we still import millions of barrels a day from the middle east. even if we dont want it as much as we used to, we sure as fuck want to control it. and you dont have to be a member of isis to carry out jihad. al qaeda, boko haram, al shabaab, etc, etc are all fighting for their lives. omar mateen and the tsarnevs werent "members" of isis. im sure they were sympathetic to their plight though. omar mateen: "You have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there. You get what I'm saying?" seems like if we, hey, stop bombing iraq and syria, he might not have had such an axe to grind. this whole "destroy isis" thing is fucking stupid, you cant destroy the middle easts displeasure with being bombed by...bombing them. unless you actually want to kill every last muslim on the planet? its top shelf warhawk nonsense.
Yes, kill every last terrorist in Iraq. The people whose families are murdered, women raped, men tortured, aren't going to be happy with us for leaving them to ISIS. Even if we don't want war, sometimes it's inflicted on you. You do respond. Chickenhawk nonsense is just going to get the shit kicked out of you. Boston Marathon bombing. Beheading of US journalists. San Bernadino Orlando. NO MORE.
As for oil, check out your graph. We're almost producing more than we use. We are energy independent. We choose to buy and sell oil, for all sorts of reasons.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/09/investing/us-energy-independence-oil-opec/ U.S. energy independence looks 'tantalizingly close'
This is reporting. The "it's for oil" claim is old and tired and simply untrue anymore. If we wanted to take over their oil fields, we would have long ago.
no...they moved from Iraq to Syria, Lebanon and other places like Somalia and France...they were not vanquished....they just retreated and regrouped..all these terrorists are from the same camp of Israeli hate and we are Israels biggest friend......Bush liked to think he wiped them out....fact...he didn't..just pissed them off
It's not that we wanted to take over their oil fields as much as we didn't want Russia taking over their oil fields...the Turkish pipeline is surrounded by US forces on one side and Russian on the other...we don't want Russia having that pipeline or more access in the region
They were vanquished. We killed all their leaders a few times. They had dozens of members, maybe not that many. Obama surrendered Iraq to al qaeda/ISIS. We had made peace with the Sunni and it really looked like Iraq was on the right path. Obama gave al Maliki the go ahead to seek revenge against the Sunni for their apartheid reign, especially during the Saddam years. Those reprisals led to the Sunni joining with ISIS to make it what it is. Obama's fault. Clinton was his top advisor, the crafter of our foreign policy.
you keep using this line of crap......learn the meaning of surrender and get back to me....Iraq is a sovereign state...it was never ours to surrender...Obama changed the way we approached support in the region from boots on the ground to drone warfare....we invaded Pakistan to get Bin Laden...doesn't mean Pakistan surrendered to us. Obama has modernized and streamlined the military which was long overdue.....just say you hate Obama and leave it at that...ISIS recruits new soldiers from all over the planet...and they are just the same folks that played for different terrorist teams in the past. I'ts like saying in our revolutionary war that Bostonians were not New Yorkers.....they all fought for a common cause...independence from England....but if a platoon is wiped out in war, it doesn't mean the army is no longer....since 9/11 we've been dealing with a foe that is not a country but a collective
again...we don't dictate Iraqi policy...Obama didn't give Maliki an executive order.....that's Maliki's job..why don't you give a scathing critique of Maliki?
http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/1 Despite the name change and supposed Iraqi leader, the foreign presence in leadership and membership of AQI continued to alienate local Iraqis. By December 2007, local concerns forced Abu Umar al-Baghdadi to issue a public statement claiming that only 200 foreign fighters were members of AQI. The number was questionable. It is true that AQI was majority Iraqi in 2006 but in 2007, the coalition forces captured records of 700 foreign nationals joining AQI and its affiliates between August 2006 and August 2007 alone.. [48] [49] [50] However, foreign fighters were on the decline, with fewer coming each month than earlier in the insurgency. Despite the decline, it is impossible to determine an exact number, and in any case Baghdadi’s declaration was not enough to convince many Iraqis. [51] The local resistance to AQI contributed to the Anbar Awakening, a movement of Sunnis in the Anbar Province to cooperate with U.S. forces in the region against the insurgency. [52][53] The Awakening paved the way for increased U.S. and Iraqi security operations that ultimately diminished the capacity of AQI by the end of 2007. As a result, AQI was unable to provide security or enforce its extreme interpretations of Islamic law in the areas where it operated, and struggled to maintain territory. [54] By early 2008, coalition and local security forces had killed 2,400 AQI members and taken 8,800 prisoners. [55] By spring 2009, the U.S. was funding around 100,000 local Sunnis to fight AQI. [56] The local fighters carried out a campaign against the group, assassinating members and warning others not to work with the group. [57] By June, 2010, AQI had lost stable communication with AQ leadership, and 36 of AQI’s 42 leaders had been killed or captured. [58] [59] Through 2011, Coalition forces continued to coordinate efforts with tribal security forces, killing the majority of AQI’s leadership and leaving it in general disarray. [60] Both Masri and Baghdadi were killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on April 18, 2010. After the April raid, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (not to be confused with the deceased, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi) assumed control of an AQI severely weakened by local backlash and coalition and local security forces. [61] AQI continued to struggle to maintain relevance through 2011, when Coalition forces withdrew. The December 2011 Coalition withdrawal signaled the end of AQI’s decline. Throughout 2012, with the group facing less pressure and security, the number of AQI attacks increased significantly. [62] [63] In 2012 and 2013, Baghdadi led two separate terror campaigns in Iraq: in 2012, the “Breaking Walls” campaign targeted the Maliki government and prioritized freeing members from prison; in 2013, the “Soldier’s Harvest” campaign shifted the target to Iraqi security forces. [64] [65] Local political tensions, in addition to the absence of foreign security, expedited AQI’s return to prominence. In December 2012, Sunnis in Iraq began protesting the policies of the Shiite Maliki government in Anbar province. When Iraqi security forces invaded protest camps, Sunni attacks against Shiite targets increased; the civilian death toll in 2013 was double that of 2012. When Iraqi security forces attempted to clear a protest camp in Ramadi at the end of 2013, a local uprising drove the security forces out of much of Anbar Province, paving the way for later AQI expansion. [66]
Read the stanford.edu link I just posted. If it's TL;DR, here's the key sentences. AQI continued to struggle to maintain relevance through 2011, when Coalition forces withdrew. The December 2011 Coalition withdrawal signaled the end of AQI’s decline.
We left Iraq to it's own methods....they can rise and fall and like or dislike each other till the end of time but sorry.....it's not our country...and like I said..you can move the Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis but they're still the Grizzlies...sure we killed a bunch of soldiers and commanders....to assume we killed all their subscribers in battle is beyond naïve....some were working or studying in the west all the while..they will pop up anywhere. We're not dealing with a chess board here.
