Posted on 06/17/2014 8:18:57 AM PDT by pabianice
Like clockwork, the Republican noise machine is blaming Barack Obama for the crisis in Iraq. And like clockwork, they’ve got everything wrong again.
The man to blame for what’s happening in Iraq is not President Obama — it’s President Bush.
Contrary to Tony Blair’s latest protestations, the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq — under deliberately fraudulent pretenses – had a great deal to do with enabling the current emergence of a Sunni terrorist military power in Iraq, but it goes much deeper than that. The recent success of ISIS — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — is exactly what Osama bin Laden had hoped that the 9/11 attacks would lead to. And thanks to Bush’s spectacularly foolish responses, bin Laden’s dream has come true.
Before 9/11, bin Laden was a terrorist and could only dream of becoming the “holy warrior” he imagined himself to be. When Bush chose to respond to 9/11 as an act of war, rather than a crime, he gave bin Laden the gift he had always wanted, just by conferring that status.
First, by invading Afghanistan, Bush validated bin Laden’s claim that what was happening was a religious war between Islam and the Christian West. Then, by invading Iraq and deposing his most prominent ideological foe, Saddam Hussein, Bush gave bin Laden a second gift—a much stronger position of influence throughout the region.
But the invasion also fractured Iraq’s tenuous factional stability, and was followed by a whole series of bad decisions making matters even worse. on their own.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Bump
Don’t forget Cheney and Haliburton, because once one mentions the word Haliburton any argument about Iraq is over!
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