Prosthetic Conscience wrote:This is not one plan; it's two separate plans.
OK fine...a program with 2 projects.
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:ISIS held territory is already "under siege" - look in the news for "Raqqa" and "Mosul", the 2 major cities they now hold. A plan about this needs to state how this will be done differently for it to be discussed.
Correction, it's under assault. However it's "assaulting" right back in the Philippines and Australia now I believe. I propose we stop attacking them, and just isolate them. Cut off from trade, travel, communications, food, medicine, everything. Order Iran, Syria, the Saudis and Iraqis to hold and prepare to form part of a link that will completely cut these lands off from everything. If they refuse, add them to the isolation area. Make it perfectly clear that this horse-shit ends now.
Of course, Russia and China would have to be in agreement and willing to participate.
And Egypt, Turkey and the like will try to smuggle in "humanitarian aid", which the force would have to repel as well. Yes...it would be ugly.
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:Most of the asylum seekers in Europe did not come from land currently held by ISIS. So this is a different matter. As Buzz62 puts it, "herding" over a million people is not a simple matter. This involves the cooperation of the governments where you want your planes or ships onto which you have forced the people to receive them. This has been tried on a small scale with Turkey, but doing it with over a million will be far harder. The countries likely to cooperate on a small scale will point out they are just where the refugee camps are, and can't take hundreds of thousands. If the idea is to, say, establish a beachhead in Syria with military force, land the Syrian refugees there, and then run away, you have to consider how many would die when you've plonked hundreds of thousands down somewhere you were able to invade, which won't be able to support such a population (plus how may died in the military operation).
You have to decide how many deaths you're willing to cause so that you don't have any more refugees in your country. And also consider if this might count as genocide, the way the Turkish treatment of the Armenians did in World War One (forcing huge numbers of people into places unable to support them, in roughly the same area).
As I said, I do understand the implications. Thousands would die.
That's sort of part of the question here, isn't it?
Could we stand to look at ourselves after doing it?
Or would we wallow in shame for having shut out and starved out so many, just to keep the worst of them from blowing up kids at a concert?