The more you see of these people - and I don’t mean the obvious physical ugliness of the whole gang (NAIR should open a franchise there - starting with the men) - but the utter lack of character - oh yeah, I know, years of oppression and blah blah blah - the more you realize that the ONLY reason we should give a Shi-ite what happens to the place is OUR OWN STRATEGIC INTEREST.
As far as providing the Iraqi people with ANYTHING? I say, NOTHING - absolutely NOTHING - beyond what HELPS OUR INTERESTS in that part of the world. PERIOD.
As I tell my Italian cousins all the time, whenever (and they don’t do it so much anymore!) they dare to criticize the US: “After bailing your sorry cowardly asses out of Mussolini’s-Hitler’s sling, all we want from you is GRATITUDE, NOT ATTITUDE!”
Same with these losers.
That is the deal Germany got after WWI, and it led directly to WWII. The trick is to make them howl in absolute misery during the war, and help them to their feet after it. George Marshall understood that, but then he never dealt with Muslims I guess.
Trying to supplant a 1500 year old theocratic dictatorship mindset with 20th century style democracy is a tall order....
Last Thanksgiving I went all the way to Milwaukee, where six German relatives were present who had flown over from the old country, and I had to listen to three disgusting hours of European Bush Derangement Syndrome. One old cousin stated that he had read where Airforce 1 had flown into Ohio in 2004 and picked up ALL of the voting machines in Ohio. My mother's sister, to her credit, finally got pissed off enough to tell the old fool that he probably would have believed anything Hitler said also.
Anyway, to make a long story short, when my turn came to say what I was thankful for, I said that I was thankful for Adolf Hitler. THAT brought absolute silence and some facial expressions which you might see on people watching an imminent train wreck.
I said that if Hitler hadn't started World War Two, my grandparents wouldn't have been bombed out of their home, they wouldn't have become displaced persons, they wouldn't have then emigrated to the United Staes, and I might still be a goddamned European.
It was pretty tense turkey after that.