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Do you still feel the same now about our middle east involvement...

Do you still feel the same now about our middle east involvement

  • Total voters
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I was more liberal back then than I am now. I supported invading Afganistan, but not Iraq. It seemed like an unnecessary war. After we invaded and found no WMD, it seemed even more unnecessary. The incompetence of the Maliki government and the Isis invasion of Iraq makes Bush's decision look even worse in retrospect. Hussein would have been a buffer against Isis in the west and Iran in the east. Now it looks like we spent blood and money just to make Iraq even worse then it already was.
 

Without continuing military assistance at least with airstrikes, we would just be turning Iraq over to ISIS The fix needs to be both from within and from the outside. Either one alone will not solve the conflict. Iraqi government will have to be inclusive to all religious sects.
 

Right. And what SHOULD have happened from the get go was, I believe they put it....Regime change, with the cost of one bullet being cheaper than an army, or some quote that went similarly.
 

The fix needs to be internal and regional.
 
Helix said:
The fix needs to be internal and regional.
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However the fix cannot happen while ISIS has it's hands on the throat of Iraq. Iraq will not survive without at least the air strikes.
 
Afghanistan was a "must do" and I think it's winnable over the long term but we have to commit for the long term. Iraq was a war of choice and open to question, but by 2008 it was a victory that BHO has thrown away. US hesitation in Syria and abdication in Iraq brought ISIS into being. Now we have another "must do."
 
ObamacareFail said:
Sorry...you will have to do better then that. Post an actual link from a historical site that mentions CIA involvement.
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Tell you what. Name the historical site, whatever the hell that means, and I'll look into it.


Since the NY Times isn't historical, now Wikipedia, nor UPI, lol.


Failed debate tactic is failing.
 
KevinKohler said:
Tell you what. Name the historical site, whatever the hell that means, and I'll look into it.


Since the NY Times isn't historical, now Wikipedia, nor UPI, lol.


Failed debate tactic is failing.
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An article that names David Wise as an authority is not to be taken seriously.
 
ObamacareFail said:
However the fix cannot happen while ISIS has it's hands on the throat of Iraq. Iraq will not survive without at least the air strikes.
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your opinion is that the current plan will result in a victory over IS and a stable Iraq? if not, what do you support doing, and where is the regional historical evidence that it will work? how much will it cost? are you willing to pay significantly higher taxes to fund it?
 
Jack Hays said:
An article that names David Wise as an authority is not to be taken seriously.
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Failed debate tactic is still failing.


That the CIA supported the Baath party rise to power in Iraq is almost common knowledge, especially among people older than, say, 20.
 
KevinKohler said:
Failed debate tactic is still failing.


That the CIA supported the Baath party rise to power in Iraq is almost common knowledge, especially among people older than, say, 20.
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I'm not debating and I wouldn't deny it. It was the smart play at the time. I was just pointing out that David Wise is merely a high volume speculator.
 
Jack Hays said:
I'm not debating and I wouldn't deny it. It was the smart play at the time. I was just pointing out that David Wise is merely a high volume speculator.
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So are many others. Who we choose to accept as valid or not tends to fall down party lines, which, in my opinion, is asinine.

At the end of the day, we know only what we are told, unless we WORKED for the CIA in the 60s. Me? I'll believe the photo of Saddam shaking hands with american leadership.

All of this, this entire mess in the middle east has been going on for centuries. It sounds cruel, and maybe it makes me an empathy lacking son of a bitch, but I wish we could just take all of their oil, and forget every last one of those **** suckers, including Israel. Forget them, let them continue murdering each other in God's name. I'm sick of it. To the point of wanting Mecca AND Jerusalem destroyed, cratered, turned into a giant parking lot.


When my children fight and bicker over a toy, even after I repeatedly tell them to stop, I take the toy away. Simple as that.
 

I have no problem at all with any USG involvement with Saddam or anyone else in the 1960's. That was before my time; I didn't begin my professional life until the 1970's. But the episodes I know about are very different in fact from David Wise's accounts.
 
I feel the same. We should't have gone to Iraq, and we shouldn't go back. We have spent trillions of dollars to nation build the middle east, and it's all been fruitless for us. What benefit does our nation ever get from these wars? I don't think the people there respect the US or thank us for anything. They are being recruited to ISIS, anti American terrorism is stronger and more extreme than the Taliban was, and our media is playing the same BS propaganda... getting citizens scared and fired up to go right back into the region and spend another 10 years at war and more trillions.



 
I supported Afghanistan. I felt that we had some great opportunities but dropped the ball. Now it is a mess.

I DID NOT support Iraq in any way, shape or form. Not once. Not from the beginning.

I support going in and ****ing up ISIS 100% as long as others provide at least an equal number of boots.
 

Spot on with that!
 
I like your post Fiddy and share much of your concerns and feelings.

I don't think many Americans, other than the warhawks and military industrialists, wanted to go right back to Iraq until the media started playing the videos of Americans being beheaded and the anti-American propaganda videos. That made it personal for many Americans. I was upset and wanted to see ISIS pay, but my emotional level has since gone down and my reasoning is now overtaking my thought process.

It is complicated.

We could have paid the ransom they wanted for those journalists lives, but our nation's policy is to not bargain with terrorist. Then when we see a US citizen brutally murdered, we want war. Our policies are now putting us in a very powerful position if the outcome drives the people to want war, because war is costly to us.

Those journalists choose to go there. The US didn't have a travel ban in place to keep them out of there.

I am asking myself if our policies leading up to the capture of journalists are flawed. Could we do more to prevent this? Or maybe, could we pay the ransoms and use it a means to track them down, capture them, and/or freeze their assets? The FBI, CIA, and other federal governmental departments employ forensic accountants for those purposes.

:shrug:


 
AlbqOwl said:
I imagine some prior to 9/11 said groups like al Qaida are not a threat to us here at home.
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Not according to the white house memos...
 
Well, sometimes don't you have to trust the government to investigate terror organizations and stop attacks, which they have had some recent success doing? After 9/11, a lot of people were eager to give up their privacy and rights in hopes it would prevent future attacks. I suppose, those pro Patriot Act people trusted the government in granting it more power, authority, and ability to intrude into the personal lives, or they distrusted the government but supported the Patriot Act because they were scared ****less... which seems kind of psychotic and ass backwards to me :lol:

But I didn't support the Patriot Act. I don't trust the government or it's workers in exercising the authority of the Patriot Act in a completely ethical manner, but I don't suggest getting paranoid about terrorist threats to the point it alters your life so that you live in fear, act irrationally, and want constant war even when it is has no actual measurable benefit to your nation. Wars should not be fought out of fear and paranoia. That's ridiculous.

The US is extremely safe compared to other nations.

 

I feel the same with one caveat. So long as we were willing to win in Afghanistan, I was for finishing the job. When the President went to West Point and announced that we were going to lose on purpose, that changed my calculus.
 
Obama was trying to impress the warhawks, and that's the only reason he supported a surge in Afghanistan. The GOP ran a campaign against him and constantly challenged him to say a surge in Iraq worked, which it didn't. Iraq is still ****ed up, obviously. Both surges were nothing more than BS American politics.

 

Surges worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2008 Iraq was a victory that BHO has since thrown away. That and his hesitation in Syria gave rise to ISIS.
 
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