Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 11 2016 04:20pm)

You strike me as oblivious to everything I've consistently posted about here for years. Have I ever said Trump is likely to win? Of course hillary is almost certainly going to win. If trump knew how to manipulate the media he wouldnt have gotten skewered these past few weeks and he wouldnt need to get back on track like I just said. Did you know there are usernames and avatars on PARD? Its not 4chan, you can connect me with all those posts where I talked about how HRC is running the same Rove dirty tricks campaign she did in '08 and pulling no punches, scripting obvious baits like the khans and colluding with the DNC and media establishments to exercise corrupt influence to get elected

Obama and Hillary created ISIS, its true. ISIS is not some shadowy secret organization financed by a saudi prince that has only a few dozen true members. ISIS was a popular movement by a whole population. Obama's bungled handling of the arab spring and iraq withdrawal created power vacuums while handing over heavy weaponary and mechanization to hardened sunni jihadis who stormed up iraq liberating sunnis from prisons and massacring the shiites and other minorities, who then with the collapse of libya due to our meddling and influx of jihadis from other arab spring states like tunisia, established a foothold in syria and got an intractable conflict which would have toppled assad and creates a full blown caliphate had russia not intervened. Meanwhile the obama administration in denial doctored papers and twisted reports to downplay the threat of ISIS while hillary championed the arab spring interventions with a mythical narrative of freedom loving secular arabs establishing western style democracies. Whoops, those strongmen dictators were actually holding populations of religious fanatics in check and you unleashes a sectarian war, nice job breaking it

Yoy could say hillary holds the responsibility for her hawkishness and media spin and that obama really didnt agree with her when he went along and was stuck between a iraq and a hard place on withdrawal, but the reality is that he was president and his legacy is the sum of his calls, no matter whos idea it was, obamas, hillarys, kerrys, generals, w/e. Its like saying GWB wasnt responsible for Iraq because it was cheney fault

Quote (Skinned @ Aug 11 2016 10:23am)

Obama was probably the only person against invading Iraq and creating the power vaccuum.

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 11 2016 11:34am)

Obama was against it, but he wasnt alone. It might have been a different story if he had to vote. Sanders on the other hand actually did. Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton too among plenty of others

But once Obama was in power, he had the quagmire where if he withdraws he creates a vacuum, if he stays we keep bleeding. You can sympathize with the hard choice, but he did choose the option that created ISIS. Compounding it was the total intelligence failure of the threat. The iraqi army was a sham and the sunnis took their guns, tanks and jeeps and became isis, and we should have anticipated that. The signs of wider sectarian conflict were obvious and smart analysts were calling it out at the time

the arab spring, libya and syria were unforced errors and proactive failures. You cant blame cheney for that. I can blame hillary, but obama went with her retarded plans and got us burned, that makes obamas judgement as responsible in the end

Quote (timmayX @ Aug 11 2016 11:37am)

We should stop trying to give democracy to these countries though. They weren't founded on freedoms and aren't having revolutions based on personal freedoms.

Let them have their dictators or religious leaders if that's what they need for stability.

Quote (timmayX @ Aug 11 2016 04:37pm)

We should stop trying to give democracy to these countries though. They weren't founded on freedoms and aren't having revolutions based on personal freedoms.

Let them have their dictators or religious leaders if that's what they need for stability.

Quote (Skinned @ Aug 11 2016 10:37am)

I said before I don't miss Qaddafi and I won't miss Assad. The Arab Spring was an Arab thing mostly resulting from the success of Egyptians in removing Mubarak from power.

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 11 2016 11:49am)

You're a fool not to miss them. Like the iraq withdrawal, world politics arent defined by black and white decisions of good vs evil. Leaving iraq might have been the right call, at least I think so, but it had a cost. Toppling tyrants has a cost. And sometimes tyrants are exactly what it takes to subjugate a worse popular threat. Assad's father razed a city to the ground to send a message, and it stabilized syria. When Assad Jr teetered on the brink, it wasnt a cute and fluffy lovable western democracy that would pop up if he fell, but a caliphate, one more extreme than the taliban, beheading all non-sunnis and exporting foreign terrorism.

Understanding what causes what and the motivations of the actors is more important than judging them or petty shortsighted righteousness.

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 11 2016 04:49pm)

You're a fool not to miss them. Like the iraq withdrawal, world politics arent defined by black and white decisions of good vs evil. Leaving iraq might have been the right call, at least I think so, but it had a cost. Toppling tyrants has a cost. And sometimes tyrants are exactly what it takes to subjugate a worse popular threat. Assad's father razed a city to the ground to send a message, and it stabilized syria. When Assad Jr teetered on the brink, it wasnt a cute and fluffy lovable western democracy that would pop up if he fell, but a caliphate, one more extreme than the taliban, beheading all non-sunnis and exporting foreign terrorism.

Understanding what causes what and the motivations of the actors is more important than judging them or petty shortsighted righteousness.