Politico: The Man Who Broke The Middle East

[Crispy]

As to a residual force, would the American people be happy if their soldiers keep dying in Iraq? I thought that there was pretty clear consensus (not just in the US) that the people want out...

Well we know at least one who would be.

The day Cheney drops fucking dead will be a great day for the USA.

 

[Mercor]

Precisely... Once you've fucked the place up, you've got to choose between an indefinite military commitment with all of the human and other costs this implies or a significantly worse mess. So, personally, I blame people like Tony Blair and Dick Cheney who have, in spite of repeated warnings, created the situation where all the choices are bad. Moreover, there appears to be no accountability whatsoever for these people and they continue to preach their ideas.

Again, I stress that I am in no way excusing Obama. He turned out to be as just as bad, if not worse.

Maybe we are at a time in world history that we all take care of our own regions.

Let the Iraqis and Iranians guard and protect the straights of Hormuz.
Let them manage tanker traffic , and for the greater good of the World they will be responsible and reliable and fair.

This is the other side of American isolationism.

 

[Tsing Tao]

No, once you've f it up, you are not responsible for cleaning up the mess.

In all wars throughout history, the loser, who hopefully was in the wrong in the first place, paid reparations.

Go ahead and set me straight if i'm wrong and wars of past required the winner to clean up the mess and pay for what happened in the war.

Iraq had oil and they could have paid for anything we did. And they should have.

Just why in the hell do you think we're responsible for cleaning up the mess?

Please tell me when we "won" in Iraq.

 

[dbphoenix]

Precisely... Once you've fucked the place up, you've got to choose between an indefinite military commitment with all of the human and other costs this implies or a significantly worse mess. So, personally, I blame people like Tony Blair and Dick Cheney who have, in spite of repeated warnings, created the situation where all the choices are bad. Moreover, there appears to be no accountability whatsoever for these people and they continue to preach their ideas.

Actually the situation was "created" by the victors in WWI who partitioned the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war with no regard for tribal affiliations. And if they and we hadn't been and continue to be so dependent on foreign oil, there would be little to attract anyone to the Middle East beyond the eventual Suez Canal.

It's all been -- and is -- about money. Those who are eager to go back see continued profits (e.g., Halliburton). To suggest that the ME has been "broken" by any current doings is at best a stretch.

 

[Trader666]

Isolationism can only be effective when we don't fuck up the country in the first place. We can't go make a mess of things and then pull out and say "not my problem!"

Isolationism is a fine policy except it's fundamentally flawed on its face because it doesn't discourage aggressors in general and jihadists in particular, especially al-Qaeda, whose primary mission is the "overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime." We need to drop the ethnocentrism and understand that they don't think like we do. These "people" only respect force and are emboldened by/exploit weakness. It's not a coincidence that attacks by al-Qaeda affiliates have tripled since 2010.

The lesson we should learn from the last 25 years is not isolationism... it's (do you really want to hear it?)

 

[CaptainObvious]

One thing for sure. While we point fingers at each other and argue over which came first, the chicken or the egg, ISIS, al Qaeda, and every other terrorists group is kicking ass and taking names. They grow stronger everyday. Their battlefield tactics improve everyday. Occupied territory increase daily. Support in both people and treasure increases daily.
They're coming, and whether you vote dem, repub, or don't vote at all, they'll smile as they kill you. Only a fool shrugs their shoulders and walks away from this while muttering not my fault, not my problem.

 

[Ricter]

One thing for sure. While we point fingers at each other and argue over which came first, the chicken or the egg, ISIS, al Qaeda, and every other terrorists group is kicking ass and taking names. They grow stronger everyday. Their battlefield tactics improve everyday. Occupied territory increase daily. Support in both people and treasure increases daily.
They're coming, and whether you vote dem, repub, or don't vote at all, they'll smile as they kill you. Only a fool shrugs their shoulders and walks away from this while muttering not my fault, not my problem.

The moment general profits and privilege are threatened by ISIS you can be sure our parties will suddenly unite and we'll start beating back the crazies.

Fecal Politics

"In 1852, an American entrepreneur named James Jewett, master of the merchantman Philomela, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Daniel Webster. In it, he asked if American citizens could legally harvest guano on the Lobos Islands, to be sold as fertilizer to the opening farmlands of the Midwest. Webster, ever the guardian of American commercial interests, wrote back, “It may be considered the duty of this Government to protect citizens of the United States who may visit the Lobos Islands for the purpose of obtaining guano.” Jewett went on to ask the secretary of the navy to send a warship to Peru, just to make sure that no foreigners got in the way. At the same time, a similar discussion was under way on the other side of the Atlantic. Starting in June, British newspapers began running a series of stories about the Lobos Islands, claiming that they had, in fact, been discovered by an Englishman named Edward Lawson in 1808, and formally annexed by Britain in 1813. Appalled, the Peruvians responded by declaring the islands off-limits to foreign guano miners. Meanwhile, American and British warships weighed anchor and sailed toward the equator. The reason for their militaristic posturing was that the world needed fertilizer , and guano was the finest to be had. The pre-Columbian Incas knew this very well. Long before the Spaniards arrived, the Incas mined guano from the islands and rowed the pungent cargo back to till into their terraced fields, which is how Inca farms supported grandiose mountaintop cities like Cuzco and Tiwanaku. So vital was guano to the Inca economy that imperial inspectors were assigned to manage the Guano Islands and forbade anyone from killing the birds on pain of death. "

--Rimas, Andrew; D. G. Fraser, Evan (2010-07-24). Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (Kindle Locations 2455-2469). Random House. Kindle Edition.

And US foreign policy has not strayed far from this since!

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

One thing for sure. While we point fingers at each other and argue over which came first, the chicken or the egg, ISIS, al Qaeda, and every other terrorists group is kicking ass and taking names. They grow stronger everyday. Their battlefield tactics improve everyday. Occupied territory increase daily. Support in both people and treasure increases daily.
They're coming, and whether you vote dem, repub, or don't vote at all, they'll smile as they kill you. Only a fool shrugs their shoulders and walks away from this while muttering not my fault, not my problem.

Well, if we are serious aobut protecting our homeland, it would seem obvious to me that the first step would be to secure our borders and stop immigration from areas which harbor terrorists. Instead, we are doing the opposite. Obama, and to be fair Bush and Clitnon before him, have thrown our borders wide open. We have special visa policies to make it easy for Saudis to come here. We take in tens of thousands of "refugees" from the places with the worst jihadist problems, like Somalia.

There is a cost to bad policies and we will pay it sooner or later.

 

[CaptainObvious]

Yes, I agree our complete lack of border security is more than just an economic problem. Frankly I'm astonished we haven't seen people blowing themselves up here in the homeland. I think it's just the terrorist mindset of wanting to make a big splash that keeps it from happening. Sooner or later they're going to get some type of dirty bomb and set it off. 9/11 will look like a walk in the park by comparison.
I'm not sure Obama "broke the ME", but he sure as hell hasn't done anything to improve it, and one can easily argue his policies have thrown gas on an already raging inferno. This just doesn't end well, or easily.

Well, if we are serious aobut protecting our homeland, it would seem obvious to me that the first step would be to secure our borders and stop immigration from areas which harbor terrorists. Instead, we are doing the opposite. Obama, and to be fair Bush and Clitnon before him, have thrown our borders wide open. We have special visa policies to make it easy for Saudis to come here. We take in tens of thousands of "refugees" from the places with the worst jihadist problems, like Somalia.

There is a cost to bad policies and we will pay it sooner or later.

 

[Fractals 'R Us]

Bush should never have messed with Iraq, as it destabilized what was a balance of power between Sunni and Shia in the region.

It doesn't matter, Sunni's are taking it back. It's like Obama has balanced the Yin and Yang again, what a leader!