GW Bush, 2007, predicting with pinpoint accuracy, exactly what has happened to Iraq because of Barack Obama.
“To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready …
would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It
would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It
would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq
to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would
have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more
dangerous,”
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For those who have a brain and think a bit deeper. When invading Iraq, Bush didn't even know the difference between Sunnis and Shias, he said, "I thought they were all Muslim."
ReplyDeleteIt was the unnecessary Bush/Cheney Iraq War that created the conditions that led directly to the rise of the ISIS.
Former GHW Bush Secretary of State J. Baker said as much on "Meet the Press." He noted that after GHW Bush had ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 91, the U.S. had refrained from marching on Baghdad precisely to avoid the sectarian hornet's nest that was subsequently unleashed by the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in 03.
But it wasn't just the Iraq War itself that set the stage for the subsequent 12 years of renewed sectarian strife between Sunni's and Shiites in the Middle East. It was also what came after.
Bush's "de-Baathification program" eliminated all vestiges of Sunni power in Iraqi society and set the stage for the Sunni insurrection against American occupation and the new Shiite-led government. Bush disbanded the entire Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army and bureaucracy. He didn't change it. He didn't make it more inclusive of Shiites and Kurds. He just disbanded it. It is no accident that two of the top commanders of today's ISIS are former commanders in the Saddam-era Iraqi military.
Petraeus took steps to reverse these policies with his "Sunni Awakening" programs that engaged the Sunni tribes against what was then known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. But the progress he made ultimately collapsed because the Bush/Cheney regime helped install Nouri Al-Maliki as Prime Minister who systematically disenfranchised Sunnis.
And that's not all. The Iraq war -which had nothing whatsoever to do with "terrorism" when it was launched, created massive numbers of terrorists that otherwise would not have joined extremist organizations. It did so by killing massive numbers of Iraqis, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees, imprisoning thousands, and convincing many residents of the Middle East that the terrorist narrative was correct: that the U.S. and the West were really about taking Muslim lands.
Look at Dick Cheney's absurd assertion that U.S. forces would be greeted in Iraq as "liberators."
The War did more than any propagandist could possibly do to radicalize vulnerable young people. And by setting off wave after wave of sectarian slaughter it created blood feuds that will never be forgiven.
The Iraq War -- and the Sunni power vacuum caused first by U.S. policies and then Al Maliki -- created the perfect conditions that allowed a vicious band of extremists to take huge swaths of territory.
Many of the same people who caused this foreign policy disaster have the audacity to criticize President Obama's measured efforts to clean up the mess they created.
The idiots say: "If you had just left a residual force after the withdrawal of U.S. troops everything would be fine." How naiive. Do they really think that several thousand U.S. troops would have solved Iraq's problems when hundreds of thousands failed to do so? They conveniently forget to mention that neither the Iraqi's nor the U.S. voters wanted a "residual" force to remain in Iraq. And they forget that the Iraqi government would not agree to conditions that would allow a "residual" force to be stationed in Iraq!
The president's response to ISIS is supported by almost two-thirds of Americans because it seems to be the only reasonable response where the cure is not worse than the disease. The problem posed by ISIS must first and foremost be dealt with by other Sunni's in the region. Obama is aimed at building an international coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy the ability of this vicious organization to threaten people in the Middle East or elsewhere. And it relies on American airpower to bolster the abilities of other Sunni forces.
Biden pronounced Iraq a victory, in Feb of 2010, just 12 months after taking office . . . . . the victory being won by George Bush. Obama pronounced Iraq "strong, stable and sovereign" in December of 2011. Apparently what ever you fantasize to be true about Bush and the Iraqi war, the fact of the matter is this: Your party's top dogs do not agree. Get a clue . . . . I will not continue posting your rants, in view of your party's support of the Bush End Game in Iraq . . . . . . . . . . and more to the point, what Bush said in 2007, quoted above in my post, is precisely true. So why didn't Obama know in 2011 what Bush knew four years earlier?
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