Zulu, in time you will find out that the only thing worse than having our troops involved, is not having our troops involved.
If this ISIS/ISIL thing is successful, this nation will be at extreme risk, as will our allies.
Agreed, I don’t like how our country has handled the recent deployments but we can’t go to burying our heads in the ground either...we are, like it or not, the worlds peace keepers. Look at the price of Obamao’s inaction around the world already for examples and it can only get worse. Not saying that military action is the one and only choice but we do need a strong military to back up our words.
We should have gone in, destroyed Saddam, replaced him with a reliable and supportive military strongman and ally and pulled out.
The loss of money and lives in defeating him was very low and generated a real fear among the local states there from Libya to Afghanistan.
But we tried to make a purse of a sow’s ear with Bush’s idiotic experiment of Democracy in a Muslim Sheikdom under Sharia law and an occupation crippled by equally idiotic rules of engagement we began to look like a paper tiger.
The West is in a real war with Islam as it has been since the 600’s. We need to pick our targets carefully and determine our objectives prudently. Our resources are not infintessimal nor is the patience of the American voter very enduring.
Its hard to justify an extended war against Islam thousands of miles away when we don’t have the manpower or will to defend our borders here or even to identify the enemy right among us who continues to grow, expand, recruit and make more and more outrageous demands in our own homeland on our culture and core beliefs.
The idea of trying to nation build an Islamic country into a functioning democracy is as stupid an idea as can be imagined.
Only ideologues of the utopian liberal sort would believe such hogwash, but unfortunately Dubya surrounded himself with exactly that sort of advisor.
His father had the good sense to take advice from foreign policy realists which is why he didn’t try to conquer Iraq.
His less than brilliant son gobbled at the neoconservative trough, and the advisors he chose were true to their liberal roots - they imagined that an ancient society would be immensely malleable and that its underlying religion would be irrelevant. All that was needed to turn Iraq into a western style democracy was their will.
It’s the same hubris that Lyndon Johnson possessed when he thought he could turn Vietnam into a miniature United States. The neoconservatives learned nothing from that fool’s errand.
America’s finances are in terrible shape. Dick Cheney would have us borrowing even more from China in order to police the Middle East. Time for him and his ambitious GOPe daughter to just go away.