[quote]pushharder wrote:
Does this ^ work too? If not, why not?
[/quote]
No, obviously. Reasons given many times.
Edited quotes etc.
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
I can go much, much deeper than I did above, so go ahead and try to refute a word of what I actually said. Otherwise this is an utterly meaningless post, sarcasm built on – and entirely unable to disguise – a foundation of not having the simple, uncontroversial facts right.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
I can go much, much deeper than I did above, so go ahead and try to refute a word of what I actually said. Otherwise this is an utterly meaningless post, sarcasm built on – and entirely unable to disguise – a foundation of not having the simple, uncontroversial facts right.[/quote]
I’m going to pass because I think it’s short sighted, at best, to boil a complex situation down to “it’s Bush’s fault”.
Maybe the war in Iraq (Authorized by Congress and UN resolution 1441 & 1483) helped create a situation where ISIS could eventually grow, but it also created a situation where Saddam Hussein wasn’t gassing his own people and they had the opportunity to take ownership of their own land and government. They failed to do so.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
Want to see and even LONGER list?
Just wait until President Obama is out of office.
(In fact; I’m sure Zeb, Rush and others have already started one).
Mufasa
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
I can go much, much deeper than I did above, so go ahead and try to refute a word of what I actually said. Otherwise this is an utterly meaningless post, sarcasm built on – and entirely unable to disguise – a foundation of not having the simple, uncontroversial facts right.[/quote]
I’m going to pass because I think it’s short sighted, at best, to boil a complex situation down to “it’s Bush’s fault”. [/quote]
Not sure what “it’s Bush’s fault” (within quotation marks for some reason) has to do with me, because I never said those words. But there is absolutely no question about this: by far the single, active, binary American decision directly connected with ISIS’ development is OIF, its ludicrous mishandling, and its foreseeable aftermath. A needless and illegitimate strategic clusterfuck of a blunder, made to utterly no benefit to American security interests (and, in fact, exactly the opposite: in enormous doses), directly and existentially involved with the development of AQI/ISIS.
[quote]
Maybe the war in Iraq (Authorized by Congress and UN resolution 1441 & 1483)[/quote]
I assume that the allusion to Congress and the UN is meant to dilute responsibility. It won’t. They can each take their blame – after we adjust for the misrepresented, mendacious, bad-faith case presented to them by the Bush administration. There are thousands of pages of evidence in support of my previous sentence. Thousands.
[quote]
helped create a situation where ISIS could eventually grow[/quote]
Helped – enormously, actively, and needlessly – to create ISIS as it exists today. Yes.
Saddam wasn’t gassing his own people when we invaded Iraq. This has always been an ahistorical revisionism with no connection to OIF. If you think the punishment of a bad guy for decades-old crimes is worth more than its weight in American blood and treasure – and the abiding global security instability that we’re still trying to deal with in December 2015 – then whatever. You go ahead and think that.
[quote]
and they had the opportunity to take ownership of their own land and government. They failed to do so.[/quote]
Oh, I see. The lesson isn’t that we did something ludicrously stupid, at great cost to our own people, setting off an utterly predictable civil war in which AQI and then ISIS developed and metastasized. It’s that Iraqi doctors, accountants and grocers “failed” to “take ownership of their own land and government” in the midst of a war in which they were dying by the hundred thousand – a war fought between sects, between long pre-existing political/religious factions, between American soldiers and a jihadist insurgency made fat on a meal consisting of hordes of trained soldiers put on the street and out of a job by the geniuses in the Bush White House.
Edited.
^ And precisely how the above relates to it being somehow OK that Donald Trump is a fucking conspiracy theorist (not your point usmccds, I know) remains totally unclear. It’s OK that Trump is a conspiracy theorist because my fundamental misunderstanding of history/current events has it that Hillary Clinton is responsible for ISIS? Ridiculous. Trumpian, you might say.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
I can go much, much deeper than I did above, so go ahead and try to refute a word of what I actually said. Otherwise this is an utterly meaningless post, sarcasm built on – and entirely unable to disguise – a foundation of not having the simple, uncontroversial facts right.[/quote]
I’m going to pass because I think it’s short sighted, at best, to boil a complex situation down to “it’s Bush’s fault”. [/quote]
Not sure what “it’s Bush’s fault” (within quotation marks for some reason) has to do with me, because I never said those words. But there is absolutely no question about this: by far the single, active, binary American decision directly connected with ISIS’ development is OIF, its ludicrous mishandling, and its foreseeable aftermath. A needless and illegitimate strategic clusterfuck of a blunder, made to utterly no benefit to American security interests (and, in fact, exactly the opposite: in enormous doses), directly and existentially involved with the development of AQI/ISIS.
[quote]
Maybe the war in Iraq (Authorized by Congress and UN resolution 1441 & 1483)[/quote]
I assume that the allusion to Congress and the UN is meant to dilute responsibility. It won’t. They can each take their blame – after we adjust for the misrepresented, mendacious, bad-faith case presented to them by the Bush administration. There are thousands of pages of evidence in support of my previous sentence. Thousands.
[quote]
helped create a situation where ISIS could eventually grow[/quote]
Helped – enormously, actively, and needlessly – to create ISIS as it exists today. Yes.
Saddam wasn’t gassing his own people when we invaded Iraq. This has always been an ahistorical revisionism with no connection to OIF. If you think the punishment of a bad guy for decades-old crimes is worth more than its weight in American blood and treasure – and the abiding global security instability that we’re still trying to deal with in December 2015 – then whatever. You go ahead and think that.
[quote]
and they had the opportunity to take ownership of their own land and government. They failed to do so.[/quote]
Oh, I see. The lesson isn’t that we did something ludicrously stupid, at great cost to our own people, setting off an utterly predictable civil war in which AQI and then ISIS developed and metastasized. It’s that Iraqi doctors, accountants and grocers “failed” to “take ownership of their own land and government” in the midst of a war in which they were dying by the hundred thousand – a war fought between sects, between long pre-existing political/religious factions, between American soldiers and a jihadist insurgency made fat on a meal consisting of hordes of trained soldiers put on the street and out of a job by the geniuses in the Bush White House.
Edited.[/quote]
Oh come on smh:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Again: “The group that calls itself the Islamic State can trace its lineage to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003.” So, Bush creates a mendacious case for a superfluous and idiotic war (at a time when there were actual wars to fight elsewhere, no less), and in the course of doing this, creates a power vacuum in the heart of the planet’s unarguably worst region. He then brilliantly puts hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with military training out of work; many of these are absorbed into the insurgency, which develops into AQI/ISIS. [/quote]
You could of just written “it’s Bush’s fault”. That’s what you said. I’m not joining in yet another debate over the Iraq war or how it’s apparently one man’s fault that ISIS now exits. You can blame Bush, that’s your prerogative . It’s ludicrous and irrelevant anyway.
This will be derail #2 for me so I’ll just leave any additional comments alone at this point.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
I can go much, much deeper than I did above, so go ahead and try to refute a word of what I actually said. Otherwise this is an utterly meaningless post, sarcasm built on – and entirely unable to disguise – a foundation of not having the simple, uncontroversial facts right.[/quote]
I’m going to pass because I think it’s short sighted, at best, to boil a complex situation down to “it’s Bush’s fault”. [/quote]
Not sure what “it’s Bush’s fault” (within quotation marks for some reason) has to do with me, because I never said those words. But there is absolutely no question about this: by far the single, active, binary American decision directly connected with ISIS’ development is OIF, its ludicrous mishandling, and its foreseeable aftermath. A needless and illegitimate strategic clusterfuck of a blunder, made to utterly no benefit to American security interests (and, in fact, exactly the opposite: in enormous doses), directly and existentially involved with the development of AQI/ISIS.
[quote]
Maybe the war in Iraq (Authorized by Congress and UN resolution 1441 & 1483)[/quote]
I assume that the allusion to Congress and the UN is meant to dilute responsibility. It won’t. They can each take their blame – after we adjust for the misrepresented, mendacious, bad-faith case presented to them by the Bush administration. There are thousands of pages of evidence in support of my previous sentence. Thousands.
[quote]
helped create a situation where ISIS could eventually grow[/quote]
Helped – enormously, actively, and needlessly – to create ISIS as it exists today. Yes.
Saddam wasn’t gassing his own people when we invaded Iraq. This has always been an ahistorical revisionism with no connection to OIF. If you think the punishment of a bad guy for decades-old crimes is worth more than its weight in American blood and treasure – and the abiding global security instability that we’re still trying to deal with in December 2015 – then whatever. You go ahead and think that.
[quote]
and they had the opportunity to take ownership of their own land and government. They failed to do so.[/quote]
Oh, I see. The lesson isn’t that we did something ludicrously stupid, at great cost to our own people, setting off an utterly predictable civil war in which AQI and then ISIS developed and metastasized. It’s that Iraqi doctors, accountants and grocers “failed” to “take ownership of their own land and government” in the midst of a war in which they were dying by the hundred thousand – a war fought between sects, between long pre-existing political/religious factions, between American soldiers and a jihadist insurgency made fat on a meal consisting of hordes of trained soldiers put on the street and out of a job by the geniuses in the Bush White House.
Edited.[/quote]
Oh come on smh:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Again: “The group that calls itself the Islamic State can trace its lineage to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003.” So, Bush creates a mendacious case for a superfluous and idiotic war (at a time when there were actual wars to fight elsewhere, no less), and in the course of doing this, creates a power vacuum in the heart of the planet’s unarguably worst region. He then brilliantly puts hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with military training out of work; many of these are absorbed into the insurgency, which develops into AQI/ISIS. [/quote]
You could of just written “it’s Bush’s fault”. That’s what you said.[/quote]
I said exactly what I said. You can reduce it to a facile sentence about it being one guy’s fault all you’d like, but my description is a matter of objective history. You took issue with it by way of lazy sarcasm and have now completely, if predictably, backed down. I don’t blame you. You cannot and will not refute the well-attested facts of ISIS’ relatively recent creation, growth, and development. This isn’t tee-ball. You swing, you either get wood on the ball or you don’t.
What I have said is not remotely, not within a million miles of ludicrous. It is objectively true, as evidenced above and by your silence on the substance of the matter. I have described the straightforward step from AQI/ISI to ISIS as it now exists, and there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that the contingent second step would have proceeded as it did without the needless, Bush-engineered state of affairs on which it was contingent. Go ahead and read the CFR report, or “What ISIS Really Wants,” in the Atlantic, which describes ISIS’ Youtube-video autobiography as pushing Abu Musa’b al Zarqawi of AQI as its immediate progenitor.
And what I have said is certainly not irrelevant as a response to a bullshit line about the creation and development of ISIS. This is where we tend to end up, though: instead of refuting what can’t be refuted, somebody resorts to trying to pretend it all just isn’t fair or important in the first place. A sure sign of a losing position.
Edited.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
ISIS was GWB’s fault… I guess that figures. I’ll just add that to the list of things that are also George’s fault; WWII, 9/11, the Bubonic plague, and Justin Beiber. [/quote]
Want to see and even LONGER list?
Just wait until President Obama is out of office.
(In fact; I’m sure Zeb, Rush and others have already started one).
Mufasa[/quote]
And yet again you mention Obama and still cannot tell us what he has done that is so wonderful. Tell me Mufasa do you ever get tired of playing the part of Obama cheerleader while actually not being able to claim even one Obama triumph?
You have a tough job man.
No disrespect intended, but I’ll take Bob Woodward’s word for it over yours Smh:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
No disrespect intended, but I’ll take Bob Woodward’s word for it over yours Smh:
[/quote]
First of all, that’s secondary to what you sarcastically took issue with, which, even in Woodward’s documentedly incorrect formulation, has Bush’s huge “mistake” at the center of ISIS’ development.
Second, as I said, we have thousands of pages of documentation. I’ll prove you’re wrong if you’d like. Literally, I will prove it. Let’s take one small example. Is it a lie to present as a certainty something which is not remotely certain? “I know that it’s raining” or “it’s raining,” when I haven’t been outside, haven’t looked out a window, haven’t looked at a weather report, and am in fact merely guessing about a sound I think I might have heard a few minutes ago (while trying as hard as I can to hear sounds of rain, because I want desperately for you to believe it’s raining). This is a lie, yes? Something not known or sure – indeed, as we’ll see, something we have good reason to believe to be false – retold as something known and sure. A lie. Yeah?
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
No disrespect intended, but I’ll take Bob Woodward’s word for it over yours Smh:
[/quote]
First of all, that’s secondary to what you sarcastically took issue with, which, even in Woodward’s documentedly incorrect formulation, has Bush’s huge “mistake” at the center of ISIS’ development.
Second, as I said, we have thousands of pages of documentation. I’ll prove you’re wrong if you’d like. Literally, I will prove it. Let’s take one small example. Is it a lie to present as a certainty something which is not remotely certain? “I know that it’s raining” or “it’s raining,” when I haven’t been outside, haven’t looked out a window, haven’t looked at a weather report, and am in fact merely guessing about a sound I think I might have heard a few minutes ago (while trying as hard as I can to hear sounds of rain, because I want desperately for you to believe it’s raining). This is a lie, yes? Something not known or sure – indeed, as we’ll see, something we have good reason to believe to be false – retold as something known and sure. A lie. Yeah?[/quote]
Ya, you’re a nice guy and I genuinely like you, but I’m not gonna take your word over Bob’s, sorry.
Saying Bush is responsible for the creation of ISIS is like saying Woodrow Wilson is responsible for the creation of the Nazi Party.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
No disrespect intended, but I’ll take Bob Woodward’s word for it over yours Smh:
[/quote]
First of all, that’s secondary to what you sarcastically took issue with, which, even in Woodward’s documentedly incorrect formulation, has Bush’s huge “mistake” at the center of ISIS’ development.
Second, as I said, we have thousands of pages of documentation. I’ll prove you’re wrong if you’d like. Literally, I will prove it. Let’s take one small example. Is it a lie to present as a certainty something which is not remotely certain? “I know that it’s raining” or “it’s raining,” when I haven’t been outside, haven’t looked out a window, haven’t looked at a weather report, and am in fact merely guessing about a sound I think I might have heard a few minutes ago (while trying as hard as I can to hear sounds of rain, because I want desperately for you to believe it’s raining). This is a lie, yes? Something not known or sure – indeed, as we’ll see, something we have good reason to believe to be false – retold as something known and sure. A lie. Yeah?[/quote]
Ya, you’re a nice guy and I genuinely like you, but I’m not gonna take your word over Bob’s, sorry. [/quote]
First, I’m not talking about my “word.” I told you, I can prove that you are wrong. Prove. Go ahead and answer the question above. Or don’t, but it’ll just be a cop-out and nothing more.
Second, people much smarter than Bob Woodward say that he’s wrong, and he has been shown to be wrong many times over – specifically on this issue. Is that all I need, an illegitimate, fallacious appeal to authority rather than to evidence? Because that would be very easy. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? Anyway, let’s take notice of the fact that Woodward supplies no evidence whatsoever, but merely argues by assertion. Let’s take further notice of the fact that Woodward is not some infallible authority but in fact is a pretty shitty reporter who has, since making his name, faceplanted and shown his ass on various occasions, including contradicting himself and regurgitating unconsidered claims in return for continued access to the platitudes of the Washington elite.
Anyway, he’s wrong and I can very easily show that he’s wrong. Sorry if that’s disappointing, or if you don’t want me to do it.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Saying Bush is responsible for the creation of ISIS is like saying Woodrow Wilson is responsible for the creation of the Nazi Party. [/quote]
Again, I supplied a factual description of the unarguably most important American decision in the development of ISIS. This was not interpretation; it was an objective series of simple and very well attested points. You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off. That’s really all that has happened here.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Saying Bush is responsible for the creation of ISIS is like saying Woodrow Wilson is responsible for the creation of the Nazi Party. [/quote]
Again, I supplied a factual description of the unarguably most important American decision in the development of ISIS. This was not interpretation; it was an objective series of simple and very well attested points. You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off. That’s really all that has happened here.[/quote]
Oh come on, you’ve always had it out for former President GWB how could your analysis possibly be objective?
A: Bush lied, we invade Iraq
B: We win
C-Y: Whole bunch of stuff happens
Z: ISIS is born
Therefore ISIS was created by Bush. Smh indeed.
“You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off.” I wish you could physically see how hard I’m laughing at this statement. Yes, I utterly backed off because it’s not like this conversation hasn’t occurred 100+ times before…
I really don’t care.
Merry Christmas. Opps, I mean Happy Holiday’s. It’s objectively inarguable that it’s Bush’s fault I said Merry Christmas.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Saying Bush is responsible for the creation of ISIS is like saying Woodrow Wilson is responsible for the creation of the Nazi Party. [/quote]
Again, I supplied a factual description of the unarguably most important American decision in the development of ISIS. This was not interpretation; it was an objective series of simple and very well attested points. You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off. That’s really all that has happened here.[/quote]
Oh come on, you’ve always had it out for former President GWB how could your analysis possibly be objective? [/quote]
No, I simply have, unlike so many people who nevertheless maintain strong opinions on the matter, a precise understanding of the evidentially factual history of OIF and its aftermath.
[quote]
A: Bush lied, we invade Iraq
B: We win
C-Y: Whole bunch of stuff happens
Z: ISIS is born[/quote]
No. As I have already shown you, ISIS is the name that AQI/ISI took for itself after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched fighters to Syria from Iraq, where his insurgency had entrenched itself ever since al-Zarqawi took up the AQ cause in post-invasion Iraq. ISIS as it is today is a direct product of AQI as it was during the first decade of this century, which was a direct product of OIF. None of this is arguable.
Furthermore, we didn’t “win” anything. Bush temporarily pacified a horrendous and needless situation, which he himself had idiotically created, with a temporary-by-design troop surge. He then explicitly provided for the complete withdrawal of troops from the country, a plan that was not renegotiated by Obama and ultimately proceeded according to the letter of Bush’s SOFA. Of course, and very predictably, things fell apart, and the mess we’d created turned out to have only been swept under the rug. AQI/ISI, a function of the post-invasion insurgency, retook ground and began spreading.
[quote]
Therefore ISIS was created by Bush. Smh indeed.[/quote]
That’s a pretty good one, but you’re still confused about all this.
[quote]
“You questioned it with sarcasm and then utterly backed off.” I wish you could physically see how hard I’m laughing at this statement. Yes, I utterly backed off because it’s not like this conversation hasn’t occurred 100+ times before…
I really don’t care.[/quote]
Yeah, that’s clear.
[quote]
Merry Christmas. Opps, I mean Happy Holiday’s. It’s objectively inarguable that it’s Bush’s fault I said Merry Christmas. [/quote]
There’s that sarcasm-instead-of-substance again.
^ The phrase “direct product” is even a little misleading, because the AQI/ISI to ISIS development is a direct continuity. One day al-Baghdadi simply announced that the presence in Syria that AQI/ISI had dispatched and supported was being promoted and merged under the new name. That’s it. It’s a fucking unbroken chain. There is no further point in arguing about whether two plus two really comes to four.