The Iraqening, heh.

Search DU and you will find post after post stating that Obama ended the war in Iraq and, after 6 years in office will end the war in Afghanistan. (Meanwhile, I don't recommend attending a wedding or any big celebration in any of several Middle Eastern countries.)

And woe unto the DUer who tries to confuse DU with verifiable facts.

a weakened and unpopular state, he is unlikely to do anything rash, or be able to build support for any major new military conflict.

The bad thing is, many presidents have been tempted to boost their sagging popularity by going to war or using the military to draw out the gung ho patriotic "Go America, we must rally around the flag!" nonsense, and it has worked too often.

--hostilities. What stopped that was that the Shiites won the civil war that we initiated. The minority Sunnis (most of the resistance) stopped attacking US forces and instead started cooperating after the Shiites beat them. Why would anyone think that Iraqi minorities would tolerate Shia dominance forever?

Granted, Obama is clearly the best person to be in charge because he is a thinker instead of an obnoxious bully. The problem is ongoing US commitment to dominate the rest of the world by military force. It's going to take a lot more than changing presidents to change that.

Alas, it's a cycle that can't just be broken. If the U.S. tomorrow announced the country would shut down every military base and remove its soldiers from every square inch across the globe, we'd still be one of the most hated countries in the world. I don't think Obama is approaching this as 'dominate the rest of the world' and instead, is approaching this from the mindset that the region is quickly collapsing into something that won't benefit the United States in the long run.

One of the main components of the Surge was to give giant wads of Cash to the Sunni'. AQ was also killing a lot of Civilians and the tribal leaders did not like that. Finally AQ was the Devil they knew and did not like. Benjamin Franklin was and still is a Great Ambassador. Once the gravy train left and Maliki-prop excluded them from sharing the wealth they reverted back to post surge options.

WTF.

I quote, "Both solutions probably won't end well - but politically for Obama, the latter at least offers him cover"


And the BS that dropping bombs on people is not taking us back to war is absurd.

And finally, Iraq if far worse off since we attacked, by every metric.

WE are the problem in Iraq, at least, those of us who push for more killing. WE are destabilizing the region and the world just to profit off of war, death and other peoples oil.

He should personally drive a tank through a playground full of Iraqi children.

And your finally is irrelevant - I never said Iraq wasn't worse off than it was before the attack. It is not, however, better off because the U.S. removed forces from there in 2011.

WE were the problem in Iraq. If we remove ourselves entirely, the problem still exists and that problem is still a threat.

are making us less safe, not more.

At least, in my view!

I see your point, I find it disturbing and disproved by the events since the day we invaded.

I hope you will change your mind.

I think, in the long run, we are continuing the cycle. The problem is that today's terrorists aren't just going to stop hating America because we removed ourselves from conflict. It's a balancing act - protecting the country by stomping out these groups and not creating even more terrorists in the process.

I wish Obama would scale back the drone wars. In fact, I'd wager he has, specifically in places like Pakistan.

Drone attacks there has decreased every year since its peak of 122 in 2010. In 2013, there were 'only' 26 attacks and 4 causalities (8 uf you count the unknowns).

Never came to pass....

In my view a similar future awaits a Iraq.

At least.... Once we leave

But Pol Pot.
100,000 Hmong killed in Laos
200,000 to 500,000 killed in Re-education Camps and Fleeing Vietnam.


There were bad people at the door of Vietnam, we knew it, but why did we have to become one of them to help them.
I wish there was a way that we could have been a better help.

Iraq the bad person was already in the house( our "help" again) who kept the wolves at bay. Even the F-pubs used that line in support of him. So why would removing him not come to this?

that went in and dealt with them, AFTER we left.

"Through 1971, the Vietnamese (North Vietnamese and Viet Cong) did most of the fighting against the Cambodian government while Sar and the Khmer Rouge functioned almost as auxiliaries to their forces"

"In early 1972, Sar toured the insurgent/Vietnamese controlled areas in Cambodia. He saw a regular Khmer Rouge army of 35,000 men taking shape supported by around 100,000 irregulars. China was supplying five million dollars a year in weapons and Sar had organized an independent revenue source for the party in the form of rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia using forced labour"


The only reason the North took action was becasue Pol Pot was invading their country and raiding border towns. He was trying to intimidate the NV. Not a good life insurance policy.

The over 500,000+ civilain deaths were all after the War. All due to Re-education Camps, Mass Refuges, and Political Reprisals. All while the NV Communist were in control. Weather we fought the War or not, the NV Communist were going to take the whole country by any means. I just wished our Policy was not we have to kill them to save them. Trying to keep millions of people from abject oppression in Noble. But How?

I think some really old dude long ago warned us about that stuff.
What also stirred fears was this going to look like a USSR Communist, Moaist China Iron Fist type Government. To let that happen would have been a tragedy also. The NV did show their ruthlessness. What side to Err on?

given entrance in 1919 to the Treaty talks, Vietnam may have become a democracy, he only committed to communism after he was rejected.

At the orders of the new President, LBJ, U.S. ships were in the South China Sea in either December '63 or January '64 with an invasion force of Marines aboard.

There was a 14- or 15-point plan to implement the invasion order, with the last point being "Load ammunition."

My older brother was the Marine manning the radio on the lead ship, receiving each of these implementation orders as they were transmitted. He says they got to the next-to-last order before the operation was aborted. All he knew was that the headquarters group was to be choppered into Laos and the grunts were to be trucked in through some country he never heard of...called South Vietnam.

The Marines who were involved in that operation knew it as 'Laos Float'--and that's what they had inscribed on their "short-timer" sticks.

that score. Moreover, the administration is extremely secretive about this subject--as with other other subjects. And Obama (by which I mean him and his advisors) has a record of fudging language and then telling us we misunderstood him the first time. So, I question exactly how we really know how many drone deaths occurred since 2010

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.asp

If you are going to take the government's official word for everything as gospel whenever a Democrat is President, good luck with that.
But, even using official info, Obama has beaten Bush sevenfold when it comes to drone deaths.

It's from The New America Foundation. It's also pretty established drone attacks have decreased over the last few years, though, you're right - they are still more than what we saw under Bush. This is because of two reasons 1) Obama has focused more on drone attacks over sending established forces into battle and 2) Drone advancements have progressed at a rapid rate over the last few years.

In Bush's final year, the U.S. did 36 drone strikes in Pakistan. Last year, the U.S. did 26 - so, we're now even at lower levels there than when Bush left office.

comparing Obama's fifth year with Bush's last is not exactly comparing apples to apples.

Even if it were, when did the standard for Presidential behavior become marginally better than Dimson? (Also, again, Obama has not been better than Dimson on drone murder.)

Boehner and Pelosi, notwithstanding, going to war require Congressional approval under the Constitution.

What is the Constitutional authority for Obama's deciding on his own who gets drone murdered and who does not?

Read the Constitution. In terms of the Bill of Rights, it does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. And, even that is not the full answer because Obama has authorized drone kills of citizens, too.

Sorry, but things that I considered morally repugnant and in violation of the rule of law when Bush did them never became excusable for me simply because a Democrat did them.

If one or more amendments to the Constitution is required because of terra, fine. Let Congress pass them and put them to a vote of the people, as the Constitution requires; and let the politicians make their case for constitutional amendment to the people. Meanwhile, the Constitution is still law.

But I really don't anticipate Obama doing anything remotely extreme. It's just not in his character.

troops there. It will escalate and another full-blown war will occur. I'm so sick of our involvement there. This time it is NOT "Bush's fault."

and has even backed off from his own rhetoric like with Syria and the "red line". That's rare and it's refreshing. Fuck the right if they whine about it being "weak". No one wanted the war and in the end he realized that.

One thing many forget is that Carter was the one that initially backed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Obama showed the right judgment in not backing the rebels in Syria.

People don't give him enough credit for making the tough decisions. I've heard screaming about us going to war in Egypt, Syria, and even Ukraine. Yet we have no troops on the ground in those countries. I hate war and have never agreed with either of the ones Bush got us into.

First, there had been a lawsuit from several members of Congress, Democrat and Republican over his getting us involved in Libya without consulting Congress, as required (maybe) by the Constitution. That lawsuit had been dismissed because those members had not shown that they were speaking for Congress. However, as to Syria, there ha been a letter signed by over 100 members of Congress saying that the President should consult Congress over Syria, followed by a letter from Boehner raising 14 legal questions about how the President was proceeding as to Syria. It was after those things that Obama "backed off."

However, Pelosi and Boehner recently amended the Constitution (maybe) by telling Obama there was no reason for him to consult Congress about re-committing us to Iraq.

My "maybes" are not sarcasm. As is so often the case, the law is not clear. However, the point is, he didn't back down on Syria out of a clear blue sky. There was a context, also as is so often the case.

Our problems with Iran go back to the Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. era -- 1953.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt,_Jr.

...at the end of WW I.

Treaty of Sevres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres). In neither of those were we actually the worst offenders.

In the Treaty of Sevres, Britain & France carved up the ME to suit themselves and then included that ticking time bomb, the Balfour Declaration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration), which overshadows so many events in the contemporary ME.

conquer and rule other nations and exploit them set the stage for the Balfour Declaration.

Of course, by the time of the Balfour Declaration, we were on board with the very colonizing mentality that we supposedly fought a revolution to end for ourselves (though my growing suspicion is that that war, like most wars in history, was also stirred up by the wealthy and powerful for economic reasons).

simply European (and later North American) concepts.

I have been reading some excellent books that I encourage as many to read as I can. Not only are they fun to read, but they are extremely informative.

Both John Darwin's After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 (broad brushstrokes about the empires of Tamerlane (aka Timur), the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Manchus, the British, the Soviets, the Japanese and the Nazis) and Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (description of two centuries of British Empire, including its diversity and chaos) are excellent. Yes, there were many empires that preceded (as well as in addition to) those mentioned, but they are likely the most influential as regards the contemporary world and the so-called "principal players" and problems we see today.

For a wonderful understanding of the modern multinational corporation, perhaps more important than ever in today's world because of its reach and power, there is the absolutely wonderful book by Nick Robins: The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational.

If one only ever reads one book about the EIC, the book by Robins is the one that should be chosen, IMO, as it also discusses the effects the EIC's policies had on societies worldwide.

I never suggested that only Europe and North America (?) had that mentality.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.asp

I have little doubt that we could find evidence of it all the way back to the days when homo sapiens first roamed Africa.

I was replying to a post about the Balfour Declaration, though.

attacking your post. I really wasn't.

But the Balfour Declaration was very much a product of European colonialist mentality, associated with comparatively latter-day empires.

Interestingly, many conquerors intermingled with the conquered peoples to the extent that whole new cultures with significant aspects of both emerged and enriched each other. But many European-style empires (Spain & Portugal may be exceptions in many ways) kept an artificial distance from their subject peoples, who were always considered "lesser," whether because of skin color, ethnicity or religion.

of my initial post to you.

interesting. The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953 http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/

And this: http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/20/cia-admits-role-in-1953-iran-coup-as-files-reveal-u-k-lobbied-u-s-to-conceal-very-embarrassing-details/

The CIA only formally acknowledged its role in the coup only last year (as was also the case with Britain's MI6). It was one of the worst-kept secrets of the 20th century.

"Special relationship," indeed!

Thanks

foreign policy by threatening force constantly. Remember his threats to bomb Syria?

He copies his economic policies, his monetary policy and his trade policies.

If you can't see that difference, you're working very hard to be offended.

Btw, it's pretty obvious Obama was playing "bad cop" on Syria to Putin's "good cop".

He's sending troops which is just as stupid as Bush's Shock and Awe. I'm SO disappointed.

And on Iraq, he's between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about the U.S. having stayed "afloat" the last 6 years- whatever that means. It is an enormously wealthy nation with a stable history.

...and that was the Great Depression. Compared to a lot of the European nations, whose unemployment continues to soar above 10% and their economy is even more fragile than ours, I'd say we staved off even further collapse.

He is doing the bidding of the owners of this country, the 1%, the very people who put in (and all other Dems) in office.

It is not our fucking job to police the world. Not now, not ever.

What you're saying basically is that you would have had no problem with the U.S. sitting World War II out if it had never been attacked by Japan? I mean, it wasn't our war, right? Who cares if Hitler was gassing the Jews and marching through Europe - not our place to police him?

The world ain't as black and white as you make it out to be.

the county and its People.

all in America.