Colin Powell would argue Pottery Barn Rules apply.
Exactly. It was all right when he came into office. He broke it when he withdrew all troops without even an attempt at negotiating a Status of Forces agreement.
If Iraq was so safe, would you have been willing to spend a month living in Baghdad outside the Green Zone?
I know I shouldn’t ask, because it’s obvious, but why do you ask such moronic questions?
If the prerequisite for having an opinion is your willingness to go fight in Iraq, then you should keep your mouth shut. Also, we all know you wouldn’t listen to anything the people who will do the fighting have to say on Iraq.
It is abundantly clear Obama doesn’t listen to our people who do the fighting either.
A country that needs an open-ended commitment of foreign troops to keep from falling into sectarian civil war is not “all right”.
Straw man…it wasn’t open ended.
If it wasn’t open-ended, when was the end? When exactly, could we have pulled out and left an Iraq that wasn’t going to slide right back into sectarian warfare? 2014? 2020? 2030?
Iraq has deep internal divisions. The idea that we could permanently solve that problem with 10k or 20k troops and a few more years, is nonsense. We were always going to have to leave eventually, and no matter how long we put it off the aftermath wasn’t going to be pretty. The only mistake Obama made in pulling out in 2011 is that he should have done it earlier.
“If it wasn’t open-ended, when was the end?”
*IF* they signed an agreement, there would have been an end date. They always do.
Don’t you know ANYTHING?
Or…can’t you apply some thought at ANY TIME?
*IF* they signed an agreement, there would have been an end date.
And when that date came there would have been calls to sign an extension, lest Iraq slip into chaos.
ISIS came out of Syria, another Obama blunder, and invaded Iraq. This isn’t a domestic sectarian uprising. 500k people fled Mosul, so it is hard to claim this is the Iraqi people rising up.
Had Obama left troops in Iraq, his red line rhetoric on Syria would have had some weight. It would have allowed him to influence the events and actors regardless of whether our troops were used or not. The military is a geopolitical tool and is essential for effective diplomacy. Smart power 101.
What we see here is how Obama’s shortsighted foreign policy, which views everything as a unique event rather than as a web of interconnected events, has once again blown back in Obama’s face.
Obama has been trying to put pressure on Iran and isolate them with in the region but now Iran will be sending troops into Iraq to fight the Islamic militants coming in from Syria. Iran is expanding their influence and it doesn’t look like current events will help us prevent them from getting nukes.
This isn’t a domestic sectarian uprising.
ISIS is a spin-off of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group born in the Iraq war, and predating the Syria conflict. It is fueled by the same Sunni resentments that fueled the insurgency.
“ISIS is a spin-off of al-Qaeda in Iraq”
So now you admit AQ was in Iraq.
“and predating the Syria conflict.”
Yes, they were based in Syria and fighting in Iraq. They were a proxy for Syria and Iran to meddle in Iraq. It is ironic that they turned on Syria and that Obama’s policies are helping them in Syria and have now pushed them into Iraq after Bush had defeated them so many years ago.
“t is fueled by the same Sunni resentments that fueled the insurgency.”
Not really. The domestic concerns about the future of Iraq as a country have little to do with ISIS desire for a global caliphate. This isn’t a domestic uprising but rather the invasion of an international Islamic militant group. While there may be some Iraqi members of ISIS, they rely heavily on foreign fighters recruited throughout the Muslim world, Europe, and the United States.
You are deluding yourself if you think this is about Iraqi politics and nationalism.
It was a hell of a lot more all right than it is now. What was wrong with Germany and Japan that we kept troops there for decades after the war?
How many American troops died during the Post-War occupation of West Germany?
Also the West German government asked for NATO troops to remain to keep the Soviets out.
The Iraqi Government asked our troops to leave.
Both of those countries faced an external threat. Neither of those countries needed (as per the Powerline article linked above) US troops saying “We will physically block you from moving if you try to do that.’”
If you can’t answer when the commitment ends, it is by definition “open-ended.”
Germany and Japan were on the front lines of the Cold War. They didn’t need our troops to keep them from collapsing into civil war.
ISIS invading Iraq from Syria isn’t a civil war.
ISIS invading Iraq from Syria isn’t a civil war.
ISIS was founded in Iraq in 2004. It’s an Iraqi organization, aided and abetted by Iraqi Sunnis.
Founded in Iraqi, armed and funded out of Syria during the war and where they have now morphed into an international Islamic militant group because of the Syrian civil war and they seek the establishment of a caliphate and not a country named Iraq. They are not nationalists.
Would they be invading Iraq right now if Obama hadn’t bungled Syria so badly?
The Sunni in Mosul were so supportive that over 500k people fled for safety. The Sunni in Iraq don’t want to live under ISIS rule any more than they wanted to live under Saddam. This is not a popular uprising.
Does it count when the EPA destroys our economy?
So, you agree Obama owns it?
Obama encourages civil war in Syria by arming and training Islamic militants. The war in Syria spills over into Iraq. Obama claims it isn’t his problem and had nothing to do with it.
I would argue that when you try and overthrow a government and the violence caused by your actions spills over into another country, that you do bear some responsibility for the outcome.
>Colin Powell would argue Pottery Barn Rules apply.<
yea we had a good health care system in 2008
Got a Citation for that?
Why bother? You never listen.
My old insurance policy was much better than the one I have now. But at least my artist friend can get knee surgery and a vasectomy at tax payer expense. I can’t even get prescription coverage as was promised by Jim and Obama but free surgeries for ceramics majors.
All ACA policies cover prescription drugs, subject to deductibles and co-pays.
If you have to hit your deductible, mine is 222% higher, then you can’t really say prescriptions are covered under your plan. You know how deductibles work right? All of your expenses are covered after you hit the deductible and that is how it was under the old system. Obamacare didn’t grant me prescription coverage, it actually made it harder for me to get to the point where they are covered.
In order to claim your insurance covers x item, it has to be before you hit your deductible to mean anything.
In order to claim your insurance covers x item, it has to be before you hit your deductible to mean anything
That’s ridiculous. As conservatives love to argue, insurance isn’t about paying routine expenses, it’s protection from large and/or unexpected expenses. By your standard it doesn’t “mean anything” that you have coverage for hospitalizations, surgery, biopsies, MRIs, radiation treatment, etc., because it only kicks in after a deductible.
Here’s the deal. In return for complete control over the military and diplomatic machinery of the US, the president becomes responsible for the success or failure of that machinery and the results of its actions. Living in the big white house and flying around in the big fancy jet comes with the price of being the one who has to take responsibility when the fecal matter hits the ventilator unit. Every president (except Washington) has had to work with what the last guy left him, and every president (except the current Won) has accepted the fact that whatever problems happen on his watch are his to deal with. Constantly pointing the finger at the last guy doesn’t absolve the new guy from taking control of the situation. It just makes him look like a whiny little bitch.
So who was responsible for Vietnam? Nixon? Ford?
Both of them, plus Johnson, you moron.
Why are you so stupid to think that something can only be the responsibility of a single person?
You don’t have to answer that. We know, you’re an idiot.
So by your logic, isnt’ Bush responsible for Iraq too?
Bush was responsible for the events that transpired when he was President and Obama is responsible for the effects of his own policies. You can’t criticize Bush and give Obama a free pass, especially considering the post surge most of the work that needed to be done was diplomatic. Isn’t Obama supposed to be some diplomacy savant?
When it came to helping Iraq set up effective government institutions, value the diversity of the population, and fight corruption Iraq needed community organizer with an affinity for centralized big government. Those challenges should have been right up Obama’s alley.
But looking how Obama runs things back home, is it any surprise that corruption, incompetence, and ethnic divisions flourished in Iraq under Obama’s stewardship?
There is a rather significant difference between “solely responsible for” and “also responsible for”.
The issue isn’t whether or not Bush, Clinton, and GHWBush are responsible for Iraq in ADDITION to Obama, it’s that people, including Obama, want to claim that Bush is SOLELY responsible for Iraq INSTEAD of Obama.
You seem to believe that including Bush in the blame game somehow lets Obama (the guy who has been in charge of this cluster fornication for the past 5 1/2 years) of the hook. It doesn’t work that way. Bush is responsible for his part of the war and Obama is responsible for his.
As I tried to explain, becoming president means taking responsibility for what your administration does or doesn’t do. History judges presidents on how they respond to situations and how well those responses worked.
No one (except a few conspiracy nuts) blames WW2 on FDR. They do though judge how he reacted to the crisis (quite well) and how things turned out because of that. The guy in the big seat gets judged by actions and results, not intentions.
Why do you leave JFK off your list?
Or Truman and Eisenhower for that matter. Allowing the French to regain colonial control over Vietnam after WW2 set the stage for the conflict. In the end though, it became Nixon’s war after it was Johnson’s war. That’s how these things work.
So was Ford responsible for the Evacuation and collapse of Saigon?
Ford hadn’t even been in office for a year, you moron, let alone five and a half.
I fully agree that Obama owns this debacle, just as he does Libya and Egypt. We needed a defacto status of forces agreement (Which me and countless others pointed out loudly at the time). It would have been fine to use legalistic subterfuge to accomplish it (declare the stay-behind force to be an adjunct to the embassy and thus have defacto the protections of a status of forces agreement) but we never even explored that possibility. Also, as the conquering power in military control, the Iraqis could not refuse a status of forces demand unless we let them. We held all the high cards, but chose not to use them.
But instead, we sent the vacuous windbag Biden to “negotiate”, which is proof in and of itself that we were not serious.
We have also now blown the one chance we had to at a stroke turn this around; heavy air strikes with no warning in the ISIS forces when they were moving south by road. Instead, Obama dithers, except to rule out ground forces (thus vastly encouraging and simplifying strategy for ISIS, while doing us no good at all. I’m not saying he should send ground forces, I’m saying that ruling it out. even if he has no intention of doing it, only hurts us for no gain whatsoever. His statement was thus a profoundly stupid one – though hardly uncommon for him.
Secondly, how on earth could ISIS have caught us napping (PErhaps NSA et al are so busy spying on Americans that they don’t have the time to keep tabs on our enemies?) Many are acting surprised by this “unexpected” move by them. This, in light of ISIS’s name (It stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and is also referred to as Al Qaeda in Iraq) is preposterous. I can understand underestimating their strength, but their goals have always been quite clear.
Let’s also not forget that the leader of ISIS, who goes by “al Bahgdadi”, was released from US custody on Obama’s watch (Just like those 5 Taliban terrorist commanders were ). Yep, Obama owns this.
I’ll also take a shot at McCain here; he and a few other Republicans were all for helping the Syrian Rebels (and/or attacking Syria) so Assad wouldn’t exterminate them, ignoring the fact that then, as now, ISIS was the most powerful and influential of those groups – a fact we had no chance of changing.
as the conquering power in military control, the Iraqis could not refuse a status of forces demand unless we let them
So we would help Iraq build a legitimate, popularly-supported government by ordering it around at the point of a gun?
Maliki didn’t want us there under any conditions that we could accept. And who can blame him — our main purpose in being there would be to restrain Maliki’s pursuit of Shiite supremacy.
In fact Maliki did want us there but he wanted 20k troops and Obama said no…5k.
This is where negotiations start…but both sides have to negotiate.
Obama refused.
He was told by the US military we needed to be there. Obama ignored them. Had Obama read even a little bit of history he would have seen the parallels to Vietnam. Neither he nor you have.
This is squarely Obama’s fault.
In fact Maliki did want us there but he wanted 20k troops and Obama said no…5k.
And so Maliki said “no, it’s 20k or nothing”? That’s ridiculous. The sticking point was that Maliki refused to give US troops immunity from Iraqi courts, and that’s a deal-breaker anywhere.
Had Obama read even a little bit of history he would have seen the parallels to Vietnam
Are there actually people who think we didn’t stay in Vietnam long enough?
JIm, what part of “Obama refused” don’t you understand?
“If it wasn’t open-ended, when was the end?”
What Maliki said was 10k absolute minimum, 15k would be better, 20k is best.
Obama refused.
Another sticking point was the immunity clause but Obama chose to not negotiate that either.
This should not surprise you – Obama refuses to negotiate with his own Congress….he negotiates with no one. He simply presents conditions no one will accept and then does what he wants.
What Maliki said was 10k absolute minimum, 15k would be better, 20k is best.
But 5k would be worse than none? Again, that makes no sense. If Maliki had been desperate to have U.S. troops he would accepted what Obama offered, including immunity.
Another sticking point was the immunity clause but Obama chose to not negotiate that either. – We don’t negotiate that clause with ANYBODY.
Chris, you don’t know what the word negotiate means. If we want immunity for our troops, it means we make other concessions. That is a negotiation. Obama didn’t offer anything because he didn’t want a deal.
it means we make other concessions
Exactly what concessions would you suggest we make in order to be granted the privilege of having our soldiers fight and die to protect Maliki’s government?
Are there actually people who think we didn’t stay in Vietnam long enough?
Yes. It’s called keeping your promise, which the dems failed to do and led to the slaughter of millions, including Cambodia.
Jim, the question isn’t what concessions I would offer but what concessions Obama did offer, which were none. Maybe all it would have taken is a pony for Maliki’s child or a couple million dollars. We will never know because Obama didn’t make the diplomatic effort to reach a deal.
Obama fails at diplomacy just like everything else.
“But 5k would be worse than none? ”
You’re trying REALLY hard to make this all Maliki’s fault.
And you’re attempt is pathetic.
5k is useless. 5k with no negotiation on immunity makes it impossible.
Obama made it impossible no matter how hard you try to twist the facts.
You look stupid when you say that a non-agreement implies open ended commitment.
You look pathetic when you try to defend Obama as it was Obama who refused to negotiate (Maliki saying 10 is minimum, 15k better 20k best..THAT is negotiating).
And it was Obama’s man who sabotaged the SOFA, which is a done deal throughout the region’s other countries, even Saudi Arabia, because their leaders don’t rile up their publics against it. Obama did just that, putting Iraq’s leadership in an untenable position where they couldn’t rubber-stamp the standard agreement. It was sabotaged by the Administration to give Obama an excuse for a total withdrawal, knowing Iraq would descend into chaos which Obama could blame on Bush.
Way to throw Iraq under the bus. Obama didn’t even try to negotiate, just like he took the Taliban’s opening offer in the prisoner exchange.
Obama failed when we needed a diplomatic and not a military solution. And efforts to help shape the Iraqi government would have all been diplomatic.
What happened to the guy who said we need diplomatic solutions? When confronted with problems that need diplomatic solutions, he does nothing.
Anybody who still blames Bush for this debacle deserves a punch in the face.
Instead of faulting Obama or Bush II or Clinton or Bush I, we should place the blame where it belongs: on the people of Iraq and Syria. If the people of Iraq and Syria are incapable of self governance then we need to recognize that and allow despots like Saddam Hussein and Assad to rule. We should assist such despots and not destabilize their regimes.
Exactly like we were doing in Egypt. Wait a second.
Exactly like we were doing in Egypt. Wait a second.
Let’s give some credit where credit is due; Obama achieved something that most observers thought impossible in Egypt (and Libya as well); currently, every major faction there now hates us, including those we used to get along with. (Achieving such unanimity in the Middle East is quite a feat!).
So, assuming Obama’s goal is to make everyone our enemy, he’s a smashing success!
At some point the record has to count. Obama’s record is he promotes America’s enemies and insult’s it’s friends. He is not alone. It’s not just incompetence.
. If the people of Iraq and Syria are incapable of self governance
“IF”. I’m sure in the right frame of reference, your country of citizenship is also incapable of self governance. It’s an awfully convenient designation.
During the Bush years we heard endless stories about the plight of the Iraqi people but now Obama is in charge, Democrats can’t spare a square for the Iraqi people showing that once again their rhetoric during the Bush years was based on partisan politics and not deeply held convictions.
It is too bad Bush wasn’t a Democrat. They would have actually helped the effort succeed rather than fight against their own country for petty partisan political power plays.
I would bet that the same people that tried to diligently tally the number of deaths in Iraq have stopped counting, now that Obama might get blamed.
They certainly are quiet about Afghanistan.
The expiration date on Dear Leader’s is getting shorter…it was only a few days ago when he emphatically dictated there will be no boots on the ground in Iraq.
Now we have more boots on the ground.
We have the IRS saying it can’t produce e-mails from six more employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups, according to two Republicans investigating the scandal.
We have the price of a barrel of oil skyrocketing
We have 11% REAL unemployment.
We have the price of meat (fish chicken beef etc.) soaring to all time highs
We have tanks rolling into Ukraine…..
Obama is worse than an abject failure.
Ignoring the blather from people too stupid, on this issue, to waste time with (jim,gerrib, dn), the fact is that we are witnessing a Fundamental Transformation in the Middle East.
If PUTZ-POTUS won’t lift a single finger to help a poor christian woman who is in jail, in the Sudan, just for being christian and refusing to convert to Islam, well then it’s hard to see how Putz-POTUS could bestir himself to do anything about the thousands of men, women and children who are being raped tortured and slaughtered by the ISIS blitz. People who took the risk to side with us when we were there.
Never mind that the 27 year old woman is in a filthy jail and is scheduled to be lashed 100 times just before she is hung, as soon as she weans her child……there’s GOLF to be played!
Never mind that Putz-Potus once justified the actions in Libya by saying that we cannot stand by and watch people being tortured and slaughtered – we HAVE to act!
That expiration date was passed loooooong ago.
So POTUS-Putz is teaching the citizenry of the ME a good hard lesson – we won’t stand by you.
Not only won’t we stand by you….we’ll release murderous jihadists who will race back to their theater of operations and conjure up a myriad of ways to increase the torture, slaughter, rape and murder.
Unless ISIS is stopped by the Iranian/Russian axis, it seems that Iraq will be splintered. The Iranians cannot have rabid ISIS on their border. The Kurds will – for a time – have a place of their own under the reign of no one….but only for a Time. The Turks, watching carefully, cannot allow a Kurd homeland so they will take steps to try to eradicate that.
ISIS are the sorts of people who don’t mind blocking the straits of Hormuz on a whim, if they can. Nor do they mind sacrificing other men women if/when consequences are faced.
Iraq was centrally located and therefore a keystone in ME politics. The territory still is. Only now, it might be under the control of people who love to create terrorist training camps……
…train terrorists….
and send them towards jim, gerrib and dn.
“People who took the risk to side with us when we were there.”
But they were allies Bush made so we cant be friends with them anymore. Republicans hate brown people, you know.
“but only for a Time. The Turks, watching carefully, cannot allow a Kurd homeland so they will take steps to try to eradicate that.”
Except that a diplomatic effort could be taken to ensure that the establishment of a Kurdish state does not have to mean Turkey will lose any territory. Immigration of Kurds to the new country could be encouraged so that separatists tendencies in Turkey are minimized. Oh if only we had a President who wanted to use diplomacy to solve problems…
“So POTUS-Putz is teaching the citizenry of the ME a good hard lesson – we won’t stand by you.”
Actually, he is sending that message to Eastern Europeans and Asians. Obama is saying that they cant count on us to fight small enemies like ISIS nor big ones like China and Russia.
“Actually, he is sending that message to Eastern Europeans and Asians.”
Quite true.
Yes we are surely seeing the result when liberal-socialist-marxist policy chickens come home to roost:
“Professor Donald Kagan is our foremost living student of the Peloponnesian War. As such, he has thought deeply about issues of peace and war, as in On the Origins of War: And the Preservation of Peace.
…………….
Of Obama himself, Professor Kagan observed: “We should not underestimate the possibility of extraordinary ignorance.”
You watch Obama long enough and patterns emerge. One emergent pattern is:
Get someone else to do the hard work. Or allow no work to be done.
You saw this in Libya – where Obama “led from behind”. Never mind the obvious contradiction of the phrase, the important thing is that he got other European powers to do a lot of the dirty work. Yes we flew some sorties. But even Obama admitted this was a mainly Yerpean show.
Next: Benghazi
We sold the security responsibilities to the highest bidder over there. With the predictable result (4 good men dead).
Next: Syria.
Obama fluffed that one and was happy to let Russia take over and arrange a “treaty”. Of course no one is following the treaty but the point stands: Obama didn’t do the hard work. He let someone else do it.
Next: Crimea
Once again, some gaseous pronounciations, then nothing.
Iraq?
GOLF!
Looks like I’m wrong about Turkey being unhappy with a Kurdistan on it’s border…..it seems to be supporting the idea
This is a case where ideology matters and George Bush got it right… it’s not about terrorists, it’s about nations. This is why armies wear uniforms and those that don’t are executed. Nations deal with nations. Anything internal to a nation is the nations problem. That includes attacks on others which are dealt with just a bit different from an attack by the nation itself. They get the chance to bring them to justice for us before we deal with it.
Let’s start with this… anyone attacking us not in uniform gets executed (after we ring them dry.) We never release them to battle with us again.
Obama is proven insane (or evil, your choice.) We had sanity in the past. Everybody responsible knew the rules. You don’t need trials to execute combatants out of uniform. You just need a quick military tribunal.
I’m still waiting for the talking heads to discover mercenaries which is the historic way for a country without an army to deal with internal military action (with precautions taken not to turn your country over to the mercs.)
Colin Powell would argue Pottery Barn Rules apply.
Exactly. It was all right when he came into office. He broke it when he withdrew all troops without even an attempt at negotiating a Status of Forces agreement.
If Iraq was so safe, would you have been willing to spend a month living in Baghdad outside the Green Zone?
I know I shouldn’t ask, because it’s obvious, but why do you ask such moronic questions?
If the prerequisite for having an opinion is your willingness to go fight in Iraq, then you should keep your mouth shut. Also, we all know you wouldn’t listen to anything the people who will do the fighting have to say on Iraq.
It is abundantly clear Obama doesn’t listen to our people who do the fighting either.
A country that needs an open-ended commitment of foreign troops to keep from falling into sectarian civil war is not “all right”.
Straw man…it wasn’t open ended.
If it wasn’t open-ended, when was the end? When exactly, could we have pulled out and left an Iraq that wasn’t going to slide right back into sectarian warfare? 2014? 2020? 2030?
Iraq has deep internal divisions. The idea that we could permanently solve that problem with 10k or 20k troops and a few more years, is nonsense. We were always going to have to leave eventually, and no matter how long we put it off the aftermath wasn’t going to be pretty. The only mistake Obama made in pulling out in 2011 is that he should have done it earlier.
“If it wasn’t open-ended, when was the end?”
*IF* they signed an agreement, there would have been an end date. They always do.
Don’t you know ANYTHING?
Or…can’t you apply some thought at ANY TIME?
*IF* they signed an agreement, there would have been an end date.
And when that date came there would have been calls to sign an extension, lest Iraq slip into chaos.
ISIS came out of Syria, another Obama blunder, and invaded Iraq. This isn’t a domestic sectarian uprising. 500k people fled Mosul, so it is hard to claim this is the Iraqi people rising up.
Had Obama left troops in Iraq, his red line rhetoric on Syria would have had some weight. It would have allowed him to influence the events and actors regardless of whether our troops were used or not. The military is a geopolitical tool and is essential for effective diplomacy. Smart power 101.
What we see here is how Obama’s shortsighted foreign policy, which views everything as a unique event rather than as a web of interconnected events, has once again blown back in Obama’s face.
Obama has been trying to put pressure on Iran and isolate them with in the region but now Iran will be sending troops into Iraq to fight the Islamic militants coming in from Syria. Iran is expanding their influence and it doesn’t look like current events will help us prevent them from getting nukes.
This isn’t a domestic sectarian uprising.
ISIS is a spin-off of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group born in the Iraq war, and predating the Syria conflict. It is fueled by the same Sunni resentments that fueled the insurgency.
“ISIS is a spin-off of al-Qaeda in Iraq”
So now you admit AQ was in Iraq.
“and predating the Syria conflict.”
Yes, they were based in Syria and fighting in Iraq. They were a proxy for Syria and Iran to meddle in Iraq. It is ironic that they turned on Syria and that Obama’s policies are helping them in Syria and have now pushed them into Iraq after Bush had defeated them so many years ago.
“t is fueled by the same Sunni resentments that fueled the insurgency.”
Not really. The domestic concerns about the future of Iraq as a country have little to do with ISIS desire for a global caliphate. This isn’t a domestic uprising but rather the invasion of an international Islamic militant group. While there may be some Iraqi members of ISIS, they rely heavily on foreign fighters recruited throughout the Muslim world, Europe, and the United States.
You are deluding yourself if you think this is about Iraqi politics and nationalism.
It was a hell of a lot more all right than it is now. What was wrong with Germany and Japan that we kept troops there for decades after the war?
How many American troops died during the Post-War occupation of West Germany?
Also the West German government asked for NATO troops to remain to keep the Soviets out.
The Iraqi Government asked our troops to leave.
Both of those countries faced an external threat. Neither of those countries needed (as per the Powerline article linked above) US troops saying “We will physically block you from moving if you try to do that.’”
If you can’t answer when the commitment ends, it is by definition “open-ended.”
Germany and Japan were on the front lines of the Cold War. They didn’t need our troops to keep them from collapsing into civil war.
ISIS invading Iraq from Syria isn’t a civil war.
ISIS invading Iraq from Syria isn’t a civil war.
ISIS was founded in Iraq in 2004. It’s an Iraqi organization, aided and abetted by Iraqi Sunnis.
Founded in Iraqi, armed and funded out of Syria during the war and where they have now morphed into an international Islamic militant group because of the Syrian civil war and they seek the establishment of a caliphate and not a country named Iraq. They are not nationalists.
Would they be invading Iraq right now if Obama hadn’t bungled Syria so badly?
The Sunni in Mosul were so supportive that over 500k people fled for safety. The Sunni in Iraq don’t want to live under ISIS rule any more than they wanted to live under Saddam. This is not a popular uprising.
Does it count when the EPA destroys our economy?
So, you agree Obama owns it?
Obama encourages civil war in Syria by arming and training Islamic militants. The war in Syria spills over into Iraq. Obama claims it isn’t his problem and had nothing to do with it.
I would argue that when you try and overthrow a government and the violence caused by your actions spills over into another country, that you do bear some responsibility for the outcome.
>Colin Powell would argue Pottery Barn Rules apply.<
yea we had a good health care system in 2008
Got a Citation for that?
Why bother? You never listen.
My old insurance policy was much better than the one I have now. But at least my artist friend can get knee surgery and a vasectomy at tax payer expense. I can’t even get prescription coverage as was promised by Jim and Obama but free surgeries for ceramics majors.
All ACA policies cover prescription drugs, subject to deductibles and co-pays.
If you have to hit your deductible, mine is 222% higher, then you can’t really say prescriptions are covered under your plan. You know how deductibles work right? All of your expenses are covered after you hit the deductible and that is how it was under the old system. Obamacare didn’t grant me prescription coverage, it actually made it harder for me to get to the point where they are covered.
In order to claim your insurance covers x item, it has to be before you hit your deductible to mean anything.
In order to claim your insurance covers x item, it has to be before you hit your deductible to mean anything
That’s ridiculous. As conservatives love to argue, insurance isn’t about paying routine expenses, it’s protection from large and/or unexpected expenses. By your standard it doesn’t “mean anything” that you have coverage for hospitalizations, surgery, biopsies, MRIs, radiation treatment, etc., because it only kicks in after a deductible.
Here’s the deal. In return for complete control over the military and diplomatic machinery of the US, the president becomes responsible for the success or failure of that machinery and the results of its actions. Living in the big white house and flying around in the big fancy jet comes with the price of being the one who has to take responsibility when the fecal matter hits the ventilator unit. Every president (except Washington) has had to work with what the last guy left him, and every president (except the current Won) has accepted the fact that whatever problems happen on his watch are his to deal with. Constantly pointing the finger at the last guy doesn’t absolve the new guy from taking control of the situation. It just makes him look like a whiny little bitch.
So who was responsible for Vietnam? Nixon? Ford?
Both of them, plus Johnson, you moron.
Why are you so stupid to think that something can only be the responsibility of a single person?
You don’t have to answer that. We know, you’re an idiot.
So by your logic, isnt’ Bush responsible for Iraq too?
Bush was responsible for the events that transpired when he was President and Obama is responsible for the effects of his own policies. You can’t criticize Bush and give Obama a free pass, especially considering the post surge most of the work that needed to be done was diplomatic. Isn’t Obama supposed to be some diplomacy savant?
When it came to helping Iraq set up effective government institutions, value the diversity of the population, and fight corruption Iraq needed community organizer with an affinity for centralized big government. Those challenges should have been right up Obama’s alley.
But looking how Obama runs things back home, is it any surprise that corruption, incompetence, and ethnic divisions flourished in Iraq under Obama’s stewardship?
There is a rather significant difference between “solely responsible for” and “also responsible for”.
The issue isn’t whether or not Bush, Clinton, and GHWBush are responsible for Iraq in ADDITION to Obama, it’s that people, including Obama, want to claim that Bush is SOLELY responsible for Iraq INSTEAD of Obama.
You seem to believe that including Bush in the blame game somehow lets Obama (the guy who has been in charge of this cluster fornication for the past 5 1/2 years) of the hook. It doesn’t work that way. Bush is responsible for his part of the war and Obama is responsible for his.
As I tried to explain, becoming president means taking responsibility for what your administration does or doesn’t do. History judges presidents on how they respond to situations and how well those responses worked.
No one (except a few conspiracy nuts) blames WW2 on FDR. They do though judge how he reacted to the crisis (quite well) and how things turned out because of that. The guy in the big seat gets judged by actions and results, not intentions.
Why do you leave JFK off your list?
Or Truman and Eisenhower for that matter. Allowing the French to regain colonial control over Vietnam after WW2 set the stage for the conflict. In the end though, it became Nixon’s war after it was Johnson’s war. That’s how these things work.
So was Ford responsible for the Evacuation and collapse of Saigon?
Ford hadn’t even been in office for a year, you moron, let alone five and a half.
I fully agree that Obama owns this debacle, just as he does Libya and Egypt. We needed a defacto status of forces agreement (Which me and countless others pointed out loudly at the time). It would have been fine to use legalistic subterfuge to accomplish it (declare the stay-behind force to be an adjunct to the embassy and thus have defacto the protections of a status of forces agreement) but we never even explored that possibility. Also, as the conquering power in military control, the Iraqis could not refuse a status of forces demand unless we let them. We held all the high cards, but chose not to use them.
But instead, we sent the vacuous windbag Biden to “negotiate”, which is proof in and of itself that we were not serious.
We have also now blown the one chance we had to at a stroke turn this around; heavy air strikes with no warning in the ISIS forces when they were moving south by road. Instead, Obama dithers, except to rule out ground forces (thus vastly encouraging and simplifying strategy for ISIS, while doing us no good at all. I’m not saying he should send ground forces, I’m saying that ruling it out. even if he has no intention of doing it, only hurts us for no gain whatsoever. His statement was thus a profoundly stupid one – though hardly uncommon for him.
Secondly, how on earth could ISIS have caught us napping (PErhaps NSA et al are so busy spying on Americans that they don’t have the time to keep tabs on our enemies?) Many are acting surprised by this “unexpected” move by them. This, in light of ISIS’s name (It stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and is also referred to as Al Qaeda in Iraq) is preposterous. I can understand underestimating their strength, but their goals have always been quite clear.
Let’s also not forget that the leader of ISIS, who goes by “al Bahgdadi”, was released from US custody on Obama’s watch (Just like those 5 Taliban terrorist commanders were ). Yep, Obama owns this.
I’ll also take a shot at McCain here; he and a few other Republicans were all for helping the Syrian Rebels (and/or attacking Syria) so Assad wouldn’t exterminate them, ignoring the fact that then, as now, ISIS was the most powerful and influential of those groups – a fact we had no chance of changing.
as the conquering power in military control, the Iraqis could not refuse a status of forces demand unless we let them
So we would help Iraq build a legitimate, popularly-supported government by ordering it around at the point of a gun?
Maliki didn’t want us there under any conditions that we could accept. And who can blame him — our main purpose in being there would be to restrain Maliki’s pursuit of Shiite supremacy.
In fact Maliki did want us there but he wanted 20k troops and Obama said no…5k.
This is where negotiations start…but both sides have to negotiate.
Obama refused.
He was told by the US military we needed to be there. Obama ignored them. Had Obama read even a little bit of history he would have seen the parallels to Vietnam. Neither he nor you have.
This is squarely Obama’s fault.
In fact Maliki did want us there but he wanted 20k troops and Obama said no…5k.
And so Maliki said “no, it’s 20k or nothing”? That’s ridiculous. The sticking point was that Maliki refused to give US troops immunity from Iraqi courts, and that’s a deal-breaker anywhere.
Had Obama read even a little bit of history he would have seen the parallels to Vietnam
Are there actually people who think we didn’t stay in Vietnam long enough?
JIm, what part of “Obama refused” don’t you understand?
“If it wasn’t open-ended, when was the end?”
What Maliki said was 10k absolute minimum, 15k would be better, 20k is best.
Obama refused.
Another sticking point was the immunity clause but Obama chose to not negotiate that either.
This should not surprise you – Obama refuses to negotiate with his own Congress….he negotiates with no one. He simply presents conditions no one will accept and then does what he wants.
What Maliki said was 10k absolute minimum, 15k would be better, 20k is best.
But 5k would be worse than none? Again, that makes no sense. If Maliki had been desperate to have U.S. troops he would accepted what Obama offered, including immunity.
Another sticking point was the immunity clause but Obama chose to not negotiate that either. – We don’t negotiate that clause with ANYBODY.
As a minimum, these agreements uniformly provide that the United States-and not the foreign government-has the primary right to exercise criminal jurisdiction over U.S. personnel for offenses arising out of the performance of official duty. From the same link, SOFAs also must include 14 fair trial safeguards for events not arising from official duties.
Chris, you don’t know what the word negotiate means. If we want immunity for our troops, it means we make other concessions. That is a negotiation. Obama didn’t offer anything because he didn’t want a deal.
it means we make other concessions
Exactly what concessions would you suggest we make in order to be granted the privilege of having our soldiers fight and die to protect Maliki’s government?
Are there actually people who think we didn’t stay in Vietnam long enough?
Yes. It’s called keeping your promise, which the dems failed to do and led to the slaughter of millions, including Cambodia.
Jim, the question isn’t what concessions I would offer but what concessions Obama did offer, which were none. Maybe all it would have taken is a pony for Maliki’s child or a couple million dollars. We will never know because Obama didn’t make the diplomatic effort to reach a deal.
Obama fails at diplomacy just like everything else.
“But 5k would be worse than none? ”
You’re trying REALLY hard to make this all Maliki’s fault.
And you’re attempt is pathetic.
5k is useless. 5k with no negotiation on immunity makes it impossible.
Obama made it impossible no matter how hard you try to twist the facts.
You look stupid when you say that a non-agreement implies open ended commitment.
You look pathetic when you try to defend Obama as it was Obama who refused to negotiate (Maliki saying 10 is minimum, 15k better 20k best..THAT is negotiating).
And it was Obama’s man who sabotaged the SOFA, which is a done deal throughout the region’s other countries, even Saudi Arabia, because their leaders don’t rile up their publics against it. Obama did just that, putting Iraq’s leadership in an untenable position where they couldn’t rubber-stamp the standard agreement. It was sabotaged by the Administration to give Obama an excuse for a total withdrawal, knowing Iraq would descend into chaos which Obama could blame on Bush.
Way to throw Iraq under the bus. Obama didn’t even try to negotiate, just like he took the Taliban’s opening offer in the prisoner exchange.
Obama failed when we needed a diplomatic and not a military solution. And efforts to help shape the Iraqi government would have all been diplomatic.
What happened to the guy who said we need diplomatic solutions? When confronted with problems that need diplomatic solutions, he does nothing.
Anybody who still blames Bush for this debacle deserves a punch in the face.
Instead of faulting Obama or Bush II or Clinton or Bush I, we should place the blame where it belongs: on the people of Iraq and Syria. If the people of Iraq and Syria are incapable of self governance then we need to recognize that and allow despots like Saddam Hussein and Assad to rule. We should assist such despots and not destabilize their regimes.
Exactly like we were doing in Egypt. Wait a second.
Exactly like we were doing in Egypt. Wait a second.
Let’s give some credit where credit is due; Obama achieved something that most observers thought impossible in Egypt (and Libya as well); currently, every major faction there now hates us, including those we used to get along with. (Achieving such unanimity in the Middle East is quite a feat!).
So, assuming Obama’s goal is to make everyone our enemy, he’s a smashing success!
At some point the record has to count. Obama’s record is he promotes America’s enemies and insult’s it’s friends. He is not alone. It’s not just incompetence.
. If the people of Iraq and Syria are incapable of self governance
“IF”. I’m sure in the right frame of reference, your country of citizenship is also incapable of self governance. It’s an awfully convenient designation.
During the Bush years we heard endless stories about the plight of the Iraqi people but now Obama is in charge, Democrats can’t spare a square for the Iraqi people showing that once again their rhetoric during the Bush years was based on partisan politics and not deeply held convictions.
It is too bad Bush wasn’t a Democrat. They would have actually helped the effort succeed rather than fight against their own country for petty partisan political power plays.
I would bet that the same people that tried to diligently tally the number of deaths in Iraq have stopped counting, now that Obama might get blamed.
They certainly are quiet about Afghanistan.
The expiration date on Dear Leader’s is getting shorter…it was only a few days ago when he emphatically dictated there will be no boots on the ground in Iraq.
Now we have more boots on the ground.
We have the IRS saying it can’t produce e-mails from six more employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups, according to two Republicans investigating the scandal.
We have the price of a barrel of oil skyrocketing
We have 11% REAL unemployment.
We have the price of meat (fish chicken beef etc.) soaring to all time highs
We have tanks rolling into Ukraine…..
Obama is worse than an abject failure.
Ignoring the blather from people too stupid, on this issue, to waste time with (jim,gerrib, dn), the fact is that we are witnessing a Fundamental Transformation in the Middle East.
If PUTZ-POTUS won’t lift a single finger to help a poor christian woman who is in jail, in the Sudan, just for being christian and refusing to convert to Islam, well then it’s hard to see how Putz-POTUS could bestir himself to do anything about the thousands of men, women and children who are being raped tortured and slaughtered by the ISIS blitz. People who took the risk to side with us when we were there.
Never mind that the 27 year old woman is in a filthy jail and is scheduled to be lashed 100 times just before she is hung, as soon as she weans her child……there’s GOLF to be played!
Never mind that Putz-Potus once justified the actions in Libya by saying that we cannot stand by and watch people being tortured and slaughtered – we HAVE to act!
That expiration date was passed loooooong ago.
So POTUS-Putz is teaching the citizenry of the ME a good hard lesson – we won’t stand by you.
Not only won’t we stand by you….we’ll release murderous jihadists who will race back to their theater of operations and conjure up a myriad of ways to increase the torture, slaughter, rape and murder.
Unless ISIS is stopped by the Iranian/Russian axis, it seems that Iraq will be splintered. The Iranians cannot have rabid ISIS on their border. The Kurds will – for a time – have a place of their own under the reign of no one….but only for a Time. The Turks, watching carefully, cannot allow a Kurd homeland so they will take steps to try to eradicate that.
ISIS are the sorts of people who don’t mind blocking the straits of Hormuz on a whim, if they can. Nor do they mind sacrificing other men women if/when consequences are faced.
Iraq was centrally located and therefore a keystone in ME politics. The territory still is. Only now, it might be under the control of people who love to create terrorist training camps……
…train terrorists….
and send them towards jim, gerrib and dn.
“People who took the risk to side with us when we were there.”
But they were allies Bush made so we cant be friends with them anymore. Republicans hate brown people, you know.
“but only for a Time. The Turks, watching carefully, cannot allow a Kurd homeland so they will take steps to try to eradicate that.”
Except that a diplomatic effort could be taken to ensure that the establishment of a Kurdish state does not have to mean Turkey will lose any territory. Immigration of Kurds to the new country could be encouraged so that separatists tendencies in Turkey are minimized. Oh if only we had a President who wanted to use diplomacy to solve problems…
“So POTUS-Putz is teaching the citizenry of the ME a good hard lesson – we won’t stand by you.”
Actually, he is sending that message to Eastern Europeans and Asians. Obama is saying that they cant count on us to fight small enemies like ISIS nor big ones like China and Russia.
“Actually, he is sending that message to Eastern Europeans and Asians.”
Quite true.
Yes we are surely seeing the result when liberal-socialist-marxist policy chickens come home to roost:
“Professor Donald Kagan is our foremost living student of the Peloponnesian War. As such, he has thought deeply about issues of peace and war, as in On the Origins of War: And the Preservation of Peace.
…………….
Of Obama himself, Professor Kagan observed: “We should not underestimate the possibility of extraordinary ignorance.”
From:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/06/the-great-unraveling.php
*Extraordinary* Ignorance just about sums it up…for Obama and his followers.
Hey Jimm…Gerrib..dn.
Sit down and watch this video. In it’s ENTIRETY….start to finish. And pay close attention.
Look at what the president you worship has wrought:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaGPzinXvY8&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYaGPzinXvY8&has_verified=1
You watch Obama long enough and patterns emerge. One emergent pattern is:
Get someone else to do the hard work. Or allow no work to be done.
You saw this in Libya – where Obama “led from behind”. Never mind the obvious contradiction of the phrase, the important thing is that he got other European powers to do a lot of the dirty work. Yes we flew some sorties. But even Obama admitted this was a mainly Yerpean show.
Next: Benghazi
We sold the security responsibilities to the highest bidder over there. With the predictable result (4 good men dead).
Next: Syria.
Obama fluffed that one and was happy to let Russia take over and arrange a “treaty”. Of course no one is following the treaty but the point stands: Obama didn’t do the hard work. He let someone else do it.
Next: Crimea
Once again, some gaseous pronounciations, then nothing.
Iraq?
GOLF!
Looks like I’m wrong about Turkey being unhappy with a Kurdistan on it’s border…..it seems to be supporting the idea
This is a case where ideology matters and George Bush got it right… it’s not about terrorists, it’s about nations. This is why armies wear uniforms and those that don’t are executed. Nations deal with nations. Anything internal to a nation is the nations problem. That includes attacks on others which are dealt with just a bit different from an attack by the nation itself. They get the chance to bring them to justice for us before we deal with it.
Let’s start with this… anyone attacking us not in uniform gets executed (after we ring them dry.) We never release them to battle with us again.
Obama is proven insane (or evil, your choice.) We had sanity in the past. Everybody responsible knew the rules. You don’t need trials to execute combatants out of uniform. You just need a quick military tribunal.
I’m still waiting for the talking heads to discover mercenaries which is the historic way for a country without an army to deal with internal military action (with precautions taken not to turn your country over to the mercs.)