hello

@McTag,

Iraq and most of the Middle East has been at war since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire during WWI and the attendant Arab awakening. I don't think the availability (or lack) of foreign-made weapons has ever been a significant issue in any of that.

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@georgeob1,

I think it has been contributory to a lot of our digging our U.S. butts into places lived in by others through varied administrations: selling weapons, providing weapons; teaching them weapons, advising them; many people hurt on various sides, ours actually the least; more hatred created toward us than was there in the first place.. re-use of weapons against us.

All so we can fix stuff.

And make money.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

Iraq and most of the Middle East has been at war since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire during WWI and the attendant Arab awakening. I don't think the availability (or lack) of foreign-made weapons has ever been a significant issue in any of that.

They will fight with scimitars and muskets if they have to. But the country is awash with modern American-made armour and munitions, greatly aiding the mobility and striking power of whoever can get their hands on it. The Islamic State fighters, for example.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I think it has been contributory to a lot of our digging our U.S. butts into places lived in by others through varied administrations: selling weapons, providing weapons; teaching them weapons, advising them; many people hurt on various sides, ours actually the least; more hatred created toward us than was there in the first place.. re-use of weapons against us.

All so we can fix stuff.

And make money.

Take the money out of the equation...and it almost has to be a better world. I dunno...maybe I am wrong on that, but "the money" seems to breed evil.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

Quote:
Iraq and most of the Middle East has been at war since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire during WWI and the attendant Arab awakening. I don't think the availability (or lack) of foreign-made weapons has ever been a significant issue in any of that.

They will fight with scimitars and muskets if they have to. But the country is awash with modern American-made armour and munitions, greatly aiding the mobility and striking power of whoever can get their hands on it. The Islamic State fighters, for example.

Well I agree we would likely be better off with Saddam still in power, still in possession of Kuwait, and still in a war with Iran. We would have been still better off if the Ottoman Empire were still around. (they knew better than to combine the former Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra respectively). Perhaps you should read up on the post WWI British war with the Ottomans, the British Mandate and the curious drawing of Iraqi borders with its tenuous and sensitive balance of competing powers - more suitable for economical colonial management (as in India/Pakistan, North & South Nigeria than continued existence as stable. independent nations.

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Great to see the same ol' conversations going round and round after all this time.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

The irony of the term "conversations", is that it contains "convers", like "converse", but that's fundamentally the opposite of what people abuse their voice for - instead it's to reassure themselves of nonsense, instead of accepting greater responsibilities in life, much like "am I wrong?".

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@One Eyed Mind,

One Eyed Mind wrote:

The irony of the term "conversations", is that it contains "convers", like "converse", but that's fundamentally the opposite of what people abuse their voice for - instead it's to reassure themselves of nonsense, instead of accepting greater responsibilities in life, much like "am I wrong?".

Wow, that's profound ly pretentious.

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@glitterbag,

They've got internet now at the asylum and he's apparently the only one who knows how to use it. Lucky for us (not).

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@CalamityJane,

Peeps feed the poster - it is ever thus.

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@ossobuco,

So can anyone tell me why people with pictures of dogs are out to get me? I don't have any doggy treats!

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@georgeob1,

None of those well-documented international post-colonial fuckups compares with the enormity of the disaster which Bush (and Blair) have brought about in Iraq.

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@One Eyed Mind,

Quote:

Re: ossobuco (Post 5762173)
So can anyone tell me why people with pictures of dogs are out to get me? I don't have any doggy treats!

Well, now you do! Razz

http://tailsoffortcollins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DoggieTreats.png

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Leonard Cohen's title "Beautiful Losers" came to mind when I read this headline at Politico...

Quote:

GOP campaigns seek out McCain
By BURGESS EVERETT | 9/10/14 7:05 PM EDT
It’s general election season — and John McCain is back in demand.

McCain, Romney and Cheney are who these people turn to in their time of need, the cupboards being bare.

Across the GOP/conservative horizon there's no one who appears as a winner or as a hero or even as original. And that's interesting. The decades-long and desperate search for a new Reagan is continually yearned for and continually disappointed (not least because "Reagan" has been crafted into a myth which is unobtainable - the real guy wouldn't get through a modern primary).

The culling out of moderates in the party and movement (and the evisceration of any body which might produce youthful and bright moderates for the movement) has severely limited any sort of up and coming farm team contingent. If you are going to run for significant office in the modern GOP, you cannot be a moderate. The word is now a profanity.

And because the movement is built upon a range of unique (if often cooperative) extremisms, nobody comes up without their own and other's blood all over them. Look at Boehner and Cruz. Or Rubio and Jindal. Each battered by their own fellows. Rand Paul has a target on his back as big as the Pentagon.

There are, of course, healthy disagreements. The above stuff isn't healthy.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

None of those well-documented international post-colonial fuckups compares with the enormity of the disaster which Bush (and Blair) have brought about in Iraq.

I don't think the facts of history are with you there. The world is still dealing with the after effects of the disaster of WWI. The European rule of the Islamic world started in the early 19th century and from immediately after WWI until the late 1950s nearly every moslem in the world was under the rule of either Russia, the UK, France or Holland.. I wonder what (apart from their own political dysfunction) pissed them off so.

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That is certainly true about the European colonization of the Muslim world. The vogue these days is to blame the United States for every national-scale tragedy in the world. There are rumors that ISIS troops have been trained by the United States--the reports are so conflicting that they do not agree on whether they were trained by American military, or by private contractors. John McCain is said to have visited the training site in Jordan, but he was linked to a member of the group who was expelled for being too moderate. If it were true that there were direct or indirect American involvement in the training of ISIS fighters (reports also claim British and French involvement) it would not be the first time such programs have bitten us in the ass. American money and the expertise of Central Intelligence created, trained and armed Al Qaeda.

EDIT: I have never seen anything about Americans training ISIS other than blog posts and opinion pieces. I know of no hard evidence for this, or for British and French involvement, which has been produced anywhere.

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I'm staying out of the ISIS conversation as I don't know squat and don't really trust anybody in office to speak honestly about what's going on here but Steve Clemons wrote a piece a while ago on Saudi involvement with ISIS http://theatln.tc/YAJESt

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

And make money.

One notion in Obama's speech that caught my attention though I saw no note of it in any media at all was the given that US military force was justified to "protect US interests".

Perhaps it is a given or unnoticed because that is precisely the role of the US military which has some 700 or 800 bases in 60+ countries. Protection of commercial enterprises or the creation of political environments agreeable for US corporate activities is what the US military has been up to for a very long while. Local autonomy and citizen well-being has been a peripheral concern or an impediment to be corrected for the most part.

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@blatham,

I think your data is badly exaggerated, but I suppose that depends on what you imagine constitutes a "base". We've had bases in UK, Germany, Spain and Italy for a long time and they were a critical part of the NATO deterrent throughout the Cold War. Many have since been closed. I don't think that constituted any harm to the host countries,. On the contrary most were eagerly sought by the countries involved, and many were even paid for by them, Same goes for our long term bases in Korea, and Turkey.

We had a complex of bases in the Philippines for a very long time. They were in part a vestige of something like colonialism, and to some extent did indeed have the effects you suggested.. A result was the Philippine government asked us to leave and we did (in the early 1990s). Interestingly they have recently asked us to return, very likely as a result of their concerns about China.

I think you are generalizing about things you don't know or understand very well. I also think this subject is outside the zone of your long-term study and intrinsic infallibility.

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@blatham,

Imagine my lack of enthusiasm for supplying moderate rebels in Syria..

oh, wait. Disasterama.

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