P3ter_Griffin
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http://lacrossetribune.com/news/loc...d21-54e2-8217-5a981efad3e1.html?mode=comments
Over 100 ISIS commanders and leadership are from the former Hussain Iraq government. (blowback from our FP)
The State department (Hillary) decided we should overthrow Assad to hurt Hezbollah and Iran for the benefit of Israel. (how does this play into our national interest?)
They were warned that military action in Syria and overthrowing Assad would result in the rise of a new radical group (ISIS) and opted to do so anyway (again not in our national interest to mess with Syria, and now a reason not to do it)
ISIS is the greatest current terrorist threat per Obama's counter-terrorism chief. (good going guys, you created the mess!)
Assad's Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran -the ones this operation initially was intended to hurt- are now fighting ISIS. (at least our enemies will wipe our behinds)
And there is now a refugee crisis because of the destruction of Syria that is destroying Europe. (woops! our bad!)
And so for you fools who would rather focus on national borders or Islam then the effects of our current FP, a proper solution will never grace your brain. There are radical elements to all religions, Islam included. But our FP has attempted to make sure these radical elements rise to the top in the Islamic world, both by direct support, money and weapons, and by indirect support, that being the unjust wars which provides real motivation for some and substance for radical Islamic propagandist to recruit fighters.
Most of the Jihadist (and we're not talking Muslims as the whole... just those that have taken up arms against us) do not hate us for our freedoms, they hate us (really our government-- they have obtained a better world-view than most Americans are seemingly capable) because we prevent their people from making a better live for themselves and their families.
I am guessing that it took you awhile, Sell, to put this together, and I don't want to spend that much time critiquing it, but I will do my best on the fly here:
Comment: This was a decision made early on after the invasion, to dismantle the Iraqi military completely. I think it was a bad idea, but you also have to wonder, if you are right and more than 100 ISIS commanders are from Hussein's forces, how loyal would they have been in a U.S.-trained and administered army? Or do you have a brilliant hindsight plan of how to have vetted them before hiring them for the new Iraqi army?Over 100 ISIS commanders and leadership are from the former Hussain Iraq government. (blowback from our FP)
Again, it looks like bad policy now, but at the time, there was a groundswell of popular Syrian hatred for Assad. But if anybody seems to have had a sound policy for the Middle East, I guess I would vote for Buggs' JFK assassin enabler, George HW Bush, who decided we probably are better off if we don't know what we're doing to let dictators stay in power if they are all that stands between keeping some sort of peace and Wreaking havoc on the world.The State department (Hillary) decided we should overthrow Assad to hurt Hezbollah and Iran for the benefit of Israel. (how does this play into our national interest?)
See my comment above.They were warned that military action in Syria and overthrowing Assad would result in the rise of a new radical group (ISIS) and opted to do so anyway (again not in our national interest to mess with Syria, and now a reason not to do it)
According to the best accounts I have been able to ferret out, ISIS started in northern Iraq during the Bush W. occupation and our commanders at that time had a chance to go in and clean them out, but declined. It goes without saying that our exit from Iraq allowed ISIS a great opportunity, which they took. There is no doubt that Obama's administration has to hold the jacket for that, but one wonders how much our country would have stood for expenditures of more hundreds of billions and young lives lost for a more protracted war than we already had experienced? The reality is we may have to expend that money, effort and blood again to clean this up. It is a grotesque tragedy of history. You seem to want to lay this at Hillary's feet. If she is the war-monger that her critics are saying she is, d'ya think maybe she was counseling Obama to stay in Iraq, possibly?ISIS is the greatest current terrorist threat per Obama's counter-terrorism chief. (good going guys, you created the mess!)
Comment: This administration is widely being excoriated because ISIS and other forces inimical to our interests there are using our left-behind equipment from the Iraq war. Obama was insistent that he did not want to arm groups that would turn on us in Syria, and he is heavily criticized, sometimes by the same people, for taking THIS stance. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and carp, but you don't have to make the decisions, Obama does. How would you handle the Kurds, the best, most effective anti-ISIS, anti-al Qaeda fighters in the theater, who are deeply hated and distrusted by our close ally, Turkey, not to mention by Sunni and Shia Iraqis and by the Iranians? Choose a side, pal, and wait for everybody else to pile on you and tell you how wrong, naive and stupid you are.Assad's Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran -the ones this operation initially was intended to hurt- are now fighting ISIS. (at least our enemies will wipe our behinds)
As for your final two points, I think your contention that our Foreign Policy (I assume that is what your FP is) has made sure that radical extremists have risen to the top of the world, I am not sure I see your argument. I guess you could say our mistakes have allowed them to rise in power, but our policy is not designed to do so. The whole point of the Obama approach was to NOT send arms that would end up being used against us. I don't see how you can come up with that idea. I totally disagree with your final point. They hate us for our freedoms because our freedoms are a direct contradiction to the ancient feudal caliphate fantasy they have of restoring Islam as a great world power, They do prey on kids who see the excesses of western consumer society, knowing it is unlikely those kids will never experience it, then use that reality to instill a hatred toward us and attracting them to Jihad and the delusionary promises of revenge, death and virgins in heaven. The people who are for Trump and against Hillary are the very same voters who scream about foreign aid, a tiny percent of our annual budget that actually takes the promise of a better life to them and helps people work to achieve a better life for themselves and their families. So go figure.
'This was a decision made early on after the invasion, to dismantle the Iraqi military completely. I think it was a bad idea, but you also have to wonder, if you are right and more than 100 ISIS commanders are from Hussein's forces, how loyal would they have been in a U.S.-trained and administered army? Or do you have a brilliant hindsight plan of how to have vetted them before hiring them for the new Iraqi army?'
I started at the point I did because I was trying to make a relevant point using our most recent policy mistake. We helped rise Saddam to power in the first place, and sent many weapons and money to him over the years. It is largely unknowable what these 100+ individuals would be doing had we not been intervening in the middle-east so heavily the past 70+ years-- which is largely to my point. But I think we can say if we had not invaded Iraq in 2003 'for the possession of WMDs', 'intel' supposedly gained by torturing an individual (and actually, they were going to invade Iraq, this just happened to be the excuse (see: 'The Plan -- according to U.S. General Wesley Clark' on youtube) these 100+ individuals would probably still be apart of Saddam’s Iraq government, not ISIS.
'Again, it looks like bad policy now, but at the time, there was a groundswell of popular Syrian hatred for Assad. But if anybody seems to have had a sound policy for the Middle East, I guess I would vote for Buggs' JFK assassin enabler, George HW Bush, who decided we probably are better off if we don't know what we're doing to let dictators stay in power if they are all that stands between keeping some sort of peace and Wreaking havoc on the world.'
The intel I mentioned predicted this would happen. If you'd look up what I said 'this would hurt Hezbollah and Iran for the benfit of Israel', you'd see it was nothing about spreading democracy. Even now the State Department is having a 'mutiny' to overthrow Assad. It is much more nefarious than you're willing to admit. The dictators he was saying we should leave in power were ones propped up by the US, by the CIA. Look up 'George H. W. Bush You are creating a Frankenstein'.
According to the best accounts I have been able to ferret out, ISIS started in northern Iraq during the Bush W. occupation and our commanders at that time had a chance to go in and clean them out, but declined. It goes without saying that our exit from Iraq allowed ISIS a great opportunity, which they took. There is no doubt that Obama's administration has to hold the jacket for that, but one wonders how much our country would have stood for expenditures of more hundreds of billions and young lives lost for a more protracted war than we already had experienced? The reality is we may have to expend that money, effort and blood again to clean this up. It is a grotesque tragedy of history. You seem to want to lay this at Hillary's feet. If she is the war-monger that her critics are saying she is, d'ya think maybe she was counseling Obama to stay in Iraq, possibly?
Here again, you miss my larger point. These are all question we need to ask *because* of poor FP. We should not be propping up and tearing down dictators and funding rebel groups in the first place. If our focus is on 'how do we fix this problem we created' instead of 'how did we create this problem in the first place' we will always be chasing our tail... or more appropriately, chasing the bad guy of the day.
'This administration is widely being excoriated because ISIS and other forces inimical to our interests there are using our left-behind equipment from the Iraq war. Obama was insistent that he did not want to arm groups that would turn on us in Syria, and he is heavily criticized, sometimes by the same people, for taking THIS stance. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and carp, but you don't have to make the decisions, Obama does. How would you handle the Kurds, the best, most effective anti-ISIS, anti-al Qaeda fighters in the theater, who are deeply hated and distrusted by our close ally, Turkey, not to mention by Sunni and Shia Iraqis and by the Iranians? Choose a side, pal, and wait for everybody else to pile on you and tell you how wrong, naive and stupid you are.'
The intel they had said this would happen. You can ignore that if you want. The CIA has been arming rebels in Syria since at least 2013. We were arming rebels (ISIS) in Libya before that, and it got a diplomat killed. Luckily the Libyan army, recently deposed by our 'no fly zone' (they were actually bombing the Libyan army as it retreated), came to their aid and got the ones out alive they could... 'enemies' wiping our butts.
Our 'close ally' Turkey shot down a Russian jet doing a bombing run on ISIS positions, they are also providing a market for ISIS to sell their oil.. what great friends if indeed ISIS is 'the biggest terrorist threat'.
And again, these questions are asking me to solve problems we have created, which misses my point that we shouldn't create the problems in the first place. I am an anarchist, so my solution is to let free people do what free people do. Supporting the Kurds or Russians in their efforts would probably be my choice.
'As for your final two points, I think your contention that our Foreign Policy (I assume that is what your FP is) has made sure that radical extremists have risen to the top of the world, I am not sure I see your argument. I guess you could say our mistakes have allowed them to rise in power, but our policy is not designed to do so.'
Again I say, I think what has happened and is happening is more nefarious than you're willing to admit. The state that the world is in is very beneficial to the military industrial complex and to politicians who want to pass laws that infringe on individual liberty. I think the people who have guided us into these mistakes are happy with exactly where the state of the world is.
'The whole point of the Obama approach was to NOT send arms that would end up being used against us.'
We've been arming them for a long time, as I said.
'I don't see how you can come up with that idea.'
By looking at the whole body of work.
'I totally disagree with your final point. They hate us for our freedoms because our freedoms are a direct contradiction to the ancient feudal caliphate fantasy they have of restoring Islam as a great world power, They do prey on kids who see the excesses of western consumer society, knowing it is unlikely those kids will never experience it, then use that reality to instill a hatred toward us and attracting them to Jihad and the delusionary promises of revenge, death and virgins in heaven. The people who are for Trump and against Hillary are the very same voters who scream about foreign aid, a tiny percent of our annual budget that actually takes the promise of a better life to them and helps people work to achieve a better life for themselves and their families. So go figure.'
Maybe you should spend some time listening to what the jihadist say, instead of what the politicians and media say the jihadist say. I understand that there are some sects like the Wahhabist that seek violence even when there is none. And there numbers are for sure bolstered by our interventionism. But to the most extreme extent, that is not what we are dealing with today, we are dealing with blowback from our poor foreign policy.
Well, Selling, without spending another hour poking through this with you, I will boil this down to one point you make that I find hard to swallow. You talk about the "intel" that was readily available to our government that clearly told them to steer clear of the policy directions they took. There is a daily flood of "intel" going into the White House, and it is so varied and contradictory that you can pick and choose which things you want to support your point of view. Obviously George W. and his bosses, Cheney and Rumsfeld, chose the weapons of mass destruction intel to support their pre-conceived decision to invade Iraq following 9-11. This will delight Buggs, I am sure, but when Colin Powell was standing shoulder to shoulder with these guys, I figured they knew what they were talking about, and I accepted it and the subsequent invasion. If Buggs wants to stress most Americans on this very day might say in a poll that they believe we need to shut down Muslim immigration to the U.S. temporarily, he may or may not be right. But the vast majority of Americans bought into the Weapons of Mass Destruction intel gambit, as did I, and it all turned out to be wrong. Winning a public opinion poll does not make the public's opinion the right or correct opinion. And choosing one version of intel over another doesn't make the chosen version the right one. If you are basing your complex construct on some versions of "intel" that you fished out of the Internet, congratulations. But neither I or anybody else has to buy into your construct, which I think is faulty and erroneous. As for anarchy, good luck with that. I don't think it has worked as a system of governance since the hunter gatherer days.
Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and provide thoughtful responses.
The issue you raise is why I am a anarchist.. well I come to my position because it is the only moral position. But it is one of the greatest moral hazards of a government, especially one where participation (paying taxes) is not voluntary. It matters of war, individuals, in my opinion, should do the due diligence themselves and decide if they want to contribute, and to which side they want to contribute. Having the government make these decisions and arguments for war provides a false sense of 'truthfulness'-- for the lack of ability to think of a better word. Surely if me and three of my buds came up to you and said "hey, that guy over there has weapons of mass destruction give us some money so we can go declare war on him", you'd probably ask for further proof... and not be satisfied with the answer 'its classified'.
You can see this moral hazards in all areas government operates, 'people don't need to learn the nutritiousness of their food, the practices of raising/growing their food, and farms with which that food is produced on because the FDA is doing it, right?'. 'People don't need to learn where their consumer goods come from, how they are produced, in what way the workers who produced those goods are treated, It surely wont have lead!, because 'the government got yo back''. I think we can call this the 'government got you back' syndrome. People are free from informing themselves and preparing themselves in the ways the natural people should, because the government got yo back. I think it distorts people's reality in a bad way, and can cause poor decisions, from what food you buy, to who you go to war with.
