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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs President Obama operating in a dangerous bubble?
I fear that the President is getting his arm twisted as his military and intelligence advisers whisper in each ear. The oil companies are threatened. American interests are under attack.
We need to go back into Iraq to protect our interests. We can say it is to protect innocent lives. We can say whatever we want. But countries don't have friends or moral purposes. They have "interests".
But war is political. First, you have to sell it to the people. We have to convince them that 1000 "bad guys", more "nasty" than Al Qaeda, is threatening the country of Iraq and taking over entire cities with a thousand rebels, after we spent $25 billion dollars training their soldiers and supplying them with tanks and personnel carriers and missiles, etc.
The President is screaming in pain as the pressure is applied. Will he stand his ground or will he buckle? Will it be a huge mistake if he goes back into Iraq?
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)the first administration. I see more and more of Obama's natural tendencies now, in his foreign policy, than during his first four years. The neocon/interventionist/MIC world (and all their media cheerleaders) has been coming at him with both barrels for the past year, but he is not yielding and overreacting this time.
WhiteTara
(29,718 posts)kentuck
(111,102 posts)But I seldom watch FOX... only when Lockdown is on.
WhiteTara
(29,718 posts)be careful that you scrub your brain!
kentuck
(111,102 posts)But I come to realize that when it comes to propaganda, both sides are not without taint.
840high
(17,196 posts)Blue Meany
(1,947 posts)control everything. The is a response to Mailiki's governance; he has run the country as a Shi'i sectarian, marginalizing the Sunnis. It's not that there is a huge rise in Islamists in the Sunni regions; it's that there are not many Sunni soldiers who want to fights for a regime that makes them second-class citizens. ISIS will not easily take over Baghdad, the southern Shi'i cities, or the Kurdish domains, but the Sunnis aren't going to put up a fight. Then, too, there are other groups fighting with ISIS, such as militias led by former Baathists. It is unlikely that ISIS will be able to effectively govern any of the cities they have taken once the in-fighting within the coalition begins.
Obama has rightly conditioned aid on measures to being the Sunnis back into the governing coalition, although it is probably too late for this to work. But the situation is not of Obama's making and he is not in a position to do much to fix it either.
kentuck
(111,102 posts)However, how about tomorrow? Will he stick to his guns?