LOL!

Posted by dahsdebater on 1/29/2016 8:52:00 PM (view original):
Well, if we hadn't decided a military response was the correct action following 9/11, and had done nothing instead, ISIS wouldn't exist.  Al Q'aida is bigger now than it was then, but that might have happened anyway.  So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East.

So yeah, doing nothing would have been better.  Unambiguously so.

He's talking about ISIS.

So, I'll ask again, is ISIS in Afghanistan?

yep

Posted by bad_luck on 1/31/2016 6:51:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 1/29/2016 8:52:00 PM (view original):
Well, if we hadn't decided a military response was the correct action following 9/11, and had done nothing instead, ISIS wouldn't exist.  Al Q'aida is bigger now than it was then, but that might have happened anyway.  So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East.

So yeah, doing nothing would have been better.  Unambiguously so.

He's talking about ISIS.

So, I'll ask again, is ISIS in Afghanistan?

"So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East."

Interesting choice of words.  "Middle East" instead of "Iraq".

FYI . . . Afghanistan is also in the Middle East, as is Iraq.  And Afghanistan was the immediate military response that followed 9/11.

Also, we did not attack Syria after 9/11.  ISIS has a pretty large presence there as well.

But to answer your specific question "Is ISIS in Afghanistan" . . . I would assume that ISIS has some presence in all the Middle Eastern countries.  Very large in some (Syria and Iraq), but much smaller in others.  It also has a presence in Europe, as was evidenced by the attacks in Paris in November.  It also has some presence, albeit small, in the USA as was evidenced by the attacks in San Bernadino.

So "Is ISIS in Afghanistan" - probably yes.

burn

Posted by tecwrg on 1/31/2016 7:05:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 1/31/2016 6:51:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 1/29/2016 8:52:00 PM (view original):
Well, if we hadn't decided a military response was the correct action following 9/11, and had done nothing instead, ISIS wouldn't exist.  Al Q'aida is bigger now than it was then, but that might have happened anyway.  So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East.

So yeah, doing nothing would have been better.  Unambiguously so.

He's talking about ISIS.

So, I'll ask again, is ISIS in Afghanistan?

"So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East."

Interesting choice of words.  "Middle East" instead of "Iraq".

FYI . . . Afghanistan is also in the Middle East, as is Iraq.  And Afghanistan was the immediate military response that followed 9/11.

Also, we did not attack Syria after 9/11.  ISIS has a pretty large presence there as well.

Do you actually think he was talking about Afghanistan when discussing the rise of ISIS?

A) Is it BL's contention that ISIS ONLY came about because radicals were upset that we went into Iraq?    That they weren't  bothered because of Afghanistan?
B) Are we still pretending that ISIS came in power because Iraq was invaded?  That it couldn't have happened otherwise?
C) Are we ignoring the fact that ISIS was practically a non-issue until bin Laden was dead?

Posted by bad_luck on 1/31/2016 7:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tecwrg on 1/31/2016 7:05:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 1/31/2016 6:51:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 1/29/2016 8:52:00 PM (view original):
Well, if we hadn't decided a military response was the correct action following 9/11, and had done nothing instead, ISIS wouldn't exist.  Al Q'aida is bigger now than it was then, but that might have happened anyway.  So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East.

So yeah, doing nothing would have been better.  Unambiguously so.

He's talking about ISIS.

So, I'll ask again, is ISIS in Afghanistan?

"So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East."

Interesting choice of words.  "Middle East" instead of "Iraq".

FYI . . . Afghanistan is also in the Middle East, as is Iraq.  And Afghanistan was the immediate military response that followed 9/11.

Also, we did not attack Syria after 9/11.  ISIS has a pretty large presence there as well.

Do you actually think he was talking about Afghanistan when discussing the rise of ISIS?

He was talking about our military action in the Middle East following 9/11.

That includes Afghanistan.  Perhaps you heard about that war.  It was in the news a lot.

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/31/2016 7:23:00 PM (view original):

A) Is it BL's contention that ISIS ONLY came about because radicals were upset that we went into Iraq?    That they weren't  bothered because of Afghanistan?
B) Are we still pretending that ISIS came in power because Iraq was invaded?  That it couldn't have happened otherwise?
C) Are we ignoring the fact that ISIS was practically a non-issue until bin Laden was dead?

A) Apparently.
B) Apparently.
C) Apparently.

That seems dumb.

A) I'm pretty sure radicals get upset with the US over just about anything.  Especially involvement in the ME.
B) That seems to be speculating on what will happen in the future with radical organizations.   Seems to me that they're rather unpredictable.
C) I can't recall the first time our leader mentioned ISIS.  It might have been when he called them the JV team.   Pretty sure that was early 2014.

Reason you can't recall when our so called leader first mentioned ISIS is because he never has. He refers to them as ISIL.

Copied from an article at quora.com:
By 2011, when the U.S. troop withdrawal was complete, AQI was being run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and had morphed from a largely foreign to a largely Iraqi operation. Baghdadi himself, as his name suggests, is local. The absence of foreigners made it easier for the Sons of Iraq and their kin to ignore previous resentments against the group. There was also another rebranding: AQI was now better known as the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI.
Baghdadi took Zarqawi’s tactics and supercharged them. The Shiites were still his main targets, but now he sent suicide bombers to attack police and military offices, checkpoints, and recruiting stations. (Civilian targets remained fair game.) ISI’s ranks were swelled by former Sons of Iraq, many of whom had previously been commanders and soldiers in Saddam’s military. This gave Baghdadi’s fighters the air of an army, rather than a rag-tag militant outfit.
With thousands of armed men now at his disposal, Baghdadi opened a second front against the Shiites—in Syria, where there was a largely secular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad
.
What mattered to Baghdadi and his propagandists was that Assad and many of his senior military commanders were Alawites, members of a Shiite sub-sect
.
Battle-hardened from Iraq, ISI was a much more potent fighting force than most of the secular groups, and fought Assad’s forces to a standstill in many areas
.
Soon, Baghdadi renamed his group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), reflecting his greater ambitions

Posted by dahsdebater on 1/29/2016 8:52:00 PM (view original):
Well, if we hadn't decided a military response was the correct action following 9/11, and had done nothing instead, ISIS wouldn't exist.  Al Q'aida is bigger now than it was then, but that might have happened anyway.  So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East.

So yeah, doing nothing would have been better.  Unambiguously so.

He's talking specifically about ISIS, tec. That's enough enough of a hint that he isn't talking about the war in Afghanistan.

In one press conference after another, when referring to the Muslim terror super-group ISIS, United States President Barack Obama will use the term ISIL instead of their former name ISIS or current name Islamic State. Have you ever wondered about that? We have.

ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Now, to us Westerners we don’t really make much of a distinction, do we? No, honestly from our perspective its all about the same. But how would a Muslim living in the Middle East view it? Just what is the Levant anyway? Let’s take a look.

The geographical term LEVANT refers to a multi-nation region in the Middle East. It’s a land bridge between Turkey to the north and Egypt to the south. If you look on a map, however, in the near exact middle of the nations that comprise the Levant, guess what you see? Come on, guess!

It all has to do with the nation of Israel.


When Barack Obama refers over and over to the Islamic State as ISIL, he is sending a message to Muslims all over the Middle East that he personally does not recognize Israel as a sovereign nation, but as territory belonging to the Islamic State.

Now you know why Obama says that he has no plan, no goal, and no stated aim for dealing with ISIS. But he does have a plan, and it’s a really nasty, diabolical one. Obama’s plan is to drag his feet for as long as he can, doing only the bare minimum that Congress forces him to do. His “plan”to buy ISIS as much time as possible to make as many gains as they can.

And it’s working.

The Islamic State has garnered millions of dollars, a vast cache of weapons, and in their latest foray have captured Syrian fighter jets. With each passing day that Obama fulfills his stated aim of doing nothing, the Islamic State grows by leaps and bounds. The ultimate goal, of course, has not changed and will never change.

The ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel.

Now you know a little bit more why Obama chooses his words so carefully, and what’s really in a name.

Posted by bad_luck on 1/31/2016 9:25:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 1/29/2016 8:52:00 PM (view original):
Well, if we hadn't decided a military response was the correct action following 9/11, and had done nothing instead, ISIS wouldn't exist.  Al Q'aida is bigger now than it was then, but that might have happened anyway.  So I guess we can just blame ISIS on our military activities in the Middle East.

So yeah, doing nothing would have been better.  Unambiguously so.

He's talking specifically about ISIS, tec. That's enough enough of a hint that he isn't talking about the war in Afghanistan.

You might notice that he does not mention the name of any particular country in this post.  He only mentions "Middle East".

Which countries were the target of the US military response in the Middle East following 9/11?

Hint: there are two.  One was a direct response to 9/11.  The other was supposedly related to the broader war on terror, and not specifically 9/11.