McCain and Graham Call for 10k U.S. Troops in Raqqa

By Jeralyn, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Tue Dec 08, 2015 at 08:08:00 AM EST
Tags: ISIS, Iraq, Syria (all tags)

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John McCain and Lindsay Graham have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for the U.S. to put 10,000 ground troops in Raqqa, Syria, to defeat ISIS. And then they want more troops in Iraq, Libya, and anywhere else ISIS is gaining a foothold in the region.

Shorter version: The world is our colony, let's start acting like it.

Missing from their op-ed: Not a single mention of al Qaida or al Nusra in Syria or elsewhere. What are they, chopped liver? Or are al Qaida and al Nusra now okay in their book because on occasion they side with the (non-existent) Syrian rebels we're training and equipping? [More...]

If the U.S. is going to put big numbers of boots on the ground in the Middle East to force democracy down its throat, I have an idea. Instead of sending your kids or mine, let's retrain and send our most excellent global holy warriors, the DEA. We don't need them here at home. The ATF can handle drugs and guns, the FBI can handle drugs and gangs and the Coast Guard can handle drugs on the oceans and international waters. (They're also not particularly effective at the big stuff anymore: All that wiretapping and intel assistance to the Mexican Navy hasn't put a dent in the corruption in Mexico. El Chapo, his two sons and El Mayo are still protected and at large.)

Back to McCain and Graham: Their plan is not really that different than Obama's. When you get to the last few paragraphs, if you make it that far, you'll see what their really calling for is just what Obama has been doing -- only rather than say they agree with Obama, they say they agree with the Iraqi prime minister (who also wants no big combat troops in Iraq.) McCain and Graham's plan to defeat ISIS in the present (not the afterlife for which they have a different plan) boils down to:

Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, has said that he does not want foreign ground combat forces to be introduced on a large scale. Neither do we. What we do want is additional U.S. troops to perform discrete tasks: improve and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, especially Sunni tribal fighters; embed with and advise Iraqi units closer to the fight; call in airstrikes from forward positions; and conduct counterterrorism operations (My emphasis).

Other than racheting up the number of ground troops in Raqqa, McCain and Graham's plan for beating ISIS now is pretty much the same as Obama's plan. It's the afterlife, with their call to colonize the world by having large numbers of permanent troops in Iraq and everywhere else in the Middle East and Northern Africa after ISIS has been defeated that's different. Given that, their plan is just the usual political blustery.

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McCain and Graham Call for 10k U.S. Troops in Raqqa | 4 comments (4 topical)

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Sorry (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by FlJoe on Wed Dec 09, 2015 at 04:16:54 PM EST

you just don't put 10k troops into a city smack in the middle of enemy country. First you have to take it, the second battle of Fallujah took around 13k coalition troops and it was no cakewalk. plus they had support and supply bases already established in country.

McCain and Graham are fools.

I read a report (none / 0) (#1)
by NYShooter on Tue Dec 08, 2015 at 07:54:36 AM EST

by some security expert who says that al Nusra is bigger, and, more dangerous than ISIS.

Anyone know anything about this?

Kosovo and colonies (none / 0) (#2)
by thomas rogan on Tue Dec 08, 2015 at 10:54:00 AM EST

You know, intervening in civil wars on humanitarian grounds actually works if you keep troops on the ground long enough. Bill Clinton did it in Kosovo. We still have troops on the ground in Japan, South Korea and Germany. Intervening in the Korean civil war worked for South Korea. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan was that we handed power over to useless leaders and then left too quickly.
There is a body of thought that countries under colonial rule were actually better governed than they were under the Robert Mugabes of the world or the tribal genocides of the world.

: Come On... (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by ScottW714 on Wed Dec 09, 2015 at 11:14:53 AM EST

Kosovo is 4,212 sq mi, a fraction of Iraq and Syria, around 600,000 sq mi. We used nukes on Japan, and Germany took ~70 million troops, and ~60M lives to defeat.
Plus of course we aren't fighting a war of countries, we are fighting an ideology that all the bombs in the world will not defeat, if anything they only increase the number of enemies.
Not sure why most people haven't learned any lessons from the past decade+. We didn't stick around long enough because after a decade we realized we cannot win, and throwing more money and bodies at the problem wasn't going to change the fact that you cannot beat an ideology with bombs and bullets.
But taking that argument, are you cool with another decade long trillion dollar expenditure that leaves our young men and women dead or disabled in the hopes that this time we won't lose ?
I am all for anyone that supports this sending in checks and we will fight until the money runs out, but to burden the rest of us with these foolish notions of defeating an ideology, is unfair to say the least.