And for those who think we should just shrug because after all it’s only Iraqis killing Iraqis…
…I offer this.
Do the Iraqi people deserve this, just because they failed to get along together and turn into a well-functioning democratic state in a decade (less than that, actually, before we pulled out)? Remember also that not all of these murderous marauders are homegrown Iraqis. Some came to Iraq attracted by their correct perception of that country’s weakness bereft of the last vestiges of American protection.
The world is full of barbarism, and we can’t even begin to stop it all. But there is no excuse for our complete pullout so relatively soon after helping to establish a new government in Iraq.
[NOTE: And since Iraq/Vietnam connections keep coming up, the barbarism of the forces taking over Iraq today makes me think of our current Secretary of State John Kerry’s long ago charges slandering American servicemen in Vietnam. This video can’t be embedded, but it’s well worth watching.]
Ask if they deserve it, and you will get one response.
Ask if they have earned this, and you will get another.
They asked for help, and tried to kill us for giving it to them. There is little good will left. Even now, Maliki asks for help resentfully, bitterly, cursing us for his situation.
Obama and the Left want this failure. No help will came from us. It’s only a political problem to be managed, for the White House.
Iran to the rescue and the disaster builds. At some point we may be able to offer real help, but not yet. I think it will have to burn itself through to its awful conclusion before we can make real progress in that region.
TFritz:
Who is this “they” of whom you speak?:
What percentage of the Iraqi people tried to kill us for helping them? What percentage were helpful and/or happy about it on the whole, or at least were mixed about it without trying to kill us? I think the latter group was by far the greater one.
You are right, of course, about Obama.
They asked for help, and tried to kill us for giving it to them. There is little good will left. Even now, Maliki asks for help resentfully, bitterly, cursing us for his situation.
You will get the same response in US Civil War II.
So don’t feel too safe, even in the 1st world.
The Christians, especially, are a target.
http://shoebat.com/2013/09/30/paul-bremer-learn-nothing-iraq/
“In doing so, these individuals ignore an unassailable fact; those who have been most impacted by the Bush doctrine have been Christians. The removal of Assad will guarantee more Christian persecution. We know a little bit about the increasingly gargantuan numbers of these Christians. It’d sure be nice to see the likes of Bremer focus on this problem instead of on helping the Muslim Brotherhood.”
“Do the Iraqi people deserve this”?
Individuals? No but the Iraqi people? Actually, yes. That is, in the societal aggregate. Tribal societies live in a dog eat dog world. “I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousins, then my cousins and I against strangers”… Bedouin proverb
A societal decision to ‘fail to get along together’ carries consequences.
The reality of Muslim M.E. societies is the choice between “the strong man” or a Jihadist State. Both are brutal in their oppression.
I would like to know how many minutes Obama spent actually talking with Maliki over the past 6 years. I suspect that most leaders of other countries don’t trust him because of his unwillingness to engage with them. If you know your country is dangerous why would you risk anything with someone who has proven himself great at throwing people under busses? Do you think the Poles and Czechs trust him after the shameful way they were treated on missile defense.
Well, I suppose that it is a good thing that volunteers are rushing forward to volunteer to fight against the ISIS … although considering the ISIS’ demonstrated brutality against those they have defeated so far is a darned good motivation. We can only do so much (although I do believe still that we should have left some kind of standing American force at an out-of-the-way base in-country, and supported the Iraqis when they asked for air support.) Their country, their lives – if they value anything at all about it, they should stand and fight for it and fight to win – “for the ashes of his fathers and the altars of his gods.” Rather like the Kurds seem to be doing. If there is any shred of comfort in this, it might very well be that the Kurds will get their own country at last, and good for them, too.
Despair is a sin. Maybe this summer is the time that the wheels come off the Obama administration for good and all, when everything comes crashing in on them all at once. G*d, I hope so. I’d like to see Vile Progs being hunted by dogs through the swamps. But that’s just me and my tender cherishing of my grudges.
“Deserves” got nothing to do with it.
vanderleun:
No, “deserves” has nothing to do with it.
But I was referring to the arguments of people who say the Iraqis deserve what’s happening now, because they didn’t accept what we offered, or still fight amongst themselves, or…whatever, fill in the blanks.
It’s Leftist programming. They used the same justification for their blood built in Vietnam. If the Vietnamese want democracy, they should fight for it!
The Vietnamese lost because they were weak and puppets of America!
When the Vietnamese were being helped by America, they were puppets and sad sacks. When the Vietnamese were left without support, they were considered weaklings and people who did not DESERVE a country.
These are propaganda justifications. But if people think it works on those like me… they need to upgrade their OS system. It’s not nearly enough, that crappy old propaganda version.
These are seriously bad guy. Killing Iraqis is just the warm-up. ISIS has announced their intention to attack Jerusalem, Rome, and Spain, slaughtering those who do not worship Allah.
I can’t stomach the video, but like Boko Haram, they willingly tell one and all exactly what they want and what they will do to get it.
http://weaselzippers.us/189767-isis-video-we-will-conquer-jerusalem-we-will-conquer-rome-hostility-and-hatred-until-you-believe-in-allah-alone/
There is, unfortunately, only one way to deal with Islam, and the majority of the denizens of the West have not the guts to act accordingly. Thus, we are locked into another 1,000 year drawn out war with the outcome uncertain because we fail to acknowledge we need to turn Mecca, Medina, and Qom into glass parking lots.
I don’t know about all the people, but I have hired a few Iraqi engineers who helped us during the Bush administration. They’re good guys and their families paid the price for helping us. Some of them are dead.
They fled here hoping we meant to help them. Leaving like we have has probably made matters worse. What Obama doesn’t understand is responsibility- his presidency is about doing the right thing. I don’t know what it is, but I do know he never does it. It’s always about him.
We should not have hung them all out to dry- there are many who embrace secular democracy and are worth saving, or at the least, rescuing and offering a home here. Just my 2 cents worth.
” But there is no excuse for our complete pullout so relatively soon after helping to establish a new government in Iraq.”
A double amen to that! There is no excuse, none at all.
And quite frankly, if I were someone living in another part of the world I wouldn’t bother thinking that Americans care about anyone or anything any more.
How’s that for Barry’s “reset” button!?
Spain used to be the source of the harem slaves of the sultans. North Africa used to be green and had olive trees, which the Islamic hordes destroyed. Alexandria had a library, which Islam destroyed because that information was not found in the Quran.
Several Crusades were fought to secure access to Christian Holy sites from Islamic raiders and warlords.
And on and on the list goes. People have forgotten their Western heritage. They threw it away in WWI, when the Enlightenment died in Europe.
Yeah, Y, that is why some say WWI was the greater tragedy. Or that WWII was WWI continued.
But the Enlightenment? Does that include Rousseau? Can we say the Enlightenment was the replacement of the Catholic and Protestant clergy by “science.” Even when, and especially because, the clergy renounced Scripture and announced science.
What is clear is that after WWI, God and Scripture was relegated to inferior status, at least with the educated classes. They did come back, no doubt about it, not quite as strong, but with more foundation and intellect. That is the really the story of the 20th century: that God and religion did not disappear.
Now we are beset not by the intellectual Christians who maintain a very reasonable view of science and history, but by Islam, which love tryanny and all sorts of violence especially against women but for reasons unexpressed is loved by feminism. Go figure that one out how those who claim men enslave women have no problem against men who enslave women. Whew.
So, WWI killed off the generation of young men who would repopulate Europe. And except for the United States, Europe would be fascist, and not just any fascist, but Nazi fascist. We don’t get any credit anymore for preventing that world wide suicide; instead, as Don Carlos noted, we had Yalta, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and well, Obama, the worst of the worst:
-Roosevelt and Yalta
-Truman v. MacArthur in Korea
-Ike and Nasser’s seizure of the Suez
-JFK and the Bay of Pigs and Ngo Din Diem
-LBJ, McNamara and his “best and brightest” in Vietnam
-The majority Dems in Congress withdrawing all support from the winning South Vietnamese.
-Carter and Iran
-Bush, Bremer and Iraq
-and the never-to-be-outdone wormiest of the worms, our own Hussein, may peace be upon him
After so much error, is it possible to find our way again?
Yes.
Someone once told me, on the occasion of his retirement from the Pentagon, that we were headed for one world government and one world religion (Islam). I thought that was nuts.
Oh and when did this occur? June 1975, just two months after the fall of Saigon.
I posted the Daily Mail link on Facebook, sans comment. I shy away from political comments or posts, but the time is coming when we will all need to take a stand, one way or the other.
Part of the article Neo linked said this, well down the page:
Marauding ISIS militia beheading their way to Baghdad: How jihadist group so extreme even al-Qaeda has distanced itself threatens to take Iraq three years after America left
The Islamist militia ISIS is so ruthless and extreme that even al-Qaeda has cut ties and distances itself from them.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Isis), used to be part of the international terror network, but was cast out in February this year in light of its violent behaviour towards rival jihadist groups.
It is famed – and feared – for spreading hardline Islamic law to the areas it subdues. Transgressors are sentenced to death and swiftly executed in public, their bodies left to decay in the streets.
This treatment has even been doled out against other jihadist leaders, who have been assassinated in a brutal struggle over strategy in the Middle East. Young jihadists are increasingly drawn to Isis over less extreme groups – particularly in the light of their rapid military progress through Iraq.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2655977/ISIS-militants-march-Baghdad-trademark-bullet-head-gets-way-control-north.html#ixzz34aKeXPlO
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BY the way: I know y’all noticed, but Hussein’s puerile insistence on, in Every Crisis, whining, “Don’t blame Me! no blame can attach to Me! I Inherited this crisis!” …
AND completely ignoring his responsibilities as Commander in Chief, President of the United States, and “Leader of the Free World”????
What is he, like 13 years old? THREE?
Yes, our moronic, profoundly ignorant fellow “citizens” voted for him because he was good-looking, on the young side, had a great voice and delivery, and was a black dude (so cool); just like an American Idol contestant. And he as just as much heft. Hell, less.
So if ISI is defeated by Iran, all the terrorists will band together to kill the US or Israel.
US occupation isn’t the elixir of liberty. Occupation of Europe since 1945 produced the EUSSR.
Europe will never be free because its people do not wish to be free. So much worse for the Iraqis.
I’m sure someone has already pointed this out, but the news media is showing its usual ignorance or mendacity by translating the last word in the name as “Syria”. It should be translated “Levant” which underscores the danger that is arising (yet again) for Israel. Its not a question of if but when Israel gets involved, and the repercussions for the US can’t be ignored.
The answer to your initial question is “Yes”.
What Americans will deserve will be far worse than what happens to the Iraqis.
That ocean won’t save you.
Neo: “And since Iraq/Vietnam connections keep coming up, the barbarism of the forces taking over Iraq today makes me think of our current Secretary of State John Kerry’s long ago charges slandering American servicemen in Vietnam.”
They’ve gone a step further by nakedly blaming terrorist-committed atrocities on the US, thus doubly incentivizing the terrorists with the ground effect of their terror plus the PR profit in the West of having their destruction blamed on the US.
ErisGuy: “US occupation isn’t the elixir of liberty. Occupation of Europe since 1945 produced the EUSSR.”
Having served in a US ‘occupation’ (Korea), I can say that it doesn’t work like that.
When I first arrived in Korea as a young trooper, I actually thought I was going to be an ogrish foreign occupier, per the leftist stereotype. I quickly learned that we have a strictly delineated defense role in Korea that steers clear of their civil society.
The then-35,000 US troops on the ground aren’t going to stop an nK blitz. We might have lasted a week, if that, in combat. But we were a real security guarantee. It’s one piece of the puzzle, but it’s a foundational, essential piece that allows for every other piece to click into place.
Early ROK was every bit as dysfunctional as early post-Saddam Iraq, or RVN for that matter. Without the security piece we’ve provided to the ROK for her whole life, there’s no modern ROK. When Obama withdrew our security guarantee piece from Iraq, he doomed their future.
We US soldiers are that important. I didn’t know that before I served in Korea.
As occupiers, we influence and advise, provide security and economic aid, but that’s not a euphemism for imposing an inflexible template. They’re not our puppets, contrary to leftist propaganda.
There’s a lot more self-determination. For better and worse, they’re our partners, self-interested. Our influence is strong at birth, of course, but we ease back as the occupied nation grows stronger, and if they reconfigure our initial work, that’s their call.
Europeans chose the EU route because of the death blows of WW1, WW2, and then the Cold War, not because the US guaranteed European security.
The US military is made out of predominantly patriots, not Clintons, Husseins, Hasans, or Caseys.
Thus when foreigners see the Real Deal, American patriots in action, they are changed for the better.
This is independent of foreign policy or politics, because it is people communicating with actual American people.
While it’s easy for people stuck in their peace malls in the US to talk about Iraqis they’ve never seen or met, it won’t be so easy when US Civil War II comes to their doorstep. Then you’ll be “seeing” things.