It's election season.

We utterly destroyed Iraq as a functioning nation state and the resulting humanitarian crisis is entirely our fault. It is our moral responsibility to help those fleeing militants. Ultimately the only peace will come with partition; Kurdistan, give the Shiite section to Iran, and who the fuck knows with the Sunnis on the border of Syria.

Should have just toppled Saddam, doubled the pay of the army, installed a pro west dictator and got the fuck out of their. How hard wold that have been?

The President looks in the mirror and speaks
His shirts are clean but his country reeks
Unpaid bills, in Afghanistan hills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wiWXw3…

there

I'm feeling mission creep.

Andrew Sullivan is the guy who said you were a traitor if you didn't believe there were WMDs. Now we're listening to him?

Remember kids, you aren't free until the United States has bombed the living shit out of you, either directly or through one of our proxies.

That's called FREEDOM!!!

ISIS makes the Taliban look like a class of napping kindergartners. But that's not our problem anymore. Let them figure it out.

This is good, right? Because we're killing "Islamo-fascists". The bad "Islamo-fascists" that are over there.

Sometimes we kill good "Islamo-fascists" by accident. But that's okay because a good "Islamo-fascist" is better off being killed by us than having to live with bad "Islamo-fascists".

@8 - Thank you indeed.

What I've long tried to understand is why we haven't done more to prop up Kurdistan? The Turks seem to have come around to the view that an independent Kurdistan is ultimately better for Turkey. I'm not sure the Iranians agree...who cares what Assad thinks: he's lost control of that part of the country already anyway.

I have always assumed we didn't stick up for the Kurds particularly well before, precisely because our ally Turkey - and particularly the former secular militarists - didn't want us to.

Let ISIL try to form a new country made up of the Sunnis, and let Baghdad go back to Persia (who owned up until the Ottoman Turks took it away).

Oh, and is @nickbaumann pure satire? My scarasm-meter is weaker than usual right now.

@10 & 11 - I dunno: are Rwanda and Burundi better off for our having let them sort it out? Blowing up the heavy artillery we left lying around isn't quite carpet-bombing Gaza or Mosul.

It's not great that we are taking sides - this is not really our fight - but there are no black-and-white absolutes and activities limited to preventing genocide seem reasonable. They are not the same as charging in and toppling a stable (if hateful) regime. During "Operation Provide Comfort" we did stop the Iraqis from attempting Kurdish genocide. in the absence of our total invasion, a real, stable and somewhat viable Kurdish government and state have arisen.

@14, you may want to rethink the whole believing what you hear from the POTUS or Pentagon about what's happening/going to happen, thing.

Once the foot is in the door, it might just swing all the way open.

Should have just toppled Saddam, doubled the pay of the army, installed a pro west dictator and got the fuck out of their. How hard wold that have been?

We tried that exact strategy before, in Central America. Now that region is arguably as much a basket case as Mesopotamia. In the short term, there's shit to blow up, but longer term, only the people who live there will be able to come to a resolution--peacefully or otherwise sadly.

I for one applaud the President for taking steps to prevent genocide while still managing not to send more American ground troops into Iraq.

@8 yes because this imperialist action has a completely different motivation. This time it's the right thing because Obama.

Wow, who could have predicted removing Sadam Hussein would have opened up this can of worms?

@19 - I know right? Here I thought everyone was going to greet us as liberators and once that happened, mission accomplished! Then the rest of the middle east dictatorships would fall like dominoes and the middle east would turn into a free market, judeo-christian democracy!

@15 - I don't take him strictly at his word, and in fact, I hope he's judiciously putting a finger or two on a couple of scales. It would be naive to believe there isn't as much quiet favoring of both Baghdad and Irbil as possible. I'm sure Obama will do things - probably involving covert action on the ground - to shore up "stability" as much as possible to push this thing to get sorted out politically rather than militarily. As @19 says: this was utterly predictable and a bunch of people have been predicting it since it got started. We do have some responsibility here. Given Obama's track record of contorting himself to get us out of places, I have some trust he's not looking for an excuse to start another ten year long war.

I'm with @17 and yes, @18 - sometimes how a thing gets done makes all the difference. This is not "imperialist" in the sense of going in and setting up our puppet government. If our "imperialist" action leads to evacuating a mountaintop of Yazidi people and transplanting them here rather than allowing genocide...ok by me.

We support ISIS in Syria, and bomb them in Iraq.

Elections are afoot.

Good thing the men in black pajamas don't call themselves "Hamas," else this would stink to high heaven!

How about cleaning up our own messes and helping our own people. So tired of seeing the people of our country in need not getting help. Now we are sending more money over "there" again. It's never going to end. Jesus.

there's only one place to point the finger of blame, and it's George Whatthefuck Bush. land a zillion Chinooks and bring the Yazidis to fucking SLC or something - they'd fit right in.

when you invade, you invade all the way, or don't do it. you use the proper troop proportions for an occupation, and you kill and kill, without mercy, until the populace ceases resistance or is exterminated.

it worked for the Romans, the Muslim Hordes, and European Colonialists. modern "democracies" don't have the stomach for it, so they shouldn't try.

@3; yes. But the war in Iraq wasn't just about toppling that idiot. And Australia and Britain are responsible too, and other countries who became the" coalition of the willing
( arseholes)". Now look, super evil men have evolved from the wreckage.

@14
"I dunno: are Rwanda and Burundi better off for our having let them sort it out?"

The point is the Dan was happy to advocate for killing Iraqi children because of "Islamo-fascists" but now seems to have a problem with dropping bombs on other people in Iraq.
The current situation was completely predictable.
Anyone want to predict what the situation will be like next year? 5 years from now? 10 years from now?
How many more times will the American military try to kill "bad" people there over the next 2 years?

How many of those times will that killing be supported/opposed by people who cannot name any of the people or their agendas without looking them up?
The media says "these people are bad, you must oppose them to be a good person".
The media says "these people are good, you must support them to be a good person".

Show of hands: who believes it matters who we vote for?

Fuck you people are heartless. There are tens of thousands of yazidis stranded on a fucking mountain choosing between starvation and death and you are critisizing Obama for dropping humanitarian supplies and a few bombs on these fucking monsters waiting to slaughter them?

Look, I was and still am dead set against mid-east intervention because there is nothing we can do to help unil islam reforms itself. But when we have an opporunity to either help moderates in the region (Israel, Kurds) against tribal genocidal militias (Hamas, ISIS) we have an obligation to do so.

@29 I will hardly call Israel a moderate....