It’s surprisingly easy to compose a list of the 25 stupidest things Bush administration officials said about the invasion of Iraq, and no such list can be remotely comprehensive. For example, the list I just referenced has President Bush assuring Reverend Pat Robertson that he doesn’t need to prepare the public for casualties because we won’t have any casualties, and it has Donald Rumsfeld dismissing concerns about looting because “free” people are free to do dumb things, but it makes no reference to Paul Wolfowitz saying in Congressional testimony that, “There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” It doesn’t include his testimony that “It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army — hard to imagine.” It doesn’t include his testimony that “I can’t imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years.”
The Bush administration said countless stupid things, told an uncountable number of lies, and made so many horrible predictions that it is a herculean challenge to try to document them all. But even their strongest critics didn’t predict just how wrong things would go.
Nearly half of Syria’s population has been displaced either internally or externally as refugees in the worst humanitarian crisis to strike the Middle East in at least a century, according to new data released by the International Rescue Committee.
The complex civil war, which has now morphed into a three-way free-for-all among rebels, the Syrian regime and a caliphate of Islamic extremists attacking virtually everyone, has driven at least 3 million people from Syria into neighboring countries. The movement is stressing already fragile nations such as Jordan and Lebanon, who have born the brunt of the exodus even as both deal with their own unstable internal political situations.
Turkey also has received hundreds of thousands of refugees and continues to struggle to control its own border; thousands of foreign Jihadi fighters have used Turkey to access the Syrian battlefield. They offset the tens of thousands of Syrian fleeing the fighting, leaving southern Turkey awash in desperate refugees and militants of all stripes.
In terms of world history, the IRC, considered one of the world’s most effective aid organizations, says the situation has reached a level of disaster not seen worldwide since the Rwandan genocide, more than 20 years ago that saw fewer people – about 1.5 million _ displaced but nearly a million killed.
Yeah, I didn’t even get to Iraq, where it is estimated that over a million people have been “freedomed” from their homes.
I don’t think the American people are focused enough on the lesson here, which is what happens when you listen to conservatives and allow them to have control of our foreign policy apparatus and the most lethal military in the history of mankind.
It’s a lesson we should all heed as the present administration tries to figure out how to triage all the crises that have resulted from the Bush administration’s reaction to 9/11.
It’s an opportunity — but only if we exploit it correctly. More accurately, only if we not-exploit it correctly.
It’s possible, given a crisis of this magnitude, that our out-keeping and aside-standing will be of a magnitude to make a difference.
But only if the Obama administration seizes the opportunity to not-act, and the situation in the region continues to be terrible enough, long enough.
I’ll be completely in favor of taking action against the IS the minute that their invasion fleet appears off of one of our coasts.
The American people could be forced to sit in a room every day for months and hear all of the available and indisputable evidence surround the Iraq clustefuck and they would STILL not be able to focus on the lesson. Because the lesson would be that the majority of them consciously and purposely aided and abetted a gang of criminals to commit the most disastrous foreign policy fuck-up in our lifetimes. And we are now being forced to confront the reaping of what we have sown. And it all came about because of this horrible and demented attitude of American exceptionalism, combined with a vein of racism that extends to anyone around the globe who is of a different hue, culture or religious background. Our ignorance and complete lack of interest as a country in any history that has ever occurred beyond our shores simply damns us to continue to follow these horrific and deadly courses. A huge number among us have become a bunch of consciously ignorant dimwits who think the answer to everything is to bust through the door of anyone with whom we have an issue, swinging our dicks and firing our patriotic cannons at anyone who gets in our way.
I shudder to think how things will go if these sociopaths ever again completely control the levers of power in this country.
And we are now being forced to confront the reaping of what we have sown. And it all came about because of this horrible and demented attitude of American exceptionalism,
Would that be the “America is the focus of all the good in the world” American exceptionalism, or the “America is the focus of all the evil in the world” exceptionalism?
Because we produce both flavors.