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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (803486)	8/24/2014 1:21:22 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583407

>> No, Iraq today is not "solely" a result of the Iraq War, but if you don't think the Iraq War played a BIG part in the result then you must be very naïve. No, I firmly believe that the Iraq War shifted a lot, with the reasonable anticipation that we would have leadership afterward to deal with the residual issues. That didn't happen. Had we had decent leadership for the last six years, the entire Middle East would look a lot better than the way it looks today, and the outcome might well have been radically different. When Obama blew it with the Iranian Uprisings, it was clear he was ill equipped to be managing foreign policy for the country. Now, one can readily say, "Obama had no commitment to Bush's 'Freedom Agenda', and there is no reason for him to have pursued it." However, even if the Bush Freedom Agenda were back-burnered by Obama, when you have a popular uprising in Iran you don't just sit on your hands. A year later came the "Arab Spring" -- exactly what Bush had hoped for with the Iraq War -- that people would be sick of dictatorship and try to choose freedom for themselves. Dictators were overthrown and major protests occurred in no fewer than 10 Middle East states. It is a lot to discount the role of the Freedom Agenda in that process. You can't do it. Yet, Obama stood idly by and watched, in some cases working against people who were fighting for their freedom. They had every reason to expect the US to stand behind them. After all, we encouraged it. Had ANYONE else been president, these outcomes likely would have been better. But we foolishly elected a man who had no substantive experience -- not only in foreign policy, but in ANYTHING. It was Chauncey Gardner at the helm. And it was a missed opportunity we may not see again for decades.