You are (unsurprisingly) missing the point. If you blow up a damn, all the water behind it will flow out and flood areas downriver. If you don’t maintain a dam, it may break; it may not.
Yep, realized that just now as I reread it. That’s what I get for posting while distracted.
We all understand that you don’t like what happened. I think you owe the class an explanation of what you think should have happened.
Do you think that the U.S. should have kept thousands to tens of thousands of troops in Iraq past 2011, knowing that these troops would have no legal protection against arbitrary arrest by a truly awful Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki?
You’re British, right? Seems to me you guys had a hand in things, too.
The parts of the “Did US create ISIS” question I am wanting to figure out are: Did the US let them rise to power purposely knowing that they would become a threat to surround countries which would force them to buy more US military weapons which ultimately helps raise the US GDP. (I’m also wondering other things like how much of the US GDP is from selling weapons is it a major source of jobs and income for the US. And is the real reason why the US is in the middle east to keeping a perpetual war going on so it can sell arms. If not why is the US in the Middle East, can’t it buy all its oil from other countries?
– also, question on the side, Russia zoomed in after paris attacks and bombed ISIS and their oil, but the US did not jump in and do the same thing- another reason leading me to be US did not want ISIS to be gone.
No, that’s a crazy hypothesis. The United States chose not to bomb Sunni militants in eastern Iraq early last year because they didn’t want to lend support to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s corrupt regime that heavily favored the Shia majority and discriminated against the Sunni minority. Few, if any, people could have foreseen the consequent rapid ascendency of ISIL there. With hindsight, I’m sure the US would have been more pro-active in preventing ISIL’s military successes and begun airstrikes on them earlier than August 2014.
Maybe you didn’t hear about the 219 Russian civilians killed when an ISIL-affiliate group brought down an airliner on 31st October 2015 with a bomb. In any case, the US have been bombing ISIL in Syria since September 2014, while the Russians only started bombing there a year later in September 2015 and, certainly before the airliner was brought down, were more focused on bombing non-ISIL anti-Assad rebels.
The US didn’t need to “jump in” because we were already in. No one has bombed Da-esh more then the US. We are the bombingest country on the face of the earth, and no one is going to wrest us from the podium, goddammit!!!
Yes. By toppling Saddam.
I blame the Akkadians.
The Vikings spawned the Norse men who thoughtlessly invaded England who carelessly started the United States, so lay the blame properly.
Pocahontas should have let John Smith die. She certainly shares part of the blame, too.
It’s all God’s fault.
Except of course we basically didn’t get involved for the first 3 years of the Syrian civil war.
I’m no hawk, and I’m not saying we necessarily should have got involved, and I’m certainly not saying that bombing is often or usually the solution.
But ISTM the anti-war side want to have their cake and eat it in threads like this: We can petition for the troops to come home from Iraq at the earliest opportunity, protest against any involvement in Syria, and sleep sound even as pretty much the worst-case scenario happens, safe in the knowledge that whatever happens there is dick cheney’s fault forevermore.
The invasion of Iraq was retarded. But more proximal events and decisions have contributed too.
The population was either side of 50/50 but that was based on Blair’s false claims and bogus evidence
Otherwise, absolutely. But I’m not trying to shy away from that by pretending creating a vacuum didn’t cause ISIS.
It’s the mooslims. They made Bush do it. They refused to admit WMD.
How much blame for ISIL do you assign to the Arab Spring? After all, it was pretty much ordinary Syrians, not AQI, that started the revolt against Assad that led to the civil war. That civil war created a distinct power vacuum in Syria, which has been filled by myriad opposition groups, from moderate to insane.
So the Arab Spring is to blame, too, right?
So, just asking here, if this little referendum decides that the US (by design or accident) created ISIS, what then? We just say, hey, it’s our fault so we’ll just have to take our lumps, or what?
It’s a civil war in which the already developed ISIS saw opportunity.
Gah - you have no idea what you’re talking about. AQI sort of existed, at least on paper, before the Iraq invasion. In the mid-2000s, its strength grew by leaps and bounds until the Sunni Awakening. At that point, it was a pretty banged up bunch. It wasn’t until late 2013-early 2014 that they started rebuilding to tens of thousands of members.
Calling ISIL “already developed” in 2011 is the type of statement I expect from someone with an ax to grind, as opposed to someone trying to figure out what actually happened. I flaky expect that you think the US is to blame for anything you find distasteful. Am I right?
Spellcheck can do some weird shit, man!