The Bombing of ISIL in Syria Has Begun

Filed in National by on September 24, 2014

Yesterday, the bombing of ISIL targets in Syria started in earnest.. Even though there is stated coalition to take on this task, right now it seems that the US is doing the heavy lifting. No surprise, I imagine. I’m interested in this question posed by Andrew Sullivan: Does The GOP Really Give A Shit About The Debt?:

I mean: where are the fiscal conservatives now? The ISIS campaign is utterly amorphous and open-ended at this point – exactly the kind of potentially crippling government program Republicans usually want to slash. It could last more than three years (and that’s what they’re saying at then outset); the cost is estimated by some to be around $15 billion a year, but no one really knows. The last phase of the same war cost, when all was said and done, something close to $1.5 trillion – and our current travails prove that this was one government program that clearly failed to achieve its core original objectives, and vastly exceeded its original projected costs.

If this were a massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure project for the homeland, we’d be having hearing after hearing on how ineffective and crony-ridden it is; there would be government reports on its cost-benefit balance; there would be calls to end it tout court. But a massive government program that can be seen as a form of welfare dependency for the actual countries – Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Kurdistan – facing the crisis gets almost no scrutiny at all. And what scrutiny it gets is entirely due to partisanship and the desire to portray this president as effectively useless.

For all of the fearmongering and the saber-rattling coming from these so-called fiscal conservatives, there is no discussion on how to pay for this adventure. None whatsoever. And the media doesn’t help here — I have never, ever seen anyone ask John McCain or Lindsay Graham how the country pays for all of the military intervention they want. Because if they cared about the debt and curbing deficit spending, we’d be in the middle of discussing a tax increase to pay for this thing.

We’ve talked about this here and here, but now that we are officially bombing Syria (we’ve been bombing Iraq for awhile), what do you think?

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (12)

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  1. Dana says:

    If ISIS is a threat to the peace and security of the civilized world, then we have to take action. There are so many places where we are wasting money that we ought to be able to cut spending to pay for the bombing campaign. To me, the real question is: if ISIS must be destroyed, do we have a plan with a reasonable chance of success to accomplish that? At least as of now, the Commander-in-Chief must personally approve every strike against ISIS in Syria. That says, to me, that the campaign against ISIS will be governed by political considerations at least as much as military ones, and I have my doubts that that will work any better than it did when President Johnson had to sign off on bombing raids during the Vietnam war.

    It won’t take ISIS long to figure it out: since there is no political support for bombing civilians, all that ISIS has to do is surround themselves with civilians. They’ve already proved that they don’t care about civilian casualties. What happens when a bombing strike kills 17 ISIS fighters, and 174 non-combatants?

  2. SussexAnon says:

    “If ISIS is a threat to the peace and security of the civilized world….”

    That’s a mighty big if. Pissed off muslims in pick up trucks riding around the desert killing each other does not a global threat make. Its just another Wednesday in the Middle East.

    Why should we bother if the countries in the region aren’t going to take the lead on this?

  3. ben says:

    It IS a significant threat to the global oil industry.

  4. Geezer says:

    “If ISIS is a threat to the peace and security of the civilized world, then we have to take action.”

    Who is “we,” kemo sabe? The US plus other countries? I assume that’s what you mean. This will be important in a minute.

    “There are so many places where we are wasting money that we ought to be able to cut spending to pay for the bombing campaign.”

    A much better solution would be to increase the taxes on the rich, who will most benefit from a war. Why should the rest of us pay for it? I’m much more likely to be killed by an American with a gun. If we don’t have to address that in any sort of way except to punish people after the fact, why is this different — especially considering that I have virtually no chance of being directly affected?

    “To me, the real question is: if ISIS must be destroyed, do we have a plan with a reasonable chance of success to accomplish that?”

    And that “real question” begs the questions: What does “must” mean to you, and what does “destroyed” mean to you. Only once we determine that can we move on to what “reasonable” means to you and what “success” means.

    “At least as of now, the Commander-in-Chief must personally approve every strike against ISIS in Syria. That says, to me, that the campaign against ISIS will be governed by political considerations at least as much as military ones,”

    Remember back at the top, when I asked about that “we” you mentioned. If you indeed meant “other countries,” any coordinated action will, BY DEFINITION, involve political as well as military considerations.

    “and I have my doubts that that will work any better than it did when President Johnson had to sign off on bombing raids during the Vietnam war.”

    And you think THAT was the only problem with the bombing raids? I want people to take note of your statement, as evidence of what happens when history is left in the hands of ideologues.

    “It won’t take ISIS long to figure it out: since there is no political support for bombing civilians, all that ISIS has to do is surround themselves with civilians.”

    If it were that simple they would have done it by now. They are not Hamas in Gaza; they have not acted like a guerrilla organization. They do not live in the crowded cities. Most of the territory they have seized is desert. But you might have read that ISIS is carrying out government functions in those areas. We are attacking that infrastructure first.

    “They’ve already proved that they don’t care about civilian casualties. What happens when a bombing strike kills 17 ISIS fighters, and 174 non-combatants?”

    Civilians learn to run away whenever they see ISIS fighters coming, and try to stay far away from them at all times.

    Seriously, though, the same thing that happens in Gaza: The bombs will keep falling despite protests. Apolitical civilians will be caught in the crossfire. Humanitarians will point out that a cruise missile or a drone is pretty much as deadly as a sharp knife, though bombs at least dispense with the preliminary torture. That position will gain little traction with the public, which will consider the deaths of several thousand Muslims not enough to settle the score over two grisly decapitations.

    Or was that a rhetorical question?

  5. Geezer says:

    “If ISIS is a threat to the peace, security and especially the profitability of the civilized world….”

    FTFY.

  6. Jason330 says:

    Utter dismemberment by Geezer. Dana is a great specimen of a typical dumbass American, accepting his spoon-feed media like a good little boy.

  7. cassandra_m says:

    “They’ve already proved that they don’t care about civilian casualties. What happens when a bombing strike kills 17 ISIS fighters, and 174 non-combatants?”

    So have we, really. How many civilians have died in Iraq during the time we were there looking for yellowcake? Civilians are just bad press, as we’ve already demonstrated. They don’t stop anything.

  8. puck says:

    Surely this time we will be greeted as liberators.

  9. ben says:

    i think this is some of the most sense anyone has ever made on the internet.

  10. cassandra_m says:

    Sorry Ben, I spammed that comment you are responding to.

  11. ben says:

    heh. it’s fine. often the first thing i read in the morning makes me go “what the hell did i just read”… that one made me get up and get another cuppa.

  12. Truth Teller says:

    We spent years and millions training Iraqi’s and when push came to shove 30,000 dropped their arms and ran away so what makes us think that this time it will be different?