Yes, Yes he is.
Because?..
Union breaker
.... You fucking got me started
I wish, you had anything on-topic to offer, when you get "started"... The topic, in this case, being the abuse of the Executive Order 12333 by the intelligence community decades after the order was signed.
Sure, precision weapons. Solves all problems.
Fallacy of excluded middle. No, it does not solve all the problems — but it does solve many...
So long as we redefine "premature" to be a synonym for "forever", then yes, "we withdrew prematurely."
We are still stationed in Germany, Japan, and South Korea... Maybe, it is time to leave those places now — many decades since the fighting ended. But leaving when such a major force as ISIS remained in Iraq was irresponsible and stupid.
Your position has lost popular support
Not in the US it has not... When the troops stopped dying, the public was willing to see us remain in Iraq as we remain in Kuwait nearby... And we are still in Afghanistan without much outcry. Oh, and even the Gitmo is still open...
charismatic nut job à la Hugo Chavez.
Haterz gonna hate...
That data ranges from e-mail content to Facebook messages, from Skype chats to practically anything that passes over the Internet on an incidental basis.
None of those things existed, when the order was signed, though. And if none of the subsequent Presidents — including the current "tech-savvy" wonder — have abolished it since then (when the explosive use of computers made it truly dangerous), then is Reagan really to blame?
I'm pretty sure the Kennedy doctrine was falsified the second we got involved in Vietnam and propped up a murderous dictator.
None of the dictators we propped up was as murderous as the Communist alternative...
It's not even clear that the issue is weapons. This isn't 1980s Afghanistan we're talking about. Ukraine is a former member of the USSR and was within spitting distance of NATO, so they're armed with fighter and attack aircraft, helicopter gunships, transport aircraft, artillery, armored personnel carriers, etc. etc.
None of it in a particularly good order, most of it a generation behind. And not enough of it to withstand Russia, which poured their gas-monies into weapons and training — in addition to skilful propaganda relying not only on the Leftists traditionally sympathetic to anything "revolutionary", but also on the Rigthists this time...
early on in the conflict, a group of soldiers simply surrendered their armored personnel carriers without a shot being fired
And the keyword here is "early in the conflict". Up until late Spring Russian television was allowed to broadcast in Ukraine... But, yes, Ukrainian's regular military does have issues of its own — many senior officers entered service during Soviet times. But not the newly-formed National Guard volunteers, who remain the shining edge of Ukraine's otherwise rusty blade. And they had to scrounge equipment themselves — from guns and ammunition to infra-red detectors to life-saving Celox...
presumably they're offering intelligence support such as satellite photos as well
Yeah, "presumably". Maybe, now they do alright. But what prevented them from doing it before Crimea got invaded? Russia was massing forces for it for a month in advance — had Pentagon not seen it from above? They had... And they surely had informed the President. But Mr. Incompetent did no see fit to inform Ukraine — neither side of the political fight there — so the invasion was a complete surprise for them... Ukrainian units stationed on peninsula did not know, what to do, and the new leaders did not have a worked-out policy. Their excuse is, they had more important things to do, what's Obama's? Too busy signing people up for Obamacare?
The US has sent body armor and night vision goggles.
Only in June! Four months since Russia first invaded — and only after multiple people, both Republican and Democrats, demanded it. Had Obama been anything more than a pathetic "community organizer", he would've reacted in March instead of trying to glue the pitiful attempts to "Reset" his relationship with Russia back together. But then, if he had been, Putin might not even have dared to invade in the first place...
Perhaps more importantly, the West has committed $27 billion in aid to Ukraine over the next two years
First of all, it is an IMF loan, not true aid. It is still welcome, of course, but it will be a while before it helps troops on the ground. Putin remains a step ahead of our amateur, who is training on-the job (as his own Vice-Amateur once said).
If Maliki's politics are to blame, then Bush is ultimately the one to blame for Maliki
Tenuous in the extreme...
Except wait a minute, who was it who approved a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq that called for all U.S. troops to leave in 2009... hm, it'll come to me... oh, that's right, it was BUSH!
The forces withdrawn under the agreement left in December of 2011. Obama was in charge for three years...
They're pretty badass, they act more like an occupying army than a terrorist organization. Turns out, there's a reason for that- they include a whole bunch of former Iraqi Army officers, who went to military academy and everything. Iraqi army officers who joined the insurgency after the Iraqi Army was disbanded by, wait for it... George W. Bush.
Yeah, Bush disbanded it the same way his predecessors disbanded German military. He also started de-Baathization of Iraq the same way we de-Nazified Germany after winning there.
And, guess what, those Nazis — fired from the army and banned from public life were pretty upset too — had we left West Germany to its own devices back then, there could've very well have been a similar insurrection there too (happily encouraged by the USSR-occupied East)... Obama should not have withdrawn from Iraq, period.
The "might not have handled things terribly well" is rather damning indeed, considering the source...
Germany didn't have the power to vaporize most of the planet with the push of a button.
Please, explain the actors in the analogy you are trying to build.
Right, as opposed to the previous guy, who went into Iraq to settle his daddy's score
His daddy has kicked Saddam's ass so bad, there were no score left to settle. But let's not change the subject, Ok?
blunder around with pointy objects in the dark making a lot of noise and hoping everyone swoons over your manliness
Oh, I guess, you just can't help it, can you?
the country you did invade is falling into civil war.
Had we withdrawn from Germany in 1955, that country would've fallen into a "civil war" as well... Whatever you blame Bush for, the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq are squarely Obama's doing. As is the emboldened Russia, to bring us back on topic.
The US can't afford to perform any surgeries.
Of course, we can. Obama's economy may be weak, but it is still greater than that of Russia and Ukraine combined. Many times greater.
We don't need to send "boots on the ground" — just help Ukrainian defenders with weapons. Like, for example, precise ground-to-ground missiles to let them destroy a Russian "Grad" parked behind an apartment building without hitting the building too. Or all that surplus equipment, that Pentagon has been sending to police departments nation-wide, militarizing them against fellow citizens . But the charlatan-in-chief would not even send Ukrainians the perfectly defensive helmets and body armor...
pissing it all away invading Afghanistan and Iraq?
We pissed nothing away invading those two. We pissed it away by withdrawing prematurely.
What? Hell no. Classics are: checkers, chess, a deck of cards, a pair of dice, dominoes and backgammon. Everybody has heard of them, everybody has seen them, (almost) everybody have played them in their lives...
Anything invented in the past few decades simply has not been around long enough to become a classic.
Chairman Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Hitler, not so much with the bluffing.
We fought Hitler and now Germany is a free and prosperous country at peace with its neighbors. China — where we dithered — not so much. Nor is North Korea — in the 60 years since we decided to "give peace a chance" there and not use nukes against the invading Chinese "volunteers", generations of millions lived in dire poverty and suffering, that they deserved even less than the Chinese soldiers.
Some times non-invasive therapies are indicated, but quite often the best course is surgery. Sadly, what we have in the White House is a "herbal remedies" charlatan...
I don't know how Russia, you know, the big one, reacts if the US decided to support
I wonder, what happened to:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Perhaps, the author of the above was a war-mongering neocon teatard — not a Nobel "Peace" Prize laureate...
There is no good solution to any of this, both governments will be pushing to the end. Ukrainian government doesn't want to lose a large chunk of territory and Russian government doesn't want to let go now, since the loss will be seen as weakness and there is a huge interest in controlling the gas supplying line to Europe. Putin's reaction to Ukraine attempts to become part of NATO was going to be met with this type of violent reaction from Putin, who doesn't want to see NATO missile launchers even closer to the western border. AFAIC the American hands are all over this one, trying hard to create yet another distraction from its failing economy. Putin was easy to manipulate to start the war, but how do you end this war? A war with Russia can turn nuclear, so that is why there are no Americans or British or German or Canadian or other visible troops there yet.
Putin has a war now that everybody understands Russia is leading, but at the same time it is not an openly declared war, you can say it is an open secret war. Putin cannot win against the West but West doesn't want to fight a real shooting war with Russia either.
Stalemate. The only losers are the people who are forced into it on all sides, be it death due to bombing or bullets or sickness or be it economic sanctions (which by the way are not declared against 'others', economic sanctions are declared against your own. So economic sanctions imposed by Putin 'against West' are actually economic sanctions by Putin against Russians, it is just that the propaganda is strong, economic education and understanding is low and there is a tribal thing going on there as well).
USA provoked another conflict that may not end and definitely will not end well, good job. Putin is throwing fresh meat into the meat grinder, good job. Ukrainians are stuck between these two, like so many others before it, too bad.
AFAIC the only quick way out of this is for Putin to be assassinated or for Ukraine to give up and for the West to fuck off. All of these are unfortunate, but the alternatives do include a possibility of a nuclear war.
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.
