is this a real thing that is actually happening?

[Al B. Sure!]

Intervention by who? We ain't doing ****.

There's always a line in the sand.

You can't have cogent foreign policy without pre-planned conditional responses. I hope we don't go to war or not go to war over a whimsical gut feeling but instead because people in power have determined an appropriate Rubicon. Is the Rubicon ISIS seizing Baghdad? Is the Rubicon ISIS acquiring chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons? There's most definitely a point where we send boots on the ground.

[C0ckney]

if one thing's for sure, it's that ISIS won't find any WMDs in iraq.

[Elok]

If another thing is for sure, it's that we're sick of war. And it's hard to make a case that military action would make a meaningful, desirable difference.

[DinoDoc]

There's always a line in the sand.

How many "Red Lines" have we drawn so far over the course of this Admin?

[Sava]

DD, are you still a Bergdahl truther?

[Uncle Sparky]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09bf97c2-f...c0.html#slide0

Kurds in Mosul was recorded in the Financial Times - their site really doesn't want me to copy or link - but the above will get you close...

[Dinner]

This is exactly what will happen in Afghanistan too. A year or two after the western armies leave the people will help the Taliban to over throw the corrupt government we installed. The government's soldiers will just take off their uniforms and run away just like the Iraqi military has done, this is what happened in South Vietnam, and in half a dozen different regimes we installed around the 3rd world in the last century. These sorts of foreign interventions rarely work out in the long run.

[Egbert]

this is what happened in South Vietnam,

I can still recall reading f the fall of South Vietnam in the newspapers at the time. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam collapsed putting up little, if any, serious resistance. It really sounded like the North Vietnamese Army was having a Sunday stroll down the coast, all the way to Saigon.

The South Vietnamese government was, by all accounts, corrupt and incompetent.

The Afghan government is, by all accounts, corrupt and incompetent. A Taliban takeover would be no surprise.

The Iraqi government is not much use to anyone. The country is divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. A collapse should be no surprise.

[Al B. Sure!]

This is exactly what will happen in Afghanistan too. A year or two after the western armies leave the people will help the Taliban to over throw the corrupt government we installed. The government's soldiers will just take off their uniforms and run away just like the Iraqi military has done, this is what happened in South Vietnam, and in half a dozen different regimes we installed around the 3rd world in the last century. These sorts of foreign interventions rarely work out in the long run.

Unless we stay there indefinitely as in South Korea.

[Heresson]

It is all USA fault. USA and Israel de facto created Islamic fundamentalism both by giving it a reason to live and by funding it against secular socialists in the Muslim world and against USSR. Then Bush instead of fighting them... attacked secular Iraq, dissolved its army, brought Dark Ages to it, allowing ISIS to form, storm Syria, and then come back for more in Iraq itself.

[Sava]

The form of radical Islam we're dealing with today pre-dates the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi_movement

[AAAAAAAAH!]

SHUT UP SAVA EVERYTHING IS AMERICA'S FAULT OKAY?

[The Mad Monk]

Did you two switch places or something?

[AAAAAAAAH!]

NO WE DEFINITELY DIDN'T SWITCH BODIES OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.

[molly bloom]

There's most definitely a point where we send boots on the ground.

Well there's your foreign holiday booked.

Don't get mistaken for a native!