08-12-2016, 04:24 PM
Quote:I forgot about how gung-ho the entire country was to remain in Iraq after 7 years of occupying that country based on lies.Whatever mess Obama inherited in the Middle East was only further destabilized by his administration's ineptitude. They totally misread the Arab Spring, encouraging it to happen, and then not knowing what to do once the Muslim Brotherhood took over and they discovered they were no better than the Taliban, and less tolerant than the regime they replaced. When people marched in the streets to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Obama administration continued to back them up until the military took over.
Thanks for setting me straight.
The whole thing in the middle east is a total cluster.
But your position appears to be that it's all President Obama's fault. If that is your position, you are so blinded by hatred that you have destroyed you ability to understand the world as it is.
So, is Isis all President Obama's fault, fbt?
In Libya, Obama/Clinton actively worked to undermine Gaddafi to facilitate an overthrow hoping the Arab Spring would sweep through there and bring about regime change. Once again, they didn't have the forethought to consider what would replace Gaddafi, who, at the time of his overthrow was more or less working as an informant in the Middle East for the United States. He had given up his WMD programs and had been working to normalize relations with the United States for almost a decade. In 2009, he started to make noise that the normalization had suddenly stopped. New administration had taken over, and they were clearly taking things in a different direction. 2 years later, he's overthrown, murdered, and the country is thrown into a state of turmoil. But, it was celebrated by Clinton with her famous "We came, we saw, he died!" comment despite the fact that we were already deploying Obama's new "Lead from behind" strategy.
What destabilizing Libya did was create an opportunity for the Obama administration to confiscate weapons caches in Libya, and then use them to arm rebels in Syria (and eventually rebels in Libya who murdered 4 Americans using said weapons), to overthrow Assad because, well, overthrowing governments in the region had been so gosh darned successful already, so why stop? Once again, without any forethought about the potential consequences, they went about trying to overthrow Assad. The only problem was, the proxy war we were fighting hit a bit of a speed bump when they realized Assad didn't have a problem slaughtering his own people, and he had no stomach for ISIS. So, Obama drew a line in the sand. They crossed it, so he wagged a finger and drew another line in the sand. All the while, Russia was gaining more and more of a foothold in Syria, helping to root out the very rebels we were financing, who just happened to be al Qaeda and ISIS mercenaries. As if we didn't learn our lesson from decades earlier in Afghanistan, we decided to go all in with this bunch, and in the process, darn near started WW3.
All the while, ISIS was expanding their Caliphate, and spreading like wildfire. We claimed to be fighting to eradicate ISIS, but the rules of engagement were, and continue to be an absolute joke. We'd run bombing missions where no bombs were dropped because Obama is so averse to the reality that in war, sometimes there's collateral damage. We relied heavily on drone warfare, and it did little to stem the expansion.
It wasn't until we put actual boots on the ground again in the Middle East that you saw any sort of slowing of growth. As war weary as this nation is, the truth is that there will be acceptance of war if it is necessary to protect our allies or the homeland.
So, yeah, Obama is most responsible for the expansion of ISIS. We had pretty much decimated the Taliban, and al Qaeda as well, but most understood that as soon as we pulled back, they'd find ways to re-form. The Bush administration had initiated the negotiations to withdraw from Iraq, and had a deal in place. Iraq balked at leaving a residual force in country. Had the Bush administration still been on the job, I would think that would have gotten worked out. When the Obama administration took over the negotiations, they basically said "Okay, complete withdrawal" despite the fact that we had spent countless dollars and lost precious lives building a presence there.