12 years, billions of dollars spent, many lost lives and Iraq is falling to radical Shia Islamists and ethnic militias. Iran is mobilizing the Republican Guard to help the Shiites. The country is on the verge of breaking apart. Before this breaks down into a Bush-Obama debate. Bush's invasion was never meant to be an eternal occupation. We liberated the people from Saddam, cleared the cities of terrorists, trained an Iraqi army to keep the peace, and then it was time to go. Obama made the call and the majority of people said hallelujah, it's time....and that was what the extremists were waiting for. The USA planted the seeds of this situation back in 2002. What is our role now? Do we engage the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on the ground? Offer air support? Is Iran our enemy-ally? We took a diplomatic approach in Syria but we have no investment there. Can we just do nothing and watch the country crumble? We (the majority here) love to hate Obama and whatever he decides to do will be wrong to some of us. Now he has one of the most important decisions of his presidency ahead. His great dilemma. Like Phaedrus, he is facing the horns of the bull. Which one do you want him to choose?
Should have never gone, should have left as soon as Obama was elected. Fuck em, let em all kill each other.
"Last month this is what Barack Obama said to the 1,064 graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy: "Four and a half years later, as you graduate, the landscape has changed. We have removed our troops from Iraq. We are winding down our war in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda's leadership on the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been decimated." That let-the-sunshine-in line must have come back to the cadets, when news came Sunday that the Pakistani Taliban, who operate in that border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, had carried out a deadly assault on the main airport in Karachi, population 9.4 million. To clarify, the five Taliban Mr. Obama exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are Afghan Taliban who operate on the other side of the border. Within 24 hours of the Taliban attack in Pakistan, Boko Haram's terrorists in Nigeria kidnapped 20 more girls, adding to the 270 still-missing—"our girls," as they were once known. Then Mosul fell. The al Qaeda affiliate known as ISIS stormed and occupied the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, population 1.8 million and not far from Turkey, Syria and Iran. It took control of the airport, government buildings, and reportedly looted some $430 million from Mosul's banks. ISIS owns Mosul. Iraq's army in tatters, ISIS rolled south Wednesday and took the city of Tikrit. It is plausible that this Islamic wave will next take Samarra and then move on to Baghdad, about 125 miles south of Tikrit. They will surely stop outside Baghdad, but that would be enough. Iraq will be lost." "One might ask: Didn't U.S. intelligence know something like Mosul could happen? They did. The February 2014 "Threat Assessment" by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency virtually predicted it: "AQI/ISIL [aka ISIS] probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria . . . as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah." AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq), the report says, is exploiting the weak security environment "since the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011." But to have suggested any mitigating steps to this White House would have been pointless. It won't listen. In March, Gen. James Mattis, then head of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress he recommended the U.S. keep 13,600 support troops in Afghanistan; he was known not to want an announced final withdrawal date. On May 27, President Obama said it would be 9,800 troops—for just one year. Which guarantees that the taking of Mosul will be replayed in Afghanistan. Let us repeat the most quoted passage in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates's memoir, "Duty." It describes the March 2011 meeting with Mr. Obama about Afghanistan in the situation room. "As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand Karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his," Mr. Gates wrote. "For him, it's all about getting out." Iraqi soliders are cowards. They always have been, including the vaunted Republican Guard....nothing more than a fancy uniform but still with nothing to fight for. The problem now is what to do...we don't have any bases in Iraq anymore, and no troops in country, with no status of forces agreement in place, so the options are limited. Prime Minister Maliki had been asking for air support for some time and that might still be beneficial, but there are no more A-10s in the region. The Iraqi Air Force has a couple planes and ONE F-16, just delivered. About the only option left is a twitter war.
That's the first thing I thought of when they started showing how they were abandoning posts...AGAIN.
I know. If we never went the story would be another one. But now we created a vacuum for these extremists to occupy Iraq and do their damage in Syria. This shit will get big. Do we have a responsibility since we created this mess? The democratic govt in Iraq could collapse and this will be another foreign policy failure. The USA had the responsibility of stabilizing the country after we removed Saddam. Are we tied to the fate of Iraq now? The other option is that a Syria-Iraq extremist state is formed. All of this shit goes back to WWII...or 700 E.C.
Do you think our options are limited to drone support? Our Muslim allies (Saudi Arabia) have got to be looking at this situation with much anxiety. Side note: The World Cup is being played in Qatar in 2022.
As much as I hate to say this this is in W's lap. I supported the war for several reasons the primary one was that Iraq was supposed to be the most secular state in the ME and a place where a positive democracy could be developed and a catalyst. Saddam was a bad man who (I still believe) had weapons of Mass Destruction) etc. The whole world believed he had chem and bio weapons (even his own generals), including Putin, the French, Iranians etc. Even Hillary with 8 years of Clinton WH knowledge believed it. The WMD ended up to being incorrect and inconsequential. The key fault was the fallacy that Iraq had potential to be a viable state. It was only held together by Saddam's ruthlessness. What we see here is the result of the release of hundreds of years (Saddam wasn't the first who suppressed the population) of emotion against their neighbors. In fact that is happening all over the ME where old rulers have been replaced. President Obama has not helped matters but even I have a hard time blaming him for the end we see.
Let me say this I think W went in with the best of intentions. He believed the neo con line that the ME was ripe for democracy. He preached it much more than O has and actually meant it. It has been reliably reported he told the Saudi's and Kuwaiti's if they didn't loosen their grip they would fall. W is much more of an idealist that O ever was. That is one thing he has never been given enough credit for.
Idealism...means so much in the mind but not in reality. The Neoconservatives thought that by preemptive force and establishing democracy that the world could be changed to an American ideology and favor. That is and was an utter failure. You can't change a mind that doesn't want to change and now this is where we are and no one can blame Obama for that. This is where I lost my belief in GW.
