Trump: Bomb the hell out of ISIS - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14796717
The United States military has dropped a 22,000-pound bomb on ISIS forces in Afghanistan, ABC News confirmed through sources at the Pentagon.

It's the largest bomb the U.S. has ever used in combat.

The "MOAB" -- which stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast but is also known as “The Mother of All Bombs” -- was dropped from a U.S. aircraft at 7 p.m. local time in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. The Pentagon says a series of caves there is being used by ISIS.

"The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and in order to defeat the group we must deny them operational space, which we did," U.S. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said.

General John Nicholson, commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, ordered the use of the $16 million bomb. It's the first time the bomb has been used in combat.

President Trump, who had been critical of former President Obama's management of the war against ISIS, called Thursday's use of the bomb a success.

Trump was told about the bomb's use but his approval was not required, a point Trump noted, as well.

"We have given them total authorization," Trump said of the military. "This was another very, very successful mission."

http://www.wfaa.com/news/us-drops-large ... /431024781
#14796905
maz wrote:When did ISIS start operating out of Afghanistan?

This article is 5 months old so do the math.

Isis in Afghanistan: 'Their peak is over, but they are not finished'

As Isis soldiers in Iraq face the brunt of Nato and Iraqi action, a small yet resilient stronghold remains in eastern Afghanistan.


Sune Engel Rasmussen in Nangarhar

Friday 18 November 2016 01.30 EST Last modified on Wednesday 23 November 2016 05.48 EST


Fifteen months ago, militants arrived in the village of Manan Bagh, eyeing its strategic location in the mountains close to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. They started picking out community leaders, elders and people they accused of conspiring against them.

Among them was Zahir Shah, who was marched into the mountains and whose fate his family only learned from a video uploaded to Facebook.

“They forced him to sit on explosives,” Ziarat Gul, Shah’s father-in-law, told the Guardian. “We haven’t been able to find even one part of his body.”

Islamic State fighters have been pummelled by US airstrikes and receive little local support, but they maintain a small – and seemingly resilient – stronghold in eastern Afghanistan.

The fighters are few but unusually brutal, in keeping with the group’s behaviour elsewhere. They may not be an existential threat to the Afghan state but they are to civilians.

Local authorities said using explosives was a common method of killing for Isis, who also impose strict rules at odds with local customs: forcing men to grow beards and women to wear burqas. They declare government-officiated weddings invalid, smash shrines and ban smoking, snuff and poppy cultivation.

These rules erode an already limited public support for Isis, argues the US Institute of Peace in a new report.

However, since it emerged publicly in 2014, Isis has continued to claim attacks outside Nangarhar – the only province where it has managed to gain ground – most notably when it targeted a crowd of protesters in Kabul in July, and a group of Shia mourners last month.

This week, Isis attacked a unit of elite Afghan bodyguards in central Kabul, which killed at least six, including civilians. Although on the ropes in Afghanistan, the group can still strike in the heart of the capital.


Since April, about 200 US airstrikes in Nangarhar alone have helped push Isis into retreat, killed its leader in Afghanistan – Hafiz Saeed Khan – and limited its reach to four districts.

“Without US or Nato forces, it would take our army and police 10 years to defeat Daesh,” said Moallem Mashoq, district governor of Achin, where Isis – also known as Daesh – has its Afghan headquarters.

But some civilians feel caught between three sides: the Taliban, who used to occupy their village; Isis, who took over; and Afghan and international forces.

Airstrikes have also caused civilian casualties; in September, a US drone killed at least 15 civilians, according to the UN.

Borhan Osman, a researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said that although Isis had lost half its initial territory in Nangarhar, it seemed to have dug in firmly in its four districts. “They have proved to be irremovable from these areas,” he said.

Locals say Isis fighters kill and abuse indiscriminately. One afternoonthey picked up 14-year-old Esmatullah as he returned home from the wheat fields and held him prisoner for 47 days.

Esmatullah said the militants beat him regularly, sometimes suspending him from the ceiling. When they eventually released him, the family fled. Esmatullah’s father had lost a brother to Isis months earlier.

“When they brought [Esmatullah’s uncle’s] dead body back, it was full of bullet holes,” the father, Jabarud, said. He did not want to risk his son, too.

The number of Isis fighters in Afghanistan is debated, as is the level of coordination it receives from Syria and Iraq, though the leadership there has endorsed its Afghan affiliates.

Osman put the number of Isis fighters in Afghanistan up to 2,000, but said estimating was difficult because the scale of casualties and recruitment was unclear.

If Abu Omar Khorasani – a top Isis commander in Afghanistan – is to be believed, the election of Donald Trump as US president would help Isis.

“His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands,” he told Reuters about Trump, who he called “a complete maniac”.

Compounding the frailty of Nangarhar, neighbouring Pakistan has begun expelling hundreds of thousands of Afghans. Some analysts fear the returnees could provide recruitment fodder for Isis which is said to pay about $400 (£322) monthly to low-level fighters.

“Their peak is over,” Osman said about Isis. “But they are not finished.”


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... t-finished
#14796914
maz wrote:They seem to be everywhere but in Saudi Arabia and Israel

And the Pakistani Security establishment. The Pakistani military and intelligence agencies are completely free of ISIS and Al Qaeda supporters. I guess the reason that Saudi is free of ISIS is because they were so co-operative with investigators after 9/11. Al Qaeda wickedly attacked the USS Cole, how different from Israel, they would never dream of taking the liberty of attacking a US warship.
#14796917
This:
New Bomb Capable Of Creating 1,500 New Terrorists In Single Blast
Image
http://www.theonion.com/graphic/new-bom ... lMarketing

Since when has bombing worked? The US has been bombing ISIS for 2 years. This is exactly the same tactic Obama was using, only Trump had to use a bigger bomb to get the same results.
#14796923
maz wrote:They seem to be everywhere but in Saudi Arabia and Israel

Part of of their original plan as "ISIL" was to take over Israel. President Obama referred to them as ISIL instead of ISIS.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM WIKIPEDIA

Today, "Levant" is the term typically used by archaeologists and historians with reference to the history of the region. Scholars have adopted the term Levant to identify the region due to it being a "wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus" that does not have the "political overtones" of Syria-Palestine. The term is also occasionally employed to refer to modern events, peoples, states or parts of states in the same region, namely Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey are sometimes considered Levant countries (compare with Near East, Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia)
#14796926
You still haven't answered the question.

Why is dropping a bigger bomb doing any different from dropping a whole bunch of bombs? Bombing doesn't work and this is Trump's big(losing) strategy?
#14797589
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/us- ... udy-finds/

    A SECRET FBI STUDY found that anger over U.S. military operations abroad was the most commonly cited motivation for individuals involved in cases of “homegrown” terrorism. The report also identified no coherent pattern to “radicalization,” concluding that it remained near impossible to predict future violent acts.

    The study, reviewed by The Intercept, was conducted in 2012 by a unit in the FBI’s counterterrorism division and surveyed intelligence analysts and FBI special agents across the United States who were responsible for nearly 200 cases, both open and closed, involving “homegrown violent extremists.” The survey responses reinforced the FBI’s conclusion that such individuals “frequently believe the U.S. military is committing atrocities in Muslim countries, thereby justifying their violent aspirations.”

    Online relationships and exposure to English-language militant propaganda and “ideologues” like Anwar al-Awlaki are also cited as “key factors” driving extremism. But grievances over U.S. military action ranked far above any other factor, turning up in 18 percent of all cases, with additional cases citing a “perceived war against Islam,” “perceived discrimination,” or other more specific incidents. The report notes that between 2009 and 2012, 10 out of 16 attempted or successful terrorist attacks in the United States targeted military facilities or personnel.

    Overall, the survey confirmed the “highly individualized nature of the radicalization process,” a finding consistent with outside scholarship on the subject.

    ...

...and...

https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/def ... zation.pdf

    Even leaving aside the important First Amendment and profiling concerns raised by the embrace of such an assumption by government officials, the religiosity-terrorism connection is simply not borne out by empirical research. The British MI5 Study explicitly debunked this view. It found that “[f ]ar from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices.”62 Sageman’s review of 500 cases, as well as multiple other empirical studies, have found that “a lack of religious literacy and education appears to be a common feature among those that are drawn to [terrorist] groups.”63 Indeed, there is evidence that “a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalization.”64

    A recent study of 117 homegrown terrorists in the United States and United Kingdom (“FDD Study”) examined the linkage between terrorism and a conservative understanding of Islam.65 While there are questions as to whether the type of sampling technique used in the study is at all useful in predicting violence,66 even among the sample population examined, the FDD Study was unable to establish that a significant proportion of actual terrorists exhibited the “religious” behaviors identified as indicative of radicalization.67 For example, only 17.1 percent of the sample exhibited low tolerance for perceived theological deviance and only 15.4 percent of the sample attempted to impose their religious beliefs on others.68 The relatively low correlation between religiosity and terrorism—in a study that seemed aimed at finding such a correlation—is a strong indication that conservative religious belief may play a lesser role in radicalization than one might assume.

    Overall, the available research does not support the view that Islam drives terrorism or that observing the Muslim faith—even a particularly stringent or conservative variety of that faith—is a step on the path to violence.69 In fact, that research suggests the opposite: Instead of promoting radicalization, a strong religious identity could well serve to inoculate people against turning to violence in the name of Islam.

...and...

http://journals.sfu.ca/jd/index.php/jd/article/view/36

    In an era where the use of military intervention is being debated by governments and societies all around the globe, the potentially radicalizing impact of the specific form of intervention has remained chronically underexplored. The article addresses this lack of research, by examining the radicalizing effects of full-scale military engagement and the consequences of more limited, aerial intervention. In an effort to inform the contentious discussion around foreign military intervention, it draws examples from the ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the more recent airstrikes employed through the US drone programme against Al-Qaeda and coalition strikes against the so-called Islamic State, illustrating the risks and outcomes of ‘boots on the ground’ versus engaging in more ‘distant’ warfare. It concludes that whilst other factors clearly play a role in an individual’s journey towards extremism, intervention by a foreign power can encourage the process of radicalization, or ‘de-pluralization’ - the developing perception that there exists only one solution, extreme violence - to take place. However, it finds that the type of intervention plays a critical role in determining how individuals experience this process of de-pluralization; full-scale intervention can result in a lack of monitoring alongside frustrations (about lost sovereignty for example), a combination which paves the way for radical ideology. Conversely, airstrikes present those underneath with unequal and unassailable power that cannot be fairly fought, fuelling interest in exporting terrorism back to the intervening countries.

:|
#14797592
I've posted the same, in the form of Mi5 studies, and islamophobes will not be swayed by facts.
#14797650
Godstud wrote:I've posted the same, in the form of Mi5 studies, and islamophobes will not be swayed by facts.

That's because we don't care about your so-called facts. We have alternate facts.

Praise the Lord.
HalleluYah
#14797651
They aren't "so-called facts". They are simply facts. Alternate facts are just the right wing's way of saying "lies". They propagate lies and hope to confuse people away from the truth.

@Hindsite , for a man who says he cares about the truth, you sure do ignore it a lot.
#14797662
No one is a fan of ISIS. Stop being stupid.

We're merely saying that dropping bombs has not been successful in dealing with them, so dropping bigger ones isn't going to do it, either. You're twisting what we're saying in a very dishonest manner.

Many neighborhood are not ISIS, but ISIS might be in them. Dropping more bombs, or bigger bombs, is not a solution. Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together can see that.
#14797678
Godstud wrote:No one is a fan of ISIS. Stop being stupid.

We're merely saying that dropping bombs has not been successful in dealing with them, so dropping bigger ones isn't going to do it, either. You're twisting what we're saying in a very dishonest manner.

Many neighborhood are not ISIS, but ISIS might be in them. Dropping more bombs, or bigger bombs, is not a solution. Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together can see that.

Dropping those atomic bombs on Japan in WWII was important in ending that war with Japan quickly. And look what happened, we are now important allies in that region. It seems to have worked out very well, indeed.

Praise the Lord.
HalleluYah
#14797682
Dropping the Atomic bombs was an entirely different thing, as it was a war against a nation. Tell me all about the US success in Vietnam, Hindiste. :roll:
#14797687
Godstud wrote:Dropping the Atomic bombs was an entirely different thing, as it was a war against a nation. Tell me all about the US success in Vietnam, Hindiste. :roll:

If it were up to me that war would have ended early and quickly in victory for the USA by dropping a few atomic or nuclear bombs on North Vietnam. that would be the humane Christian way to do it.

Praise the Lord.
HalleluYah
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