Tell that to the hundreds of Shi'ites that were just massacred, asswipe.

Just admit it, Woodie. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

BTW, Germany emerged from the same cultural revolution as Britain and France in the 19th century. Nazism was but a brief backstep. And don't be so quick to trumpet Japan. They seem to be shaking off the dust of getting their asses kicked in WWII.

(June 16, 2014 at 9:29 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(June 14, 2014 at 2:39 pm)Chuck Wrote: Actually, ISIS was never really Al Queda. It was once a franchise of Al Queda. Now it mostly has its own agenda and Al Queda fears it. ISIS in Iraq is better thought of as a Sunni insurgency seeking to carve out a Sunni state to restore the preveliged status enjoyed by Sunnis of the takriti clan under sadam. ISIS's military success owe much to the dispossessed but trained former soldiers and officers of Sadam's old Sunni Takrit clan dominated Iraqi national army.

They didn't take Takrit first in Iraq, Saddam's home town and seat of the Takriti clan, for no reason.

I think his point, that American intervention is for us lose-lose, still stands.

Not really. We could win if we ally with Iran. But it requires a major eating of our own words as well as a political determination to shatter the influence of Israel lobby.

Quote: We could win if we ally with Iran.

It might be worth it, Chuck. Think of all the republicunt assholes who would literally shit themselves to death if that happened.

It's worth considering.

I would pay good money to see the reactions of the cuntservatives if we allied with Iran.

Let's face it, our policy shouldn't be about idealism and being the harbingers of freedom and democracy and blah blah blah in the M.E. We're powerful; we're not that powerful. The middle east has a lot to go through, culturally-speaking, before it's ready to handle a multi-party socio-democratic system. It's gonna get uglier there before it gets better. It goes against the grain for me to say this, but...let 'em kill each other. Either one side is gonna tire out and accept defeat or they both are gonna tire out and accept a ceasefire, and possibly end up learning to tolerate each other in the way that democrats and republicans tolerate each other rather than straight-up murdering one another. If other nations want to start coming together to do the work, then good for them. But frankly I'm tired of the world always staring at us pointedly every time a bunch of massacres start happening. It's always "Where's the American military," and then it's "The American military has no right being there!" A lot of NATO-members' foreign policies are hypocritical and two-faced as fuck. Everyone was pissing and moaning that we weren't diverting our forces to a third front in Libya, then they all get pissy when we send Spectres and Spookies in to open fire on groups firing on civilians.

The Shits and Dummies wanna butcher each other, fine, whatever, have fun guys, lie in the beds you made for yourselves. We spent years training Iraq's armed forces and apparently they were too stupid to know which end of the gun to point at the target, too stupid to overcome their bigotry towards one another, and too craven to understand any form of discipline. Their government has fallen apart almost instantly. As has been said before many times in this thread; you can't give computers to cavemen and expect them to do anything other than break them.

I think that establishing closer ties with Iran makes good strategic sense, but it will never fly. On the one hand, we are too beholden to Arab countries (especially the fucking Saudis), a consequence of dicking around for decades without a serious, aggressive national energy policy; on the other hand, Israel and its most fervent American supporters would scream bloody murder. A move like that would require more political courage than anyone in D.C. seems capable of demonstrating.

Ah.... these are the "good guys" apparently.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/...=5043&_r=0

Quote:BAGHDAD — The first signs of sectarian reprisal killings of Sunnis appeared in Iraq on Tuesday, as 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station in Baquba, north of Baghdad, and the bodies of four young men who had been shot were found dumped on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

Quote:“Those people were detainees who were arrested in accordance with Article 4 terrorism offenses,” he said, referring to Iraqi antiterrorism legislation that gives security forces extraordinary arrest powers. “They were killed inside the jail by the policemen before they withdrew from the station last night.”

These guys must be auditioning to be cops here in the US!

America imagines herself as a world power. She is not. She is a regional power with unusual flexibility in picking her region. She can't dominate several regions at once. But she can hope to do very well by correctly choosing the important region and sustain a focus on it.

But the politics and temperment of America is such that patient and diligent focus on the region of importance is seen as "lack of vision", or "lack of boldness", where as striking out to make big initial splash in regions of less consequence at the expense of region of greater consequence is seen as "leadership". So the qualities America is beholden to is the quality which is detrimental to her interests.

(June 16, 2014 at 10:14 pm)Heywood Wrote: I think our error in Iraq was not the invasion part. The invasion was the easy part. Where we screwed up is in disbanding the Iraqi army and marginalizing the Sunni's.

I think Dubya's administration saw the possibility of having bases literally in the middle of the middle east, and was willing to risk it. The possibility that it would lead to more wars and not less may also have been seen as a feature and not a bug.

Quote:where as striking out to make big initial splash in regions of less consequence at the expense of region of greater consequence is seen as "leadership".

Ah, yes.





The Bush Doctrine!

At the time of withdrawal, Maliki did not want US Forces at all.

I was part of the last staging for the removal of all US Forces. The elections were one sided. He wanted to give Shittes all the power, and make the Sunnis second class citizens. There was no back room deals, they were not signing the SOFA period.