LogFAQs > #879765825

Lokarin posted...

minervo posted...

JOExHIGASHI posted...

That'll just create sympathizers, more anti-American sentiment, and recruits for terrorist organizations

This.

Actually; I've always disagreed with this reasoning... because you can just take out the new guys over and over until there's no one left. [this was referring to using conventional force]

That's the problem. You know that whole "everyone is 6 handshakes away from anyone else in the world" thing? Well, we can put aside that it is an idealized scenario for a moment. The real gist of it is that people have friends and family and acquaintances and all sorts of whatnot. Even ISIS nuts. Not all of those acquaintances are necessarily in agreement with them mind you, but they may still mourn the loss of a friend or family who happens to support ISIS. And if someone kills people you like, even if you don't really agree to some of their more extreme beliefs, then you are more prone to being pursuaded that those beliefs may be the ones that actually are necessary to stop these sorts of things (i.e. friends being killed by foreign forces or people armed by them) from happening.

There is also the situation where things were in many cases relatively stable before the USSR and the USA started playing give-the-middle-east-nations-all-these-guns in their proxy wars (the "Cold War" was really quite not-cold for them...). Granted, the big mess really started in the aftermath of WW1, but post WW2 actions by the superpowers have been VERY unhelpful.

It really only takes a little bit of spinning to make either the USA or the USSR out to be an evil empire from the perspective of people living in these regions. Depends which region specifically, and which of the two a potential spinner you want to demonize more for their agenda. But at the end of the day, a we either goes and bomb them ourselves, or they get bombed by our allies using the jets we gave them, or they get shot by guns that are in the hands of people who are liable to shoot stuff. Guns which are from us. Same applies to the USSR and now Russia. And we both keep giving whatever group we feel like supporting at the time in various regions more weapons.


Even if you take out the violent ones and the psychopaths, there will still be people who direct their anger at the ones who supplied all these weapons in the first place, or the ones who necessitated some exodus because they wanted to take out a government and propped up some rebels, or the ones who outright sent jets in to bomb stuff and "accidentally" hit a civilian target (it is accidental of course, but they won't see it that way).
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