t agree. There should be good Turks, Saudi’s, Egyptians, Iraqi’s, Jordanians etc�etc…They certainly have the equipment. We bought it for them and gave it to them already.

Utilizing your logic, there shouldn’t be any place in the world where we should not intervene militarily to thwart evil�…This argument is naive and this objective unachievable.

Most middle eastern militaries cannot force project at all. Not to mention how fragile any alliance would be without either the UN or another coalition of the willing to keep everyones eyes on the ball. They lack adequate training and there would be too many conflicting agendas if left to their own devices.

We helped create this mess. We need to help clean it up. It isn’t going away any time soon and there is a very real potential for there to be “splash effect” if we don’t.

The “so easy” comment was about the extermination bit. What you are advocating is genocide. We are supposed to be the good guys, remember. The problem is much more complicated than you are making it out to be and it will require coordination, leadership, and a clear understanding of the ins and outs of the areas. We have been successful at this before with AQI in al anbar circa 2006-2007, the same can be done now. Trust me, veterans of that war are chomping at the bit to right this wrong….myself included.

@Redleg13A:

It isn’t going away any time soon and there is a very real potential for there to be “splash effect” if we don’t.

But … there will probably be a “splash effect” even if we act.

The present situation is arguably a “splash effect” from the war in Iraq.

@Redleg13A:

Most middle eastern militaries cannot force project at all. Not to mention how fragile any alliance would be without either the UN or another coalition of the willing to keep everyones eyes on the ball. They lack adequate training and there would be too many conflicting agendas if left to their own devices.

I do not believe that the countries I mentioned earlier cannot effectively engage and defeat isis. If they can’t then so be it, they can start their caliphate and eventually they will attack the wrong country, perhaps Israel and then we can engage w/all the willing vets we have. Yet I would argue that we do it “right” this time.

@Redleg13A:

We helped create this mess. We need to help clean it up. It isn’t going away any time soon and there is a very real potential for there to be “splash effect” if we don’t.

I agree with you here but just as we might not have the intestinal fortitude to “kill everyone and salt the earth” I doubt we are willing to stay the long term, criminalize their twisted religion and build a democracy. I feel this is pure folly and naivety.

@Redleg13A:

The “so easy” comment was about the extermination bit. What you are advocating is genocide.

It took the fire bombing of Germany, the atomic bombs striking Japan, THEN the Marshall plan and 70+ years of permanent military bases and involvement in the axis countries for us to make a change to the dynamic of these peoples, their culture and their society at large. This is what I mean by Kill everyone and salt the earth. It is, imo, the only realistic way and we aren’t ready for that are we?

@Redleg13A:

We are supposed to be the good guys, remember.

If we are indeed the ONLY good guys capable of effectively combating problems like this around the world we are indeed in a world of schite my friend. There are other good guys and I would argue smarter ones at that.

@Redleg13A:

The problem is much more complicated than you are making it out to be and it will require coordination, leadership, and a clear understanding of the ins and outs of the areas. We have been successful at this before with AQI in al anbar circa 2006-2007, the same can be done now. Trust me, veterans of that war are chomping at the bit to right this wrong….myself included.

I want to say I REALLY appreciate your service. You are a true good guy and hero in my book. I am all for offering coordination & leadership (perhaps in 2 years when this country has one). But the topic was boots on the ground and I would rather we keep your boots where they are.

@wheatbeer:

@Redleg13A:

It isn’t going away any time soon and there is a very real potential for there to be “splash effect” if we don’t.

But … there will probably be a “splash effect” even if we act.

The present situation is arguably a “splash effect” from the war in Iraq.

agreed

I just realized the second part of my post was redundant since redleg acknowledged this. I appreciate the argument of responsibility he makes, I just have doubts about where such involvement will ultimately lead both the US and the Middle East.

@MightyChris:

So says the guy who is literally advocating using nuclear weapons to “wipe out” a race of people “once and for all.”

I wasn’t really advocating that.  I was thinking more along the lines of JWWs post but he wrote it better than me and more funny.  Sometimes humour doesn’t carry well.  But anyway, lets get the hell out of the middle east and leave them to their own.