Islamists taking over Iraq

Although I get your point in terms of unintended consequences--NOPE--can't rank them with the Iraq invasion in terms of sheer fuckedupedness. Iraq not only appears headed toward the same backfiring consequences, but ALSO included an immeasurably more costly, embarrassing, tragic and flat out stupid path getting there:

Backing the 53 coup in Iran didn't require an insanely costly decade long war that helped bankrupt our government, put us a mountain in debt to China, ruined our international standing, and cost thousands and thousands of innocent young lives. Nor did we have to deal with the "we were right, you were wrong" humiliation before the world community when our entire WMDs!!! basis for illegally invading turned out to be pure horseshit.

And there was a legitimate basis for supporting the mujahadeen in the 80s. The Soviet Union had, in fact, illegally invaded Afghanistan, the Afghan people actually did need our help, the support was quite defensible on the facts. Contrast that to Iraq where the entire WMDs!!! basis upon which we declared war turned to be pure horseshit.

And I don't think it was not nearly as foreseeable in 1953 that the coup would end up backfiring 26 years later with a Islamist revolution overthrowing the Shah, nor in the 80s that the folks we supported against the Russians would later give us Osama Bin Laden. But what happened in Iraq following Saddam's fall WAS very foreseeable--international scholars were screaming warnings from the rooftops that this would happen in the months leading up to the Iraq invasion, yet our govt chose to ignore them and instead convinced themselves that the Iraqi people would all be on their knees embracing us as liberators and eager do as we instruct. It was plain delusion.

Nope. Iraq remains the gold standard in terms of sheer all around brain dead foreign policy blunders.

 

You're trash.

 

Bush didn't even know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. That says it all right there.

 

Iraq Said to Seek U.S. Strikes on Militants

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq’s appeals for military assistance have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has also called attention to the limits the White House has imposed on the use of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s requests and the administration’s response, saying in a statement, “We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions, but the government of Iraq has made clear that they welcome our support” in combating the Islamic extremists.

http://nyti.ms/1koNroP

 

Well, this could be fun, the twin civil wars in Syria and Iraq merging together into one colossal mess. Anyone wanna jump in the middle of that?

 

He's not the one who started it.

 

Anyone who sees a story like this and immediately jumps into assigning political blame should really, really feel bad about themselves.

 

^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^

 

I think you're missing a larger point here. Our meddling in the Middle East, from the 1953 coup in Iran to the Iraq War, came about because we had something out there that leaders called a "threat" to the United States. In 1953, that was Communism. Today, it's terrorism.

You can argue that one had a higher cost than the other, but I can argue that, if we hadn't been meddling in Iran in 1953, we might not have had that chain of events that ultimately led to 9/11 and thus give leaders an excuse to use "terrorism" as the new boogeyman when Communism no longer held that distinction... and thus, they don't have the boogeyman to start a war in Iraq.

 

It'll be interesting (in one of those depressingly horrific sort of ways) to see how long before Iran sends in its proxies... if they aren't there now.

ISIS vs. Hezbollah and the Qds force. Hooray. I feel better about humanity already.

 

The right-wing spin on this is amazing.

1. Commander in chief Hillary Clinton took us to war in 2003. She was an equal political partner in the affair with the Bush administration.

2. Obama's failure to secure a status of forces agreement to replace the shitty best-we-can-do status of forces agreement secured by the Bush administration means that all these is Obama's fault.

"Obama didn't fix Bush's fuck up fast enough; therefore this is all his fault."