More American War in Iraq?

It's funny how we are always responsible for learning about and understanding others. Why doesn't this get turned around? Why do people like you want civilized people to understand animals? That's what these guys are who are currently rampaging through Iraq are. Sure Saddam kept them in check but was that really better for the people of Iraq in the long run? Would you be ok if Saddam were still in power?

There are strong indications that ISIS has a good many of Hussein's former cronies and underlings in their organization. They "liberated" Anbar, the Sunni region of Iraq, and then they "liberated" Tikrit, Hussein's home town and the home town of most of his high-ranking government officials and officers of the Republican Guard. I would say that not only did Hussein not keep them in check, he encouraged their depredations against the Shi'ite majority of Iraq--the more than 300,000 Iraqis Hussein is said to have murdered. Nothing could be better for Iraq and the world than that the Persian Revolutionary Guard destroy them completely.

If you want to deal with something you need to understand it. If you don't understand it you make mistakes which is what lead to the debacle in the first place.

Mark Noble's gonna get mad at you if you talk like that!

Oralloy shoots blanks. He makes sweeping statement and acts like their imaginary logic needs no proof or examples. He pisses me off not because he's wrong all the time, but because he states opinion as fact. Puhleeze oralloy, put me on ignore!

Fox News Host Goes On Fox News And Blasts Conservatives For Supporting The Iraq War (VIDEO)
Author: Ryan Denson June 17, 2014 4:52 am
For once, a Fox News host says something intelligible. Shepard Smith actually goes against war-mongering members of the GOP. (Image Credit: The Raw Story)

For once, a Fox News host says something intelligible. Shepard Smith actually goes against war-mongering members of the GOP. (Image Credit: The Raw Story)

For once I’m not having to bash Fox News for their shoddy “reporting” and that makes it a good day. For once, Fox News had their facts *GASP* and they actually delivered on it! Shepard Smith gave the chicken-hawk Republicans a little lesson in their own history among their harsh and unmerited criticism of President Obama due to Iraq’s very religious and very bloody civil war. Key word being civil – their own doing, not President Obama’s.

“Are we about to be drawn back into a conflict in Iraq?” Smith asked. “The same people who 12 years ago told us this will be quick, this will be easy, this will be inexpensive, they will see us as liberators, it’s the right thing to do, are now telling us, ‘It’s the right thing to do.’ What’s the endgame? Who’s thought this through?“

I’ll give you a hint of who thought it through: Chicken-hawk GOPers like John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Oliver North, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and so forth, who have nothing to lose (but everything to gain) by being back in the mess that they got us into. Because John McCain was a POW, he somehow receives a free pass on talking out of his ass, like demanding Obama’s entire national security team to be fired and/or resign (or attacking every single country at the drop of a hat).

Obviously the War in Iraq wasn’t quick. It raged on for eight and-a-half years. Enough said on that. The War in Iraq was in no way easy. Over 4,400 U.S. soldiers lost their lives, and another 32,200 were wounded in action, and now countless vets have taken their lives after the fact. That’s not something too many people will find ‘easy.’ And they, the Republicans who want to go right back, said that the war would be inexpensive, that it was something we could afford. According study from Harvard University’s Kennedy School, the war, along with Afghanistan, has cost us $4 to $6 trillion. And my favorite talking point about the war: we are the liberators! We are the bringers of democracy, to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and to free them! That is unless you’re Condoleezza Rice, who in an interview with ABC News in 2011, said that democracy was not at all what the war in Iraq was for:

“Now, we didn’t go into Iraq to bring democracy to the Iraqis, and I try in [my] book to really explain that that wasn’t the purpose.”

When the interviewer confronted her that the Bush Administration had told the public that it was one of the major purposes, Rice responded that “we were very clear” that it was “a security threat.”

So don’t give me that “we are doing this for the good of Iraq” BS because it’s not true. Never has been, never will. At least from Republicans. In reality, the real reality that the GOP fails to grasp, is that this conflict going on right now is not the doing of the Obama Administration, but the doing of Maliki’s own failures. In a short and sweet recount of why this is going on, it’s because Maliki would NOT require an inclusive Shitte and Sunni government, and now the Al Qaeda offshoot known as The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are seeking to establish Sunni control over Iraq and the Levant region, which includes Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Now President Obama has sent a letter to Congress today informing the body that, under the War Powers Resolution, he would be sending up to 275 US troops to Iraq to protect the US embassy in Baghdad. And Republicans say he isn’t doing anything, and that he is incompetent to do anything. Something tells me they’re just praying for another Benghazi.

I’m glad Shepard Smith could deliver a fact filled, actual faire and balanced approach to the talking points of the right regarding what is going on in Iraq. Hopefully a lot of Fox viewers had a bright light bulb go off in their dark heads. What is the right’s obsession with constantly demanding resignations and expecting every president to engage in some kind of military action? Is it profit? Is it to say ‘I told you so?’

I’m with Shep on Iraq… it’s a quagmire we need to avoid.

Watch the video of Shepard Smith’s commentary below:

You and I may not be OK with it, the people of Iraq and the world would have been better off for if he'd stayed in power. Iraq used to have a middle class, it used to have an education system, it used to have a significant Christian and Jewish population, it used to have infrastructure, it used to have no al Qaeda, it used to have a secular government, it used to have stability, it used to have a semblance of rule of law. Then the US fucked it. And what did we find? No WMDs, no al Qaeda link, no connection to Sept 11th - NOTHING - including the cheaering crowds welcoming the sackers of their nation.

You know lately I seem to taking all sides..but..

I think if you ask anyone besides the Sunnis and Baathist if they wished they had Saddam back, I really don't think they would say yes. There is no getting around the fact that he was a brutal dictator who used fear and oppression to control the country.

However, the same could be said about quite a few countries who we haven't gotten around to invading. (hope we don't)

Pretty interesting article on Juan Cole.

Mass Sunni Uprising in Iraq: Sectarian Blowback of 2003 U.S. Invasion (Cole on Democracy Now!)

True, but most people would opt for security under a brutal dictator than chaos.

What culture? Lacelot in the movie "Arthur" said "there will always be a battlefield" war is in the nature of humanity.

We disagree. At this point, it doesn't seem worth the effort, on either of our parts, to provide dueling links.

I agree that pressuring Maliki to change his sectarian ways should be part of the US response. The question, of course, is always who will blink first.

It's would be a tough call to let ISIS sack Baghdad because Maliki won't budge.

I don't think it will come to that though because (assuming Iraqi defense forces alone can't repel ISIS) if we don't provide Maliki with what he needs, Iran will.

While it would likely save Baghdad, it's not a great outcome.

I acknowledge that this isn't a simple situation to resolve. We don't want to pull Maliki's fat out of the fire only to have him create another crisis down the road because he's done nothing to reform his government.

Major General Qasem Soleimani is by multiple reports in Baghdad advising Maliki, and he brought along two Brigades of his forces


http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13930304000986

I'm not convinced that ISIS can take Baghdad now, and as for the Persians, they're already on their way to Baghdad. That's a done deal.

I think they have already provided themselves with an out so they can still help without Maliki having to reform his ways. They simply provide help for the Iraqis to help themselves (training and advise I guess) and military help to guard our interest there.

The most ominous current reports are that Shia militia are making the rounds in Baghdad telling the Sunni to leave. We already know that Shia have in the last two weeks been making a mass exodus from the North. It is too early to know if we will see Yugoslavia style ethnic cleansing, but one way or another Iraq is going to split onto three. The American dream of Iraq maintaining its borders proved to be unrealistic. We probably should have known this when the Kurds from the start said that they did not believe in being part of Iraq. We certainly should have known it after a few years of Maliki refusing to work towards a unified Iraq.

Chalk up another yet failure for Bush the younger and his team.

Cole makes a number of legitimate points, but he also seems to ignore the fact that rather than simply sulking over its being cast as a member of the "Axis of Evil" after the post 9/11 "candle-light vigils" held by Iranian citizens, the Iranian's continued to pursue a "foreign policy" wherein the US was considered an enemy, and they very actively participated in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq either through the direct actions of Iranians or, far more extensively, through providing Iraqi insurgents with IED technology.

While more "moderate" forces were at the helm of Iran on 9/11/01 and some of them issued statements condemning the act of terrorism, soon after they were replaced with hard-liners, and on September 24, 2010, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN General Assembly that "there is one theory" that US engineered the 9/11 disaster to prop up Israel, and urged the UN to investigate. President Obama, rightly and forcefully, refuted Ahmadinejad's comments, calling them ""hateful, offensive and inexcusable".

Regardless of whether or not one feels that Iran has legitimate reasons for considering the US its enemy, it is undeniable that it is our enemy and so "working with" them in response to this crisis should not be seen as some no-brainer of an opportunity to forge peaceful relations. It would be short-sighted not to consider that this might offer some opportunity, but it would be foolish to think it will provide anything even remotely like a breakthrough, and my concern with Secretary Kerry is that he is engaged in a constant search to find a major diplomatic "success" that he can attach to his "legacy."

The question of whether or not a neo-conservative strategy to improve and secure US security by promoting democratic ideals (even through direct military intervention) throughout the world and particularly in regions like the Middle East, can be successful was not answered by the Iraq War. The effort was flawed in so many different ways that it can't be seen as a dispositive test case.

Not all of the mistakes were made due to arrogance and ego (although Rumsfeld accounted for a number of those), there was an obvious reason why, initially, the US "sided" (as Cole describes it) with Shia leaders: They, not the Sunni's welcomed the toppling of Saddam. Shia, not Sunni had been oppressed and murdered by Saddam's regime, and they offered the best opportunity for moving Iraq to a democratic nation. Perhaps there was also an underlying or even sub-conscious concern about the fact that it was Sunni Muslims who were responsible for 9/11, but I doubt this had a major influence on the thinking.

Bremer's policy of de-Baathification may, in hindsight, appear to have been a mistake, but it wasn't formed out of caprice, and it's important to note that for the Shia who Bremer had to rely upon, the Baath Party was the source of their miseries. I don't know how well they appreciated the subtle reality that to have any sort of job in the public sector someone had to be a party member.

I completely agree with you that the notion that anyone other than the people who benefited from Saddam's regime is mourning its loss and might wish that it could return is preposterous. The hypothetical that Cole offers (but which he also disagrees with) of how Saddam remaining in power would have been a better state of affairs for Iraq is far-fetched.

Ridding Iraq of Saddam and his government was a good thing, and one of the few outcomes on which most people agree was beneficial, but whether or not it, alone, was worth the deaths of some 5,000 American soldiers and the wounding (often in horrific manner) of some 33,000 more (not to mention of course the high Iraqi civilian casualties), I think it’s clear, in hindsight (at least to me) that it was not.

That he was a monster and a scourge upon his people is unquestionable, but as you have pointed out there are others like him throughout the world. While it would be in many ways satisfying for the US to be a global White Knight ridding the world of such monsters, that is just not going to happen in any way that would be acceptable. As far as him being a threat to the US, I have no doubt that he had evil intentions, but the reality is that the invasion revealed he did not have the capabilities to actually make good on these intentions to the degree to which his removal was essential to our security. Whether or not the belief that he did was simply mistaken or born of lies, is not something I care to address here. Suffice it to say that he didn't have the weapons that were the primary justification for invasion.

That the Bush Administration invested almost everything in these weapons as the justification of the invasion to the American people is something that I disagreed with at the time and which set them up for a monumental perception of failure and suspicion. Clearly there was a strategic reason for the invasion but I suspect the Administration just didn't trust Americans to understand it and preferred to focus on our fears.

American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is clear proof that nation building is a complex and very difficult endeavor, and the arrogance and ignorance that led officials to believe it would be otherwise was a major cause of what, arguably, has been two failures. I would go further though and say that these two examples are convincing proof that nation building is too complex and difficult for us to attempt again under almost any circumstances. There is little reason to believe that the combination of leadership, enduring political and public will, and an environment on the ground that is conducive, rather than antithetical to the attempt will ever come about.

We sided with the Shia because we love the victims. The thing we have not learned yet is that victims very often become abusers. Giving the victims what they want is not pursuing justice, and it is an amazingly stupid move. This is how you perpetuate the abuse cycle, it is not what you do if you want to end the abuse cycle.

I think you nailed it. ISIS has brigandage down pat. I don't think they have a clue on occupation, governance, management.

did you notice the reports that the people currently in Mosul seem to prefer living under the ISIS to living under Maliki's forces? They say that the ISIS has so far improved city life. No I am not betting that this holds, but any claims of ISIS management incompetence must be proven, because it is not self evident. Remember too that Hezbollah has a rep for being better at government than any lebanon government of the last two decades.