{"id":161388,"date":"2015-06-23T14:48:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T14:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=161388"},"modified":"2015-06-23T14:48:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T14:48:16","slug":"obama-war-better-no-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/obama-war-better-no-war\/","title":{"rendered":"For Obama, Any War Is Better Than No\u00a0War"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White House recently announced that Obama has approved a plan to send 450 new troops into Iraq to fight ISIS<\/a>. These \u201ctroops\u201d aren\u2019t ground troops, but instead are going in an adviser role to assist the Iraqi military.<\/p>\n

Now, everyone who believes that please, go stand on your head<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been four years since the US \u201cofficially\u201d pulled their ground troops out of Iraq, yet CNN reports that<\/a>, \u201cThere are currently 3,050 U.S. forces in Iraq \u2014 with 2,250 of them devoted to supporting Iraqi security forces, 800 protecting US personnel and facilities, 450 training Iraqi troops and 200 in advising and assisting roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does it sound like war has ended in Iraq for the US military? Does it sound like the taxpayer is all of the sudden not going to have their money stolen to benefit the military-industrial complex? Does it sound like, in such a war torn country (thanks in no small part to the US), that these new 450 soldiers will really have much of a choice<\/em> in whether they\u2019re combat troops or not?<\/p>\n

I am also unsure how it could even be tracked whether these troops stay<\/em> in their \u201cadviser\u201d role. Maybe some decide to go off and shoot some folks anyway. How would we know? Or maybe there will be some who are de facto turned<\/em> into ground troops because of the unpredictability of war torn countries. There are many questions about unaccountability that need to be answered.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To top it off, the National Journal<\/a> points out that this announcement comes only two days<\/em> after Obama admitted that he has no \u201ccomplete strategy\u201d for training Iraqi forces in fighting ISIS. So why <\/em>are more troops being sent in?<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s reasoning in the past for not sending in more explicit ground troops is that he does not want to do what the Iraqis need to do for themselves. If that\u2019s the case, then why send advisers?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a basic question of military strength and insanity. The networked resistance of ISIS, as terrifying and awful as it is, has shown, time and time again, capable to beat the Iraqi military and outwit the US assistance. I don\u2019t claim to have the answer for what would work best militarily, but it seems foolhardy to keep trying the same thing over and over again. Specifically, the militaries are trying to test their centralized might against networked cell-based terrorist organization. Do they really expect history to be on their side at this point?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House recently announced that Obama has approved a plan to send 450 new troops into Iraq to fight ISIS. These \u201ctroops\u201d aren\u2019t ground troops, but instead are going in an adviser role to assist the Iraqi military. Now, everyone who believes that please, go stand on your head. It\u2019s been four years since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-161388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news","9":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}