Posted on 12/10/2015 2:29:07 PM PST by Isara
GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Thursday that the Middle East was more secure when key dictators were still in power, and said too many Democrats and Republicans have supported toppling Middle Eastern governments to the benefit of the United States' enemies.
"Was the world, in fact, in the Middle East, a more secure place when Saddam Hussein was in power, when Moammar Gadhafi was in power, and when [Bashar] Assad wasn't fighting for his life in Syria?" asked MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
"Of course it was," Cruz answered. "That's not even a close call."
Cruz said Gadhafi did bad things but had worked with the United States and "was actively cooperating in hunting down and stopping radical Islamic terrorists." The Texas senator said Gadhafi's ouster has turned Libya into a "chaotic warzone ruled by radical Islamic terrorists."
"We need to focus on killing bad guys," Cruz said. "What has been a mistake, and we've seen a consistent mistake in foreign policy is far too often, we've seen Democrats and a lot of establishment Republicans in Washington get involved in toppling Middle Eastern governments. And it ends up benefiting the bad guys. It ends up handing them over to radical Islamic terrorists."
Cruz ranks first in the Washington Examiner's newest GOP presidential power rankings.
The war of Islam has been in the process since 628 AD ...
In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’ The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did.”
Cruz is dead right on this one! You can take the man out of the cave, but you can`t take the cave out of the man. Islamic nations are a prime example of that basic principle, you can`t civilize a nation of devout knuckle-draggers.
I like Cruz but he is dead wrong here.
Correct! That’s exactly why O and Clinton changed the landscape. I believe they are quite happy w/ their results....
Correct! That’s exactly why O and Clinton changed the landscape. I believe they are quite happy w/ their results....
Oh, and I can’t help but mention Bush for getting the ball rolling for them.
Yup. I think I have changed my mind about the ME.
I originally agreed with W that everyone yearned freedom, and that the ME would cling to it, once liberated, as a better way of life. Many, at the time, said that these people could not handle freedom. I thought that was very arrogant, as the spirit of man longs to be free
It seems that, because of islam, they do not yearn freedom (except possibly in small numbers) like Christians and Jews do - their spirits have been taken over.
Sounds familiar.
He’s absolutely right.
Which would you rather have(one choice only), Assad or ISIS?
Cruz is right.
Cruz is right.
It worked in Japan and Germany.
It was working in Iraq.
The much maligned GW Bush waged a just war in Iraq against Saddam's thugocracy that was in the process of starting WWIII in the Middle East.
Bush's victory in Iraq was one of the most amazing and successful military operations in history and the casualties on both sides were minimal.
After winning, Bush's post war occupation was probably the most restrained of in recent history and pretty much followed the precedents learned from WWII .
In a region of the world where there is still bitter hatred and animosity for wars fought 700 years ago, Bush and America were seen as liberators helping to free Iraq and provide a better future. Never before has a defeated enemy had as much good will for their winning adversary.
America fought hard to liberate Iraq from the foreign al Qaeda invaders and ex Saddam dead enders and finally defeated them with the help of the Iraqi people.
America won the war and then won an even harder fought peace in Iraq thanks to the sacrifices of our soldiers.
George Bush left office and gave Obama a success in Iraq and Iraq was on its way to becoming a normal and more prosperous country.
Obama came in and willfully delivered Iraq into the hands of its enemies.
The Shia half went to Obama’s buddies in Iran and the Sunni North was delivered into the hands of Obama’s buddies in the Muslim Brotherhood's ISIS army.
I know this because former U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney predicted this all the way back in the early 1990s when he explained why the U.S. never conquered Iraq during the 1990 Gulf War.
Cheney's decision to act against his own better judgement in 2003 was one of the worst military and political decisions ever made, and this jug-eared dope in the White House right now can be directly attributed to that decision.
I agree. Textbook example of how to use Military to defeat Saddam. Everyone goes back to the successful campaign that saw Saddam statues being overturned and the excitement of many in Iraq. Even Dems were all for it at that point. The occupations stage got ugly where we underestimated the hostility between different sects of Muslims (which is why there will never be peace with Muslims since some are the very strict militant muslims that interpret the only way is to kill non muslims. Again, Bush doubled down and had helped solidify, the situation. Obama’s pulling out totally blew up the hard fought victory.
Finally, the one thing that everyone missed with taking the war to Iraq and Afghanistan, was that it preoccupied our enemies and funnelled all the action in those places, they didn’t have time or chances to focus actions against USA itself. Our withdrawal has now allowed them to refocus on proactive targets in the U.S and Europe vs fighting defensive war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well put. George W. never seemed to get that.
Assad, Khaddafi, the Iranian leadership, Erdogan, etc are all n part of the problem.
The GENERATE ISIS, etc. The Islamic states need responsible leaders who will gradually educate the populace, bring them democracy and reform Islam. We can beat these turds any day in a military engagement. The trick is trying to stop them from repopulating themselves. And that is harder. Unless you are prepared to exterminate over 1 billion Muslims that is the only solution.
Tyrannies like Saudi Arabia only breed these fanatics.
Perhaps Iraq should have immediately been split into separate countries along tribal regions, instead of always trying to force warring tribes to live together. One of them is always going to vie for power. Undraw those British imposed borders, each sect can be the big dog of their very own dirt patch.
Saddam stepped up to the plate and attacked Iran with the full support of the Arab oil states and the US. All provided Saddam with support of various forms.
For Kuwait, they lent Saddam tons of money because lose Kuwait had the most to lose against Iran.
Kuwait is a tiny country which is floating on oil and the Kuwaiti oil fields were highly developed with the best technology the West could provide.
They were a located right next to Iran and Iran was seriously looking at a hostile takeover of the Kuwaiti oil fields and the Kuwaitis were terrified of the Iranian threat on their borders
Saddam was the de facto defender of Kuwait who protected them from Iranian invasion.
The Iran Iraq war was one of the most brutal in the 20 th century , which is really saying something. Saddam expected to roll over Iran in days, but it did not turn out that way. Instead it became WWI style never ending stalemate that chewed up millions of Iraqi and Iranian lives
The war took a huge toll on Iraq but when it was over, Iran was far too beat down to even consider invading Kuwait.
The now safe Kuwaiti's became arrogant and were really pressing Saddam to repay all the mo eye they had lent him, but Saddam and the rest of Iraq was broke, exhausted and bitter about the long war and the Iraqi economy was on the ropes. Iraq was in no position to repay Kuwait and the Iraqi people were enraged that Kuwait should ask for repayment for the services Iraq had rendered in protecting Kuwait and eliminating any Iranian threats to Kuwait.
The situation was made even worse because Kuwait had taken advantage of Iraq's war time distraction to slant drill to steal oil on Iraqi oil fields so the Iraqis also claimed that the Kuwaitis had already been paid by stealing Iraqi oil.
The rest of the oil states hated Kuwait and were more than happy to see Saddam take them over and George Bush did what made the Saudis happy. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait made the Saudis very happy for a short time so Bush initially was ok with the invasion.
Then Saddam got greedy and made his fatal error of making moves on the Saudis as well.
The Saudis complained to GHW Bush and requested he solve their Saddam problem .
The rest is history
Yup
Yeah, Trump already said that several weeks ago.
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