re: Thoughts on the Russian Mess from a non republican

Who was it that fomented civil war in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria. This isn't a partisan issue. The Bush family is just as guilty as the rest.

That is a lot of bullshite.

With Benghazi the democrats bald faced lied about it over and over and not a God damned thing happened to them.

If the motherfrickers were using this bullshite as a "payback" they are worse scum than I thought. They are vile. They are cancer.

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Who was it that fomented civil war in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria. This isn't a partisan issue. The Bush family is just as guilty as the rest.

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You tried to make it a partisan issue was the problem. And not even a well articulated one.

The Iraq war and its subsequent botching was the largest contributing factor to Al Qaeda in Iraq and later ISIS's growth. Without those gross missteps and the chaotic fracturing and vacuum that created, it would of been extremely difficult for ISIS to amass the sort of leadership and infrastructure it has accumulated.

Keep in mind that currently it is estimated that roughly half of senior ISIS leadership were Iraqi Army veterans and a good portion of the early insurgents and their networks were built from former Baathists and Iraqi Army veterans that only subsequently incorporated extremist fighters from other territories.

Just how many of those issues could of been fixed had Bremer and Bush administration leadership hatched a much more informed, pragmatic, empathetic, strategic, and careful post-war transition and occupation plan? I would argue had that been done, Iraq very well may have succeeded in becoming the Neoconservative success story they had wanted to have.

What a looser.

You sound like a lose cannon.

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Notice i didn't say liberal because i am not a liberal. I read a great article on the daily beast.

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by "not a liberal" you mean you are a liberal. i'm sorry that you're embarrassed by the moniker son but none the less you do own it friend.

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think he can win a second term.

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Such a bold statement since he just destroyed the strongest political machine ever, by a wide margin

You could just about be forgiven for your extreme ignorance if it wasn't for your shitty fricking attitude.

Again this isn't a partisan issue. Clinton, Obama, Bush's and certain members of the GOP leadership are on the same side. Continue being a dumbass though.

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No. No it wasn't. You simply don't know what you are talking about.

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Proven by all these compelling counterpoints you are offering up.

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LOL... and these are the guys that we should have trusted with a "much more informed, pragmatic, empathetic, strategic, and careful post-war transition and occupation plan"?

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You start off your response by arguing a straw man. Not a good opening look.

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That first part, the CPA from 2003-04, is everybody's favorite punching bag, and indeed, it did last too long and botched a lot of things. And, yes, there were political constraints about how many boots on the ground and years of occupation could be sold to the public, so Rumsfeld was forced to go with an overly optimistic "light footprint" scheme. But aside from the foot-dragging under Bremer, this was well done, and it should be obvious that an occupation is not some easy thing to plan. It's war. Nobody knew exactly what would happen.

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You don't have to sell the public on every contingency plan imaginable, but having at least a handful of realistic internal strategies for the post-war rebuild of a country of 35 million might be wise. By all accounts the Bush leadership that was in charge did little in this regard and ignored what was out there for them to reference in the military and State department.

Saying you think something was well done doesn't make it so. We can see the results of those actions and they were anything but successful.

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'm not saying there is nothing to criticize about the de-Baathification process that took place. A better plan could probably be devised if we had a do-over. But, jeez, man, based on the information you just gave, a totally new Army had to be raised. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too, thinking that these were all normal guys who only got turned into bad guys because they felt spurned by Paul Bremer. Give me a break.

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This stuff was basic knowledge that any first year middle eastern political history student could of explained to Rumsfeld and Bremer. It was not hard to recognize that a full de-Baathification would result in not just senior leadership losing their employment and becoming ostracized in the new government, but down to the teachers and low level technocrats that were basically required to register as Baathists to hold their jobs.

I knew this quickly because the day it happened I spoke with a former Middle Eastern foreign policy professor I had at university who very wisely wrote back what the likely consequences of this acton would be. Which he was right about and has been documented in countless literature on the subject now.

A totally new army did not need to be raised, just vetted, inspected, and culled. Then restructured at the senior leadership level and without the Republican Guard. In fact that was the original position of the Bush administration, people in the Defense department, the military, the CIA, and the State Department. However they(Bush and Rumsfeld and Co.) appointed, allowed, and deferred final judgement to Bremer.

If you remember correctly most of the Iraqi Army actually did what American's asked them to do, take off their uniforms, abandon Saddam, and seize fighting.

Most went home to their families and awaited instruction that we signaled would come. Instead we took a hatchet and in one fell swoop destroyed the security infrastructure of the country by disenfranchising, disempowering, and taking away the economic security of paychecks and pensions of over 300,000 people. When protests came we let them fall on deaf ears. When consensus outrage by the Iraqi citizenry came due to the callousness of our combined actions, we ignored those grievances. So we basically created a situation where we cratered public goodwill, destroyed the government infrastructure, further ravaged the economy(40% unemployment and no power for months), and turned the million or so people most knowledgeable about the governments functioning and those trained in the military and security against us. But sure, feel free to argue that was the only wise path forward.

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We know what happened. Syria & Iran encouraged and facilitated al Qaeda insurgents to pour through their borders into Iraq, and then Obama pushed Maliki into Iran's after the March 2010 elections, and then the Shiite goon squads precipitated another insurgency after Obama withdrew from the country in 2011. Meanwhile, Syria's Assad again unleashed al Qaeda insurgents into the Sunni population areas. So there's your proximate cause right there, and it's not some hack partisan narrative. It's reality.

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The only reason that opening existed for so long was due to the invasion and subsequent botching of the rebuild. Which created a helpful vacuum and resources, both physical(military weaponry soldiers took home, land vacuums to set up operations without much interference) and leadership(former Baathist and disenfranchised military veterans).

Saddam was not a good guy but he was not allowing the sort of chaos, division, and vacuums to emerge that would foster and support that level of expansion of ISIS on their soil.

There is no realistic scenario I have seen offered where ISIS forms or strengthens to the level it became without the botching of the Iraq rebuild and those key turning points talked about above. Subsequent actions have a place to be debated, but ignoring the original sin and trying to blame decisions made after it was committed is backwards.

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Plus, you seem to be making an implicit and unfounded assumption that the region would be more stable if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to stay in power in 2003, and that somehow the last 14 years would have then been more peaceful. That's a stretch, to put it mildly. Everything from 1991 to 2003 indicates a problem with radical Islamic terrorism that was spiraling out of control quickly, and there is no way in hell that Saddam would have played a stabilizing role in all that.

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I am under no illusions that Saddam wasn't a menacing tyrant. You once again assume too much to make an easier argument.

In fact I made it pretty clear in my post that had the Bush Administration done better post-invasion, they could of realistically succeeded with their garden democracy experiment in the Middle East. Or at least the first phase and their first serious strike at it.

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Everything from 1991 to 2003 indicates a problem with radical Islamic terrorism that was spiraling out of control quickly, and there is no way in hell that Saddam would have played a stabilizing role in all that. Had there been no Iraq War, there would be no hope at all for primary U.S. interest in the region, which is nuclear non-proliferation, which indeed, was the fundamental reason why the war had to be waged.

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I don't know where you are getting your information from, but Saddam was no friend of Islamic extremism. He saw it as the threat from his right that he had no tolerance for. One that was more volatile and dangerous then many of the other autocracies we helped prop up in the region.r

Saddam's nuclear capacity was far behind most of his peers in the region. And Hans Blix famously begged Bush to give him the week or so more he needed to conduct a full evaluation of Iraq's weapons facilities. Since after Saddam realized the pressure was real, he opened the floodgates to inspectors knowing that his signal of internal regime strength was less valuable then the potential for regime change and death.

We ignored Hans Blix's begging on the UN floor to give him one more week to finalize his weapons inspections. Which he was completing unabated and with total co-operation once Saddam knew the jig was up. If non-proliferation were the necessity for engagement, the Hans Blix factual undercuts that narrative. After all the post invasion assessment was in line with his findings.