Postby jwocky » Mon Nov 16, 2015 12:23 am
Well, fact 1: Nobody called for anything "nuclear". The point I made is, either you get a job done or you don't. If you don't intend to do it, don't even start it.
Fact 2: The Bush administration led two wars. Afghanistan was no question. A hostile act had taken it's origin from there when all the 9/11 attackers were trained specifically for that kind of mission there under the auspices of the Taliban which was then the ruling power there. So actually, according to the definitions of the Convention of Geneva, Afghanistan attacked the US, the invasion was a valid counter measure.
The situation is different with Iraq. The Iraqui government had gased some ten thousand of their own people, had some 20000 more in political prisons and had still not paid for the invasion of Kuwait some years earlier. The UN had then prevented any invasion of Iraqi terrain after the liberation of Kuwait. Ssaddam Hussein's regime was actually trying to get WMDs already since the 70s. The ruins of the Tamuz reactors are still about five storeys high and about two city blocks wide. Inside, you can see the foundation for a French built breed reactor ... but the Israelis blew the thing up before it could go hot. More than 10,000 bodies in mass graves near the Kurdish area proved by being killed with C-weapons, that those weapons in Iraq were not "just a CIA lie". But of course, after Chemical Ali had killed those thousands by gas, he ran out of it. They never had an own production, it was still left-overs from what the Carter administration had given them once.
So, there was no clear reason on the legal side that would have forced the US to go to war there. They had a choice. Still, there were some long overdue ethical reasons. Unless you consider men, women, children in whole villages killed in concentric helicopter attacks with WMDs as "no reason to be upset". You know, peace groups are all nice and fine, but if the peace politics consists mere of look the other way when people die, there is a certain lack of ethical credibility to it.
Fact 3: After the administration change to the Obama administration, The US withdrew from Iraq without establishing a sufficient security system either in form of the Iraqi government or by international security troops. The Obama administration was warned, by NATO, by the own Chiefs of Staff, this is a dangerous game. Still, the cut and run took place. And actually, it worked for a while simply, because no group popped up that was strong and ruthless enough to overpower the other ones.
Fact 4: With the escalation of the Syria Civil war and the recognition, the Obama administration would never act the hard way, the most radical part of the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra brigade broke off and formed, what became the core of ISIS. Now there was a strong and very ruthless group in the area and the inevitable happened, they grabbed parts of Syria and Iraq.
Fact 5: The "air strike only" strategy failed as such strategies always failed since the invention of aircraft. Because you can't destroy dug in infantry from the air. Technically impossible unless you use nukes and nobody wants that. Thus ISIS could recruit with the additional treat of "we are the guys who withstand America since months, we are the guys who have a Caliphate". Which makes their recruitment very successful.
On a personal sidenote: I believe if any opinion feels the need to label any group of its own population "asshats" like for example Goebbels called Jews "rats", it outs itself as unworthy further discussion and shows, it is a reason- and civilization-free ranting only. So you may want to avoid this impression. You are free to speak up your mind and I will not ban you, but that doesn't mean, if you use a language like that, especially when you come up with "my" and "your" facts, which indicates, the facts you use are not fact but subjective claims ... a semantic thing of course, that people may perceive you as some kind of nutjob with thin foil hat and we don't want that.
Free speech can never be achieved by dictatorial measures!
