George W. Bush screwed the Middle East. His clownish foreign policy advisors have never looked more inept. With Mosul in the hands of a group too radical even for al-Qaeda, the idea that removing Saddam Hussein would add stability to the region could not be more discredited.
Read the following and try not to claw out your brain:
October 8, 2003
The war on terrorism “is greatly served” by the removal of Saddam Hussein as a source of instability in the world’s most volatile region, says President Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
“We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11th attacks. Yet the possibility remained that he might use his weapons of mass destruction, or that terrorists might acquire such weapons from his regime, to mount a future attack far beyond the scale of 9/11,” Rice told the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations during an October 8 address on the war on terrorism.
Now read this:
Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) — also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — seized control of Mosul, the capital of northern Iraq, after six days of heavy fighting against Iraqi security forces. Iraq’s speaker of parliament, Osama Nujaifi, told reporters in a televised news conference that the militants have taken over the entirety of the city, along with several villages and a military air base south of Mosul. This means, according to reports, ISIS now has control of some military aircraft and helicopters.
We will never stop having to pay the bill for Bush’s disastrous presidency.
What will Ukraine cost?
At least as much as all those tens of thousands of soldiers we’ve got stranded in Syria.
Obama — stupid bastard just goes around invading places. You’d think Libya would have been enough.
Oh, wait, we don’t have tens of thousands of soldiers in Libya and Syria.
But Obama wants there to be. Really bad. You can tell.
Your snark is the wind beneath my wings where it comes to flying through comment sections lately.
My close reading of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism has led me to conclude that the troops must be there, so there they are. I can’t help it if the facts on the ground refuse to oblige.
I suppose theoretically you could cavil and say things like “that’s a hundred-year old text” or “every case is unique”, but I learned a lot of stuff about the US and foreign affairs thirty-five, forty years ago, and it works for me.
I’m too old, busy, and tired to bother acquiring new frames of reference or adapting to changes in circumstance.
agree, although “property is theft … electing a University Law School Professor ” is hard to top,
Just remember — it’s always the social democratic moment!
Why, if it weren’t for all that false consciousness we’d long since have made Denmark and Sweden look like a West African blood diamond mine.
“We will never stop having to pay the bill for Bush’s disastrous presidency.”
Truer words have rarely been written.
Thanks again, Ralph!!!
And the lollygaggers who brought us this disaster will never be drummed out of polite society as they should be, and they’ll never stop using their undeserved status to blame Obama for the consequences of their own spectacular failure.
Shit’s been stranger than fiction since 2001.
Jeebus, where are the Kurds? They were supposed to be re-populating Mosul. At one time they were the most effective military in Iraq, guess those days are gone…
Not exactly a feather in the cap of the Iraq army, eh? If fact, quite humiliating. Maliki better get on the phone and get some of the Hezbollah Old Guard flown in pronto. They don’t put up with this shit.
Life in Iraq is a long way from being able to go out and get a goddammed coffee. Thanks indeed, Cheney.
But of course all True Americans know this is just another Obammy failure…
Kurdish strength depends on Turkey’s stability as the PKK in Turkey seeks autonomy from Turkey, just as the Iraqi Kurds have gained a strong measure of autonomy from the Maliki government. Turkey is a NATO ally. The Kurds are direct clients of the CIA. Those interests have to be balanced. We will see how this turn of events affects Turkish-Kurdish relations.
Mosul is a Sunni Arab town, thanks to Saddam’s resettlement policies. It’s actually quite ethnically diverse but it is not in any way part of Kurdistan.
We will never stop having to pay the bill for Bush’s disastrous presidency.
Don’t forget to thank a lot of useless Democrats, like possibly the next President.
And a lot of useless (and/or lazy) Democrats that failed that chose “me betta warrior” to take on GWB in 2004. Better to draw a stark difference on the principle issue at the time and lose than whatever the hell Kerry haplessly attempted. So bad that when Abu Ghraib broke during the campaign season, he couldn’t even use that to his advantage.
And don’t forget the current SoS!
And the arrogant fools are strutting around on the teevee attacking Obama’s policies. That just shows how corrupt our society has become.
Mosul is diverse enough that this is likely a temporary seizure.
In fact, I would not be surprised if it’s another attempt to draw US troops back into another Middle East operation. Look how much 9/11 resulted in the destruction of US power through overreach and internal divisions. Folks with any strategic sense at all cannot have missed that self-defeating approach of wastefulness. And think in terms of trying to sucker us again.
The US gift of the several trillion dollar project in freedom, democracy, and stability. Except for the car bombs that routinely kill, maim, and destroy.
One of the biggest mistakes that the Federal Government has made is not to have prosecuted the Bush Administration for War Crimes. If the Federal Government does not want to do it I am very sure that The UN would be willing to help.
The truth hear is this country is being torn apart because the radical GOP has never been punished for what they have done in the past. See you cannot go forwards without first learning from your mistakes and correcting those errors. No matter how hard it may be. To go forwards you have to have a good solid foundations and this country does not have that. We have lost our moral strength by not cleaning house. It is well past time to clen up this mess.
That was a conscious Obama decision, not by faceless bureaucrats. Substitute “Obama” for “Federal Government” in your post.
It has been established precedent that Republicans are not liable for any crimes they commit while Emperor, and that Democrats can be held liable for anything while Emperor, although it won’t be actual crimes.
Since September 8th, 1974!
Long Live C̶a̶e̶s̶a̶r̶ The President!
USA policy under Obama supported the overthrow of Gaddafi and the prospect to do the same with Assad in Syria. Clearly policy of the Obama administration and with Hillary Clinton running State affairs.
The jihadists (Sunni) were encouraged in Libya and a massive flow of arms and money created a more powerful terror group. USA created a flow of arms from Libya to Syria with support from the GCC states and used the Homs uprising to continue as a Sunni revolution. The result was destruction and massacres by jihadists and three years of bloody war with dictator Assad.
The ISIS was strengthened by Saudi Arabia under leadership of Prince Bandar who even emptied death row inmates to search for paradise on the battlefield.
In Iraq you have sitting dictator Maliki who is more concerned with Iraq’s treasury than building a well-funded army. How is it possible that 11 years after the ill-conceived pre-emptive strike on the nation, the Iraqi army still dons their weapons and flee for the advancing jihad fighters.
The same will happen in the Af-Pak region as NATO forces pull out. Pacifying the Taliban is an illusion as it was with the Viet Cong in the villages of Vietnam. Freeing a Taliban mass murderer fits US policy quite well. Anyone noticed how the Taliban reacted in Karachi, Pakistan?
BTW the Sunni migrating jihadists did leave the Af-Pak region due to the drone strikes to fight another war in Syria.
○ Sources: Sunnis Behind Iraq Car Bombings
○ US Foreign Policy, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood Ploy
○ US State Declares Syrian Rebels a Terrorist Group [al-Nusra Front]
Can they please begin handing out some pain to the folks who brought them the war? Oil oligopolies. Only fair, I would say.
Ironically, if the goal is “stability” Hussein offered it in spades after his reign of terror settled down and he focused on his Reagan-sponsored/catalyzed war against Iran. I’m not saying it was a place any of us would want to live, but it was stable and predictable and most of those really offensive things his government did were in the first half of his reign.
The problem was that after the Iran truce Hussein was sitting on all of this US-provided military hardware (plus some Soviet stockpiles from before Rumsfeld and he became BFFs) and of course he was going to use them on someone, and Bush senior indicated – either mistakenly or intentionally – that Kuwait would be fair game. Even then, after his forces were crushed in the first Gulf War and Schwartzkopf let him slaughter the Kurds who Bush Sr had encouraged to revolt, things were as stable as they could be given the medicine embargo and perpetual daily bombing runs from the US.
“Schwarzkopf let him slaughter the Kurds who Bush Sr had encouraged to revolt ..”
In the nineties, the UN established a no-fly zones over Iraq during which time the Kurds recovered economically and became a close ally to Turkey.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf signed an agreement with Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad which allowed helicopter flights used by Iraqi forces to slaughter Shiites in the marshes in the southern part of Iraq near the Persian Gulf and Basra.
○ Iran’s Feared SAVAK: Norman Schwarzkopf’s Father Had Greater Impact On Middle East Affairs
I have to save, I am pretty surprised they whipped the Kurds.
I don’t think the Kurds controlled that city. I may be wrong though.
Speaking of war criminals:
Yes, Nixon Scuttled the Vietnam Peace Talks
And only the extremely naive thinks it was merely coincidental that the Iranian Embassy hostages were released within minutes of Reagan taking office.
They should do to Bush what they did to Mussolini in Italy – String Him Up in the Public Square & Hang His Ass For All The World To See!!!