Well, Tony Blair is hardly a disinterested party in this whole Iraq discussion, so I am not sure we should listen to what he says. Moreover, he's a lying POS, but that's an entirely different discussion.
Obama Fail : What is his policy in Iraq?
- Thread starter jem
- Start date
Stating that things would have gone down the same if Bush was President, is just speculation.. but a possibility. The bottom line is that he did say this would happen if we left early.
Fair enough. And he's got a lot of company about now. Namely, Bush's entire Iraq war machine, who are advising us about what to do in... Iraq.
Yes, he did say if we "left early". You left that bit out of your first post. Bush never intended, at least publicly, for us to remain in Iraq indefinitely. Remember the pullout, some giving Obama credit for that, and others taking it away because it was the Bush plan all along?
Of course it won't work if we approach it as another adventure in nation building with politically correct rules of engagement and kid gloves. I think the good Captain was basically saying we should take the gloves off and exterminate them like the cockroaches they are.
Why anyone thinks they'll leave us alone if we totally withdraw and cower under our beds is beyond me. The head of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, already said "I'll see you guys in New York" when we released him to the Iraqis in 2009.
We can do it now or we can wait until they inflict enough damage on us to take them seriously. My guess is, that won't happen until after we've been nuked and hopefully we'll have a president with balls by then.
I think what ohms, captain etc are saying is: we should skip the nation building bullshit and wage war the way it is meant to be waged. Killing people and wrecking shit. That means we will have innocent blood on our hands, but it is what it is.
I have to agree. If possible I wouldn't put infantry on the ground, but I would send out hit squads all over the region to wipe out ISIS backers. If this were just some group with no American blood on their hands, I wouldn't care or desire to see US involvement. We invaded and occupied these two countries for more than a decade to get rid of AQ and their allies, instead we got al-qaeda 2.0, bigger, badder, and better financed.
As you pointed out, it is because of the way we fought the war, it is not because we can't win. These guys are taking cities and running off armies with AKs, makeshift bombs, and 50 year old ruskie artillery mounted on pickup trucks. We have the most sophisticated military in the known history of the universe and they survived us, that is a victory to them and now their numbers and influence are swelling. We all know what the difference is, they are willing to do anything to win. We gimp ourselves out of some moral code that doesn't exist in real war.
One thing is certain in my mind, if these rats are not wiped out, we will get attacked again. And if they really lifted the equivalent of a half billion dollars from the iraqi central bank.. the next attack might be quite a bit more destructive than 9/11, to say the least.
edit: Trader666 beat me to it, but im not deleting my post.
Apparently they have 4X that:
The terrifying rise of Isis: $2bn in loot, online killings and an army on the run
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/terrifying-rise-of-isis-iraq-executions
I didn't mean to imply that Bush said that in a way that meant, permanently, and I don't think that's what I did. Anyway I doubt things would be the same under bush, I doubt W would have released thousands of iraqi prisoners, especially while we were still there. I doubt he would have made the bergdahl swap. I think he would have come to terms to keep a force in iraq, as long as necessary. We committed to win there the minute the first US soldier lost his life on iraqi soil, you can't just walk away and say fuck it.
They can buy a fully assembled nuclear bomb from Pakistan with that kind of money. I imagine you could buy from North Korea as well.
In the scenario you paint I agree entirely. There is no point in the winning hearts and minds approach. If we restrict ourselves to that we will lose. Problem is if we do nothing, hoping they will eventually exterminate themselves...well, that just isn't going to happen. One side is going to win and that side is Radical Islam. Once that happens we get the "big war" whether we want it or not. Just like not every German was a Nazi, once the Nazi's got the power, everyone fell in line. They did so not out of loyalty, but out of fear. Muslims will do the same. They're not all nuts, but they live in fear and fear makes people do stuff they wouldn't otherwise consider.
Forget the nation building. This is about nation destruction. Doing it as humanely as possible, killing as few civilians as possible, but honestly that's almost an oxymoron. There isn't much humanity when you're fighting to win. The humanity of a nation is determined by how they treat those survivors whose nation they have just beaten to a pulp. Until total victory is achieved, it's about primal killing. That's just how it is.
We're going to fight this war, now or later, but it is inevitable given the mindset of our enemy. They ain't quitting. Why would they? They got nothing else going for them. You wanna' be on the winning side of this, or the losing? I guarantee you, if they win, we won't be treated like we would treat them. We'll be exterminated. Like I wrote earlier. No clean hands, No easy choices. Just the ugly truth.
Forget the nation building. This is about nation destruction. Doing it as humanely as possible, killing as few civilians as possible, but honestly that's almost an oxymoron. There isn't much humanity when you're fighting to win. The humanity of a nation is determined by how they treat those survivors whose nation they have just beaten to a pulp. Until total victory is achieved, it's about primal killing. That's just how it is.
We're going to fight this war, now or later, but it is inevitable given the mindset of our enemy. They ain't quitting. Why would they? They got nothing else going for them. You wanna' be on the winning side of this, or the losing? I guarantee you, if they win, we won't be treated like we would treat them. We'll be exterminated. Like I wrote earlier. No clean hands, No easy choices. Just the ugly truth.