I support air strikes against ISIS, ISIL, IS or whatever is the current acronym.

[pinto]

It was due. And hopefully it is being done as well as possible given all the complexities.

"As well as possible" seems an inappropriate term but I don't know how else to put it.

Civilians in this religious, sectarian and now international conflict are at great risk. The largest risk being ISIS. Something, someone has to stop this.

[whatchamacallit]

1. That's nice

[grahamhgreen]

2. For how many years? How much money? Who pays?

[pinto]

7. Yeah. That's a part of the conundrum as well.

[grahamhgreen]

12. 1 trillion? From a special tax on the wealthiest? Sound good?

[NYC_SKP]

3. Hear, Hear, pinto. We don't vote for CICs and then purport to know better than they do.

I don't envy the president these decisions, but I'm disturbed by some articles and bloggers who seem to find fault with every move.

The innocent have been victims for, well, ever. And they will continue to be.

One can't be elected to high office and not be faced with hard choices, and I choose to believe that President Obama is tempering his decisions.

Long term goals, local cultural stability, an end to hostility, domestic security... who among us at DU can with qualification make better decisions?

[dflprincess]

13. A good many of us purported to know better than Bush

And we did.

[grahamhgreen]

14. There is ZERO evidence that our last war created stability, in fact, we did just the opposite.

[fadedrose]

15. And who, qualified or not...

can do with all the criticism from friends, allies and enemies, attempts on his life, and stuff we don't know about? Nobody at DU, that's for sure.

I like him very much, always did and always will. Wish his critics would get the beating on TV,in the press and from other politicians that he gets..and I hope this bombing ends well and ends SOON.

[pinto]

16. I, for one, think he's tacking as temperate a course as possible given the situation.

To garner some sort of international coalition to help respond to the extremists was a good step. No clue to how it will go of course from where I sit. I read the news, don't make it. Likely to be complicated, though, imo.

[rug]

4. “No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt, The Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt

[pinto]

6. Well said, Eleanor. I wish there was another path. May still be, but it seems far off.

[NYC_SKP]

9. Wow, she did kind of nail it, didn't she?

Personally, I'd like to live in a noninterventionist nation.

But here I am. Still, some parts of our state are almost there!

[delrem]

5. I support 500 million *more* to moderate rebels to take out Assad.

I don't give a shit who those moderates actually are, so long as I'm told that they're moderate, because "moderate" is the name of the game. Who can't love a moderate, vs those extremists?

I support a complete brain-purge of everyone who tries to distinguish "moderate" from "extreme" rebels, because they aren't going to make it with anyone anyhow. I say arm them with the left hand, bomb them with the right hand, and sever the connection between the brain hemispheres if that is necessary to get this war on the road!

[Electric Monk]

8. Daesh

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025568362
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/19/isis-daesh-france_n_5850280.html

"SNIP.......................


ISIS, IS, the Islamic State, ISIL -- the international community can't seem to decide what to call the Islamic extremists who have been terrorizing the Middle East, and now the French government has announced it will use yet another name for them, which is reportedly upsetting the group.

The French foreign ministry released a statement earlier this week referencing the Islamic State group as "Daesh." The new moniker is a transliteration of an acronym of the group's Arabic name "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. It is also similar to the arabic word that means "to trample."

France's foreign minister Laurent Fabius explained that he views the organization as "a terrorist group, not a state."

“I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh,’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats,'" Fabius said, according to France 24.

[MattBaggins]

10. Five most terrifying words in the English language

Won't somebody please do something.

[LittleBlue]

11. I'll support airstrikes when an airstrike actually achieves something in the Middle East

Total Middle East policy collapse.

Fuck everything up, create a power vacuum, leave, then rush back in when this unstable situation predictably explodes. Wash, rinse, repeat. That's our new Middle East policy.

This will go down as one of the worst strategic errors in US history. Now every time some ragtag group pops up, we have to rush in because the puppet governments we left behind will never be strong enough to defend themselves.

[grahamhgreen]

17. +1. But, every time a bomb is dropped, someone makes money.