Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
b. traven
Mission accomplished, George Bush! You succeeded in making Saddam Hussein look like Mahatma Gandhi compared to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the ISIS Caliphate. Your invention of non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) back in 2002 as an excuse to invade the sovereign state of Iraq in 2003 has come back to bite us in the ass big time. ISIS, the new Golem of Iraq and Syria, has filled the vacuum of power left in the wake of your propping up of the incompetent Shia kleptocracy we support in Iraq. (Let’s give an assist here to Barack Obama as well, who vacillates between leaving Iraq and getting back in, even as he tells us to look forward, not backward.)
Saddam Hussein may have ruled with an iron fist, tortured, and used our supplied nerve gas but he did rule a secular state in which Shia and Sunni Muslims lived relatively peacefully together. He even tolerated a Christian community. His people received a decent education and adequate health care while he and his sons spent time building massive villas around the country.
That regime now looks benign compared to the murderous rule of the expanding caliphate of ISIS engulfing not only Iraq but the catastrophe of Syria. Obama, of course, has learned nothing from Bush’s disastrous military adventurism in the Middle East and has slowly been escalating our involvement again in Iraq 3.0.
Mark my words: This isn’t going to turn out pretty!
The Contrary Perspective 
Thank goodness the rulers of the USA and Europe don’t own any massive villas! That would be just so awful…
The world is full of Baghdadi’s. Just look at some of the police departments being exposed in the wake of Ferguson. Visit the recent history in Ukraine. The oppressor, usurper, liberator, bully, Allies, coalitions, Abu Grahb, Mei Lai, meld and fold into good and evil and back again .Was it not really oil or the furtherance of the military industrial entities that prompted the incursion. Who did what to whom and how is human behavior just continuing its ageless march in man’s progress to whatever. My friend, nothing turns out pretty here or there- get use to it!
Mission accomplished, Barack H. Obama! (Did you notice in his inauguration for second term he dropped “Hussein” as his middle name?) His “progress” from “mild-mannered Constitutional Law Professor” to flat-out total stooge for The Powers That Be has been instructive. It is the ultimate proof that the “vote for the lesser evil” concept has lost all meaning. This man was promoted, starting at the 2004 Dem National Convention, as the Chosen One by an obviously very powerful faction of the US Ruling Class. If it wasn’t those who control the oil industry, it was those very close to it. Then again, with crude oil the most important commodity on the planet–despite the growing scarcity of potable water, which just reveals the total insanity of “our” energy policy–it would be difficult indeed to attain the presidency whilst harboring any hostility thereto. The future of planet Earth will not be pretty, that is true. And the greatest tragedy is that IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! But the status quo continues as long as the great majority of the people living in “the developed world” (whose actions/inactions most impact the environment of the planet) continue to sleepwalk through life, mindlessly consuming, mindlessly saluting the flag as US military interventions abroad continue. “Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.”
While most of us everywhere agree that Bush owns the most catastrophic foreign policy mistake in U. S. history, your criticism of Obama is confusing. Just to be clear, you want him to do nothing while the “murderous caliphate” unleashed by Bush engulfs the Middle East, correct? Please explain precisely what you want him to do. You are aware that here are raging blamers like greglaxer (see the incomrehensible diatribe above) who seem to be screaming for Obama to wage World War III against ISIS, so the right policy isn’t exactly obvious. Between the meltdown he inherited, bloodthirsty reactionaries on the right, and critics like you who don’t want war but don’t want the consequences of isolationism and who have no clear solution to voice, one can see why any president might “vacillate”. Try to be fair.
“Incomprehensible”??? I admit I actually voted for Obama in 2008, hoping for an itsy-bitsy modicum of actual change in foreign policy. This is the root of my bitter disappointment in real-world Obama. The fact that the GOP has obstructed and hamstrung him every minute of his reign does not obviate the fact that he has embraced and continued the policies of his predecessor’s administration. That is his terrible flaw. A handful of criminals allegedly taking refuge in Afghanistan post-9/11 was used as an excuse to launch the US military adventure that Obama continues there to this day. Now the nation has been committed to an open-ended adventure in the Middle East to combat the so-called Islamic State. If we’re talking about a gang of criminals conducting kidnappings and unlawful executions of foreign nationals (just as the US does!), this is a matter the UN needs to address. Not the US unilaterally, not the US with a handful of lickspittle junior partners, not NATO (last I checked a map, Syria and Iraq are not that close to the North Atlantic). But, given the UN’s track record, it’s probably more practical (!) to invent a time machine and go back and prevent G.W. Bush’s war against Iraq which planted the seeds for the current chaos. You somehow thought I was calling on the US to “wage World War III” against the so-called Islamic State?!? Your misunderstanding is incomprehensible to me!! I am calling for the US to drop the charade of “exceptionalism” Obama has staked his war-making privileges on. Do you comprehend me now, “End game”?
Then I agree I misunderstood your original comment. And you are correct that the time-machine solution is the best. But now that Bush has unleashed hell, do you really think that we have no moral responsibility in the region? Unfortunately I think we do. And comparing ISIS to the U.S. because we kidnapped and tortured is a false equivalence and is way off the mark.