This is what Kerry said to a Senate committee in 1971: “So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered [in Vietnam] by the United States of America … .” Kerry’s comrades/nation had murdered [his word] 1.6 million Vietnamese 1964-71, mostly civilians – women, children, and old men...if he was right. He’s never offered a scintilla of proof for that wacky accusation.
The Iraqi soldiers don't need AK-47s. They have plenty of those. They don't need people since the army is supposed to be comprised of 271,400 troops, down from Saddam's 400,000 back in the day but still huge for a nation of only 31.1 million. They need big-time artillery, tanks, RPGs, missile launchers – the works for fighting an all-out war, weapons Obama wisely withheld from Syrian rebels, who now are slaughtering each other to see who will run things when Assad is dispatched, not that he will be.
The Iraqis are having the sectarian civil war that well-informed folks knew they would have after Saddam Hussein, his sons and their cutthroats were neutralized. Obama could have removed the Americans much sooner than 2011 and their war would have begun then. Instead, he left them there to continue to be killed while the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds awaited the announced day of departure. Now, the time is at hand.
Saddam was a butchering Sunni Muslim and ruled with a minority of about 34% of the population. Al-Maliki is a Shiite Muslim, ruling (or attempting to) with his cult, some 63% of the population in payback mode. The Kurds in the North (about 17%) are their own sort of Arab, most of them Sunnis. Al Qaeda now controls much of the population, having moved in even before the Americans left in 2011 and now holds famed Fallujah, scene of some of the bitterest fighting in the Iraqi action.
People like Senators McCain and Graham crow an “I told you so” theme (chaos in a total American pullout) but spit in the wind. Tying up American GIs (10,000 or so) for decades would change nothing because Muslims kill each other with the same vengeance they kill infidels—maybe a greater one. Sectarian violence is unsurpassed in intensity...remember the Crusades. Saladin was a Kurd.
The warmongers bewail the fact that U.S. Forces are exiting Afghanistan this year. Not waiting until December, he should be removing them as rapidly as possible now, along with the other NATO forces. When they're gone, the al Qaeda and Taliban butchers can then get it on with their never-ending fighting. It's time that U.S. officials—both before and after the fact—admit that efforts to democratize both Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, notwithstanding the “free elections” in both countries, which meant nothing.
Senator McCain (forever seeking a camera) was in Kabul last week trying to be State Secretary and cut a deal with Afghan honcho Karzai to keep Americans in Afghanistan after this year. He also found the folks to give weapons in Libya (created total chaos) and later, the folks to give weapons in Syria. It's time for him to shut up and stay home. He's helped spread the murderous al Qaeda (especially exiting Libya) throughout the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa.
Muslims, as always, are primed to kill each other by boatloads in the name of some cult of Islam and there's nothing anyone can do about that. Though it sounds insensitive, it nevertheless is true that when they devote their energies in that direction they're leaving the infidels (Americans) alone.
Hindsight indicates that the “surges” in both Iraq (Bush 43) and Afghanistan (Obama) that cost many American lives were terrible, costly mistakes. Sunnis, Shiites, Wahabis, Alawites, whatever—all warring branches of Islam—are now in high-gear battle-mode. Until sanity overtakes them, nothing can be done.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment