Yet, this time around there are calls from the Obamanoughts who favor liberal intervention. The "tough" guys of 2003 have been replaced by the tough gals of 2014.
Writes Bob Dreyfus in the Nation: "It's appropriate that two of the leading liberal interventionists, both of whom have served in prominent positions in Barack Obama's administration -- are named Power and Slaughter.
Samantha Power, of course, is Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, and a leading advocate of using American force overseas, especially when in her opinion civilian casualties can be exaggerated as "genocide." And Anne-Marie Slaughter, long a foreign policy insider and currently head of the New America Foundation, served under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as director of policy planning at the State Department (2009-2011). Back in 2011"
True to her name, Slaughter is seeking more US slaughter on the ground. Interesting isn't it that an Administration that backs massive NSA Surveillance, was caught off guard by the ISIS offensive in Iraq that seized cities and now oil fields. So much for the brilliant prognosticators in our intelligence agencies who also missed Putin's move into Crimea.
Of course, the media jumped in with all its baggage. Suddenly there were new terrorists to excoriate with very little airtime devoted to explaining the corruption and failures of the Maliki regime that we brought to power, and who played the ethnic card by stigmatizing Sunnis and brutalizing critics.
The voices of Iraq Veterans again the war were, of course, not heard. In a press release, they "call on the Obama administration to learn from the lessons of our country's past and to pursue non-military diplomatic solutions in supporting the people of Iraq in reaching reconciliation."
How is it possible that after hundreds of millions spent on creating all this alleged "progress" in Iraq, a new U.S. dictator playing the ethnic card has taken over from Saddam.
Iraq is still a militarized state built on human rights abuses and massive inequality and presiding over a society that lost more than a million people with millions more living in other countries as refugees.
Has any of this horror show been explained on US TV by networks that mostly closed their bureaus and moved on, and are as clueless as the government.
The Political Scientist Michael Brenner puts in this way: "We all are acutely aware that Washington is in a serious jam because of the mounting threat to the Baghdad regime amidst signs of military and political unraveling. The United States is reaping the whirlwind from its twelve years of reckless "War On Terror" in the Middle East.
The disastrous Iraqi invasion/intervention is the direct cause. Strategically incoherent and disjointed American actions elsewhere are also essential parts of the story. For there has been no systemic logic guiding policies from place to place, from issue to issue. Yet the intersection and overlap of developments are the hallmark of the region's politics. "Today, we are confounded by unanticipated events that leave us uncomprehending and at a loss as what to do."
The blogger Legalienate goes further at legalienate.blogspot.com:
"The destruction of Iraq, which began under the conservatively emotional Bush regime, continues under the liberally placid Obama administration. There are differences in style when an intelligent landscaper replaces a slack jawed gardener but the plantation they serve differs only in the cosmetic facade it sells the public, not the diseased crop it produces. " It contrasts itself to its blood thirsty opposition as a peace-making arbiter among squabbling foreigners, but those squabbles often originate in our meddling foreign policy which looks like the rest of our economy; dangerously de-structuring."
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