To be fair, I say this as one who thinks we should give up on the Arab world and build a big wall around it-much as the Israelis have done to protect themselves from the Palestinians. I don't think one more American should have to give his or her life to trying to bring order and sanity to that region. That includes non-Arab insane asylums like Pakistan and Afghanistan as well.
But I'm just an unwashed blogger. The so-called serious thinkers today should be pointing out that Iraq is the country that we liberated from Saddam Hussein. We ultimately "prevailed" in the post-war fighting with the surge under George W Bush. Then came Obama and pulled every last soldier out of the country clearing the way for the Sunnis and Shia to go at it with their car bombs. Now Al Qaeda is threatening to conquer the country. What do we do now- send in the Marines again? Do we organize another coalition of the willing? I say, "No thanks".
But that is just Iraq.
As for Afghanistan, we will bring everybody home soon, and that means the Taliban will soon be shooting women in soccer stadiums at halftime again. But don't worry. Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California has just told us that they are not-repeat not- necessarily a terrorist organization. According to her, they were "part of the fabric" of Afghanistan and part of the leadership "before we engaged there".
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/taliban-not-necessarily-terrorists-rep-jackie-speier-says/tue-06102014-235pm
Yes, they were harboring Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda when they plotted 9-11, which is why "we engaged there".
Libya? Syria?
Meanwhile, we are working to undermine the new Egyptian government, which is trying to do the world a favor by eliminating the Muslim Brotherhood. That's working well. Now everybody hates us in Egypt. As for Israel, only a fool would believe that this president is on their side.
All this is the handiwork of a feckless president, aided and abetted by two feckless secretaries of State, Hillary "Hard Choices" Clinton and John Heinz Kerry.
And that's not even counting China, North Korea and Russia.
"Good news, mein Fuehrer. Soon all of our troops will be out of Berlin."
3 comments:
Your position is self-contradictory and makes no sense. Should we have kept troops in Iraq, or not? If not, then what the hell are you criticizing Obama for?
Just trying to look at it from both ways, anonymous. Some question why we left without any residual force. Others are saying Obama was caught completely off guard by what has happened. It has been reported that the Iraqis have requested air power. Where is it?
What do you think Obama should do, Anonymous? You tell me.
I dare say John Boehner was also caught completely off guard by what happened. I know I was. I bet Fousesquawk was too. I haven't seen any bold predictions in these pages that ISIS was going to take Mosul.
What is falling apart is Maliki's domestic policy, not Obama's foreign policy. What is failing is George W. Bush's, Dick Cheney's, and Donald Rumsfeld's foreign policy. Yeah, yeah, Obama has been president for over five years. But you can't put Humpty-Dumpty together again. No matter how many years he is president, Barack Obama can't undo that we invaded in the first place, which was a stupid move, can't undo the de-Baathification program, which was even more stupid, releasing thousands of trained soldiers with nowhere to go but AQIM, can't undo the "hands off" election which turned out almost as badly as Bush's Palestinian election (the one that Hamas won).
You can't force the squalid government of a sovereign country to do the right thing, you can't save them from their own folly, and short of sending troops back, we can't pull the chestnuts out of the fire. We MAY find it necessary to launch a total war to take control of the region as we did of Nazi occupied Europe, but that would be very costly. And what could we say then? "Saddam Hussein, come home, all is forgiven." Oh, wait, he's dead.
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