2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBush/Cheney Created Conditions That Led Directly to ISIL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/bushcheney-created-condit_b_5820916.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592snip
The Iraq War -- and the Sunni power vacuum caused first by U.S. policies and then Al Maliki -- created the perfect conditions that allowed a vicious band of extremists to take huge swaths of territory.
And now many of the same people who caused this foreign policy disaster have the audacity to criticize President Obama's measured efforts to clean up the mess they created. And they do so often without ever saying what they themselves would do to solve the horrific problems that they created.
It reminds you of a bunch of arsonists standing at the scene of a fire criticizing the techniques used by the firefighters who are trying to extinguish the blaze they themselves have set.
More at link about the cause recent horrific terrorism.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Which helps not one bit.
earthside
(6,960 posts)... that the Obama administration is calling it a 'war', too.
In Shift, White House Calls ISIS Fight A War- ABC News; September 12, 2014
No one should let the media or political pundits let Bush/Cheney off the hook for their responsibility for this mess. The first three paragraphs of Thomas Ricks's 2006 book Fiasco lay it all out:
President George W. Bushs decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy. The consequences of his choice wont be clear for decades, but it already is abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect informationabout weapons of mass destruction and a supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and al Qaedas terrorismand then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and an untold number of Iraqis have died. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region, but so too may civil war or a regional conflagration, which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock.
This books subtitle terms the U.S. effort in Iraq an adventure in the critical sense of adventurismthat is, with the view that the U.S.-led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation. Spooked by its own false conclusions about the threat, the Bush administration hurried its diplomacy, short-circuited its war planning, and assembled an agonizingly incompetent occupation. None of this was inevitable. It was made possible only through the intellectual acrobatics of simultaneously worst-casing the threat presented by Iraq while best-casing the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country.
How the U.S. government could launch a preemptive war based on false premises is the subject of the first, relatively short part of this book. Blame must lie foremost with President Bush himself, but his incompetence and arrogance are only part of the story. It takes more than one person to make a mess as big as Iraq. That is, Bush could only take such a careless action because of a series of systemic failures in the American system. Major lapses occurred within the national security bureaucracy, from a weak National Security Council (NSC) to an overweening Pentagon and a confused intelligence apparatus. Larger failures of oversight also occurred in the political system, most notably in Congress, and in the inability of the media to find and present alternate sources of information about Iraq and the threat it did or didnt present to the United States. It is a tragedy in which every major player contributed to the errors, but in which the heroes tend to be anonymous and relatively powerlessthe front-line American soldier doing his best in a difficult situation, the Iraqi civilian trying to care for a family amid chaos and violence. They are the people who pay every day with blood and tears for the failures of high officials and powerful institutions.
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)and inattentive. I'm not sure I can help.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)Until people wake up and pay attention to what's happening.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)that are actually At-Will, part time employees of both We The People, Government, and Corporations. Politicians take turns with those elected in running the country. Good example is when Wall Street/President Regan addressed the nation in person and orally.
I have a reply on the OP, on the Texas Group about another At-Will employee, King Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz needs to be fired by the People of Texas.
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)and some old fart lifetime employees on the SC nuke the initiative. Wear the people down with whack-a-mole. You have to go small or not at all if you want to have any influence on any issue, person or place.
underpants
(182,826 posts)Rec'd
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)with some of their neighbors & other major ME countries have just offered to help with air support.
The entire world would have been better off if bushcheney never were allowed to start their war.
To start their 'for profit' empire built off of Americans Federal trillions, in the first place.
Raster
(20,998 posts)...a clear exit strategy from Iraq/Afghanistan. Silly people. There was never an exit strategy because there was never any intention of leaving.
polynomial
(750 posts)It would not surprise me that a lot more Americans are participating in this Iraq turmoil. Especially knowing Cheney operated a Blackwater military mercenary structure that could very well be an integral part of the current mess in Iraq. Protracted for no end profiteering ad infinitum.
Yes a structure so secret and greased with billions of tax payer money are paid to mercenaries. Every type of war like this is loaded with serious connections to be able to be so effective. Cheney did it before and likely doing it now. Thats their method secret dirty tricks.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)America. Haliburton is its own country being funded by the American Taxpayers Treasury Account. Who/what Big Oil corporations did Maliki give oil contracts to again to restart the dirty tricks?