Richard
Fernandez doubts the efficacy of the pro-Yazidi airdrop and limited strikes:
In Obama’s gesture is an implicit lie. Nobody ever comes to a war “to help”. It’s not like stopping by a picnic or helping a neighbor move house, where you can participate as much or little as you want and then walk away. The only valid object of joining a conflict is ‘to win’, or at least, be on the winning side. Fighting to look good is neither moral nor does it work. You don’t ever want to “help” and be among the defeated. For those in the field, defeated means dead.
Bombing once started makes enemies and kills people. Unless it is done for a definite object and terminal state in mind, then it is better not done at all. Any action sufficient to ‘stop the genocide’ requires defeating ISIS. Either Obama aims to defeat ISIS or he is merely prolonging the agony. Lyndon Johnson was a great fan of “targeted airstrikes” in Vietnam. Johnson famously boasted of his fine grained control over the USAF.
“LBJ liked to pick bombing targets himself”. More strongly expressed in Vietnam Magazine, December 1997, by Air Force Major John Keeler (Ret) – who quotes LBJ as saying: “Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission”.
Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam to ‘send a message’. Ho Chi Minh was in it to win. How did that work out?
3 comments:
Maybe this is just my ignorance of military matters but it sounds to me like what we have is a mountain full of Yazidi and the area surrounding the mountain full of ISIL. Is there some reason we can't just bomb the area around the mountain? Is this not something drones could do quite effectively? Or does the "precision-strike" designation on, say, the Hellfire missiles not mean that precise?
(Link is bad and the way PJ Media is handling that is driving me nuts. Try this.)
Yeah, I hear "ISIS massing here or there" and that's kind of the obvious question in my mind. Or is the problem that ISIS strategically places a toddler or two in the middle of every platoon?
Why would Leftists bomb their allies, the Islamic Jihad?
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