More GOP Blame Game

Reading the comments re: the horror story unfolding in Paris, and fielding the stray thoughts as they arise in response to some of the utter drivel being written.

In no particular order: Those who are advocating all out "war on Isis", seem to have little or no concept of the difference between this lamentable situation and a "conventional" (for want of a better word) war. Of course they are appalled, as are we all, that the events in Paris happened, considering as we all do, that the dead and injured were/are "innocent civilians." What seems to pass unnoticed is the realization that any purely military effort to eliminate the threat of ISIS' terrorism will surely involve the death of not 150 civilians, but more like thousands of men women and children, whose only crime is living in a city occupied by ISIS forces.

In the minds of these persons, that's acceptable collateral damage because, well, because they're Muslims. I find the most amazing contradiction in the minds of those whose strenuous Christianity impels them to think and act in a most decidedly unchristian-like manner. These persons, many of whom insist on the continued existence of Israel as a state, as pre-requisite for establishing the conditions for the "second coming," should actually be hoping that if there was or is a Jesus who is a God and he comes back, and holds mankind accountable for moral behavior as he defined it, they are in trouble.

Finally: There is much delusional denial among those who supported the Bush desert adventure (The son's, not the father's) as to W's culpability and/or or share of the responsibility for the current situation. The argument goes along the lines of completely denying that the Iraq invasion was unjustified, and that when Bush left office Iraq had a stable central government and a viable military. Of course recent events put the lie to both statements, but these geopolitical naïf's continue, blaming President Obama for complying with Bush's withdrawal agreement. What is far less understood is really the "story behind the story" of the immense failure to rebuild civilian controlled military authority in Iraq. While it was a daunting task in any event, considering the millennium plus of sectarian strife in the region, the Bush administration by total failure to understand the culture and history of the parties involved, made it impossible.

Letting W, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowicz off the hook sounds good to GOP ers, but it simply isn't true.

Assuming we all agree that W's invasion of Iraq destabilized the region (really non-debatable) The issue then became "How do we reconstruct Iraq?" Remember, how many times Bush said categorically that we weren't going to get involved in "nation building?"

The initial choice to head that process, General Jay Garner, was bright enough to know that we had to incorporate and use former police and military personnel, especially those with education, in any reconstructed central authority. He proceeded upon that course, realizing that many of the former Iraqi military were no more in love with Saddam then we were. This, however was not "punitive" (for want of a better word) enough for Wolfowitz, Cheney, and especially Rumsfeld, at whose insistence, W replaced the administrator with another who alienated the former security forces and police, summarily making them unemployed and angry.


Paul Bremer, a civilian whose only former overseas assignment of stature was in Norway (that hotbed of unrest) was that guy. As the top civilian administrator of the former Coalition Provisional Authority, Bremer was permitted to rule by decree. Among his first and most notable decrees were Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 1, which banned the Ba'ath party in all forms and Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2 dismantled the Iraqi Army. In 2014 he called for "a reconstituted Iraqi army". The issue, of course was that all the real army guys with experience were forbidden from having any role in the process. The result haunts us today.

       As much as GOPers would love to absolve Bush 43 and his cohort, it is historically unjustified. Alternately, these people immediately somehow blame the current administration for this. The theme seems to go that instead of holding individuals accountable for their actions, we should have, all along, been blaming an entire religion and its adherents. The closest analogy I can come up with would be to hold the Pope accountable for the hatred spewed by the Westboro Baptist Church, or holding all Christians accountable for Hitler's atrocities.

     The real tragedy is that ISIS, as much as anything arose from Western efforts to overthrow, or enable the overthrow of the brutal Assad regime in Syria. It was the Syrian uprising (a nation where we had zero troops, (zip, nada, none ) which triggered the following chain of events: As the last Americans left Iraq, the uprising in Syria pitted the country’s vast Sunni majority against the ruthless regime of Bashar al-Assad. There was little or no reliable intel to have predicted this upheaval, but Syria rapidly dissolved into anarchy. At this point, had President Obama actually tried to re-insert troops in Iraq, he'd have probably been impeached!

     Desperate and seeing an opportunity, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, dispatched a handful of soldiers to Syria, where, in a matter of months, they had gathered an army of followers and had begun attacking the Assad regime. Suddenly, Baghdadi’s group—which had been staggering toward the grave only months before—was regaining strength. In 2013, the I.S.I. became the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria. ISIS was born. hey were/are a self created group, born of a singularity, but a weak Iraq created the nursery. Imagine if the (at least) 800,000 out of work Iraqi police and military who now hated the USA had been reincorporated into the Army of a strong Iraq. Sad, really, isn't it?