A savvy move on Obama's part. I think Obama would be wise to use this as a tool to gain concessions from the Nouri al-Maliki government. Dropping more bombs won't cure what ails Iraq. Maliki has been very arrogant and very stupid. Maliki needs to fix his government and he needs to make some concessions to the Sunni population. It will certainly be interesting to see how Obama handles this crisis. I think we need to give Obama a big bonus, he has had more than his fair share of crisis to deal with while in office. And he still has 2 1/2 years left.
LOL!!! You've GOT to be kidding me??? Obama needs a bonus because he's had it tough?? LOL!!! It's still all Bush's fault, eh? How about Clinton being a pussy and not taking out Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance, ultimately leading to 9-11 just 9 months after Bush took office?? Maybe if Clinton was more concerned with national security than getting his knob slobbered there wouldn't have ever been a 9-11! But Obama's had it tough?? Please!! Obama has it tough because he's done stupid things and lied and tried to cover up those stupid things, which is worse than just being stupid, it's being stupid and corrupt!
Personally, I think if we take any action, it should be simple - JDAM the regions that have been taken over, and let the local military perform cleanup. Oh, we hit civvies? Well, then why weren't they fighting to keep their cities free? Sorry, just jaded by us trying to be "world cop"... we can't even fix our own issues at this point.
Reports are coming in the the US is evacuating (or has already completed evacuating) US personnel from Balad air base north of Baghdad. While there were only a dozen or so uniformed US military personnel there, there were several hundred American civilian contractors, busy training the Iraqi airforce in flying and maintaining everything from F-16's to helicopters. Given that the Iraqi military were seemingly deserting further north and refusing to fight, and given that ISIS militants weren't all the distant from the base, Washington decided to pull the Americans out by air (in a couple of airliners, apparently). The US says that it is speeding up supplying equipment to the Iraqi military, but if the training arrangements are falling apart, it's hard to imagine how that will work. And that leaves all the aircraft and equipment currently at Balad airbase. Will the Iraqis fight to defend that stuff, or will it fall into the hands of ISIS? The Americans don't seem to have blown up the planes and helicopters when they left. I don't expect that ISIS has the technological ability to use most of it at this point though. So far, ISIS has been winning its victories on the cheap. Reportedly the force that initially took over the city of Mosul was only 800 men. It's probably been heavily reinforced since they took over the city, something that probably surprised even ISIS. (The attack probably was just intended as a raid.) The Iraqi military forces in the vicinity of the city numbered 12,000 soldiers who simply turned, threw off their uniforms and ran away. So ISIS doubtless has its own vulnerabilities. It might not have sufficient manpower to heavily garrison all of the extensive area (tens of thousands of square miles) it's seized in the last few days. Much of that area is probably vulnerable to any sort of competent counter-attack.
You would almost start to think the Iraqi's don't want their US-imposed government. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Problem #1. If the nationals won't fight for their own country, well...What to do?? Problem #2. Afghanistan+problem #1.
I think that it is common knowledge that Osama Bin got his start with the CIA. Back when the Russians were invading Afghanistan, some CIA man, or perhaps Donald Rumsfeld, was visiting Saudi Arabia and told his friends there that they needed to create an Islamic insurgency to fight the Russians. The Saudis said, 'We got just the man you're looking for - young Osama Bin Laden! You already know his family, the construction kings.' So The U.S. created the monster that would one day come and bite it on the ass. This is exactly why the U.S. would do better to mind its own business.
LOL, yeah Obama does. He took the helm of state in the midst of a global economic melt down. The country had been at war for almost a decade. After spending billions of dollars and more than a decade, Bin Ladin remained free. And let's not mention the republican congress who have steadfastly opposed anything Obama has tried to do, even when it was what they wanted -opposition for the sake of opposition. Yeah, reality is tough if you are a republican. It's easier to live in the land of denial, and unfortunately, that is where most republicans live these days. I don't have to blame Georgie, the facts do. And what "stupid" things has Obama done exactly? The Obamacare rollout aside, virtually nothing. And what has he lied about?
True - but again, Obama had to do that. Uh - that happened under Bush. Review the dates. And he killed Bin Laden, and ended our part of the war in Iraq, and led the US out of one of the deepest recessions it's seen in a long time.
True, it happened under his watch. But the effort that went into that was extraordinary and not just under Obama's watch. Right, but events in the past change what happens in the future. You know, the ol' "if I wouldn't have done that then nobody would have died" mentality? Drop an egg and watch it splat! Imagine if you never would have dropped the egg! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Great! But it takes a whole bunch of attaboys to make up for 1 Oh Sh!t! He doesn't have that many attaboys accrued yet.
Reminds me of the Vietnam war where America spent close to 500 billion to win that one and we lost 55,000 of our service people and we gained nothing there and it went back to the way it was before the war started. As far as where do we go I'd say the quicker we get all personnel out of both countries the better. America can't keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars on countries who cannot take care of themselves. Iraq has oil that it can sell to keep it running because if the insurgents take over they won't pay anyone back that Iraq owes that's for certain.
It's a shitty situation. A. On one hand, nobody wants to sit back and watch al Quaida take over Iraq, or even set up a statelet in a large fraction of it. B. On the other hand, Americans don't want to send US troops back in. (And there's no way that Barack Obama, with his aversion to using US power abroad and his strong focus on US domestic affairs, would ever decide to do that.) So, the obvious problem is doing something about A., given B. It looks to me like this problem isn't going away soon. Iraq's majority Shi'ites will probably hold on to southern Iraq and the capital of Baghdad. But they might have to become more aligned with and beholden to soon-to-be-nuclear Shi'ite Iran in order to do it. (Which would suit the mullahs in Tehran just fine.) The Sunni but non-Arab Kurds up in the northeastern mountains will probably become effectively independent. (Which Turkey may or may not be willing to accept, given the fact that much of eastern Turkey is occupied by Kurds that the Turks are ruling against their will.) And there will likely be a de-facto al-Quaida state in the rest of Iraq for some time. All of this has interesting implications for America's and Europe's idealistic (but arguably naive) policies promoting rebellion in neighboring Syria. Hopefully Washington and the European capitals are starting to realize that doing that might not be the smartest idea. (Just as overthrowing Saddam didn't turn out as hoped.) Sometimes the dictators are keeping a lid on things that are even worse. (I think we are starting to realize that in Egypt.) So much for the over-hyped "Arab spring".
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Interesting from an Aussie point of view. Australia also was a party to the Vietnam war, and our conservative government at that time, used the "domino theory" principal that if Vietnam were to fall to those terrible commos, they would keep the flame burning so to speak, and take over the other nations in SE Asia, down to New Guinea and finally they would be threatening Australia itself, with its rather small population. Needless to say all that instilled fear by our conservative government at that time, was shown to be a great big brain washing ploy.
I suspect that no matter which way he'd gone you'd have called it 'savvy'. So Obama is savvy by not getting the US involved in Iraq?
Lol, how do you figure? The US is already involved...has been for more than a decade. What did I say about the Obama are rollout? Did I say he was savvy?
More items from the news: Apparently the Iraqis have asked the US to fly airstrikes against ISIS, and Washington has said 'no'. And reportedly the Iranians have offered to send the Iraqis up to 10,000 Islamist fighters from Tehran's Revolutionary Guards force to help protect Baghdad and the Shi'ite holy places. This one is still under consideration.
Malikie cannot get his government to give him the powers he needs. So how is he going to save his nation?
No what they didn't want was an all Shiite government. Sia's represent 55 to 60 percent of the population whereas Shiites are 30 to 35%. Saddam was a Sunni and as evil as he supposedly was he kept sectarianism to a minimum. The ousting of Saddam exacerbated these underlying tensions and the US support of a predominantly Shiite government of course didn't help. This is a backlash against a bad government that happens to represent a minority within the country. This minority of course also represent Iran's majority (they too are Sunni), which is why the Iranians are offering the government help. Now of course the Americans can just sit back and sing like Silkk The Shocker "It ain't my fault. Did I do that!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-Yzj57NO4 The Americans must have known this. I mean, I can't believe that they are COMPLETELY stupid. Or maybe they are.
