What is that supposed to mean? Al Baghdadi al Bakr escaped a Bush controlled Iraqi prison and founded the IS waaay before Obama ever took office. Who cares what the fuck their name is.
Or we could just lose another 5,000 soldiers (of which your valliant ass will not be among them) to keep ISIS down until we EVENTUALLY leave and then they rise up anyway.
He wasn't the first leader. The group started in the late 1990's in Jordan with the goal of overthrowing King Hussein and taking over. Then they showed up in Iraq and attacked the Jordanian embassy, then a UN building, and then they started blowing up Shiites.
This I highly doubt, you might as well just say they began in 630s with Mohammed. Ideology is not the only unifying factor. Al Baghdadi, the current Caliph, began his tirade around 2006/2007. That's a good enough start date for the state he currently rules.
You're new here, so a couple of things: First, welcome. Second, there's only one rational response to a gturner post (aside from treating it as white noise), and that is:
He took over from the Z man, who essentially drowned in his own fluids after we hit his hideout with a smart bomb. Z-man built the organization from nothing until the force it became in 2006 or so, peaking around 2007 and getting crushed back into almost nothing by 2010. The goal from the outset was to build a caliphate, originally in Jordan but almost anywhere would do.
That's simplistic to the point of childishness. After we and the Sunni Tribesmen pushed them out of Iraq they fled to Syria, slowly rebuilding. By the time the Syrian Civil War kicked off they were in a position to exploit the situation. If you want to throw blame at Obama for ISIS this is actually the fuck up, not being decisive enough with Syria. Should have listened to Hillary and moved in early and with force, even if just Special Operations and drones. Anyway, exploited the chaos to establish a powerbase in Syria. From there they exploited the schism in Iraqi society and weakness of their security forces, to roll through Sunni Iraq. This goes back to Bush STUPIDLY disbanding the Iraqi military. Biggest strategic blunder of the entire fucking war. Everything goes back that. Remember that early on we actually WERE treated as liberators. It took a good year of chaos to set in before the Iraqi people realized we didn't have a fucking clue and so turned on us. Anyway, disbanding the military and trying to build it back from scratch = Epic Fail. Got even worse after the elections. Muktada al-Sadr was part of the ruling coalition and merged JAM (Jaish al Mahdi - Mahdi Army) into the security forces. Cowards, thugs and criminals. Worthless. We had a standing policy that no Iraqi soldier was to be left alone in a room, lest they start stealing/raping/killing etc. The way to calm people down during night raids was Themallah, Jundi Amerikee (calm of God be with you, American soldiers). They were so happy it was us and not their own military as they knew we weren't going to be assholes. On patrol they were all gaggle fucked, joking and smoking, then as soon as a shot rang out they were high tailing it the other direction. That's the fucking Army we were supposed to 'support'. So what'd we do? We went around the bastards. We reached out directly to the Sunnis and paid them to turn from ISI and fight for us. We paid their wages ourselves. And they were good fighters. Actually had NCOs worth a shit (most were either ex-Saddam Army or had been trained by them). But then al-Maliki threw a bitch fit about us paying fighters in his country and sovereignty and all that shit so along with the SOFA saying we had to get out Bush also agreed that we would pay the Iraqi government and they would pay the Sunnis and would integrate them into the military. Well that didn't happen, so when everything went fucking down and ISIS came back, the shit Iraqi Army fled, the Sunnis said fuck it, leave us alone and we don't really care, the Kurds fought back. And now we are where we are. The new Shia PM is promising to reform (and has actually started to, kicking out some of the old partisan Shias, like Maliki last week). We'll see how they handle negotiating with the Sunnis. Either they'll work something out and together push out ISI or Iraq breaks up along sectarian lines and the US works with the Kurds and Turks to squeeze ISIS on our own. Not sure which is the better outcome at this point.
Why hasn't ISIS invaded Jordan then? I don't think you actually know much about the middle east, you throw around unrelated characters as if they are all part of the exact same plot. Explain why ISIS picks the battles it does and why it is in Libya and Sinai but not Lebanon or Yemen.
@garamet, one of the reasons new people don't stay is that as soon as they arrive, everybody here starts bad mouthing everyone who's already here, convincing newcomers that they've landed in a forum full of angry, crazy people. Very few people would actually tolerate the way conversations go on this board. Heck, just today I changed my bank passwords because I was worried about getting hacked by someone here. People shouldn't have to worry about things like that.
Not really comparable as after only a few years both the governments and people of those nations supported the US presence and there was no active insurgency of any scale. Vietnam is probably a better comparison in terms of long term troop presence.
Don't get me wrong, I'll try to respect the rules, but I'm a troll. I like the vigor. Don't use internet banking. It's too easy to be hacked ANYWAY. Wanna know one way? I can set-up a pineapple and pretend to be a wifi access point you trust and just get all your passwords that way. Or if you check it from Starbucks I'm already on the network you trust...and I steal them that way. Best to do banking face to face.
To some of the leadership, it was the same plot. Wage jihad and establish a caliphate where ever they can. They're chasing opportunities as they present themselves, rebranding, merging, shifting from country to country, exploiting situations that exist or creating situations they can exploit. Al Maliki wanted a significant troop presence, as did most of the Iraqi parliament. They all have enemies and we were good at making sure those enemies didn't take over. But what we ended up offering was a tiny token force that could barely handle embassy security, and nobody was willing to take the political hit for supporting a force that couldn't accomplish anything or significantly train the Iraqi army, or keep it restrained.
This is a complete Republican lie. Maliki virtually threw the US out, he didn't want to powershare with Sunnis and Iran is a better supporter and willing to continue fighting for Baghdad.
"Maliki wants us to stick around because he does not see a future in Iraq otherwise. I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA.” - Joe Biden, Obama's point man on Iraq.
Nah. Some less savory strong-man than Saddam Hussein could have ended up in charge or Iraq could have ended up being a stable Iranian client state. There are other possibilities, some of them better and some of them worse than the current state of affairs; none of them, of course, are better than the plausible results of not having invaded Iraq, and it was always the case that a longer occupation most likely meant a less stable and less desirable situation upon leaving.
I'd say it's more about having them close by in case the shit hits the fan in Southeast Asia somewhere.
Might be. Might not be. But in 2011, Syria became the go-to point for crazies of all flags and colors. Right now it's kinda libertarian wonderland where everybody including the 'government' is completely free to kill whoever they like. The living proof, btw, is 15 kilometers from where I live in the form of Austria's only refugee processing center.
It would be a very perverse libertarian who was okay with killing people for no highly compelling reason.
Well, it depends how much killing people pays. Are we talking a low-wage shit job where you have to bash their skull in and also have to bury them, or is it a highly paid button-pushing job with good benefits? ISIS has some pretty sweet perks, including free goats on Ramadan, low cost sex slaves, a share of all loot, and the authority to shoot people in the face or string them up in the town square. I think where they're weak is their retirement plan, though that may not be an issue because their membership will have a pretty short lifespan.
It would be a very perverse libertarian who was okay with with a powerful enough government enacting and backing sufficient laws and regulations to prevent someone else on the power ladder from being free to kill whoever they like. Libertarianism is, generously speaking, a state of extreme paranoia about government power coupled with the failure to recognize that entities not generally considered "government" have power over people's lives.
Haven't met a libertarian yet who objects to laws against murder or to a state powerful enough to enforce them. And let's not go down the "libertarians are anarchists" rabbit hole again; that's tiresome. Probably looks that way to anyone on the extreme left whose faith in government is religious in character, especially given the massive empirical evidence provided by the 20th Century. Y'all are still convinced that your power cult will work out as long as the right high priests are in charge.
Anc, that is exactly what I remember the Iraqi National Guard being like and you pretty much wrote what I would have written about my Iraq experience.
He cares a great deal about names. Just ask him about civil rights and the Democrats and Republicans. He thinks today's parties hold the same values as those from the 1860s.
"Slipping across the border" would imply a one-time event. That border is beyond Swiss cheese - a border in name only. I'm not blaming Bush or Obama - the US should have thought it through before ever setting foot over there. Newsflash - another country ending in "stan" borders it. They might not "have your back" & "be on the same page" as we are, which was a big fucking surprise to nobody.
In addition to what's already been posted, I would say the major difference is those countries don't rely on US forces to provide internal security.
