Tuesday, November 17, 2015

History Is Written By The Winners...And Erased By The Wingers



For all the blood-drunk howlers frantic to somehow pin the Paris tragedy on the Kenyan Usurper, their hardest job is trying to bray loud enough so that everyone forgets just how ISIS got started...

First, Bush Administration policies created ISIS:
The hidden hand behind the Islamic State militants? Saddam Hussein’s.

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’| This is part of an occasional series about the militant group Islamic State and its violent collision with the United States and others intent on halting the group’s rapid rise.
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The de-Baathification law promulgated by L.­ Paul Bremer, Iraq’s American ruler in 2003, has long been identified as one of the contributors to the original insurgency. At a stroke, 400,000 members of the defeated Iraqi army were barred from government employment, denied pensions — and also allowed to keep their guns.

The U.S. military failed in the early years to recognize the role the disbanded Baathist officers would eventually come to play in the extremist group, eclipsing the foreign fighters whom American officials preferred to blame, said Col. Joel Rayburn, a senior fellow at the National Defense University who served as an adviser to top generals in Iraq and describes the links between Baathists and the Islamic State in his book, “Iraq After America.”

The U.S. military always knew that the former Baathist officers had joined other insurgent groups and were giving tactical support to the Al Qaeda in Iraq affiliate, the precursor to the Islamic State, he said. But American officials didn’t anticipate that they would become not only adjuncts to al-Qaeda, but core members of the jihadist group.

“We might have been able to come up with ways to head off the fusion, the completion of the Iraqization process,” he said. The former officers were probably not reconcilable, “but it was the labeling of them as irrelevant that was the mistake.”
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And then the Bush Administration's hand-picked puppet government gave ISIS their direction and focus:
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Some of them had fought against al-Qaeda after changing sides and aligning with the American-backed Awakening movement during the surge of troops in 2007. When U.S. troops withdrew and the Iraqi government abandoned the Awakening fighters, the Islamic State was the only surviving option for those who felt betrayed and wanted to change sides again, said Brian Fishman, who researched the group in Iraq for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and is now a fellow with the New America Foundation.

Among them was Brig. Gen. Hassan Dulaimi, a former intelligence officer in the old Iraqi army who was recruited back into service by U.S. troops in 2006, as a police commander in Ramadi, the capital of the long restive province of Anbar.

Within months of the American departure, he was dismissed, he said, losing his salary and his pension, along with 124 other officers who had served alongside the Americans.

“The crisis of ISIS didn’t happen by chance,” Dulaimi said in an interview in Baghdad, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “It was the result of an accumulation of problems created by the Americans and the [Iraqi] government.”
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Yes, it was the administration of Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hasan al-Maliki which both drove its own countrymen into the arms of ISIS and showed its American benefactors the door.

So how the Hell did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq?

Fareed Zakaria: Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assist from George W. Bush
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But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq? He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expert Tom Ricks called “the worst war plan in American history” — the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.

If the Bush administration deserves a fair share of blame for “losing Iraq,” what about the Obama administration and its decision to withdraw American forces from the country by the end of 2011? I would have preferred to see a small American force in Iraq to try to prevent the country’s collapse. But let’s remember why this force is not there. Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here’s what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: “It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. 1 demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them.” He reminded me that Maliki spent 24 years in exile, most of them in Tehran and Damascus, and his party was funded by Iran for most of its existence. And in fact, Maliki’s government has followed policies that have been pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian.
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Like the Cornerstone Speech and the details of the various Traitor States' articles of secession, I find it handy to have these these bits of historical fact in my back pocket  at all times.  Not that history and facts ever changed the mind of a committed wingut, but I have found that when confronted immediately with the knowledge that you are onto their bullshit, it often shuts them down mid-rant, after which they skulk away and go looking for a less informed citizen at which to blather.  

7 comments:

bowtiejack said...

Conservatism can never fail, it can only repeatedly fuck us over.


Anonymous said...

Good to have it confirmed that the Bush gang f'd up the whole Iraq thing in pretty much every way they possibly could. I blame Obama.

bluicebank said...

Yeah, Drift, I hear you. I still have the old bookmarks that I assembled regarding the Great Clusterfuck, to use as primary source material against the knuckle-draggers. I was young, and still thought that reasoning from known facts would win the day.

And then it got worse, when I had to remind the Los Angeles Times of their own reporting on the run-up to the Iraq invasion, when that once great newspaper started saying that no one could have predicted. And some dead-tree edition letters-editor actually published my letter that pointed out that the LAT caught the lying fuckers lying.

And then things got worse, no matter what the facts were.

Robt said...

Very appropriate is the photo of "Mission Accomplished".
Very concise accounting of the ISIS creation. How did you get that in so few words?
Why cable media lets the GOP obscure and avoid an account as yours and many on Iraq and Afghanistan. America has been put on the hook for GW and Cheney's superior race conquests.
The neocons and their PNAC. Never took the time to understand how Iran arrived at it's own predicament with the assistance of the Western imperial nation building. My how Vietnam has become the spitting image of America!

Currently, the GOP candidate rial of Obama's failure in France. Conservative now have an affection for France. Will they embrace the Frenchy Secretary of State John Kerry now?
The
IIt is like Sheldon Adelson told the GOP to smear his shit in their hair because, Sheldon's shit does not smell (so Sheldon says). This way the GOP doesn't stick so bad when Sheldon has to give them orders in private.

The party of self reliance, small or no Government. Government cannot do anything right is now howling at the shit in their hair that they can keep me and you safe. That we need to rely on government (with the GOP in charge) OF COURSE.
What did Netanyahu do about this? Why doesn't Netanyahu step up?
The GOP can hand over the U.S. House of Representatives for BeBe to slander America's current president. Hial BeBe. Netanyahu the Magnificent!
I would rather the Congress call Veteran after Veteran to lecture or tell their stories. One after another while the GOP sits and listens as they did with BeBe. Maybe one of the GOP could interrupt a Veteran and call him a liar. Just to keep it real.

We saw the reports of ISIS killing rampage.
We see the reports of fleeing refugees to Europe and elsewhere.
We see the refugee dilemma of people of these countries with so many fleeing.

I ask you, is it possible ISIS is using this outbreak of attacks as in France. To feed the flames of fear. Fear of the refugees. Sending them back to the slaughter at the hands of ISIS?
Do the pro lifers send pregnant refugee women (the unborn) to their deaths?


What I will not ever hear from the War mongering GOP who seems to be in the no thought sick'em mode.
They will never raise taxes prior to war to pay for it and to fund the V.A. for those that do return and in need.

Grung_e_Gene said...

ISIS is the unholy muslim love child of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Don't forget Zbigniew Brzezinski. IIRC, the "brilliant" idea to cultivate jihadis as pawns to use against the USSR, and later Russia, came from that guy.

Cinesias said...

Shorter version:

Iraq was a secular dictatorship under Hussein.

After Bush II took Hussein out, and disbanded the army, the Sunnis took their guns, and bided their time. They fought for whomever gave them a paycheck, whether it was the US during the surge, or Daesh now. Bush II then signed the US-Iraq Status of Forces agreement to pull out almost all US soldiers by Dec. 31, 2011. It was a binding agreement, and even though Obama tried, he couldn't get permission to keep US soldiers in Iraq.

And now, Daesh pays Sunnis to carry their flag.

Thanks, Bush II.