Reality, Reason, and Iraq
The news calls them “jihadist” and “Sunni extremists.” You have no idea who they are or what they want. Iraq is a nation three large minorities: ethnic Kurds, Shi’a Muslims, and Sunni Muslims. (Baghdad’s Jews and Marionite Catholics no longer count.) Historically, Iraq was never a nation until the British created it from the old Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. That they did not create Kurdistan at the same time is another sad story.
Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. Although nominally a secular socialist, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who depended on religionist support. Aside from the Kurds, his opponents were Shia Muslims who drew aid from Iran, the center of that faction, as Cantebury is for Episcopalians.
The US invasion destroyed the central government of Iraq. For over a decade, many Washington planners from different organizations have tried to create or nurture some kind of pluralist government in Iraq. It is doomed to failure.
For one thing, Turkey does not want an independent Kurdistan, especially as the Iraqi Kurds have de facto independence now. Moreover, they are largely out of this fight. It is between the Sunni and Shi’i.
As far as the Sunni are concerned, they are fighting for their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Trian...
If they take control of Iraq again, the tables will be turned to no one’s benefit. It would be best to let them have their Sunni Triangle as a independent state or autonomous region.
As for the president of Iraq, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki:
“He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived in Tehran until 1990, before returning to Damascus where he remained until U.S. coalition forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime in 2003. While living in Syria, he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country's effort to topple Saddam's regime.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Ma...
Iraq is suffering in a civil war – but it has suffered so ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and surely since the failure of the British mandate. American involvement on behalf of the central government will only make matters worse. Iraq will become a satellite of Iran.
If an ideal settlement exists, it is the partitioning of the region into three or four states: Kurd, Sunni, Shi’ite, with – again, ideally – Baghdad as an international free trade zone. Whatever happens, the best course is _no_ course: laissez faire.
Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. Although nominally a secular socialist, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who depended on religionist support. Aside from the Kurds, his opponents were Shia Muslims who drew aid from Iran, the center of that faction, as Cantebury is for Episcopalians.
The US invasion destroyed the central government of Iraq. For over a decade, many Washington planners from different organizations have tried to create or nurture some kind of pluralist government in Iraq. It is doomed to failure.
For one thing, Turkey does not want an independent Kurdistan, especially as the Iraqi Kurds have de facto independence now. Moreover, they are largely out of this fight. It is between the Sunni and Shi’i.
As far as the Sunni are concerned, they are fighting for their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Trian...
If they take control of Iraq again, the tables will be turned to no one’s benefit. It would be best to let them have their Sunni Triangle as a independent state or autonomous region.
As for the president of Iraq, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki:
“He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived in Tehran until 1990, before returning to Damascus where he remained until U.S. coalition forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime in 2003. While living in Syria, he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country's effort to topple Saddam's regime.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Ma...
Iraq is suffering in a civil war – but it has suffered so ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and surely since the failure of the British mandate. American involvement on behalf of the central government will only make matters worse. Iraq will become a satellite of Iran.
If an ideal settlement exists, it is the partitioning of the region into three or four states: Kurd, Sunni, Shi’ite, with – again, ideally – Baghdad as an international free trade zone. Whatever happens, the best course is _no_ course: laissez faire.
We simply have no business in the internal affairs of any other country and never have.
With the "coalition of the willing" of some 20+ nations, we ejected Iraqi forces from Kuwait and its oil fields. The retreating Iraqi army was destroyed from the air.
Our mistake was that we didn't seize control of Iraq then, when we had the necessary troops in place (over 500,000) and a large coalition of Western and Middle Eastern powers that could have each contributed to the stabilization of Iraq. We also had not destroyed the government and its infrastructure, so we wouldn't have been starting from the Stone Age and moving forward.
Over the years that followed, the US and our allies were enforcing the No Fly Zone authorized by the United Nations denying Iraqi military jets and helicopters access to their southern skies (and Saudi's border). We routinely were engaged by Iraqi "air power" and we routinely put them into the ground in the desert. We probably destroyed more Iraqi jets during "peacetime" than during Desert Storm.
A few years later - Saddam put out a death order and a contract killing on Bush 41... more or less an act of war, even though it didn't succeed (former presidents have Secret Service protection full-time).
Bush #43 didn't start out as a wartime President... he actually had a robust educational agenda in mind and had started his administration in that direction, with really no interventionist actions prior to 9/11. When 9/11 happened, we obviously and fully justifiably invaded Afghanistan.
We had been fighting a "warm war" in Southern Iraq since Desert Storm, and was diverting quite a bit of Air Power to do so. Keep in mind, the US jets cost a tremendous amount of money each, we don't have a "lot" of them.. it's not like 50,000 of them in the air like it was during WW2.. A typical Air Wing is like 16 or 24 jets & airmen. If we have 1000 in total, I would be very surprised, I think it's in the 600-700 range. We can't deploy airpower around the world indefinitely. (and the 600 to 700 maintainers, in-air refueling tankers, their support, etc.) that goes with them... we're talking a couple of thousand people, easily.
To be honest, I think Bush took the opportunity to "finish" something that was started under his father, and not by our choosing. I think he considered it the family legacy to do so. He had a somewhat reason or two, and he did it, hoping to build a democracy in the Mid East that might change the direction of US relations.
In truth, it did, I think the Iranians have been kind of warming up to us again, only because of our commitment to Iraq, and deposing their mortal Sunni enemy. If the end result (someday) is a stable Iraq that respects its neighbors' borders and has political ties that stabilize the region, it will have been worth it. The idea isn't flawed, I think what is flawed was pounding them into the stone age, and the "nation building" that followed.
Kuwait was not an "independent nation" in any real sense. It was created as a fueling depot by the British. Kuwait was really as much a part of Iraq as anything could be. Look at the map. The Kuwaitis could have mounted a heroic defense and won -- if they cared to fight.... None did. The country was loaded with foreign workers who had no rights. No one could vote. They had no elections. It was a theocratic monarchy and their oil money went for the big royal family. Saddam Hussein had a lot of support among Kuwait's Palestinian guest workers.
Moreover, we never (to my knowledge) ever settled the casus belli - Iraq claimed that Kuwait was slant drilling into its oil fields. Were they? Who knows?
The horror stories and atrocity stories about Iraqi soldiers taking babies from incubators and shipping the machines back home were false. We know that now. Much about that war was false.
With Saddam Hussein successful in Kuwait, the message to Saudi Arabia was clear. As a theocratic monarchy whose guest workers have no rights because, really, no one has any rights there, the Saudi Royal Family were sitting ducks. Saddam Hussein could have taken as much of Saudi Arabia as he wanted. And who cares?
Well, the Bush Family cared because the House of Saud are their personal friends. So, the Saudis hired the Americans to defend them because they were incapable of defending themselves.
That brought in Osama bin Laden.
"... it is a fact that the Saudi royal family gave the bin Laden family--and group--exclusive rights to all construction of a religious nature, whether in Mecca, Medina or--until 1967--the Holy Places in Jerusalem. This enabled the bin Ladens to establish an industrial and financial empire which now extends far beyond religious construction projects.
The relationship between the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family is quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets. This is particularly the case with regard to the group's present-day leaders and the Soudairi clan.
Thanks to the renovation of Mecca, Sheik Mohammed bin Laden did not become merely Kin Abdul Aziz' official contractor, but his friend and confidant as well. This friendship has been handed down to their children. The bin Laden sons went to the same schools as the numerous offspring of King Abdul Aziz and they all followed the same path." -- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...
Families are so troublesome.
None of what you are saying is untrue, but people misconstrue the facts... they think the relationship between GHW Bush and the Saudi family comes from their supposed "oil fortune"... at most, they were tiny wildcat players in Midland, TX... not Chevron or Texaco. The relationship is a result of GHW's time as the Director of the CIA, and as Vice President, Ambassador to the UN, Ambassador to China, etc.
Frankly, I'm more comfortable with those relationships... than I would be with being a "friend" of the Clintons... something that is very, very dangerous.
The attacks on our aircraft flying the "No-fly" zone were themselves acts of war, and violations of the armistice. More than enough excuse to resume the war and finish Hussein.
The pounding was flawed in that we didn't put them in the stone age. The nation building was definitely flawed.
We have business wherever American interests are threatened.
Let me refresh your memory...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I6i0crm...
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/9-11-the-25...
WE are the United States of America. Our business is where ever the hell we decide it is. WE are the advancing light of civilization, even in our crippled and decadent state.
When the members of that 7th century death cult decided to come to our shores and wage war upon the people of the United States of America, they were requesting assisted suicide, and I'm all for helping them on their way to perdition.
The bastards who perpetrated 9/11, since you seem to have forgotten, did not come out of Omaha, or Kansas City; they came out of the middle EAST, not the midwest,
Terrorists, whether they be Al Qaeda or Viet Cong, need sanctuary. The Viet Cong found it in North Vietnam and the countries bordering South Vietnam. Al Qaeda *and their affiliates* found it in the middle eastern countries we continually refused to destroy, among the adherents of a religion that all rational peoples should recognize as threatening and destructive.
We have what we have because we didn't destroy them a decade ago. We have what we have because of politically correct nitwits and those who keep insisting that A) barbarous middle eastern dictatorships are equal in sovereignty to the United States of America, and B) that we must be nice to our enemies.
Ken King, the dipshit in charge of Ft Bucci (?) in Iraq, in charge of prisoners, including the ones released in exchange for Berghdahl, repeated over and again on Megyn Kelly's show, that we treated our prisoners with "dignity and respect". THAT was our great, bigoted error. We insisted upon looking at them with our (modern) cultural values, and not treating them according to *theirs*. Yeah, he's got a chest full of medals including purple hearts. Dipshit, I say.
Objectivists, like the Pauls, love this idea of taking America back to 1787, staying here in America, staying a 3rd rate country huddled on the edge of a vast empty continent, rather than accepting the REALITY that we are a global empire, and that it is the obligation of our government to protect that empire, wherever it is threatened.
Objectivism and reality have nothing to do with one another where this is concerned. The world is what it is, people behave how they behave, Objectivist ideals be damned. This IS the time for the barrel of a gun.
("you" in this context being "one", not you specifically).
And, you're wrong, Maphesdus. The "whole world" hasn't turned against our enemies, in spite of *their* barbaric behavior. Rome was brutal to its enemies, but everybody wanted to be Roman, and the Roman border was the end of security, prosperity and civilization, for everyone. The Dark Ages came *after* Rome fell, not during her reign. Not even during her imperial period. Rome fell *after* it started being multicultural.
If only Great Britain were our ally in the end, I'd be content. But, then, I'm old fashioned. I prefer one or two good, reliable friends to a host of fair-weather acquaintances.
a stable and pro West Country in the Middle East. Women were voting and being educated. Who knows what could have grown out of this. The future was bright and we pissed it away because of the political views of this President.
It seems to me the key to making it work is creating a pluralistic gov't, one that's strong enough to fight insurgents but that grants regions and cities autonomy. There's the huge issue of managing the oil wealth, but that could be managed without violence if they had a strong pluralistic gov't.
The situation is similar in many ways in Syria. Bashar al-Asaad was practicing as a doctor at a children's hospital in London when his brother was assassinated. So, he returned to take over the government. He is another secular, Western ruler. The rebels are not pro-democracy pro-Western but are Shiite and other religious factions seeking to create clerical states as almost happened in Egypt.
The whole thing is a mess - and the USA has no business intervening. Business interests have a place. Education, science, art, music, movies, whatever else our culture is, they will import it on their own. Putting boots on the ground or giving guns to rebels will only backfire.
There is not one native Arab on the planet who is "western". That's a canard.
Syria has long been a sanctuary and supply source for middle eastern terrorists; they have long threatened Israel (our fault; we failed to explain to them that Israel's existence is not open for debate).
I agree we should never give weapons to anyone. As for them importing our culture... sure, and we can't even get illegal alien invaders to adopt our culture.
And who *cares* if they import our culture? My interest isn't in other peoples adopting my culture. My interest is in my people being able to go where they wish, when they wish, to do what they wish, and to not be interfered with when they do. Unlike you, I *don't* care about people outside the U.S.; that's their worry. I care about American prosperity.
And what business is going to get involved in a middle eastern hellhole? You have to send the troops in to make it safe for the businessmen to offer their wares.
Assad is a member of a minority, neither of the big two. One of the few favorable things about Assad is that minorities in Syria are/were reasonably secure. Assad has the support of Shia Iran but that may be more for strategy than ideology.
I could give a rats ass if the muslims annihilate themselves off the face of the earth. In fact, I'd go so far as to say an entire city or town is forfeit to save the life of one US serviceman.
Let them divide up their nation as much as they desire. Let them war amongst themselves until their blood lust is sated. Construct Keystone pipeline, amp up coastal drilling and let that region of the world wallow back into the sand.
My 2 bits...and yeah, I have a huge legitimate chip on my shoulder when it comes to muslims and terrorism.
What actually happened is Bush got to raise our national debt from some $5.8trillion to over $10trillion, within a couple of weeks of 9/11 Ashcroft had the Patriot Act ready to send to Congress to be voted on (you don't think that thing wasn't in someone's file before 9/11), followed not too long by establishing the Dept of Homeland Security and soon the NDAA, Rumsfield on 9/10/01 announced that the Pentagon couldn't account for or find $2.3trillion and our debt at that point was minimum $5.8trillion (that's right, the day before 9/11).
And during all that time, we couldn't find Osama or who in the Saudis financed the 9/11 hijackers. We let the Saudis in the country fly out during the following week including the family in Florida that the primary hi-jacker visited continually during the year before the attacks. We let 4,486 of our young men get killed in Iraq, twice as many as we lost going after the Taliban and Al Quaida in Afghanistan who we could conceivably tie to 9/11.
What have we gained? We've lost even the semblance of citizen's rights, our government is out of control and doing whatever they want with no fear of retribution, we have a National Police and Secret Security forces monitoring everything we say and do and ignoring our Constitution, we've let the government kill two Americans not on any battlefield with drone missiles (one a 16 year old kid) and been threatened with the same thing in our own country, our local and state police have become military forces breaking into our homes at 3 or 4 AM with flash bang grenades thrown into a baby's crib (yes, with the baby in it), we stand a better chance of being mistakenly killed by our own police than by an armed robber, we've watched a non law enforcement agency attack a rancher and his family with 200 militarily armed men and sniper teams over cows, and our great accomplishment in Iraq - poof!
It's as bad or worse than Korea and Vietnam. What the Hell has this country become? Anybody attacks or threatens to attack this country - bomb them back to the stone age and kill as many as possible. I wouldn't even object to deporting every practicing Muslim in this country. But we've got no business going into any other country and trying to tell them how they should live and govern themselves. Not if we want the right to do the same in our country.
I don't understand how we got to this point. We dealt with the threat of nuclear war, yet we scared by a bunch of loosely-connected losers committing crimes. It's almost like some people need a huge threat like the Soviet Union was. In the absence of it, they try to get fired up over gangs or some other boogie man. If you call the gangs terrorists and suspend disbelief, you can almost imagine them being as bad as a country with thousands of ICBMs. You let the criminals of the world know we'll treat you as a serious world player if you only commit some ghastly murders.
Invent a new religion, and base it on race. Claim that the Creators (12 of them, one for each facecard in a deck of playing cards) meant for white people to be pure, and therefore they must never be in the same building with brown people, and never in the same room with yellow people. See how long you get to practice your religion.
Again, the answer is to declare, via amendment, that Islam is not, in fact, a religion, but a philosophy of government.
Then what killed all those Kurds? Watching too many episodes of Duck Dynasty?
We saw trucks hauling WMDs and related equipment to Syria. Gee, in this Syrian civil war, the gov't used... the exact same kind of WMDs Hussein used on the Kurds.
All these bad things happened; I'm not going to defend Bush, since he's *also* a progressive. His unwillingness to let us hurt our enemies, and his willingness to treat American citizens with the same suspicion as foreign Arabs is just as bad as anyone openly on the left who fought for the same.
"But we've got no business going into any other country and trying to tell them how they should live and govern themselves. Not if we want the right to do the same in our country. "
And that's where you're wrong. We are the United States of America, the culmination of the greatest philosophical minds in the history of Mankind, the pinnacle of civilization.
They are backward primitives, not fit to be called civilized, who only have a veneer of civilization because of the money afforded them by our oil industry. There is no equality here.
Nobody has the right to tell us how to run our country, because we're superior to them all. We have the right to dictate to anyone else we choose, because we're superior to them all.
Get it? This is not some philosophically pure Gulch, this is the third planet out from the sun, where the top of the food chain was not attained by the purest, fairest, most decent species on the planet, but the "most ruthless at brutality".
I hate to tell you this, because you seem to naively think we can just send over a flight of drones and bomb people into submission. Maybe if we could simultaneously atom bomb every capital on the planet at the same instant. But, aerial bombing campaigns, while popular among civilians who weep over comparatively trivial battle losses (gee, 4,500 dead over a decade... compared to 50,000 dead in 3 days at Gettysburg? 36,000 dead in a night in Dresden?)
We had massive bombing campaigns in both WWII and Viet Nam, and the only times they were effective was when they destroyed the war manufacturing capabilities of the enemy. Kinda hard to do when the war making capabilities of your enemy is a "factory" in an apartment in Anytown, Earth, and the materials can be had off of a convenience store shelf.
No, it requires boots on the ground, it requires the arrogance to recognize and impose your superiority on your enemies. Not your "goodness".
Your concerns over the police are very, very valid, but they *are* local concerns, as you said. It's not feds doing most of that, it's the local swaggering duck-walking cops. That's up to you in your State and city to deal with.
And if those two Americans had been good, loyal Americans who'd stayed the hell in America, they wouldn't have been killed. But they were outside and not under the jurisdiction of the United States, so they gave up their protections when they took the side of our enemies.
We're essentially on the same page regarding the conduct of the war; we should have been conquering the middle east, not nation-building. But, we also shouldn't have been sitting here on our own shores waiting for the next 9/11.
Look to the report on terrorism written by Newt Gingrich and Gary Hart and released in early 2001.
Jan,
That mission accomplished banner, A) was accurate and put in place by the ship's company; the ship was returning home having accomplished their mission and B) was not put up for Bush's photo-op, but was put up because of see A).
The war on terror had to be a kabuki theater, because the left, *and objectivists and libertarians*, would not let us fight it like a real war.
None of you were willing for us to rape women in front of their men, for example. You know what the people we're fighting call that kind of behavior? "Wednesday". (I edited out some more raw examples). Hell, y 'all freaked out over Abu Graib, how could we do anything really raw after that?
I mention rape on purpose; it is within their mindset. To rape their women means nothing; to rape their women in front of them means *you are raping them*. It establishes your dominance in their minds. This is how they feel, because it's how *everybody* felt until recent centuries. Political correctness has left us incapable of thinking naturally anymore. And that is going to bring about our defeat and destruction.
(I don't think those extremes would be necessary if we'd been allowed to fight hard as we used to fight hard; but we desperately need to stop worrying about the dignity and health of our enemies).
And airs of moral superiority don't win wars.
This is a knife fight in a broom closet, not an Antebellum cotillion. If we pull back into our borders and let these barbaric cultures continue to expand their capabilities and influence, we will be fighting them in the streets of Oklahoma City. And then I'll have a real debate over targets; Moslem terrorists or Objectivist enablers.
I have been right about this war from the getgo, but nobody will listen. It's not that I'm all that brilliant a strategist; to me the behavior of our enemies is obvious and transparent... because I know how to think like them, and as I said, how all men thought until recently.
Of course they are treated like a red-headed stepchild by the entire world.
There was no Bush/Cheney debacle.
The "current outcome" was *self-fulfilling* policy. Just as in Vietnam, the leftists in government and the media did everything they could to cripple our war effort.
You need to understand: Kawasaki sells motorcycles and robots the way UCLA sells t-shirts. They make money on the product, but it is not their main line of business. Kawasaki makes ocean-going cargo vessels and has since 1878. (See http://www.khi.co.jp/english/company/his...)
About 1900, a committee of intellectuals investigated whether English or French should become the language of science in Japan. They chose English.
We did not successfully impose a constitution. We only capitalized on western elements - anti-war, pro-business, anti-traditionalist - which had been strong in the country all along. Japan fell into American ways the same way that they adopted Chinese writing and Indian religion. Japan is an ISLAND NATION. You cannot walk there. You have get into a boat and go over the horizon to some place that no one ever went before. Sound familiar?
And that is not Iraq at all. Iraq is Uruk. Everyone else there calls it Mesopotamia: the land of two rivers. It is way older than Islam. And you can walk there .. which is how Noah's children followed the waters downstream from Ararat to the fertile plains where they founded Ur. (If you believe that story.) When you interfere in Uruk, you are fighting between Sargon and Hamurabi and Gilgemesh and Enkidu ... and Humbaba is going to eat you for lunch...
You are so full... nevermind.
To compare Japanese culture to anything western is to compare slavery to freedom. "Anti-traditionalist elements"? Really? Among a culture of ancestor-worshipers?
There was never anything "western" about Japan any more than there was anything "western" about China, aside from the fact that, like the parasites invading across our southern border, they liked the benefits that western culture could provide.
You probably masturbated over that ridiculous piece of propaganda called "The Last Samurai".
Get this through your thick... be civil, Hiraghm, be civil... try to understand, that if Americans can be restored to what we once were when we defeated Japan, no force on Earth can stand up to us.
let's have a reality check, a real, old-fashioned, ugly as hell, raaaacist reality check, shall we?
Until approximately 500 AD, Western Europe dominated the world. Then Rome fell, Western Europe went into the dark ages, and the rest of the world... sat on its collective ass. Until the Renaissance. Then the Europeans exploded again.
14 thousand years ago, aborigines from Asia migrated to the Americas. This was 8 thousand years before the earliest recorded western civilizations. When Europeans got to the Americas in the late 15th century, the inhabitants of the Americas were still living in the late stone age, a period during which all of civilization grew in Europe and Asia.
Homo sapiens came out of southern Africa; and yet, the first civilizations were established in central Europe and north Africa. When central and south Africans were sold to Europeans in the slave trade, their cultures were still, again, in the stone age.
Europe, whether by the hand of God or the happenstance of evolution, developed over the millennia the cultural traditions and values necessary for the ultimate advancement of Mankind. Asia did not do so, including Japan. The middle east, as the name implies, was smack dab in the middle of the trade routes, and should have benefited greatly from cultural diversity. But it didn't happen.
Asia was civilized before Europe, and yet Europe still came to dominate the world.
And the hallmark of European civilization is the respect for the individual, and the unleashing of the individual to make his own fortune. No Asian culture, including Japan, had this value.
Middle eastern cultures were ripe for the introduction of Islam; it was a religion that fit the existing cultural values.
Asian cultures were ripe for the introduction of socialism; it was a philosophy that fit the existing cultural values.
And if Americans were to re-embrace our traditional cultural values, even if we re-adopted the evil horror of slavery, not a nation outside of Europe could stand against us.
But, above all, we made it clear that we were in charge of them. Or else.
We didn't hand Japan a Constitution. We occupied Japan and ruled Japan for a period of time as they adapted to their Constitution (yes, which we gave them).
And we dominated them, because the "greatest generation" wasn't concerned about PC, and was absolutely convinced that we were superior to them (because... America). And they were downright civilized compared to the barbarians we fight today.
Pick any two ..... right?
It's going to get really ugly when they overrun the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and kill a couple thousand, or hold them hostage and ransom them. Pull our people out now and close the embassy.
As an aside, why aren't the headless bodies stacked like cord wood being talked about more? My gods prophet is better than your gods prophet and I'll kill and maim you to prove it.
This presidency cannot survive another brutal embassy attack.
Cold war policy, poor policy at that, coming back to bite us ten fold. It better to get our own hands dirty.
As far as the Taliban and Al Qaida are concerned, that was a different matter entirely. And again, it was never proved that the 9/11 attackers were trained in Afghanistan. They were the work of a rich, university trained Saudi, Ossama bin Ladin, who objected to the US being in his country.
We were there to protect the Saudi Royals from Saddam Hussein - whom we previously nurtured. The invasion of Kuwait was a harsh warning for Saudi Arabia: no one living in the country was going to die to defend it. The Kuwaiti royals took off for the casinos of Cairo and left the country to the Iraqi army. The same would happen in Saudi Arabia. They hired the USA to defend them: "Onward Christian Soldiers."
The other issue I see is that we can not take back what we have already done in the Middle East. While we can speculate on what they will do if we pull out, it hasn't been proven that they will let bygones be bygone, either.
That is one reason that region has been fighting off and on throughout history.
The only time it stops for any length of time is when someone strong enough to force it to stop does so.
I guess the terrorist training camps weren't evidence.
"They were the work of a rich, university trained Saudi, Ossama bin Ladin, who objected to the US being in his country. "
Who was based in Afghanistan and rejected by his family when he turned radical.
Many Japanese officers attended U.S. universities before WWII, too. So what?
I guess what the Iraqis did to the Kuwaitis didn't matter; I mean, all that were left behind were peasants, right? Just as what Hussein's regime did to Iraqis didn't matter. And of course, the fact that the taking and destruction of Kuwait posed a serious threat to Europe's oil supply.
While I agree that once we took Kuwait back, we should have kept it, that doesn't change the political reality of the region.
This idea that they were perfectly peaceful barbarians bothering no one outside their sphere (persecuted Christians no doubt had it coming... and that Israel... just a pack of filthy Jews, who cares?) is laughable.
Gee, too bad we didn't leave them to themselves; too bad we didn't spend our money and effort creating their oil-based wealth, and leave them wandering their deserts killing each other. But, getting the oil was in our own self-interest, and to do so we had to make deals with the devil... no, not the Arabs... the stinking leftists in the west who grew hot with outrage at the idea of us conquering or "exploiting" those self-same barbarians.
Hussein wasn't a threat to the Saudis; we already had U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia. There's no way even he was stupid enough to attack Saudi Arabia. But, Kuwait...
Fact 1: We went in with over a hundred-sixty countries, two-thirds of the world, ok??
Hali Burton and oil companies profited from our decision to go in. So? Isn’t that what they do? Look for profit in good times and bad. In an adult world we can look at these activities dispassionately. They are businesses, after all.
Fact 2: Bin Laden probably could have been killed a long time ago, but many in the military would agree that it would have been smarter not to hunt him down because his death could have actually caused a bigger problem in the region with fanatics. After our embassy was attacked in Syria (on Obama’s watch) there were demonstrations across the region where the men chanted: “Obama, Obama, we are all Bin Laden” Those fellows are probably part of the crowd marching on Bagdad as we write. Martyrdom is a bitch.
Plu-leze..not give Obama credit for Bin Lade, Of course I give him credit! Without him in front of microphones given his “go-me!” back-patting speeches along with his sidekick, Joe Biden, twenty-two members of Navy Seals six would still be alive.
Silly you. Of course I will never forget.
2) Regardless of how we got into the war, it was "won" and O failed to set the terms by which it would stay "won." No SOFA, no on-going military presence so that this incursion would not have happened. No military stabilization force. One reason that we stayed in Germany (albeit, way too long now) was so that any residual Nazi sympathizers wouldn't feel that they could resume the fight. O cut and ran, leaving a void that al Qaeda is more than willing to fill.
3) Unlike Mimi, below, I believe that WMD did exist, and are either buried in Iraq's desert or were sent to Syria. Some day, they will be found, mark my words. It is very unlikely that an underling of Saddam would take it upon himself to deceive such a brutal dictator that these existed if they didn't.
"The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
—Jean-Luc Picard, Symbiosis
I agree, the state of Iraq is artificial and unstable, it could survive under firm control and a federal structure as many empires did -Ottoman, Hapsburg, Britain, and even Switzerland. Most of the world would be better off with a split of Iraq 3 or 4 ways. But will it happen without outside intervention?
Just a thought, if one powerful side does not intervene, other contenders will. The side who practice moralistic non-intervention will see the neutrals, the weak, and then their friends being picked off one by one. Um, no, I think hands off, at least in this case.
Enemies exist, but don't need to be created.
Islamist epistemology (if you can call it that) sees anyone who isn't one of "them" to be killed or converted. Very dangerous for the US. ...especially when our president nurtures this craziness.
When "push comes to shove" in this nation (and there are hard times coming), you will see a mass exodus from the coasts to the middle of this country.
At that point you will understand the thought of "true Americans". It has to do with individualism.
As far as the drone strikes go, you are correct. I personally understand that the US doesn't belong at war ...especially in the Middle East (the graveyard of empires).
Henry Kissinger said that our downfall would be a lack of consistent foreign policy. He was correct.
No. There will be no autonomous Sunni region for Al Qaeda to exploit.
The ideal settlement could have occurred 11 years ago. America invades, conquers, puts our boot on the neck of Iraq, and rules them through a governor-general with an iron fist until they learn to play nice. Hard on the Iraqis... but I really, really, don't give a shi'a. A millennium is long enough to put up with these barbarians and their 7th century death cult.
"Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. "
Sounds to me like we needed to install another puppet, not a "democracy".
It worked with Japan.
If I can find the source of this story, I'll share it. I do have several biographies on Alexander in my home library, but I'll not be there for a while.
As I've expressed in other postings, I'm not by nature a violent or vicious man. But, like you, I can see what works and what doesn't work, and why.
"The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy... They never went by that saying which you constantly hear from the wiseacres of our day, that time heals all things. They trusted rather their own character and prudence- knowing perfectly well that time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad."
"From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved."
" Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."
-Niccolo Machiavelli