Nice observation from President Obama, this has been clear for quite some time, what took the president so long to understand this terror threat to the Western world?
President Obama Speaks with VICE News plus video
Start section on Islamic State at 11m42s
Iraq’s crisis: Don’t forget the 2003 U.S. invasion | June 16, 2014 |
In Washington and elsewhere, pundits and politicos are indulging in the blame game. Some accuse the Obama administration of being too keen to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011; others harp on the provocative Shiite sectarianism of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has created conditions for Sunni extremists like ISIS to flourish.
Curiously, quite a few of the most outspoken critics were prominently involved in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Rarely in their current diagnoses do they acknowledge the tumult unleashed after the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In a lengthy piece posted to his personal Web site, former British prime minister Tony Blair went so far as to dismiss the legacy of the war he helped start. “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that `we’ have caused [the current crisis]. We haven’t,” Blair wrote. He added: “The fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it.”
Blair has been widely criticized for his comments in the U.K., where there’s a sharper conversation on the consequences of the Iraq war and the reasons invoked more than a decade ago to justify the invasion.
Time: Obama Says `We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet’ for Fighting ISIS | Aug. 2014 |
See my earlier diaries about these events …
○ Returning to Nixon’s ‘Twin Pillar’s Policy’ and Regional ‘Gendarmes’
○ In Joe Biden’s Own Words of Truth; Our Arab Allies Funded ISIS!
○ Flawed Reasoning and Misleading Projection On ISIL Origin
○ Turkey In Alliance with ISIS – Undermining Obama’s Policy In Iraq
○ Clinton’s 21st Century Statecraft and the Land of the Two Rivers
○ Syria Expendable In Joint US-Israel ME Power Schemes | Dec. 28, 2013 |
