NYTimes ISIS Editorial

Yup. That Baron sure has things figured out. If the US didn't exist, the Middle East would be a bastion of calm civility.

 

Why don't we ask the Iranians how they felt about the Shah?

 

No, it wasn't perfectly stable. But it wasn't the mess it is now.

Once again, besides putting our soldiers at risk, what alternatives are there?

 

It wasn't? Ever?

 

If it was so terrible back then, why weren't we greeted as liberators?

 

Yeah, maybe. Oh well. The Watchmen have their bad days.

 

A dictatorship in one hand...

...A murderous group of terrorist poser punks in the other...

Kinda sucked on both sides of the second invasion.

But, obviously, the second invasion invited chaos to the party. Of course it did. And unless we had planned on treating Iraq like a colony - which also would have turned out poorly eventually - this was all inevitable.

 

There was no ISIS before we invaded Iraq. In fact, there was no radical Islam terrorist presence at all in Iraq before we invaded. And there'd be no ISIS in Iraq today if we hadn't invaded. It was our own monumentally fucked up foreign policy mistakes that created the power vacuum that enabled ISIS to emerge. Yeah, things have always been bad in that region, but our own astoundingly misguided (and illegal) Iraq intervention only made them far worse.

 

Of course Saddam's sons were more batshit insane than the old man so I'm sure things would just be peachy now if they were still around.

 

Saddam's crazy sons cared about screwing women, fancy cars and living the high power high life on the home front. But they did not give the first flaming shit about Islam, or Isamo-terrorism, or essentially anything that happened outside Iraq's borders. Hell, Al Qaeda hated them nearly as much as us. Don't know exactly how things would be if they were still around, but I've no doubt it'd be safer for us and the world overall.

 

So you were pretty close friends with them I take it?

 

Baron, I'd really appreciate it if your responded too, or cited something from, the Times editorial in one of your responses.

As much as I appreciate reading your regurgitated talking points, none of them are in response to the Times editorial, or my questions about it.

I have to wonder if you even read the editorial.

The Times mentions the breakdown in local authority. They call ISIS a threat to humanity. They say they have to be stopped. The only military pressure it talks about is "from the West".

And, all it calls for is for us to not relent what is a failing effort.

Does that make sense to you?

It's like they know that only an increase in US military action can stop this threat to humanity. Yet, the Times is so against US military, they can't bring themselves to call for it.