State Department spokesperson: "We can’t stop ISIS by killing them, we need to give them jobs."

[d2d]

State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told Chris Matthews that ISIS can be stopped if we just create jobs for them. This bitch went to private schools all her life and Daddy's alma mater Ivy League college. She doesn't know a fucking thing about anything, except which fork to use at dinner.

... but if we kill them, will the dead ones still want jobs? Somebody please explain how dead Muslims want jobs from us?

 

[LoneStarDawg]

She's got ironically thick rimmed glasses, so clearly she's smarter than everyone.

 

[whatshouldicareabout]

Maybe the jobs we give them will all be as grave diggers?

 

[CFetters_Nacho_Lover]

Maybe at some point before deciding to radicalize and join ISIS, they wanted jobs but those now part of ISIS can't be helped. Setting them up at a VO-Tech isn't going to cause them to throw away their AKs.

 

[PurpleThrobber]

She's got ironically thick rimmed glasses, so clearly she's smarter than everyone.

Need a shot of her rack to make that determination.

 

[jecornel]

Maybe we can hire them as death panels for obamacare?

Seems like a good job for them.

 

[AZDuck]

State is both right and wrong on this one. If we had actually used their blueprint "Future of Iraq" that they generated in 2003, we might have been able to build a halfway decent successor state to Saddam Hussein, but we didn't (in part because it explicitly said that we would need troops in Iraq for 10 years plus - which was not politically okay back in 2003).

Iraq is proper fucked now, a true failed state. Jobs are no longer the problem. That was the problem in 2007. Joe Biden's probably right in that the best bet would be to partition Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines. But we can't say that publically.

 

[RaceBannon]

We had troops in Iraq until Obama pulled them out. Now we're sending them back. All so Obama could claim a victory in 2012.

This is on your boy

 

[DeepSeaZ]

First off, the economy can't take on more minimum wage (minimum value) workers at $15 an hour. Which might not be a problem here since ISIS doesn't give a shit about money at a micro level. These guys just want to wipe out everything that isn't them. Giving them jobs will not solve that problem.

 

[AZDuck]

Not quite. GWB negotiated a Status of Forces Agreement requiring the US to withdraw its forces by the end of 2011. Obama failed to re-negotiate the terms of said agreement to ensure that US troops stationed in Iraq would not be subject to Iraqi laws and courts, so US forces left.

Doesn't really matter, Iraq is proper fucked.

 

[ToddTurnerLIVES]

If you actually care to get the facts there is a good Frontline called "Losing Iraq" that goes into detail of exactly how we fucked up (spoiler: Partisan hacks won't be pleased as blame is cast on both Bush and Obama). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/losing-iraq/

If you don't care to watch that here is the synopsis: we vastly underestimated the amount of time, money & resources needed to rebuild Iraq after we bombed it to shit. After about a decade of failed attempts we actually started to get things headed in the right direction towards the end of the Bush presidency. We stopped the sectarian fighting by paying and training the minority tribes to become mercenaries for the central government(that group was called "The Sons of Iraq"). After a decade of trying to fight an underfunded and undermanned war we had found a solution that minimized US involvement but armed a bunch of fucking crazy ass tribesman which, if you remember the outcome of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, didn't end well for the US(Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, 9-11... you get it).

Then Obama came into office and was hell bent on getting out of Iraq despite what generals were telling him. We started pulling troops out and the majority Islamic faction, on queue, started committing religious genocide against the minority tribes. But this time they were armed with weapons that the US gave them as mercenaries for the central government. Same as the fucking Taliban in the 80s. So now you have ISIS which was the Sons of Iraq who were trained and armed by the US.

The notion of jobs being a solution is really saying "we actually need to build a nation state that is sustainable and inclusive to every faction inside Iraq." Jobs is a part of it. A seat at the politcal table for all religious factions is a part of it. The reality is that Iraq is a religious battleground and the prospects of all that happening is pretty fucking small. Which begs the question why were in there in the first place? Once boots were on the ground, why pussy-foot around and try to minimize our activity in the country? And once we have some shit working why pull out when we can pretty much guarantee the outcome is going to be shitty for both Iraq and the US?

 

[RaceBannon]

I blame Bush for not turning it into a parking lot and then rebuilding it from scratch like Japan and Germany. Of course he gets blame. The lack of unity after both parties voted for war didn't help either. We don't know how to win a war anymore

 

[ToddTurnerLIVES]

First off, the economy can't take on more minimum wage (minimum value) workers at $15 an hour. Which might not be a problem here since ISIS doesn't give a shit about money at a micro level. These guys just want to wipe out everything that isn't them. Giving them jobs will not solve that problem.

How does the US minimum wage have anything to do with Iraq?

 

[HeretoBeatmyChest]

State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told Chris Matthews that ISIS can be stopped if we just create jobs for them. This bitch went to private schools all her life and Daddy's alma mater Ivy League college. She doesn't know a fucking thing about anything, except which fork to use at dinner.

... but if we kill them, will the dead ones still want jobs? Somebody please explain how dead Muslims want jobs from us?

The larger point, which this chick probably bungled and you are too fucking stupid to understand is that poverty and high youth unemployment can be deep root causes of terrorism. Its obviously far beyond it at this point but people with jobs don't become terrorists.

Kinda ties in with Race's point that we had to completely rebuild the place & its economy or otherwise it would be susceptible to becoming a dumpster fire.

 

[DeepSeaZ]

It doesn't. Goes back to older HHB threads on proposed minimum wage in Seattle.

First off, the economy can't take on more minimum wage (minimum value) workers at $15 an hour. Which might not be a problem here since ISIS doesn't give a shit about money at a micro level. These guys just want to wipe out everything that isn't them. Giving them jobs will not solve that problem.

How does the US minimum wage have anything to do with Iraq?

 

[AZDuck]

If you actually care to get the facts there is a good Frontline called "Losing Iraq" that goes into detail of exactly how we fucked up (spoiler: Partisan hacks won't be pleased as blame is cast on both Bush and Obama). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/losing-iraq/

If you don't care to watch that here is the synopsis: we vastly underestimated the amount of time, money & resources needed to rebuild Iraq after we bombed it to shit. After about a decade of failed attempts we actually started to get things headed in the right direction towards the end of the Bush presidency. We stopped the sectarian fighting by paying and training the minority tribes to become mercenaries for the central government(that group was called "The Sons of Iraq"). After a decade of trying to fight an underfunded and undermanned war we had found a solution that minimized US involvement but armed a bunch of fucking crazy ass tribesman which, if you remember the outcome of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, didn't end well for the US(Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, 9-11... you get it).

Then Obama came into office and was hell bent on getting out of Iraq despite what generals were telling him. We started pulling troops out and the majority Islamic faction, on queue, started committing religious genocide against the minority tribes. But this time they were armed with weapons that the US gave them as mercenaries for the central government. Same as the fucking Taliban in the 80s. So now you have ISIS which was the Sons of Iraq who were trained and armed by the US.

The notion of jobs being a solution is really saying "we actually need to build a nation state that is sustainable and inclusive to every faction inside Iraq." Jobs is a part of it. A seat at the politcal table for all religious factions is a part of it. The reality is that Iraq is a religious battleground and the prospects of all that happening is pretty fucking small. Which begs the question why were in there in the first place? Once boots were on the ground, why pussy-foot around and try to minimize our activity in the country? And once we have some shit working why pull out when we can pretty much guarantee the outcome is going to be shitty for both Iraq and the US?

Pretty much this except Sons of Iraq =/= ISIS. I know because I've worked with the former and helped to kill the latter.

The Sunni tribes are sitting on their hands as much as they can.

6/10 would smash

 

[dnc]

If you actually care to get the facts there is a good Frontline called "Losing Iraq" that goes into detail of exactly how we fucked up (spoiler: Partisan hacks won't be pleased as blame is cast on both Bush and Obama). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/losing-iraq/

If you don't care to watch that here is the synopsis: we vastly underestimated the amount of time, money & resources needed to rebuild Iraq after we bombed it to shit. After about a decade of failed attempts we actually started to get things headed in the right direction towards the end of the Bush presidency. We stopped the sectarian fighting by paying and training the minority tribes to become mercenaries for the central government(that group was called "The Sons of Iraq"). After a decade of trying to fight an underfunded and undermanned war we had found a solution that minimized US involvement but armed a bunch of fucking crazy ass tribesman which, if you remember the outcome of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, didn't end well for the US(Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, 9-11... you get it).

Then Obama came into office and was hell bent on getting out of Iraq despite what generals were telling him. We started pulling troops out and the majority Islamic faction, on queue, started committing religious genocide against the minority tribes. But this time they were armed with weapons that the US gave them as mercenaries for the central government. Same as the fucking Taliban in the 80s. So now you have ISIS which was the Sons of Iraq who were trained and armed by the US.

The notion of jobs being a solution is really saying "we actually need to build a nation state that is sustainable and inclusive to every faction inside Iraq." Jobs is a part of it. A seat at the politcal table for all religious factions is a part of it. The reality is that Iraq is a religious battleground and the prospects of all that happening is pretty fucking small. Which begs the question why were in there in the first place? Once boots were on the ground, why pussy-foot around and try to minimize our activity in the country? And once we have some shit working why pull out when we can pretty much guarantee the outcome is going to be shitty for both Iraq and the US?

Pretty much this except Sons of Iraq =/= ISIS. I know because I've worked with the former and helped to kill the latter.

The Sunni tribes are sitting on their hands as much as they can.

6/10 would smash

Okay for someone more ignorant on this than I should be, who are the Sons of Iraq now, and where did ISIS come from, if they're not the same? I'm not challenging you, I just have no fucking clue.

 

[RaceBannon]

Didn't isis come from Syria?

 

[AZDuck]

The Sons of Iraq (SOI) are basically Sunni tribesmen from western and north-central Iraq. Many are actually folks who had power/influence in the Saddam era, and were fluhed from the government and army during Paul Bremer's "De-Baathification" edict in 2004. ISIS actually got its start in my old stomping grounds of Diyala province (Baqubah and environs - NE of Baghdad) only at the time they were known as AQI or "Al-Qaeda Iraq."

The whole idea of recruiting, training and arming the SOI was to give the Sunnis an alternative to Al-Qaeda aligned groups and give the Sunnis a chance to safeguard their interests and show them that they had a place and a role in post-Saddam Iraq.

Problem was that Nuri al-Maliki fucking hated the SOI and when the US started to draw down its forces in Iraq in 2009, his guys would start to roll up the SOI as soon as the US handed over tactical control of an area to the Iraqi armed forces. He also started up some cool secret prisons to torture and murder them.

By that point everyone knew the exact date that US forces were leaving, so the al-Qaeda fuckers just bided their time. Once the US was out, they came out of the woodwork. In the meantime, lots of AQI guys had migrated across the desert to Syria (along with almost 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees from the fighting during 2004-2009) and were heavily involved in radicalizing the civil war there.

ISIS broke off from AQI during some arguments about fuck if I know during the Syrian war. The Syrian Al-Qaeda guys are known as "al-Nusra Front." the US also killed the hell out of AQI. We basically liquidated everyone that didn't get over the Syrian border.

ISIS started to control territory and was organized more like a mafia than an armed force, and they made a shitton of money robbing banks in Iraq and smuggling oil into Turkey. The Turkish government kind of tolerated ISIS at first because the Turkish government is also a little bit Islamist and they have a shared love of long moonlit walks to the mosque and Kurd killing.

Last year ISIS began moving into Iraq in force, and the Iraqi army folded like a tent because all the competent generals and officers were Sunni and had been purged/killed/left. So they took big swathes of northern and western Iraq.

The local Sunni populations kind of let them do their thing because at least they aren't Shia thugs out to kill them and rape their daughters. ISIS only does that shit to Shia, Kurds, and Yazidis. But given that most of the Sunni population wasn't real religious (by middle eastern standards, anyway) I'm not sure how much they will like living under the Caliphate's fun-filled brand of islamic law. Here's one clue: Muslims believe burning people alive is actually a really bad thing to do - because Mohammed said something about that once. So ISIS burned a Sunni high-caste Muslim alive. Big mistake.

But Iraq really is proper fucked. There is absolutely no hope for either Iraq or Syria at this point, which means that Lebanon is fucked as well.

 

[2001400ex]

The overreaction to what some hot blonde bimbo says on a lame news channel is great. Here is her actual quote in case you were wondering.

“We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians — they’re in this fight with us,” Harf said. “But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs.”

“We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or 50 lifetimes,” Matthews interrupted. “There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor Muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?”

In return, Harf suggested a soft power-like approach: “We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance,” she said. “We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.” She conceded, however, that there is “no easy solution.”