The turnover of Iraq to Iran continues apace;
A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 63 people and injuring almost 200 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country.
The blasts also came on the heels of a political crisis between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite factions that erupted this weekend.
The political spat has raised fears that Iraq’s sectarian wounds will be reopened during a fragile time when Iraq is finally navigating its own political future without U.S. military support.
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
How to win the war in Iraq? Stand back and let them kill each other.
agreed.. Off topic .. Sorry Kate.. Tommy Robinson was attacked yesterday.. Story at Gates of Vienna.
Who knew peace would kill so many people?
I dislike Obama as much as anyone, but my understanding of the SOFA required the US to leave.
The Iraqi government would not grant immunity to US forces so keeping them there was not an option. Did Bambam mess up the negotiations about immunity, I don’t know. Maybe someone could provide more info.
mike
Sectarian violence eh?..go figure…
Damn that Kenyan Nazi Commie for invading Iraq, looking for weapons of mass distruction after Saudi terrorists based in Germany knocked down the World Trade Center. How dare he declare “Mission Accomplished!” and then continue to occupy that country for years. Oh, wait…
On the bright side, stuff is blowing up all over the place in Iran too. So the much feared takeover of Iraq by Iran will look more like two mugged drunks trying to hold each other up.
Still, if the idiots are just going to go at each other as soon as the grownups leave, it would have been cheaper to do that ten years ago.
Colonialism is expensive!
I had no Idea that Obama let this happen. How powerful is the President of the US that they can soothe the hearts of the savage beast by quoting Lincoln and stopping Muslims in their tracks. I don’t remember W exercising this magic power much. Ideas of American power are vastly over rated, especially when everyone in charge hasn’t the least notion of the world outside of America. America still relies on Muslims to tell it how to please Muslims. No one should be that stupid that long unless you are hopelessly compromised and infiltrated.
The Phantom
“On the bright side, stuff is blowing up all over the place in Iran too. So the much feared takeover of Iraq by Iran will look more like two mugged drunks trying to hold each other up.
Still, if the idiots are just going to go at each other as soon as the grownups leave, it would have been cheaper to do that ten years ago. Colonialism is expensive!”
Precisely mine own sentiment….
Once again the Kurds are caught in the middle….
“Once again the Kurds are caught in the middle….
Posted by: sasquatch at December 22, 2011 11:09 PM”
I believe the Kurds are busy burning Christian businesses and clubs.
BL@KBIRD “I believe the Kurds are busy burning Christian businesses and clubs.”
The Kurds helped out the Turks by ridding the world of those pesky Armenians and Assyrians. Apparently they have a place in their heart for Christians. I’m sorry, the Turks say it never happened.
Sasquatch said: “Once again the Kurds are caught in the middle….”
Maybe we could make a whole bunch of cheap crappy guns and sell them to those guys, eh? Worked for the Russians…
How to keep Muslims happy? Give them someone to kill.
I don’t buy that the Iraqi government really wanted the US out. This was about Obama’s election checklist of “accomplishments”. Problem is, like always it will “blow up” in his face “unexpectedly”.
The Kurds are caught in the middle again because the Turks , the Shia and the suuni all hate them. They are much like the “Roma” or what we perceive as the Gypsies. The possible saving grace for them is that the Suuni and Shiites hate each other more and may leave them alone for a while. The USA needs Turkey a lot more than it needs the Kurds so I doubt if the Kurds will get a lot of help from the west.Or the east,north or south. Their best bet is to try and form a alliance with the Sunni , which is also in danger of being eliminated. This conflict was inevitable once the USA pulled out but I thought it would be at least a couple of weeks before they were at each others throat. Guess bringing them democracy could be filed under FAIL. Over 800 billion. Over 4500 deaths on our side and over 30 000 wounded not counting the thousands who will never be the same mentally. For what?. For the oil that China will eventually get. I fully support our troops but the doddering idiots that sent them in there without a exit strategy should be strung up by the nuts. Afghanistan is the same can of worms and will have the same result. Also for what?. The only winner in all of this is the Industrial military complex that made billions in profit and thrives on brainwashed politicians.
Re: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lybia, Egypt – Burn baby Burn!! No one with the patience to put out the fire now.
peterj – It would be fine to send troops into almost any area if, and only if, the generals are in charge, not the politicians. They can win if they are allowed to do what they do best which is to kill people and break things. They cannot win if they have one hand tied behind their backs and have to appologize forever for collateral damage. (Is there a term for collateral damage in the middle east where they are evacuating/surrendering today?) Just askin’.
@ Mike
The immunity was the excuse both sides needed to end this failed love affair. Since when did a conquering army need immunity from prosecution ? We owned Iraq but didn’t know what to do with it. The bright sparks in the suits finally realized there was no end to this war and another 8 years looked like the last 8 years. Unpopular and unaffordable. Muslims and democracy are like oil and water. Incompatible. Nouri al malikij the president of Iraq is actually a Kurd who thinks he will gain favor with the Shiite majority by being instrumental in sending the USA home. He is wrong and I hope he realizes his life is in great danger. The bloodbath has already begun and wont end until the Shia have complete control. The only thing Obama wanted was to get out, against the wishes of his generals who knew it would all fall apart. Bragging rights for the coming election. There never was a exit strategy and no light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t think Obama realized how quickly things would fall apart but he will still spin it as some kind of victory. He will blame it on Bush like everything else.
@ CRB
Agree 100 %. Generals thinking is we can’t win their hearts and minds. Let us conquer the damned country. Politicians thinking is, lets bring them democracy and they will learn to love us. Generals one, shit for brains zero. I tried to find one case in history where politicians won a war. No luck unless Generals were there first to lay the groundwork by beating the snot out of the enemy. Winning hearts and minds always came after they were too weak to get back up.
Well, to the people on the political discussion forums I used to frequent in 2002/2003, I was right. When the US was was ramping up for the invasion of Iraq in 2002, I was totally against this enterprise as I thought this could only benefit Iran. My primary argument was that the US has no staying power and that it would leave Iraq when it was politically convenient for some idiot POTUS to do so. I was roundly attacked for my opinion at that time. It’s interesting that David Hackworth was also totally against the invasion of Iraq in 2002.
Once the US invaded Iraq, and rolled over the incompetent Iraqi military, I had no choice but to support the troops and hoped that maybe this time US intervention would be different. With GWB in power, the US prevailed and, despite the massive screwups by the US like having no plan of what to do after they totally defeated the Iraqi military, they managed to bring into existence a democratic state in Iraq.
From a strategic perspective, the US should have maintained a heavy military presence in Iraq regardless of what the Iraqi’s thought as having US troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan would make the Iranians think twice before they tried anything. I’m sure that the Kurds would have been happy to have 100,000 or so American troops stationed in their territory.
By leaving Iraq now, they’ve betrayed the Kurds and Sunnis who have become allied with the US. It’s a constant theme in US foreign policy to abandon its friends and leave them at the mercy of enemies that only US power held in check. I have no idea whether the Kurds and Sunnis can form an alliance against the Shias of Iraq. Any conflict in Iraq is much to Irans liking. While Saddam Hussein is much better off dead, he was what kept Iran in check. Now Iran is free to expand into Iraq and it’s going to cost a lot more American lives if the new islamofascist state has to be re-invaded.
Nothing shows up the idiocy of TOTUS more than the action of withdrawing US troops from Iraq. The cost of liberating Iraq to the US was huge when one considers that the US has an all volunteer military and each US military death is probably the equivalent of 10-20 dead conscripts.
About 5years ago I spent an evening at a social function in Edmonton talking with an Iraqi Kurd. There is no doubt in my mind that the Kurds have spent the time from the end of the war till now preparing a defense of their quasi autonomy. They trust no one around them! Initially they were very pro-USA but have come to realize that they are pawns on a bigger stage. Make no mistake they are an united people.
Mike, Senator McCain gave an interview on Fox a few days ago in which he stressed that the failure to reach a SOFA agreements was due to Obama’s negotiators. As for Iraq; like post WW2 Europe it required US forces to protect it and nurture it, end of story. Obama wanted to diminish the US and he is succeeding.
I wonder how his supporters will react when they discover that peace and prosperity are a result of US moral and physical dominance rather than a natural condition of man? My guess, they’ll blame Bush.
Those “sectarian wounds” are yawning chasms with long and bloody histories. A band-aid ain’t gonna gut it, Doctor.
Obamba is going to have more Nobel Peace Prizes than anyone in history if he keeps it up.
He’ll be able to give them away as door prizes at the next Whitehouse Motown party, after he gets back from vacation in Hawaii again.
At least the Iraqi’s must be digg’n “the change they can believe in”.
@ Loki
Of course you are correct. I think the biggest mistake we continually make is presuming that politicians that plan and impliment these ventures are actually intelligent enough to know what they are doing. Often they are not and get their advice from people with a vested interest in financial gain or warhawks that live for chaos. As a citizen all one can do is support our troops even when one can see the stupidity and long term implications of a misguided venture with little hope of a happy ending. To speak against is to be unpatriotic. Frustrating. Afghanistan is next on the list of wasted lives, money and effort.
@ Loki
I do have one different take on what you said in:
“they managed to bring into existence a democratic state in Iraq”.
This was forced on them and now that we have pulled out I doubt if it will take a month to revert to their old way of killing off the opposition and dumping any pretense of democracy.
Funny thing is, this pullout happened exactly as W had originally scheduled, so… Bush must be working with the Iranians! Right Kate? Because if you don’t a coddled whiny protectorate like post-WW2 Europe in your hands, you must handing it off to [insert today’s menace].