The Third Hundred Years War Has 86 To Go

[The Grand Nudger]

The "bear" is a mouse if we don't support it with air power.

You expect us to bomb the kurds ourselves, then, or?  

I remember when Bush the Smarter sent troops into Somalia because there was a civil war and a drought and a famine and we had lots of nice pictures of Marines carrying water and feeding starving kids and all the usual GOP propaganda they so love but Bush failed to understand the underlying problem and within no time at all these "humanitarian soldiers" were involved in the civil war.

That's what happens in civil wars.  The people there during a civil war, get caught up in the civil war.  

The one thing about helping people is we always assume that people want to be helped.  Sometimes, they don't.  I remember joking to a friend back when one of the first skirmishes happened that the Somalis said "okay, now we've eaten.  Get out."

It hardly matters whether or not a person who needs help wants help.  There are plenty of times that people do this on an individual level, and ofc we end up doing it on a national level as well.

I'm just trying to get through all the "for their own good", and "they don't want us" and "we can't do anything about it"s and get back to the root of the objection. It's expensive, it's difficult. I'd add "it gets us embroiled into other peoples problems" to the list, per your comments above...but doing nothing does that as well, so, it's a wash.

I really don't understand. Assuming the absolute and unqualified truth of the statement "We fucked up the middle east." only makes an even -stronger- argument for our continued responsibility in helping them to fix what we purportedly fucked up.