To Crush ISIS, Will Trump Send U.S. troops into Syria? - Foreign Policy

[TomSea]

Excerpted:

To Crush ISIS, Will Trump Send U.S. troops into Syria?

Trump has made some overblown promises. 'Quickly' wiping out Islamic State might be the biggest.

Current and former military officers say Trump could make good on his promises of “quickly” defeating the Islamic State only if he sent in an overwhelming force of U.S. ground troops, a politically risky option that could plunge the United States into another fraught, open-ended occupation in the Middle East.

Though Trump campaigned on the idea of reducing U.S. commitments overseas, such a ground force has surprising traction inside the administration: Michael Flynn, tapped for national security advisor, has openly flirted with the idea.

The retired U.S. Army general and intelligence officer has suggested wider military action is required to tackle what he deems an “existential” threat, one he compares to the adversaries America faced in World War II and the Cold War.

“The sad fact is that we have to put troops on the ground. We won’t succeed against this enemy with airstrikes alone,” Flynn told Der Spiegel in 2015.

After he was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 and before joining the Trump team, Flynn drafted a plan that called for sending U.S. forces into the Syrian city of Raqqa, the last territorial bastion of the Islamic State, sources familiar with the proposal told Foreign Policy.

The details of that blueprint remain unclear. But in the 2015 interview with Der Spiegel, the retired general suggested a multinational occupation of Syria by the United States, Russia, and other powers — resembling the international peacekeeping force that deployed to the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

“We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors,” Flynn said, adding: “The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/08/to-crush-isis-will-trump-send-u-s-troops-into-syria/

I don't think we will.

“ISIS has been defeated a lot of times,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The question isn’t whether you defeat ISIS, it’s whether you let ISIS come back in three years’ time.”

[truth_seeker]

Since terrorists will hide among women and children, it would be necessary to kill ten of thousands of women and children.

I don't see America today, willing to do that.

WWII was ended in part by bombing Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We won and it stayed won. They were and remained very compliant during our long occupations.

To get to compliant unconditional surrender, we had the will to do what was necessary.

No  more.

[dfwgator]

Since terrorists will hide among women and children, it would be necessary to kill ten of thousands of women and children.

I don't see America today, willing to do that.

WWII was ended in part by bombing Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We won and it stayed won. They were and remained very compliant during our long occupations.

To get to compliant unconditional surrender, we had the will to do what was necessary.

No  more.

Vietnam pretty much took care of that.

[montanajoe]

Vietnam pretty much took care of that.

In my view it was the baby boom generation's widespread refusal to support both their country and those from our generation who were serving...

[TomSea]

We had to stay long term in Iraq; not withdraw but just staying there with any kind of substantial presence would have meant I'm sure, some lives lost of American troops, just the logistics does that.  Syria is a different country, folks can make of that what they want. In my view backed up with credible information, terrorists used it as a staging ground of attacks on coalition forces.

[TomSea]

Since terrorists will hide among women and children, it would be necessary to kill ten of thousands of women and children.

I don't see America today, willing to do that.

WWII was ended in part by bombing Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We won and it stayed won. They were and remained very compliant during our long occupations.

To get to compliant unconditional surrender, we had the will to do what was necessary.

No  more.

My speculation is that stories have been recently, that Russia looks at the US in Afghanistan and wonders if it is succeeding, likewise, Russia probably bombed Aleppo in a similar way as you describe above. Unfortunately, we aren't going to likely win the war with our sensitive approach, at least, wars against people like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

But doing so nowadays, gets all of the human rights folks upset, etc. etc. Some returning vets from Vietnam called baby killers, things like that.

This is all bad, so is uncalled-for interventionism that might get these places riled up.