Reality, Reason, and Iraq
The news calls them “jihadist” and “Sunni extremists.” You have no idea who they are or what they want. Iraq is a nation three large minorities: ethnic Kurds, Shi’a Muslims, and Sunni Muslims. (Baghdad’s Jews and Marionite Catholics no longer count.) Historically, Iraq was never a nation until the British created it from the old Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. That they did not create Kurdistan at the same time is another sad story.
Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. Although nominally a secular socialist, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who depended on religionist support. Aside from the Kurds, his opponents were Shia Muslims who drew aid from Iran, the center of that faction, as Cantebury is for Episcopalians.
The US invasion destroyed the central government of Iraq. For over a decade, many Washington planners from different organizations have tried to create or nurture some kind of pluralist government in Iraq. It is doomed to failure.
For one thing, Turkey does not want an independent Kurdistan, especially as the Iraqi Kurds have de facto independence now. Moreover, they are largely out of this fight. It is between the Sunni and Shi’i.
As far as the Sunni are concerned, they are fighting for their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Trian...
If they take control of Iraq again, the tables will be turned to no one’s benefit. It would be best to let them have their Sunni Triangle as a independent state or autonomous region.
As for the president of Iraq, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki:
“He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived in Tehran until 1990, before returning to Damascus where he remained until U.S. coalition forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime in 2003. While living in Syria, he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country's effort to topple Saddam's regime.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Ma...
Iraq is suffering in a civil war – but it has suffered so ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and surely since the failure of the British mandate. American involvement on behalf of the central government will only make matters worse. Iraq will become a satellite of Iran.
If an ideal settlement exists, it is the partitioning of the region into three or four states: Kurd, Sunni, Shi’ite, with – again, ideally – Baghdad as an international free trade zone. Whatever happens, the best course is _no_ course: laissez faire.
Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. Although nominally a secular socialist, Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who depended on religionist support. Aside from the Kurds, his opponents were Shia Muslims who drew aid from Iran, the center of that faction, as Cantebury is for Episcopalians.
The US invasion destroyed the central government of Iraq. For over a decade, many Washington planners from different organizations have tried to create or nurture some kind of pluralist government in Iraq. It is doomed to failure.
For one thing, Turkey does not want an independent Kurdistan, especially as the Iraqi Kurds have de facto independence now. Moreover, they are largely out of this fight. It is between the Sunni and Shi’i.
As far as the Sunni are concerned, they are fighting for their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Trian...
If they take control of Iraq again, the tables will be turned to no one’s benefit. It would be best to let them have their Sunni Triangle as a independent state or autonomous region.
As for the president of Iraq, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki:
“He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived in Tehran until 1990, before returning to Damascus where he remained until U.S. coalition forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's regime in 2003. While living in Syria, he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country's effort to topple Saddam's regime.” – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Ma...
Iraq is suffering in a civil war – but it has suffered so ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and surely since the failure of the British mandate. American involvement on behalf of the central government will only make matters worse. Iraq will become a satellite of Iran.
If an ideal settlement exists, it is the partitioning of the region into three or four states: Kurd, Sunni, Shi’ite, with – again, ideally – Baghdad as an international free trade zone. Whatever happens, the best course is _no_ course: laissez faire.
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With the "coalition of the willing" of some 20+ nations, we ejected Iraqi forces from Kuwait and its oil fields. The retreating Iraqi army was destroyed from the air.
Our mistake was that we didn't seize control of Iraq then, when we had the necessary troops in place (over 500,000) and a large coalition of Western and Middle Eastern powers that could have each contributed to the stabilization of Iraq. We also had not destroyed the government and its infrastructure, so we wouldn't have been starting from the Stone Age and moving forward.
Over the years that followed, the US and our allies were enforcing the No Fly Zone authorized by the United Nations denying Iraqi military jets and helicopters access to their southern skies (and Saudi's border). We routinely were engaged by Iraqi "air power" and we routinely put them into the ground in the desert. We probably destroyed more Iraqi jets during "peacetime" than during Desert Storm.
A few years later - Saddam put out a death order and a contract killing on Bush 41... more or less an act of war, even though it didn't succeed (former presidents have Secret Service protection full-time).
Bush #43 didn't start out as a wartime President... he actually had a robust educational agenda in mind and had started his administration in that direction, with really no interventionist actions prior to 9/11. When 9/11 happened, we obviously and fully justifiably invaded Afghanistan.
We had been fighting a "warm war" in Southern Iraq since Desert Storm, and was diverting quite a bit of Air Power to do so. Keep in mind, the US jets cost a tremendous amount of money each, we don't have a "lot" of them.. it's not like 50,000 of them in the air like it was during WW2.. A typical Air Wing is like 16 or 24 jets & airmen. If we have 1000 in total, I would be very surprised, I think it's in the 600-700 range. We can't deploy airpower around the world indefinitely. (and the 600 to 700 maintainers, in-air refueling tankers, their support, etc.) that goes with them... we're talking a couple of thousand people, easily.
To be honest, I think Bush took the opportunity to "finish" something that was started under his father, and not by our choosing. I think he considered it the family legacy to do so. He had a somewhat reason or two, and he did it, hoping to build a democracy in the Mid East that might change the direction of US relations.
In truth, it did, I think the Iranians have been kind of warming up to us again, only because of our commitment to Iraq, and deposing their mortal Sunni enemy. If the end result (someday) is a stable Iraq that respects its neighbors' borders and has political ties that stabilize the region, it will have been worth it. The idea isn't flawed, I think what is flawed was pounding them into the stone age, and the "nation building" that followed.
Enemies exist, but don't need to be created.
Islamist epistemology (if you can call it that) sees anyone who isn't one of "them" to be killed or converted. Very dangerous for the US. ...especially when our president nurtures this craziness.
There is not one native Arab on the planet who is "western". That's a canard.
Syria has long been a sanctuary and supply source for middle eastern terrorists; they have long threatened Israel (our fault; we failed to explain to them that Israel's existence is not open for debate).
I agree we should never give weapons to anyone. As for them importing our culture... sure, and we can't even get illegal alien invaders to adopt our culture.
And who *cares* if they import our culture? My interest isn't in other peoples adopting my culture. My interest is in my people being able to go where they wish, when they wish, to do what they wish, and to not be interfered with when they do. Unlike you, I *don't* care about people outside the U.S.; that's their worry. I care about American prosperity.
And what business is going to get involved in a middle eastern hellhole? You have to send the troops in to make it safe for the businessmen to offer their wares.
Then what killed all those Kurds? Watching too many episodes of Duck Dynasty?
We saw trucks hauling WMDs and related equipment to Syria. Gee, in this Syrian civil war, the gov't used... the exact same kind of WMDs Hussein used on the Kurds.
All these bad things happened; I'm not going to defend Bush, since he's *also* a progressive. His unwillingness to let us hurt our enemies, and his willingness to treat American citizens with the same suspicion as foreign Arabs is just as bad as anyone openly on the left who fought for the same.
"But we've got no business going into any other country and trying to tell them how they should live and govern themselves. Not if we want the right to do the same in our country. "
And that's where you're wrong. We are the United States of America, the culmination of the greatest philosophical minds in the history of Mankind, the pinnacle of civilization.
They are backward primitives, not fit to be called civilized, who only have a veneer of civilization because of the money afforded them by our oil industry. There is no equality here.
Nobody has the right to tell us how to run our country, because we're superior to them all. We have the right to dictate to anyone else we choose, because we're superior to them all.
Get it? This is not some philosophically pure Gulch, this is the third planet out from the sun, where the top of the food chain was not attained by the purest, fairest, most decent species on the planet, but the "most ruthless at brutality".
I hate to tell you this, because you seem to naively think we can just send over a flight of drones and bomb people into submission. Maybe if we could simultaneously atom bomb every capital on the planet at the same instant. But, aerial bombing campaigns, while popular among civilians who weep over comparatively trivial battle losses (gee, 4,500 dead over a decade... compared to 50,000 dead in 3 days at Gettysburg? 36,000 dead in a night in Dresden?)
We had massive bombing campaigns in both WWII and Viet Nam, and the only times they were effective was when they destroyed the war manufacturing capabilities of the enemy. Kinda hard to do when the war making capabilities of your enemy is a "factory" in an apartment in Anytown, Earth, and the materials can be had off of a convenience store shelf.
No, it requires boots on the ground, it requires the arrogance to recognize and impose your superiority on your enemies. Not your "goodness".
Your concerns over the police are very, very valid, but they *are* local concerns, as you said. It's not feds doing most of that, it's the local swaggering duck-walking cops. That's up to you in your State and city to deal with.
And if those two Americans had been good, loyal Americans who'd stayed the hell in America, they wouldn't have been killed. But they were outside and not under the jurisdiction of the United States, so they gave up their protections when they took the side of our enemies.
We're essentially on the same page regarding the conduct of the war; we should have been conquering the middle east, not nation-building. But, we also shouldn't have been sitting here on our own shores waiting for the next 9/11.
I guess the terrorist training camps weren't evidence.
"They were the work of a rich, university trained Saudi, Ossama bin Ladin, who objected to the US being in his country. "
Who was based in Afghanistan and rejected by his family when he turned radical.
Many Japanese officers attended U.S. universities before WWII, too. So what?
I guess what the Iraqis did to the Kuwaitis didn't matter; I mean, all that were left behind were peasants, right? Just as what Hussein's regime did to Iraqis didn't matter. And of course, the fact that the taking and destruction of Kuwait posed a serious threat to Europe's oil supply.
While I agree that once we took Kuwait back, we should have kept it, that doesn't change the political reality of the region.
This idea that they were perfectly peaceful barbarians bothering no one outside their sphere (persecuted Christians no doubt had it coming... and that Israel... just a pack of filthy Jews, who cares?) is laughable.
Gee, too bad we didn't leave them to themselves; too bad we didn't spend our money and effort creating their oil-based wealth, and leave them wandering their deserts killing each other. But, getting the oil was in our own self-interest, and to do so we had to make deals with the devil... no, not the Arabs... the stinking leftists in the west who grew hot with outrage at the idea of us conquering or "exploiting" those self-same barbarians.
Hussein wasn't a threat to the Saudis; we already had U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia. There's no way even he was stupid enough to attack Saudi Arabia. But, Kuwait...
The situation is similar in many ways in Syria. Bashar al-Asaad was practicing as a doctor at a children's hospital in London when his brother was assassinated. So, he returned to take over the government. He is another secular, Western ruler. The rebels are not pro-democracy pro-Western but are Shiite and other religious factions seeking to create clerical states as almost happened in Egypt.
The whole thing is a mess - and the USA has no business intervening. Business interests have a place. Education, science, art, music, movies, whatever else our culture is, they will import it on their own. Putting boots on the ground or giving guns to rebels will only backfire.
As far as the Taliban and Al Qaida are concerned, that was a different matter entirely. And again, it was never proved that the 9/11 attackers were trained in Afghanistan. They were the work of a rich, university trained Saudi, Ossama bin Ladin, who objected to the US being in his country.
We were there to protect the Saudi Royals from Saddam Hussein - whom we previously nurtured. The invasion of Kuwait was a harsh warning for Saudi Arabia: no one living in the country was going to die to defend it. The Kuwaiti royals took off for the casinos of Cairo and left the country to the Iraqi army. The same would happen in Saudi Arabia. They hired the USA to defend them: "Onward Christian Soldiers."
What actually happened is Bush got to raise our national debt from some $5.8trillion to over $10trillion, within a couple of weeks of 9/11 Ashcroft had the Patriot Act ready to send to Congress to be voted on (you don't think that thing wasn't in someone's file before 9/11), followed not too long by establishing the Dept of Homeland Security and soon the NDAA, Rumsfield on 9/10/01 announced that the Pentagon couldn't account for or find $2.3trillion and our debt at that point was minimum $5.8trillion (that's right, the day before 9/11).
And during all that time, we couldn't find Osama or who in the Saudis financed the 9/11 hijackers. We let the Saudis in the country fly out during the following week including the family in Florida that the primary hi-jacker visited continually during the year before the attacks. We let 4,486 of our young men get killed in Iraq, twice as many as we lost going after the Taliban and Al Quaida in Afghanistan who we could conceivably tie to 9/11.
What have we gained? We've lost even the semblance of citizen's rights, our government is out of control and doing whatever they want with no fear of retribution, we have a National Police and Secret Security forces monitoring everything we say and do and ignoring our Constitution, we've let the government kill two Americans not on any battlefield with drone missiles (one a 16 year old kid) and been threatened with the same thing in our own country, our local and state police have become military forces breaking into our homes at 3 or 4 AM with flash bang grenades thrown into a baby's crib (yes, with the baby in it), we stand a better chance of being mistakenly killed by our own police than by an armed robber, we've watched a non law enforcement agency attack a rancher and his family with 200 militarily armed men and sniper teams over cows, and our great accomplishment in Iraq - poof!
It's as bad or worse than Korea and Vietnam. What the Hell has this country become? Anybody attacks or threatens to attack this country - bomb them back to the stone age and kill as many as possible. I wouldn't even object to deporting every practicing Muslim in this country. But we've got no business going into any other country and trying to tell them how they should live and govern themselves. Not if we want the right to do the same in our country.
I could give a rats ass if the muslims annihilate themselves off the face of the earth. In fact, I'd go so far as to say an entire city or town is forfeit to save the life of one US serviceman.
Let them divide up their nation as much as they desire. Let them war amongst themselves until their blood lust is sated. Construct Keystone pipeline, amp up coastal drilling and let that region of the world wallow back into the sand.
My 2 bits...and yeah, I have a huge legitimate chip on my shoulder when it comes to muslims and terrorism.
You are so full... nevermind.
To compare Japanese culture to anything western is to compare slavery to freedom. "Anti-traditionalist elements"? Really? Among a culture of ancestor-worshipers?
There was never anything "western" about Japan any more than there was anything "western" about China, aside from the fact that, like the parasites invading across our southern border, they liked the benefits that western culture could provide.
You probably masturbated over that ridiculous piece of propaganda called "The Last Samurai".
Get this through your thick... be civil, Hiraghm, be civil... try to understand, that if Americans can be restored to what we once were when we defeated Japan, no force on Earth can stand up to us.
let's have a reality check, a real, old-fashioned, ugly as hell, raaaacist reality check, shall we?
Until approximately 500 AD, Western Europe dominated the world. Then Rome fell, Western Europe went into the dark ages, and the rest of the world... sat on its collective ass. Until the Renaissance. Then the Europeans exploded again.
14 thousand years ago, aborigines from Asia migrated to the Americas. This was 8 thousand years before the earliest recorded western civilizations. When Europeans got to the Americas in the late 15th century, the inhabitants of the Americas were still living in the late stone age, a period during which all of civilization grew in Europe and Asia.
Homo sapiens came out of southern Africa; and yet, the first civilizations were established in central Europe and north Africa. When central and south Africans were sold to Europeans in the slave trade, their cultures were still, again, in the stone age.
Europe, whether by the hand of God or the happenstance of evolution, developed over the millennia the cultural traditions and values necessary for the ultimate advancement of Mankind. Asia did not do so, including Japan. The middle east, as the name implies, was smack dab in the middle of the trade routes, and should have benefited greatly from cultural diversity. But it didn't happen.
Asia was civilized before Europe, and yet Europe still came to dominate the world.
And the hallmark of European civilization is the respect for the individual, and the unleashing of the individual to make his own fortune. No Asian culture, including Japan, had this value.
Middle eastern cultures were ripe for the introduction of Islam; it was a religion that fit the existing cultural values.
Asian cultures were ripe for the introduction of socialism; it was a philosophy that fit the existing cultural values.
And if Americans were to re-embrace our traditional cultural values, even if we re-adopted the evil horror of slavery, not a nation outside of Europe could stand against us.
We didn't hand Japan a Constitution. We occupied Japan and ruled Japan for a period of time as they adapted to their Constitution (yes, which we gave them).
And we dominated them, because the "greatest generation" wasn't concerned about PC, and was absolutely convinced that we were superior to them (because... America). And they were downright civilized compared to the barbarians we fight today.
That mission accomplished banner, A) was accurate and put in place by the ship's company; the ship was returning home having accomplished their mission and B) was not put up for Bush's photo-op, but was put up because of see A).
The war on terror had to be a kabuki theater, because the left, *and objectivists and libertarians*, would not let us fight it like a real war.
None of you were willing for us to rape women in front of their men, for example. You know what the people we're fighting call that kind of behavior? "Wednesday". (I edited out some more raw examples). Hell, y 'all freaked out over Abu Graib, how could we do anything really raw after that?
I mention rape on purpose; it is within their mindset. To rape their women means nothing; to rape their women in front of them means *you are raping them*. It establishes your dominance in their minds. This is how they feel, because it's how *everybody* felt until recent centuries. Political correctness has left us incapable of thinking naturally anymore. And that is going to bring about our defeat and destruction.
(I don't think those extremes would be necessary if we'd been allowed to fight hard as we used to fight hard; but we desperately need to stop worrying about the dignity and health of our enemies).
And airs of moral superiority don't win wars.
This is a knife fight in a broom closet, not an Antebellum cotillion. If we pull back into our borders and let these barbaric cultures continue to expand their capabilities and influence, we will be fighting them in the streets of Oklahoma City. And then I'll have a real debate over targets; Moslem terrorists or Objectivist enablers.
I have been right about this war from the getgo, but nobody will listen. It's not that I'm all that brilliant a strategist; to me the behavior of our enemies is obvious and transparent... because I know how to think like them, and as I said, how all men thought until recently.
We have business wherever American interests are threatened.
Let me refresh your memory...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I6i0crm...
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/9-11-the-25...
WE are the United States of America. Our business is where ever the hell we decide it is. WE are the advancing light of civilization, even in our crippled and decadent state.
When the members of that 7th century death cult decided to come to our shores and wage war upon the people of the United States of America, they were requesting assisted suicide, and I'm all for helping them on their way to perdition.
The bastards who perpetrated 9/11, since you seem to have forgotten, did not come out of Omaha, or Kansas City; they came out of the middle EAST, not the midwest,
Terrorists, whether they be Al Qaeda or Viet Cong, need sanctuary. The Viet Cong found it in North Vietnam and the countries bordering South Vietnam. Al Qaeda *and their affiliates* found it in the middle eastern countries we continually refused to destroy, among the adherents of a religion that all rational peoples should recognize as threatening and destructive.
We have what we have because we didn't destroy them a decade ago. We have what we have because of politically correct nitwits and those who keep insisting that A) barbarous middle eastern dictatorships are equal in sovereignty to the United States of America, and B) that we must be nice to our enemies.
Ken King, the dipshit in charge of Ft Bucci (?) in Iraq, in charge of prisoners, including the ones released in exchange for Berghdahl, repeated over and again on Megyn Kelly's show, that we treated our prisoners with "dignity and respect". THAT was our great, bigoted error. We insisted upon looking at them with our (modern) cultural values, and not treating them according to *theirs*. Yeah, he's got a chest full of medals including purple hearts. Dipshit, I say.
Objectivists, like the Pauls, love this idea of taking America back to 1787, staying here in America, staying a 3rd rate country huddled on the edge of a vast empty continent, rather than accepting the REALITY that we are a global empire, and that it is the obligation of our government to protect that empire, wherever it is threatened.
Objectivism and reality have nothing to do with one another where this is concerned. The world is what it is, people behave how they behave, Objectivist ideals be damned. This IS the time for the barrel of a gun.
No. There will be no autonomous Sunni region for Al Qaeda to exploit.
The ideal settlement could have occurred 11 years ago. America invades, conquers, puts our boot on the neck of Iraq, and rules them through a governor-general with an iron fist until they learn to play nice. Hard on the Iraqis... but I really, really, don't give a shi'a. A millennium is long enough to put up with these barbarians and their 7th century death cult.
"Fast forward through the puppet King Faisal and we come to the modern era of socialism and military dictatorship. "
Sounds to me like we needed to install another puppet, not a "democracy".
It worked with Japan.
a stable and pro West Country in the Middle East. Women were voting and being educated. Who knows what could have grown out of this. The future was bright and we pissed it away because of the political views of this President.
We simply have no business in the internal affairs of any other country and never have.
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