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andrew lenaghan
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion
Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion
Total number of comments: 143 (since 2014-08-10 13:45:07)
Showing comments 143 - 101
Page: 2 1
Showing comments 143 - 101
Page: 2 1
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thank you for simple truth.
"Celebrating on a pile of rubble doesn’t look like victory."
this is why you dont play around with lying about war. once you start the fog of war gets thick at foggy bottom. cities are leveled and society is traumatized.
assuming that this is not your goal.
so the leaning minaret has been destroyed as i predicted.
dear prof cole,
my point still stands. you seem a bit disinterested considering the scale of the destruction.
but still...have you thought about the leaning minaret? how are they going to get the isis fighters out of it without knocking it down? after they knock it down, how is it going to go over in sunnistan? when the pictures of shia soldiers high fiveing on its ruins take over twitter?
who is going to rebuild these cities? who is going to pay for the reconstruction of four or five large cities? sinjar, tikrit, falklujah, ramadi, and now mosul. will we take in the refugees here in the usa?
have you ever heard the saying ..."we have to burn the village to save it?"
see what i am saying?
dear prof cole.
how is it possible that your website has almost nothing about mosul? our military and its operatives are presently blowing up this huge iraq city, committing war crimes daily, and creating yet another global refugee crisis.
yet prof cole is silent. no thoughts. no outrage. no nothing. no wonder nobody knows nothing.
here is a thought....what happens when they knock over that leaning minaret? how is that going to work out?
andy
so are they going to blow up the old mosque? that is probably going to calm stuff down considerably.
do you think that mosque tower in mosul is going to get knocked down? i bet that will improve things.
hillary clinton ran a singularly terrible and uninspired campaign. she still won the election because trump was an even worse candidate. but ... in our pseudo democracy where election losers can win elections.....she lost. none of this has anything to do with russia.
professor cole
any thoughts about the pentagon's efforts to transfer culpability to the islamic state for the pentagon's ongoing and deliberate "massacre" of civilians in mosul. i put 'massacre' in quotes because that was the term you used. i use the word "deliberate" because the pentagon has itself presented evidence that it knowingly destroyed buildings with large groups of civilians within them. doesnt this make you feel a little uncomfortable?
maybe we should stop bombing them for a bit? or we could keep bombing them and just tone it down a little.
i disagree. the south will continue to torture the rest of the country with their humiliation and wounded pride seemingly forever. maybe if they were free of the federal government they might actually make some headway in their tortured search for enlightenment.
war sucks. stop sponsoring it. stop condoning it. stop exacerbating it. stop practicing it. stop funding it.
true progressives do not believe in warfare. it really is that simple.
the pentagon needs civil war and failed states. militant extremism requires military intervention. interventions create more civil war, failed states, and militant extremism. it is known as supply and demand. the industry is war. it doesn't matter if there is natural resources or crucial real estate. civil war is itself the commodity. civil war equals regime change equals armament sales and armament use and raison d'etre.
somewhere neocons are laughing about how eight years after the antiwar candidate was elected president, their neverending war is still dropping bombs all over iraq with no end in sight.
prof cole, the ny times insists that the generals insist that the current rules of engagement were instituted before trump took office. obama bombed a lot of stuff in iraq since 2014. you cheered it on. obama offered no plan for the aftermath, you cheered it on. now trump continues those very same policies and suddenly you call it "massacres".
the thing you need to understand is that it is bad policy either way. evil in fact.
"moderate" that!
the generals want the killing and hatred to continue or they would be out of a job. number 1 rule to war.
there is no good war. there is no ok war. there is no just war. leave these people alone finally.
meanwhile trump is doing a good job prosecuting the bushobama never ending war. killing civilians in great numbers in both syria and iraq at once
so we going to blow up the rest of mosul or what?
trump is a bad extra in a horribly expensive and long hollywood movie fiasco. he is not the director. he is not the writer. he is not the movie company. he is an extra just reading a couple of lines poorly. hillary might have read the lines better but it would have been the same script. actually i am not sure she would have read the lines any better. give trump a break. cant blame him for everything.
and what would hillary be doing if she was the emperor?
we looked in the mirror and we saw trump.
trump is a bigot and provocateur. he exploits whatever he can impulsively and for no recognizable purpose. he has no decency.
he is a reflection of ourselves as a nation. we should sue ourslves.
it is interesting how nobody is really fooled by this kind of orwellian terminology. everybody knows the war continues abated.
The ceasefire does not cover either Fateh al-Sham or Daesh (ISIS, ISIL).
i prefer a term like "coordinated targeting agreement" to "ceasefire" . a "ceasefire" that does not include the true adversaries is really not a "ceasefire". if we will not consider a future that includes these enemies, we are not really serious about a ceasefire. we are in the pursuit of an unconditional surrender. we are in the pursuit of total annihilation of our enemies. "ceasefire through annihilation" might be appropriate.
oh yeah? you mean the nut job in florida? was he born in iraq? was he from samara? was he living in iraq?
and even if isis had attacked us, which they have not, would it not be a justified response to having been invaded, bombed, and plundered without provocation?
but mostly you miss the point, saddam and isis are the same, just different names.
tribalism. we matter. they don't. we have a pow mia flag flying over federal monuments and infrastructure. who gives a crap for the insane numbers of laoations, cambodians, and vietnamese we killed. all that matters is that a few pilots of helicopters and jets got shot down over the jungle and the military was unable top locate them. and what were they doing when they were shot down? protecting our way of life? keeping us free? of course not. they were killing people in their homes.
sorry to go on...
and so what is our current plan? when does it end? when mosul is destroyed? will it be over then? of course not.
there is no endgame. the tab is running. the tap is running. the tub has overflowed a long time ago.
we are still taking the bath. we are asleep in the tub.
madness.
i wonder where our new 13billion $ aircraft carrier will deploy?
hello prof. cole.
thank you for writing this. it can not be said enough. the crazy thing is that we are still wasting money blowing stuff up in iraq today, almost eight years after the reign of bush ended.
you say "the little people TOOK a bath", but we are still TAKING the bath. it is a never ending war. the tab is still running
the pressing question is when does it end? if it was such a mistake, why are we forever committed to its continuation?
the common answer is ..."but now Isis must be defeated". who is isis and where do they come from? are we really sure they were not in iraq in 2003? it would seem that their leader, for example, abu bakr al baghdadi, was in fact in iraq. he was born in samara, not that far from tikrit, saddam hussein's hometown. is isis really that different than the baathists of saddam? saddam committed many atrocities within iraq for decades. he gassed civilians. he invaded neighbors. he conducted environmental warfare on a huge scale. he used tanks and helicopters to repress protest. his secret police was unparalleled for brutality. political executions were the daily norm. his son was a sociopathic murderer. etc.
what makes isis so much worse than saddam? as far as i can tell they have killed no where near as many people to date.
all the same, i still do not believe we should have wasted these trillions on our war.we have made things even worse for iraqis by amping up the violence.
which is what we are still doing this very moment.
time to stop.
professor cole,
thank you. you have said all there is to say right here. the aumf is an obscenity.
obama ran for president as the antiwar candidate. he has turned out to be anything but. progressives are asleep while he drops bombs all over the place. i myself was asleep for most of his presidency. it required the primaries of this past year and the obliteration of the large iraqi city of ramadi to wake me to the truth. obama is the trojan horse of the antiwar movement.
on 9-11, i want to give thanks and respect to a true american hero, chelsea manning. manning is being tortured and abused in a military brig while serving a 35 year sentence for exposing just a few of the pentagon's warcrimes. it is a national disgrace. manning must be freed.
president obama has the power to undo this disgusting injustice. he could do it today to honor national heroes. but of course, he won't.
professor cole
you are correct to rethink the terminology. "joint air command" is much better than the orwellian use of "ceasefire".
professor cole
how do you know how many mosul residents support isis? was there an opinion poll?
as long as no ground troops get killed, they are not really there. as long as no ground troops get killed, we are not at war even if we are bombing several countries simultaneously. if we are not at war, no congressional approval or united nations approval is necessarry.
you know the picture of the south vietnamese officer executing the vietcong captive at point blank range? that officer was getting paid by us.
we missed the extra point or we would have had 7.
all of this is not to say we don't help out in the political execution fest. we conducted a droning of six convicts in yemen on monday.
i guess you could say saudi arabia is winning the atrocity match 47-36. what was the spread? a touchdown? saudi arabia must have covered the spread. 11 points is a big margin.
political executions by our allies must be ignored while political executions by our enemies must be exploited as atrocities. saudi arabia executes 47 one day and shia iraq executes 36 on another. it all gets buried in the back pages. why? because we are allies with both. how can we be allies with both when they are practically at war with each other?
thats just how we roll baby!
i would say that isis is doing pretty well militarily considering that both the american and russian imperial air forces are blasting them around the clock for a year plus. it is pretty impressive they are still around at all.
i am not rooting for isis but rather pointing out the madness of our warfare. it is not working. ...assuming the goal is stability and democracy.
but truth be told....the goal is chaos and headlines like "With Defeat Looming, ISIL haunts Syria with 6 Bombings, Killing 53".
so i guess our policy is working. ...mission accomplished.
is it possible that we in fact want isis to stick around and get crazier giving us an enduring reason to continue the Never Ending War?
the goal is achieved. that is the point of what anon is saying. chaos is the goal, NOT regional stability and democracy. we are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. that is our mission. mission accomplished.
anon....
speak the truth to the sheeple!
it is a thankless and tiring task.
a futile task even.
but like a mouse in a glue trap, struggle we must against all odds.
we always have hope.
and we within the empire are better off than those poor souls locked in its gun sights.
it sure would be nice to get our hands on some of that pentagon $ though.
the argument is that we are bombing 6 countries today and that there are absolutely no plans to cease. talk of a "ceasefire" is nonsense.
ok. stick with me and i will see if i can sort it out for you, the truth is complicated and the propaganda is multi layered. many so called progressives are struggling to make sense of the situation. they have been bamboozled by their own political and intellectual leaders. they have been betrayed by a trojan horse, president obama. They have been distracted by a red herring, the candidacy of the clown even as the trojan horse rapes and pillages their homes.
north korea was our enemy and we ultimately made a ceasefire with them. the north vietnamese were our enemy and we ultimately made a ceasefire with them. today our enemy is not recognized as a nation or an entity capable of negotiations. thus we can not discuss a "ceasefire".
in the case of north korea and vietnam there was a large price to our warfare in terms of american deaths. In the case of Iraq there was less of a price but even so, it awoke the american public enough to ultimately reject chicken hawk bush implicitly by electing an antiwar candidate as his successor. this candidate went on to win a nobel peace prize as the american president all the while refining and expanding american warfare. in his style of warfare only a handful of americans get killed. there are no boots on the ground. but make no mistake, we are at war. we are dropping bombs all over the place including syria. it is just that americans do not know or care because there are no american body bags.
we have no intention of ceasing our bombing missions in syria. this post by professor cole discusses some sort of "ceasefire" that the pro war 2004 candidate of the liberal party is working out with russia. we are not bombing russia and russia is not bombing us. we are both bombing various groups in syria. if this proposed "ceasefire" were to in fact occur, both russian and american warplanes would still be bombing people and things in syria. so it is not in fact a "ceasefire".
the term "ceasefire" here is a typically upside down orwellian term. the inverse of the given term is once again the truth. we and the russians are not working on a "ceasefire" but rather a continued fire agreement.
do you follow?
how have our imperial wars worked out on a humanitarian level?
korea?
Vietnam?
cambodia?
central america?
Iran?
Iraq?
we have no credibility. we are not in this business for humanitarian reasons.
ceasefires and such talk are a farce. aint nothing happening until the american sheeple wake up. they didn't like their sons getting killed in korea...they sort of woke up. they didn't like their sons getting killed in vietnam they sort of woke up. they didn't like their sons getting maimed in iraq, they sort of woke up.
aint no american kids getting killed in syria. aint no ceasefire.
ceasefires can't be ceasefires if all parties of warfare are not at the table. furthermore, a ceasefire where imperial powers are still bombing in the region is not a ceasefire.
is isis a party to the ceasefire? which syrian military factions might be party to the ceasefire?
you know what a ceasefire is? a ceasefire is for us to vacate the region and stop dropping bombs within syria. until we do that, talk of ceasefire is just bullshit.
professor cole
why do you and so many other progressives waste time and energy talking about the clown show. the clown will never be president but hillary von clinton will be. lets worry about how to fight her as she continues disastrous foreign policies that create the refugee problems in the first place.
maybe we should be talking about the unfolding disaster in mosul? maybe we should debate the necessity and purpose of destroying this rather large city. maybe we should debate the plan for the refugees already homeless in iraq before throwing another million into the abyss?
reality is trump will not be president. reality is obama is president. reality is von clinton will be president.
reality is trump has as of yet created no refugees in his lifetime and never will. reality is antiwar candidate obama morphed into neocon president obama. reality is that he and his former secretary of state and soon to be president von clinton have created refugee crisis all over the place.
we make the wars that refugees flee from. it is up to others to take them in. they are not our problem. there is no profit in them anyhow.
because they couldn't do it any better. obama has become bush in sheep's clothes. bush is proud of his legacy and obama's continuation of the neocon mission.
Turkey says it has killed 25 of the US-backed fighters, whom it terms “terrorists.”
my definition of terrorist....1. an enemy in warfare. 2. a sociopath guilty of murder.
it is a term of propaganda. in meaning one, it only identifies another entity as an enemy. in meaning two, it is used to link criminal behavior of sociopaths with a larger enemy.
our tax dollars hard at work. just wish we could spend more money on these foreign endeavors.
the answer is chaos.
whose bombing and rebuilding plan is better? trump or clinton?
professor cole,
how much does this blowing stuff up cost us daily? are we also paying for the rebuilding of the stuff we blow up? what is the total price tag of our never-ending iraq war at this point? i would be really interested in a study of the expenses.
professor cole,
have you figured out what the obama administration is doing to rebuild ramadi? are the people of tikrit back in their homes? is the trench around fallujah finished? what kind of preparations has obama made for the impending refugee crisis in mosul?
it seems to me the only thing that has been completed is the trench. which is actually kind of israeli like.
saudia arabia can only dream of what our airplanes are capable of. still if they need the planes, we should sell them a bunch.
this is just another example of how warfare spirals out of control. the pentagon loves this kind of stuff. they are itching for it. they thrive on it. we are just along for the ride.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Chris Garver today confirmed that several hundred vehicles which they identified as “an ISIS convoy” was allowed to flee from the city of Manbij after its capture by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
This was a significant change from what happened earlier in the fight over Manbij, when the US saw another convoy they figured was ISIS and pounded it with airstrikes, killing around 200 civilians and no ISIS fighters. This sparked calls from allied rebel factions for the US to stop bombing Syria in general.
This time, the US apparently left the matter up to the Kurds, and Col. Garver said it was a decision of SDF commanders to let the convoy go, noting that there were large numbers of civilians in the convoy, along with what the US estimated was a number of “ISIS commanders.” The fleeing convoy headed into ISIS territory further west, and US officials noted many fled all the way into Turkey.
It’s unclear how many actual ISIS were in the convoy, but both the US and Kurds are keen on that narrative, and the idea that the civilians “may have been hostages.” In reality, many of Manbij’s Arab population have feared a campaign of ethnic cleansing after the Kurds took over.
go ahead and bury your head in the bloody sand. are we talking about iraq? yes. are we thus talking about the usa? yes. we are at war with iraq. we have been since 1990. you seek the content free discussion, not me. anybody who excuses our mass destruction in the countries we bomb incessantly in fact doesn't care one whit about the folks actually living there.
professor cole
the problem with pundits like you is that you still believe in our benevolence despite all the evidence to the contrary that you yourself present daily.
we are not interested in happy outcomes. that is not our agenda. failed states and mayhem is what we bring. that is the product of war and mass bombing. we are the terrorists.
stop the bombing now.
how many countries did we bomb yesterday?
how many countries did we drop bombs on today?
who cares about the clown trump. how about the real president to be?....from informed comment....
"The Clinton presidential campaign has indicated that it will not support a carbon tax. But we simply cannot meet greenhouse gas reduction goals without a price on carbon. How can we take Secretary Clinton’s commitment to climate action seriously if she rejects carbon pricing outright? Clinton’s negligence in failing to support a carbon tax is simply inexcusable."
professor cole,
so is the never ending war over now?
so what has nobel prize obama planned for the unfolding refugee crisis?
oh yeah right. money for bombing only.
well at least nobel peace prize obama wasn't busy blowing shit up in this instance.
irony is he is really good at cia shit and fooling the hippies. but the rednecks can't stand him because he is a negro.
in other news...evicted fallujah residents swelter in 127 degree desert refugee camps. the shia government digs a medieval trench around the empty city.
us backed ethnic cleansing continues. us war against sunni iraq continues. us war of lies continues.
bombing is what we do. we are the terrorists. we are the bad guys.
warfare breeds extremism. it is a cycle that feeds itself. destroyed families, homes, and lives will bring forth more of the same. squalid refugee camps in record desert heat are only going to make the sunnis more pissed off. more crazy.
trump bla blah blah. meanwhile the latest refugees created by our bombing and foreign policy are stranded in the desert outside fallujah in 127 degree heat. who needs trump when the democrats are doing such a great job as the war party.
professor cole, i am confused by how you end up with this conclusion. you are spot on and then you advocate continuing bombing, destruction, and ethnic cleansing in sunni iraq.
seriously.
how do you see the humanitarian crisis that is growing by the day in iraq playing out? what do you think the sunni youth are making of their destroyed homes and dead fathers as they suffer in refugee camps?
what are the unstable young arab men all over the globe making of our endless war in iraq?
so it was an illegal war launched by criminals using obvious lies as justification.....we know that.
so it has been a disaster for iraq....we know that.
so it has been a disaster for the american taxpayer. we know that.
the question is why are we still bombing eight years after bush left office?
the question is when will we stop bombing this country we criminally invaded?
yup.
do as i say not as i do.
steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.
yes we have a policy. fund warfare and bomb. our policy is specifically not to barrel bomb. but we do have a revitalized fleet of b-52's. rest assured that they are no longer used for carpet bombing napalm, they now use precision targeting systems that only hit organisms that hate our way of life.
time to stop bombing foreign peoples. it really is that simple. we need a time out.
don't worry. we will find some new reason to drop bombs even IF isis is defeated. thats what we do. democrats and republicans are arguing for show. the plan is to bomb forever.
professor cole,
what are the chances that the shia will grant the sunni cities any kind of autonomy or even representation?
personally, i think none.
this is msnbc. not fox. i guess they are trying to sort it out. sort of. but then again ....never ending war.
this is obama. not trump. not cruz. obama. this is never ending war. a never ending war that began with lies. a never-ending war that was unprovoked. a never ending war with no end. a never ending war with just one goal;...to never end.
the main purpose is to blow shit up with our expensive and awesome war machines. thats what we do. its our empire and prerogative. the never ending war by definition does not seek resolution or peace.
reports of falluja refugees being without water, shelter, and latrines in the broiling desert wondering if their missing husbands, fathers, and sons are still alive do not describe them as happy to be liberated.
who is going to govern? who is going to police? who is going to rebuild?
it is not over.
sunni militants are in it for the long haul. 2003 to now. ebb and flow, repeat.
making millions of iraqi people refugees while destroying large cities "makes you an ally of isil" and sadly very american.
this depressing article reminds me of the famous picture of the south vietnamese officer executing the vietcong guerrilla at point blank range.
time to stop the bombing. we have shown that we only make things worse. we are a plague on iraq. time to let the poor country alone. maybe we could try to help in other ways. warfare is not the answer.
we are sick. we need help. we should address our own illnesses and immoralities.
hope bernie wins today so bad
back to reality.... jason ditz from antiwar.com
"A day after announcing their “final assault” on the ISIS-held city of Fallujah, Iraqi troops have been stalled at the southern gates, in the face of major resistance from ISIS forces. Unlike previous defenses, there was no word of ISIS using suicide attacks, and rather faced the Iraqi military heavily armed in a gun-battle.
The commander of the offensive, Lt. Gen. Abdelwahab al-Saadi, was as upbeat as ever, presenting the fight as the Iraqi forces “repelling” an ISIS attack on the outside of the city, and claiming to have killed 75 ISIS fighters in the process. He offered no details on casualties on the Iraqi military side.
Other Iraqi military officials told a different story, saying the ISIS forces are heavily dug-in in trenches and tunnels around the city outskirts, and keeping Iraqi troops and affiliated militias at a distance in the ongoing offensive.
US officials have conceded that they believe Fallujah will not only be a long, difficult fight for the Iraqi military, but that the troops will likely face hostility from the civilian population as well, as the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab city is averse to being “liberated” by the Shi’ite-dominated military.
Iraqi officials had presented territorial gains around the city suburbs as major wins, but those came largely without resistance. ISIS appears to have decided that the city would be more readily defended at the city level, instead of in the more rural outskirts."
this is war. it escalates. it gets worse. it gets uglier. this is why moral progressive people do not believe in preemptive warfare no matter how long it goes on. . big brother loves words that are upside down. "preemptive war" "department of defense" "operation enduring freedom" "operation iraqi liberation"
is isis ugly? yes.
are we ugly? yes.
is bombing the solution? no.
can we trust our military to tell the truth? no.
do we have a plan for the rubble and refugee camps of sunni iraq? no.
does isis have a plan for the rubble and refugee camps? oh yes. oh yes they do.
operation enduring freedom
a b52 is a b52.
word.
those pesky fallujah folks. they just won't get with our program. maybe some squalid refugee camps will bring them to their senses? it worked so well last time. it should do the trick again.
and then obama said, "when my term is over, all the major sunni cities of iraq will be rubble. so suck on that apologists!"
It turns out destroying a city just doesn’t make for social peace. If anything, al-Qaeda and then Daash were strengthened by the government’s hard line against them.....
so why do we keep doing it? i guess we don't care too much about social peace.
the more civilians the "coalition" kills in "liberating" fallujah, the better for isis. the more buildings the "coalition" destroys in "liberating" fallujah, the better for isis. refugee camps are the isis recruiting grounds.
the pentagon is winning when it keeps the balls in the air. endless war is the plan.
tell me again. what is the plan for the rubble and refugee camps after the mosul campaign?
The question is whether, given the parliamentary infighting and governmental paralysis in Baghdad, the Iraqi government can keep the road clear of Daesh elements.
The answer is no.
the more i learn about this man, the more disgusted i become. i can't believe i defended him so emphatically for so long.
Hello again,
The Obama administration is tempering expectations in regard to Mosul. There even appears to be some afterthought about the devastation strategy that destroyed ramadi so as to liberate it. But the bombing continues every day. Every day mosul has more rubble. Sadly, Clinton will most likely only escalate the bombing when she becomes president. i have even less confidence in her than obama.
Hello Professor Cole,
I fail to see how leveling major Sunni cities is going to make Isis dwindle. Squalid refugee camps with no water or shelter is going to be a veritable breeding ground for isis or whatever group picks up the cause of the sunni insurgency. Obama has no plan for the rubble and refugee camps. He offers a 50 million dollar bandaid to repair Ramadi. Ramadi is 80 percent destroyed. no bridges, no electricity. no water facilities. remember where abu bark al baghdadi got his start?....an american detention camp. obama could not be doing more to guarantee isis longevity.
us never ending warfare....the goal is to make things worse. much worse. they need to feed the monster. its what they do.
obama destroyed ramadi and tikrit
maybe they don't like being bombed as much as we thought they would
i suppose this might bring an end to the bush-obama-clinton never ending war
what is obama's plan for the destroyed cities of sunni iraq? his government in baghdad can't even function within itself, how is it going to police the refugee camps and the rubble piles of sunni iraq?
answer...he has no plan. there is no plan. our bombing missions only make things worse.
us interventions equal more chaos.
how does detroying sunni iraqi cities make sense when no one has a plan for the aftermath or reconstruction. it is enough to make one cynical about our true intentions.
obama is a "defensive realist"? what about destroying Tikrit and Ramadi to "liberate" them from a sunni iraqi movement called Isis? Is he being a "defensive realist" ? when he bombards Mosul today?
or maybe morph into something with a different name in the exact same place as has already happened three times in 13 years. saddam fedayeen. al quaeda in iraq. isis.
professor, i disagree with you that isis is defeated. any defeat that results in large sunni cities in ruin is not a defeat for isis but rather fertile ground for more extremism. our ongoing war on sunni iraq always was and always will be a bad idea.
so are we really supposed to vote for her?
yesterday i talked election politics with liberal friends in park slope brooklyn. nobody knew of ramadi. nobody knew it had been a city of 600,000. nobody knew that we had bombed it to smithereens this fall.....and then when informed...they say, "but what is your plan for isis?"
hillary will support israel's continued war crimes. this is a reflection of that.
thanks professor cole for the depressing but sobering news this morning. another 8 years of the war in iraq
yeah. they are fine with having their cities demolished because we said so.
bombing other countries. its what we do. wasting our money terrorizing peoples half way across the globe. us message to anbar residents.." prepare yourself to be refugees. your home is likely to be destroyed. " its called winning hearts and minds.
pretty hard to disagree with the quoted statement. iraq will not heal until it is broken up and the borders reconfigured. just let it happen already.
we leveled tikrit not long before ramadi. fallujah and baiji are probably pretty wrecked. next up mosul. but ted cruz wants to carpet bomb. what? the desert?
the thing that kills me is that we just finished leveling the city of ramadi and no one knows or cares.
whatever the case. it was going to happen. it has happened. nobody really saw it coming. war is unpredictable. it takes a life of its own.
the only thing that might change is the name. just as it has before. republican guard. baath party. sad dam's fedayeen. al quaeda in iraq. now it is isis. but is the same thing just with different names. it can't be killed. it just morphs into something else. that is the point of professor cole's statement.
thank you prof cole for this history you have written up here. if the nytimes and others were on the up and up, this piece would be on the front page. it is clear to any sober person that isis is a locally backed entity and not a group of international terrorists. the citizens of sunni iraq did not want us in 2003, they don't want us now. they are willing to take on the most technologically advanced military on the planet. they have fought that military to a standstill and have suffered incredible hardship so as to defend their homeland from an invasion that george w. bushes brother has this past week admitted was a mistake. so why are we are we still bombing these people and destroying their cities still at this very moment? exactly who are the terrorists here? what a colossal waste of our treasury. what a stubborn refusal to accept our failure. what a horror to inflict on a people for no clearly stated reason. this really is vietnam all over again. maybe vietnam needs to be taught more accurately in our schools.maybe we need to fund history education rather than the pentagon. orwellian in 2003. orwellian in 2015. ignorance is truth.
some say "if we kew then what we know now", others say" but we knew then what we know now". i say" if we knew then why don't we know now?" . stop bombing these people. it is their home. it costs a lot of money and it is totally destructive with no purpose. these people will wait us out just like the vietnamese did in their tunnels. they have lived in this territory for many thousands of years. a decade means nothing to them. nobody an explain why we invaded iraq back then or now. so why are we still bombing ramadi 12 years after we started our unprovoked and inexplicable invasion? stop the madness!
i mean, why can't we get the message? 2003, they didn't want us there. 2015, they don't want us there. even on msnbc we don't get the message. THEY DONT WANT US THERE.
i was watching laurence odonnell last night. he had a segment on the politics of "if we knew then what we know now" despite that many of us like nancy pelosi "knew then what we know now" but then he had a segment on ramadi detailing the cost both then and now. but "if we know now what we knew then" why are we still bombing ramadi? when will we just let these people be? they have been in the ramadi region for a very, very, very, very, and very long time. it is their home. let them be. stop blowing shit up and wasting our money.
recognize reality. iraq is divided. let it be so. stop wasting our taxes and treasury blowing shit up in iraq. it is a sinful waste. it is ugly.
thank you bush for reminding us every so often what a nasty and destructive and unelected nightmare you were. in case we forgot while we live with your mess.
how much money, life, and destruction before iraq eventually divides? isis may be ugly, but it is a reality. borders have changed. the sooner it is recognized, the sooner people can get on with life in peace. maybe next time, we will remember this misery when the chicken hawks start beating the drum....probably not.
i am suspicious of the shia intentions as much as the sunni. i am suspicious of the propaganda of the iraqi govt. i am not in to wasting any more of our money blowing up anything in iraq for any reason. the idea of demolishing mosul is a very bad one. denying the reality that iraq is no longer a single country is to be in denial of reality.
the question is ...are the "extremists" and "terrorists" fighting today in tikrit from tikrit ? i tend to believe a fair number of tikritis are within the ranks of the militants defending tikrit today.
we know the shia militias are from the south and not from tikrit.
we know the planes are from america and not tikrit
true what you say about stalingrad. true isis does not have a fresh army of tanks ready to pounce from behind in a snowstorm.
but they have operatives all over iraq that are blowing shit up. read the wires and note the number of attacks all over the place everyday. it is 2004 all over again.
and even if the shia clear tikrit like we cleared fallujah in 2004, who is going to be running tikrit in 2025? who is running fallujah in 2014? where is the american sniper now?
what a waste of our money. what a disgrace. what stupidity. what a horror show. what failure.
i saw the movie. we already captured fallujah like ten years ago. why are we still bombing tikrit? i don't understand.
this is bad. we need to disengage in iraq. accept reality. stop contributing to the destruction. spend the money on paying teachers back home.
the assumption that isis will be defeated is unrealistic. it will take substantial us intervention to do that. containment is the more likely outcome.
so yes. fallujah equals pyrrhic victory. tikrit equals pyrrhic victory.
first of all. tikrit has not been taken yet. second of all, even if it is taken, it will not be held. us marines took fallujah. who runs fallujah now?
Once Daesh is driven out of Iraq....
good luck with that . it aint happening. they are 1/3 of the country.
this is a failed campaign. iraq has already split up into three as many predicted it might. blowing up sunni cities is a failed policy. first fallujah, now tikrit, later mosul. failed policy. bad idea. what came of the 2003 invasion? fallujah. what came of fallujah? isis. what came of isis? bigger fallujahs. this is a disaster. glad we are not directly participating.
gosh, the war mongers are really in a fix. caught between sunni iraq and iran. sounds like not much has changed since the 1980s.
my solution. walk away. stop picking at the zit. actually zit is not right. open wound is more accurate. stop operating on the open wound with a dirty kitchen knife. wrap it up and hope for the best.
bombing the hell out of mosul...no good will come of it. bombing anything in iran. beyond beyond crazy. crazy, crazy.
what is the plan exactly? what will be left of tikrit? who will be running the ruined city? what is the longterm plan after clearing the city? i am relieved that the u.s. is not more directly involved. i hope it stays that way.
blowing up cities did not work in fallujah and it will not work in tikrit. it is a losing strategy in a failed war without end.
blowing up cities and occupying the ruins is a failed strategy. by definition it can not succeed. unless occupying blown up cities is the goal. but what kind of a goal is that?
Then he likely has to ally with the Kurds against Cali Ibrahim and try to get back Sunni Iraq.
this part seems the least likely.
my only problem with what this guy is saying is where he feels compelled to support the recent invasion minus the killing of playing or sleeping children. you cant say i "did not object to the incursion into Gaza" except for the killing and war part because the incursion is in fact killing and war. either you support it or you don't.