Global terrorism thread

Baghdad claims that Tikrit is now back under their control, though pockets of ISIS resistance remain.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/middleeast/iraq-isis-tikrit/index.html

Now we will see if the militias can be trusted around civilian populations, though most of the city has long been evacuated. And I think this battle proved that Iraq cannot retake it's cities without foreign air power.

I wish we could just get over ourselves and support this effort more directly.

I found this amusing. Given ISIS draw their strongest support from social media, this is doubly effective.

I loved that last one.

I lost my shit at the New Zealand one.

@De Marquis

Actually, the less the USA and other countries outside the region have to do, the better. We're not well-liked in the area, and if we supplant the local forces already doing the fighting we'll only help ISIS draw in more recruits.

The French one was kinda lame and unkind (the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys stereotype needs to die once and for all...).

The best ones are Britain's, New Zealand's and Russia's, imo.

@ Demargis Actually the US did provide air support for this one, a fact the media briefly touched upon and then left to focus on their "Shia militias are wining everything" narrative. And it's pretty remarkable we did this much, considering some of the bloodiest battles of the insurgency were against these very Militias.

Especially when the French lead a successful intervention in Mali. Seriously, you blow one war and your entire military heritage, past present and future, is dumped on nonstop?

edited 31st Mar '15 9:24:42 PM by Rationalinsanity

France: the biggest Never Live It Down in history.

For that matter the actions of Free France's army is nothing to sniff at either. It's really just a bullshit stereotype through and through.

edited 31st Mar '15 9:26:36 PM by Gaon

Oh if there is a country that should earn the but of the military jokes is Italy

Most stereotypes are, but they are amusing

Oh how did Rome fall so far

edited 31st Mar '15 10:02:39 PM by JackOLantern1337

Iraqi military was able to get rid of ISIS from Tikrit with help from militias.

I don't think it necessarily has to be true that any intervention by the US would automatically lead to greater overall resentment of us. We have a bad reputation over there because our policies seem weak and inconsistent. We seem to have a tendency to encourage grass-roots movements that are in our interests only to abandon them later when we lose interest. If we could implement our interventions with more strategic sense and consistency, I think we would begin building up a foundation of support over there.

Our support of the Iraqi push into Takrit was luke-warm at best. Nothing at all like, say, our support of the Northern Alliance at the beginning of the Afghan war. We could have done better.

Our support of the Afghan War ultimately gave us the Taliban and helped to create al-Qaeda. Seriously, US interventions in the affairs of other countries, and particularly Islamic countries, tend to create devastating blowback.

The Taliban came about as a result of the Soviet intervention, though American funding helped that as well.

Real reason.

It's the economy and infrastructure and education, stupid.

The Taliban came from the Afghanistan Mujahideen, but so did their foes in the Northern Alliance. I think the biggest influence (possibly by far) on the Taliban's ascension to power came from extensive Pakistani support of them. I kinda think of the Taliban as Pakistan's own attempt to invade and control the country.

More generally, there seems to be examples where full US intervention, partial US intervention and a lack of US intervention have all caused horrible fallout. And if they didn't do what they did in the past, maybe things would have been different but just as bad, or even worse still. Or no different. Sorry for the vague fatalism.

edited 1st Apr '15 10:42:33 AM by betaalpha

Yeah the Taliban were a Pakistani creation, not a US one. The Northern Alliance were the US/UK backed folks. AQ actually took out one of the main guys the UK backed against the Soviet's shortly before 9/11.

That's not to say that the guys the US/UK backed were particularly nice, a lot of them pretty much turned into drug warlords, they were pretty bitter about the US/UK abandoning them once the Soviet's left and as such some did flip sides and most have been much tougher people to work with in the modern day.

Gunmen form Al Shabob kill 15 people and take hostages after storming a Kenyan university.

AQAP just stormed a Yemeni prison and freed about 300 fighters.

@Kenya

- The GSU is now calling the shots in retaking the university in Garissa county.

@Yemen

- it's gonna be a pain in the butt now that senior AQ figures were among those freed.

RE: US backing for the Taliban and/or Northern Alliance

Here's the thing—a fair amount of the money that Pakistan's ISI put into Afghanistan? Money the USA gave them. I had to do a paper on this back in fourth year. Essentially what happened is that the US, wanting to distance itself from the conflict, gave money to the ISI, so that they could funnel it into Afghanistan. A fair amount of that money went to the Arab volunteers under Azzam, bin Laden, al-Zawahiri that eventually became al-Qaeda, some of the rest went to the Pashtun groups that would eventually become the Taliban.

The US also backed the Northern Alliance, particularly once they realised that they couldn't trust the ISI any farther than they could throw them. Still, without US money, both al-Qaeda and the Taliban would have, at the very least, taken significantly longer to form.

US money was no longer under US control once given to the ISI. The issue is misplaced trust not deliberate action.