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defrogLittle ducks, there is trouble in Iraq. Again. Or as usual.
And I’d have posted this earlier but I was under deep cover in Singapore all last week.
So. ISIS is moving towards Baghdad, and everyone’s arguing over two very important aspects of the situation: (1) “What should Obama do about it?” and (2) “Which POTUS can we blame this on?”
I have no idea what the answer to the first one is. The Economist has a pretty good write-up of how it’s likely to play out. The only thing I’m pretty sure about is that of all the options Obama has in front of him, none are going to fix the overall problem, not when at least part of the problem is the current Iraqi leadership.
One thing we do know is that if Obama is hedging on military responses, it’s because the American People™ generally don’t want to hop back in the quagmire, because we’ve been there, and most of us didn’t like it the first time.
The exceptions are the neocons that created and advocated the quagmire in the first place. They’re clearly convinced that (1) we should get back in there and kick some ISIS ass and (2) everything was going perfectly according to their plan until Barry Hussein Obama screwed it up for everyone by not leaving US troops in Iraq forever.
That ground has been well-covered by Jon Stewart and others, but I think it’s worth reiterating. Because whatever you think the US should be doing about Iraq, the last people we should be asking are the dingbats who decided to invade the damn country in the first place. They’ve been consistently and catastrophically wrong about almost every aspect of the war in terms of the rationales and the outcome. Better yet, they refuse to even admit they were wrong despite all evidence to the contrary. Who in their right mind would take these yahoos’ opinions seriously?
I will say I don't think it’s fair to blame the current situation fully on the Bush Admin. But I do think Obama’s performance should be evaluated in the context of a president inheriting an impossible situation his own predecessors couldn’t have fixed even if John McCain had won in 2008.
Of course, that’s not how this works. Republicans are mainly evaluating the situation in terms of how they can inflict maximum political damage on Obama, not how to actually solve the situation. Sure, they’re offering their opinions on solutions, but most of them seem focused on salvaging the situation they created in order to prove they were right to create it.
I don't know if Obama has any better ideas, or if he’ll make the right decisions, but honestly, at this stage I don’t see how he could do any worse. In fact, one good thing I can say about Obama’s approach is his unwillingness to make the kind of snap judgments that Republicans claim to want. Obama is smart enough (or politically savvy enough) to know that a good chunk of America is now hip to the idea that knee-jerk military responses for every little foreign policy crisis comes with consequences, and they do matter.
It’s not so much that America has no right to intervene in trouble spots around the world. It’s more about doing so responsibly. The GOP has trouble admitting this (American Exceptionalism™ and all), but one of the criteria of being the World’s Policeman – especially when it’s a self-appointed post that everyone else accepts by default – is convincing the rest of the world that you have the good judgment to know when to use excessive force and when not to. In that sense, the Bush Posse was less World Policeman and more Maniac Cop.
Result: geopolitically speaking, America isn’t really in a position to take instant, decisive action and bomb whomever it wants. And the GOP has no one but itself to blame for that.
The GOP response to this, of course, is that public opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to making those hard decisions in the name of national security. George W Bush famously said that he doesn’t do focus groups.
Fair point. On the other hand, it helps when yr decisions prove that you were right and the focus groups were wrong.
So no, the neocons and the GOP don’t have a lot of credibility with me when it comes to Iraq.
Wrong about everything,
This is dF
And I’d have posted this earlier but I was under deep cover in Singapore all last week.
So. ISIS is moving towards Baghdad, and everyone’s arguing over two very important aspects of the situation: (1) “What should Obama do about it?” and (2) “Which POTUS can we blame this on?”
I have no idea what the answer to the first one is. The Economist has a pretty good write-up of how it’s likely to play out. The only thing I’m pretty sure about is that of all the options Obama has in front of him, none are going to fix the overall problem, not when at least part of the problem is the current Iraqi leadership.
One thing we do know is that if Obama is hedging on military responses, it’s because the American People™ generally don’t want to hop back in the quagmire, because we’ve been there, and most of us didn’t like it the first time.
The exceptions are the neocons that created and advocated the quagmire in the first place. They’re clearly convinced that (1) we should get back in there and kick some ISIS ass and (2) everything was going perfectly according to their plan until Barry Hussein Obama screwed it up for everyone by not leaving US troops in Iraq forever.
That ground has been well-covered by Jon Stewart and others, but I think it’s worth reiterating. Because whatever you think the US should be doing about Iraq, the last people we should be asking are the dingbats who decided to invade the damn country in the first place. They’ve been consistently and catastrophically wrong about almost every aspect of the war in terms of the rationales and the outcome. Better yet, they refuse to even admit they were wrong despite all evidence to the contrary. Who in their right mind would take these yahoos’ opinions seriously?
I will say I don't think it’s fair to blame the current situation fully on the Bush Admin. But I do think Obama’s performance should be evaluated in the context of a president inheriting an impossible situation his own predecessors couldn’t have fixed even if John McCain had won in 2008.
Of course, that’s not how this works. Republicans are mainly evaluating the situation in terms of how they can inflict maximum political damage on Obama, not how to actually solve the situation. Sure, they’re offering their opinions on solutions, but most of them seem focused on salvaging the situation they created in order to prove they were right to create it.
I don't know if Obama has any better ideas, or if he’ll make the right decisions, but honestly, at this stage I don’t see how he could do any worse. In fact, one good thing I can say about Obama’s approach is his unwillingness to make the kind of snap judgments that Republicans claim to want. Obama is smart enough (or politically savvy enough) to know that a good chunk of America is now hip to the idea that knee-jerk military responses for every little foreign policy crisis comes with consequences, and they do matter.
It’s not so much that America has no right to intervene in trouble spots around the world. It’s more about doing so responsibly. The GOP has trouble admitting this (American Exceptionalism™ and all), but one of the criteria of being the World’s Policeman – especially when it’s a self-appointed post that everyone else accepts by default – is convincing the rest of the world that you have the good judgment to know when to use excessive force and when not to. In that sense, the Bush Posse was less World Policeman and more Maniac Cop.
Result: geopolitically speaking, America isn’t really in a position to take instant, decisive action and bomb whomever it wants. And the GOP has no one but itself to blame for that.
The GOP response to this, of course, is that public opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to making those hard decisions in the name of national security. George W Bush famously said that he doesn’t do focus groups.
Fair point. On the other hand, it helps when yr decisions prove that you were right and the focus groups were wrong.
So no, the neocons and the GOP don’t have a lot of credibility with me when it comes to Iraq.
Wrong about everything,
This is dF
