Discussion for article #223939
And just think, this most recent slaughter and the ones before all came about because Saddam tried to kill W’s daddy. May we never elect such an incompetent idiot again.
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It’s really sad that people worshiping in the same faith have not been willing to leave peacefully side by side. This tragedy has flared up time after time over the centuries and is now exacerbated by both sides having modern firepower.
IMHO there is not anything that America and our allies can do to bring a lasting peace to this region until the people themselves, not the leaders but the actual man on the street Sunni and Shia, show a willingness to put down their arms and embrace one another as equals.
Attacking ISIL with drones isn’t going to accomplish anything other than killing by remote control and further inflammation of tit for tat retribution that will follow.
buh buh buh Mittens is all suited up on the Sunday argle bargle shows telling us that Obammie and Hitlery screwed everything up with poor foreign policy decisions. If they had just off-shored all their income, hid their tax returns and gone on a bike ride around France none of this would be happening. Because to Mittens way of thinking it’s better to have no foreign policy than to actually have one.
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Morality aside, it isn’t at all good PR to publicize massacring soldiers you have captured. Best way to make sure the next batch chooses to die fighting to the last man.
All in all these people don’t seem very bright. They’re 20% of the population of Iraq, and in recent memory their leader Saddam and their faction lorded it over the Kurds and Shia. So they make a military play for the biggest remaining mixed part of the country, thereby creating a good bit of inherent ethnic cleansing when the Shia and Kurds retake the area, quite aside from whatever intentional ethnic cleansing will follow.
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As I understand it, prior to our invasion and the “de-Bathification” Iraq was a more integrated society. The rise in sectarianism is at least in large part a result our intervention and our favoring one group over another.
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These people don’t care. Their version of morality is twisted because of religion. Shia and Sunni see each other as apostates. The more outrageous way they can kill each other the better in their eyes. Much of the modern sectarian violence can be laid at the feet of those who drew the arbitrary boundaries of Iraq, Syria, and Jordan after the 1st world war. The rest is as old as Islam itself. Hatred that old and that deep will not go away any time soon. Having visited the middle east in the early 70’s I learned 1st hand the depth and breadth of their desire for revenge and how long their memory can be. The depth of the sectarian hatred and hatred of Jew and Muslim is well beyond any rational understanding[quote=“gtomkins, post:4, topic:5491”]
Morality aside,
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There is no morality, by our standards, in this
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It’s more complicated than that. Under Saddam, all the tension had less chance to come out because it would get you killed. He was constantly suppressing rebellions, with extreme brutality. Our mission was to bring Freedom And Democracy® to the country, along the lines of ours, with majority-rules but protections and representation for minorities. Trouble is, the majority wasn’t interested in hearing from the minority that had beat them up for so long, and preferred to exact their revenge. So when the Sunnis rose up, it was hard for the US not to take sides against them, since we were being attacked along with the Iraqi government (and they were being backed by al Qaeda as well).
It will be interesting to see how this all turns out. According to several articles I’ve seen, ISIS is not the only or even the biggest group on the Sunni side, even though they’re getting all the notice. According to one, the leader of a group of Baathists claims they are the largest group and won’t settle for the kind of Islamic state ISIS wants once the Maliki government is defeated. So perhaps we will end up with Saddam jr. in the middle of the country.
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All good except you got it backwards. The Bathists were Sunni and ruled with an iron fist over the majority Shia. it was the Shia who revolted after we destabilized Irag and then later Sunni funded Al Qaeda fighters entered into the fray against the Shia.
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Sen Graham says Obama is “delusional” about Iraq.
UUUmmmm…right Lindsey. Your side’s response is to send troops back to Iraq.
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This is proof that a well determined if loosely assembled group of people, obviously aided by the local population, can take the fight and win against a mostly well trained and better equipped Army. Somehow I have the feeling that this Iraq Army total debacle is due in large part to the Sunny side of it giving up without a fight and joining the ISIS, while the Shiite side getting slaughtered by their own comrades. I wouldn’t be surprised if those pulling the trigger were actually ex comrades of the Shiites proving their new allegiance to ISIS.
So you saw him this morning also. I was distracted by his obvious and unctuous avoidance of answering questions.
It could be said that his slip was showing.
Hardly
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Looks like Lindsey’s gone off the deep edge"
“Put American airpower into the game. These guys are not 10-feet tall.
Stop the advance on Baghdad. Get people on the ground that the Iraqis
trust. Maliki must go. Get a new government in place, right, and hit
Syria,” he said. “If you don’t deal with Syria in a coordinated fashion,
maybe with Turkey, regional Sunni Arab states, you will have this
happen all over again in Iraq.”"
Read that quote carefully. Give it a moments consideration… The man’s asking to start a world war.
Graham is in need of an intervention … at least to calm him down. It’s apparent to me from the quote the man needs therapy. It would be an act of kindness.
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Libs comment exhibits pretty much the simple and shallow meme totally devoid of any understanding of the region that got us into this debacle in the first place.
One of the myriad problems endemic to the right has is that they continually frame other peoples in foreign places and cultures as being much like white suburbs or rural America. As if the values had any similarity…
It’s kind of like you and me landing in Vietnam feeling certain that we could win that war by bonding with the VC and NVA over our mutual fondness for “Leave it to Beaver” or perhaps By bridging the Mary Ann vs. Ginger divide.
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He sounds exactly like a schoolboy trying to b.s. his way through a teacher’s question without having read the homework. He does seem to grasp that there are different groups, the Shiites and the “Sunny” side, so to speak, that don’t like each other. I suppose that’s a start.
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You tryin’ to make trouble, buddy? Better watch your back.
Well, I was referring to the later uprising in Anbar against the Shia-led government and the US (what is usually meant when people just say “the insurgency”, involving the Sunni and tribal groups and backed by al Qaeda), after the unrest from Sadr and the other Shia militias had calmed down after 2005 or so.
It makes sense now, thanks!
I’m not going to mince words or be a super-sensitive liberal. I’m a liberal but I’m not a pacifist nor do I think all people are equal just because they are homo sapiens.
These Islamic fundamentalists are animals. There is nothing even remotely human about their behavior. I wonder if a one of them even pauses to think about what they’re doing. Whether it’s in Iraq or Syria or Nigeria or wherever – these savage beasts need to be gotten rid of as surely as one gets rid of a rabid dog. There is no cure for them. No reasoning that they will accept. With every ounce of my being I hope the Iraqi government and the Iranians from the other side squeeze these vermin into oblivion.
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It’s clearly the result of George W. Bush’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The ongoing tragedy of Iraq is the permanent legacy of the Imperial Presidency of POTUS #43