Obama: no combat troops to Iraq
So, Obama and I finally agree on something – he says that he won’t send US troops to Iraq. Yep. they did their job and it’s up to the Iraqis to figure this stuff out for themselves, but, they do need some assistance. The Afgans’ Northern Alliance couldn’t defeat the Taliban by themselves in Afghanistan, but they got US air support and they rolled right over the Taliban, so that’s probably what the Iraqis need. A little moral support. But, really, it shouldn’t have got to this point.
I’ll concede that it’s largely the Iraqis own fault. Maliki is a dumbass – no argument here. He needs to be reminded that he’s the leader of all Iraqis, not just Shi’ite Iraqis. But, as far as US involvement goes, the President told reporters yesterday that his national security staff is working on a range of options that he can take to help the Iraqis.
Well, Fallujah fell to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria whichever the group formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq is now calling themselves, back in January. What has the President’s national security staff been doing since then? Why are they always surprised by world events? The fall of Fallujah might have been a hint that things were going wrong in Iraq – well, to me anyway. There should have been a plan in place, along with some military assets that could be applied at a moment’s notice.
But the President and his staff only get their information from the news apparently. They’re consistently surprised by world events. It’s as if they don’t understand that their job is deal with these things before they happen based on the information that the rest of us don’t have. But, how many times has the President told us that he didn’t find out about problems until it was on MSNBC?
According to the Washington Times, John McCain is calling for the entire national security staff to be fired;
Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said Friday that every member of President Obama’s national security team should lose their jobs.
“Everyone in the national security team, they have been a total failure,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
While the president said he is considering airstrikes to try to restabilize the conflict in Iraq, Mr. McCain said no one on the president’s current team should be making those decisions.
Now, that’s always John McCain’s answer to problems in the Obama Administration – I think he just inserts the problem area into a boiler plate press release calling for people to be fired. However, in this case, the President should have arrived at that conclusion when he asked his staff what he should do and they told him that they’ll get to work on a range of options.
I just finished reading Tom Clancy’s last novel “Command Authority” last night which was about a Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Clancy died on October 1st last year. The troubles in the Ukraine didn’t start until late November – Clancy had written a whole novel about a Russian annexation of the Crimea before he died, but the Obama Administration was taken by surprise. A novelist knew the warning signs better than the President and his advisers. So obviously the wrong people are in those jobs.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
Susan Rice is the National Security Advisor. Are we REALLY surprised by their cluelessness when she’s the one in charge?
That’s the problem with academics: they never let facts get in the way of their theory.
The warning signs for the current problems in Iraq were there two years ago. Both in how Maliki was isolating the Sunnis and what the Islamists from the Syrian conflict wanted to do in Iraq. Keep in mind that AQ has always had a unified Sunni Caliphate encompassing the entire Middle East as a primary goal. The administration needs to start thinking about what to do if this turns into a broader regional conflict (which it technically is) and the implications of Iran commiting troops to support Maliki. That may cause the Arabian peninsula countries to commit resources to countering Iran sparking a more direct conflict.
Not sure the Kurds need any help from the US, because the peshmerga seem to be quite capable of taking control of things. They’ve already seized Kirkuk by telling the Iraqis and Arabs to give them the keys and piss off home.
http://news.msn.com/world/kurds-seize-disputed-oil-hub-amid-iraq-chaos
They’ve also grabbed weaspons. US-supplied vehicles, etc.
We should send the Kurds more stuff. We have a surplus of JRVVS and Buffaloes, don’t we? I think they can handle just about anything.
That’s the tempting thing, but Turkey will go apoplectic if we do that. And unfortunately, they are a key ally of ours.
The problem I have always seen in Iraq, is the Iraqis themselves. The Shi’ite hate the Sunnis. The Sunnis and Shi’ites hate the Kurds. As long as the flavor of their religion is more important to them than freedom or a stably nation, they will continue to digress into chaos and anarchy led by Sharia Law extremists. If in our country the same were true of Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Mormons we too would be at constant internal war. We learned something though from our founding father’s blood and wisdom. Freedom comes in many areas. One of which, one of the most important is freedom of and from religion. Especially religion imposed by the state. We were guaranteed the freedom to worship or not as we choose. We, in America, let and allow all to do so. In Muslim countries…not so much. They are so full of hatred for anyone who would dare believe, even in Allah, differently from them, they are willing to eradicate them from existence. Maliki is a Shi’ite. In his heart and mind, no matter what comes from his mouth, he is a Shi’ite first, last and always. If we would support him to rid Iraq of Sunnis and Kurds he would be doing backflips of joy. But we are not going to do that for one reason. It is not freedom for all which is what we stand for and were suppose to help them learn and build a government based upon that freedom as well as freedoms for women, the vote, speech and so forth. We will never stop ignorant hatred anywhere. ISIS is all about hatred. Not just for Muslims of a different flavor but of America first and foremost and our freedoms, all we stand for and our lack, in their minds of our bowing to Allah as a nation, which makes us, Israel and everyone else an infidel. Infidels are worthy only of bad deaths in their minds. We cannot stop this. If we lend air support to Maliki he will use it to his Muslim preference, not freedom… Read more »
You’re right about the case for not helping Maliki for air strikes. I also agree with you on the matter of the Kurds, but unfortunately Turkey will never allow us to arm them or negotiate on their behalf, and they’re arguably our most crucial ally in the GWOT, the only semi-moderate Muslim state, and quite possibly a key bastion against Putin’s influence in the next few years. They’ll be leveraging the shit out of that to keep us the hell away from the Kurds, and good luck getting president mom jeans/shrimpy weights to stand up to them (heck, whether he should is an open question).
HS Sophomore…Excellent points. In a perfect world it would be different with the Kurds. But we do not have a president or SoS capable of negotiating with the Turkish in order to aid the Kurds. The Turkish government laughs at the Obama presidency as hard as Putin or any other nation.
Sparks, we as a culture learned less from the Founding Fathers than from our own history. Catholics & Protestans spent several centuries murdering each other, to the point where the Thirty Years War damn near depopulated central Europe.
It’s easy to understand how the Muslims are acting when you view Shiites as Protestants and Sunnis as Catholics. What finally helped introduce a measure of toleration in Europe was the degradation of Church power from constant war and the growth of nationalist monarchies at the expense of the Church. I can’t say what sort of mechanism would work to introduce a parallel process for Muslims.
It doesn’t help that modern Islam has been dominated by Bedouin culture.
Sorry Jonn I may have goofed up my email address on the last post causing the “awaiting Moderation”.
There have been problems in Persia with mooslimbs since 600 AD. So who could have reasonably predicted this?
Regarding Tom Clancy, when we were watching the planes hit the Towers on 9/11, my eldest son and I looked and each other and said, simultaneously, “Debt of Honor”. The government talking heads later said that no one thought of using planes as missiles, then I said “Tom Clancy did”.
Apparently Brad Thor also writes about events that predicate real life events.
Can it be that people reliant on solid research for their livelihood do a better job than government stooges who mostly make decisions based on what’s best for themselves politically? Maybe folks in the White House and Pentagon should be required to read fiction thrillers.
I desperately wish somebody in Hollywood had the balls to make a movie adaptation of “The Last Patriot.” After all, it was okay to make “Da Vinci Code,” so why shouldn’t the Muslims get a similar treatment? Especially considering that Brad Thor is a lot less insulting to Islam than Dan Brown is to Catholics.
But no, that would be RAAAAACIST! We can’t treat them like everybody else! They need the kid gloves!
I love Tom Clancy and his books. I grew up on them.
But man, I must not have been looking for real life allegories when I read them… Looking at his work, it’s nearly prophetic. The use of jets as a missile, the invasion of Crimea… I just hope that the rest of his books don’t follow suit; I’m not keen on Ebola.
A “Red Line” on no combat troops, but Pres Obama stated today he “doesn’t rule out anything”? Ugh, what? When the faeces hits the phan, suppose he can always punt his commander of the chiefs authority to congress (i.e.,thrown under bus) about sending in troops.
Devtun…And there you go. A “Red Line”, that has no more value or solidity than a “fart in a whirlwind”. The definition of Obama and his presidency.
let iran and isis fight it out its like when hitler attacked stalin you didn’t know who to boo for!
Once again, VWPissant demonstrates that he/she/it gets his/her/its rocks off watching people who aren’t white kill eachother. Racist shitbird.
Well, I’m sure Iran is cackling with glee right now, but letting Iraq and the ISIS fight it out is really all that we can do right now. Or, at least, it’s the best option.