This Vale Of Tears said:
I'm always honest when I agree, even with somebody who I find little agreement with.
President Obama said that this fight needs to be won by Iraq and Iraqi forces and I agree with this wholeheartedly. It seems that Iraq is not fighting because they expect us to do it for them, and this is certainly nothing new.....we faced the same problem in Vietnam.
It goes back to something I've argued repeatedly, that freedom is something we can want for ourselves, but we can't want it for others, for they must want freedom so badly they're willing to fight for it themselves. The French, another superpower, assisted us in our Revolutionary War, but they didn't fight it for us. Liberty endures in our hearts for many generations precisely because we remember those who fought for it and laid down their lives for it. It cannot be treasured what isn't contended mightily for, and a dear price must be paid, not by somebody else, but by the very ones who want to be free.
Does Iraq want to be a free nation? We'll never know if we keep interfering with the process of them finding out. I like Obama's plan, train and assist, but let them do their own fighting.
The entire debacle in the Levant is a goal set by the GCC thirty years ago. The current warfare was agreed to and designed by John Kerry during his meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in the fall of 2013. The backstory for today began a year ago when the Russians foiled an attempt by Britain, France & the US to invade Syria.
At the time, the "justification" was a gas attack allegedly perpetrated by the Syrian Army against its own people. There was a lot of accusatory language in the western press attempting to foment bloodlust on the part of the population. Following the attack, the United Nations sent an investigative team into the area to determine the truth. The results of their work was not widely distributed in the west. UN findings were that the delivery system originated with al Qaeda positions, anti-Syrian positions NOT from the Syrian army. In other words, the intelligence community of the west was responsible for the poison gas, not the Syrians. Google the whole thing if you doubt it.
Following manipulations by the Russians, western military assets were removed and at the end of summer King Abdullah was about to have a kitten. News stories at the time stated that the Saudis were very close to severing diplomatic relations. Following a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry, the King became quiet. What did they talk about in back rooms? They discussed the creation of ANOTHER terrorist organization on the order of al Qaeda in the Levant - and so ISIS/ISIL was born.
The offices of the
Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul were setup years ago by Sunni interests to gather resources and to distribute them as needed to theaters of war throughout the Levant. It is most definitely NOT a charitable organization. Support for al Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL comes from there. If a true solution to the issue is necessary, the closing of that organization is paramount. But it won't happen because the US supports it.
France provides weapons to SNC, which in turn distributes them to al Qaeda & ISIS/ISIL. Two weeks ago a lucrative arms agreement was signed with the French.
The GCC(*) provides most of the financing to SNC and on to the battlefield.
Turkey provides the manpower/soldiers for the conflict.
In the end, the entire enterprise is funded, supplied, populated, trained and ordered by "allies" of America. POTUS Obama is merely performing a smoke and mirror act to persuade Americans that ours is NOT an aggressive position. The US is most definitely NOT in this for the principle of 'freedom' or humanitarianism. Our hands are stained with the blood of innocents and God will judge us for it.
Judgment may come in the form of the Medvedev Doctrine of 2008. (ref: The Cicero Foundation, Maastrict, The Netherlands) The doctrine justifies the development and deployment of tactical atomic weapons within the territory of Russian client states (like Syria) to 'deescalate' American aggression. If the US invades Syria with 'boots on the ground' we may be walking into an atomic disaster of historic proportions. A week ago, Mr. Putin threatened the use of these weapons specifically against the west. The context was Ukraine, but since Russia can "seize Kiev within two weeks" if it wants to, the threat is veiled and understood to be a different theater of war - the Levant for example.
The problem is that fools rule in Washington DC. Nobody there is truly interested in the welfare of the American people - or anybody else for that matter.
IF GOD DOES NOT JUDGE AMERICA, HE WILL HAVE TO APOLOGIZE TO SODOM AND GOMORRAH.
and that's just me, hollering from the choir loft...
(*) GCC is the Gulf Cooperative Council composed of Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.