Let me make this perfectly clear. Our former allies are abandoning us at light speed. The British are coalescing with the Egyptians without consulting us and seem to be unwilling to form a major partnership in Iraq to eliminate the ISIS threat. Our leadership is no longer trusted by most everyone. President Obama loves to say let me make this clear but his results are almost always opaque We have just about isolated ourselves and are becoming insignicant in the Middle East Some may agree that this is what we need, I fear it will come back and bite us.
I rarely do this but where was all this insight when we decided to nation build Iraq? That was the start of our impotence. That fact that we pulled our allies through that morass was the beginning of the problem you are announcing. We made them all look like asses for following us into a situation that turned out to be based on false pretenses with no hope of an acceptable exit strategy. Nearly every leader of our allies that followed us into that hell hole took a hard fall because of it. Simply put, the current administration is failing at foreign policy at nearly every opportunity. Their predecessor setup many of the situations though. Leaders "friendly" to the US were ousted in favor of more independent leaders because the previous leaders followed us into the Iraq quagmire.
Good. Let somebody else meddle in another country's affair and deal with the inevitable blow back. Quit treating these ISIS clowns as if they are some kind of super humans. On the other hand, maybe they are.
As Bush said and McCain in 2008, it will take time. It took a generation or two in Japan and Germany and we are still there, matter of fact local Germany economies would be devastated if we ever left. Japan is a different story, they are ready for us to leave. We should still be in Iraq and none of this would have happened, we should have been there with 50,000 troops for 50 years and an entire generation. The seeds were planted for democracy but we needed to follow through and protect them for at least a generation. Helped them become an economic ally, which would have paid all monies back two fold like Germany and Japan.
George Bush, I think, honestly believed he could plant democracy seeds in the Middle East and grow a popular government that would spread the concept region wide. He was surrounded by people who were probably more informed but they saw the possibilities for Haliburton; they were in it for the profit. The WMD ******** should have convinced anyone with doubts that we were sold a line of ****. Is Obama a foreign policy genius? Not by a long shot. Are the problems he has to deal with of his own making? Almost entirely not. history repeats itself because we are not observant enough to learn. We backed the Shaw because he was our stalwart ally in the Middle East not named Israel. The way he treated his own people using our guns and training was a problem we ignored until the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Why wouldn't their government distrust us? We were largely responsible for the House of Faud controlling Saudi Arabia and their heavy handed tactics are well documented. Most Saudis are comfortable and don't question the government but you are ill advised to question authority there. There are always unintended consequences to interfering in the governments and wars of other people. The Isis people see themselves as soldiers of the true faith. They are getting tacit support from the major Sunni players, while their Shiite enemies (majority in Iraq) are supported by Iran. So the people we tried to help build a nation are fighting in a holy war with the help of our enemy, Iran , against an enemy funded on the down low, by our allies in the region, like the Saudis and the various emirates. It is a Sunni vs. Shiite war. There is no way to take a side in an insane concept like "holy war." These people can't stop killing each other long enough to see the long term benefits of democracy and may never get to that point.
1leg 'He was surrounded by people who were probably more informed but they saw the possibilities for Haliburton" Just curious, who were these people?
I really can't believe anyone can still defend the actions or inaction of this administration. If we had left military personnel in Iraq we would not have this mess.
mojo Never forget it was not BO's idea to remove all troops well except when it was and he wants to take credit for it well except when he doesn't want to take credit for it. Got it? BO has both taken credit for it and said it wasn't his idea just this month.