War-boner twins John McCain and Lindsey Graham are slightly tingly about the recent bombing of ISIS forces in Iraq, but they’re begging the president to grant them full engorgement by engaging in further sorties in Iraq and Syria (I’m sure Assad and the Russians won’t mind!) and distributing weapons more liberally throughout the region:
We need to get beyond a policy of half measures. The President needs to devise a comprehensive strategy to degrade ISIS. This should include the provision of military and other assistance to our Kurdish, Iraqi, and Syrian partners who are fighting ISIS. It should include U.S. air strikes against ISIS leaders, forces, and positions both in Iraq and Syria. It should include support to Sunni Iraqis who seek to resist ISIS. And none of this should be contingent on the formation of a new government in Baghdad.
As insane as the first part of that paragraph is, their waving away concerns about the dysfunctional clusterfuck of a government in Baghdad truly reveals the pair’s stupidity and shortsightedness. Why do they suppose the Iraqi military flung its weapons down and ran away from ISIS faster than Rand Paul from an immigrant schoolgirl? Why have Iraqi Sunnis allowed the ISIS dirtbags to roll into their territory relatively unopposed?
Maybe it’s because the Sunnis and Shia don’t trust each other, and the Sunnis despise the Baghdad government. The Iraqis have to sort out their government or this shit will keep happening over and over. Adding more guns to the mix will just give the crazies more guns to pick up next time it all falls apart. That’s why Obama declined to get involved before, despite McCain, Graham & Co. bellowing like ruptured cows from the sideline.
You can make a credible case for US military strikes to prevent an imminent massacre, and Obama did yesterday. (I thought the regional players whom we’ve armed for decades should take the lead on that, but what do I know? Maybe they couldn’t or wouldn’t.) However, the US taking a central military role on an ongoing basis sounds like a perfect recipe for a giant cock-up as well as an obstacle to ever achieving a lasting resolution.
McCain and Graham again:
“If ever there were a time to reevaluate our disastrous policy in the Middle East, this is it. Because of the President’s hands-off approach, the threats in the region have grown and now directly threaten the United States. We are already paying a very heavy price for our inaction, and if we do not change course, the costs of our inaction will only grow.”
Well thanks, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte! Jesus, I wish Obama would sign an executive order that requires McCain and Graham to punch themselves in the face if they ever utter the phrases “disastrous policy” and “the Middle East” in the same sentence again.
This is the same bullshit those two were spewing back when they were pissing themselves about Saddam’s WMDs and mushroom clouds. Do they think we don’t remember that? Probably. Their media hosts are rarely rude enough to bring that up when they make the Sunday rounds.
Anyway, I hope and trust President Obama will have the good sense to continue to ignore that pair of foreign policy trolls.
Chyron HR
What could possibly degrade ISIS more than posing for selfies with John McCain?
StringOnAStick
As usual, Gramps and Huckleberry Butch Me Up are just playing to their real audience, e.g. the Villagers.
Mnemosyne
I dunno, I’m perfectly fine with half-measures. Full measures (or whatever it would be) haven’t panned out very well for us, so let’s dip our toes in the water and see what’s going on before we jump in headfirst only to land on a goddamned alligator.
BGinCHI
Why doesn’t Obama send these two geniuses into the ISIS camp to negotiate with them or to tell them we are going to crush them?
Let’s see if they have the courage to be dropped from the air into their midst.
/parachutes available at extra cost
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: To be clear, it’s an alligator with American-made weaponry.
srv
It appears the Peshmerga are vastly over-rated.
McWalnuts and crowd are right, if you want to defeat ISIS/IL, we’re going to have to do it. We don’t have the ARVN you wish you had.
We’re the one who destabilized Iraq, and winked at destabilizing Assad.
Here’s ISIL, enjoying all yer trucks. Watch that video and tell us you can win this without a strategery.
Mustang Bobby
@BGinCHI: They can take Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney with them as long as ISIS promises to keep them. (HT to O. Henry and The Ransom of Red Chief.)
Hunter Gathers
Somewhere on this planet, a brown person who prays to the wrong god is not in any immediate danger. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are on a mission to stop such an injustice.
catclub
@srv:
Quite possibly, but I think they will defend Kurdish territory much more vigorously than peripheral territory, which is what they have retreated from, so far. They do seem to think the US has become their Air Force.
Alex S.
I fail to see how ISIS is directly threatening the United States.
shelley
Forget the bombing, is there any news of the food/water drop for those people trapped on that mountain?
Patrick
As I recall, the region was fairly stable in 2003. It was people like McCain and Graham that helped make it unstable.
Why anybody would listen to these folks who have continually been wrong is beyond me. Furthermore, people like me have already been forced to help pay the $trillion plus for their idiotic war with our hard-earned taxes. If these clowns want more war, why don’t they pay for it themselves?
Cervantes
I like it!
(Having the President do it might even get around the Constitutional ban on legislative bills of attainder — Article I, Section 9.)
Elizabelle
Those two are barnacles on the ass of the ship of state.
shelley
In the same way that the ‘threat’ of Ebola is causing various wingnuts to piss their pants and demand that possible patients should be sent to Gitmo.
Betty Cracker
@srv: Interesting that you invoked Vietnam. That wasn’t our fight either.
Cervantes
@Alex S.:
For one thing, some small but not insignificant number of ISIS militants have US passports.
Chyron HR
@srv:
Hey, slow down, hoss. You don’t roll out a new product in August.
cleek
it’s their job to complain about what Democrats do.
BGinCHI
@Mustang Bobby: Then they would have four for bridge and possible circle jerk.
raven
@srv: Yea, the fucking ARVN were great.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
It wasn’t much of a fight at all, until the French and the Americans made it so.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Among other stupid analogies.
Mustang Bobby
To quote myself (‘cuz no one else will): This turd has been handed down from generations long past; from the division of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the arrogance of the victors to dictate the terms of peace that gave rise to the dictators of the past and present.
But this moment, this action, could have been forestalled if we had never gone there in 2003; if we had never let the liars and the bloodsuckers win their war of lies and a promise of richness beyond the dreams of Avarice. Until we end that war, we will not end this one.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald.
catclub
Reality based discussion of the Peshmerga and ISIS likely capabilities, after you finish pointing and laughing at the war twins.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-on-making-sense-of-whats-happening-in-northern-iraq
Alex S.
@Cervantes:
Yeah right, and suddenly there is an ISIS army right in the middle of the country, WOLVERINES!
Cervantes
@Alex S.: You’re trying too hard. Walk before you run.
Villago Delenda Est
I think the President should go along with this “more bombs!” thing, with one condition.
Both Gramps Walnuts and Huckleberry Closetcase be strapped to the first bombs delivered.
srv
@Chyron HR: We’ve been trying to roll this out for years, but Assad was the new Hitler.
We’re just not fashionable like y’all.
@catclub: They got a lot of territory to cover. I think ISIL will fuck them up and we’ll see the old “which Kurdish tribe will stab the other in the back first?” roll out.
That said, if ISIL was thinking strategically, they just want the Kurds to stay out of the way while they mop up the rest of the country. Then they can come back and hammer them.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
From what I’ve read, it appears that ISIL have been acquiring a lot of tanks and heavy artillery, from the deserted army bases in Sunni territory, that the Kurds can’t match. Thus the desire for US help with airstrikes to take out that artillery.
Alex S.
@Cervantes:
Sorry, I’m still not seeing the direct threat, try again.
Redshift
Shorter McCain/Graham: “Blowback? What’s that? I don’t think it exists. Bad consequences only ever happen from not using the military enough!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Mustang Bobby: I might add, this should happen in the style of the contemporary update of The Ransom of Red Chief for the screen, Ruthless People. Which, given that we’re talking about such stellar human beings as The Dark Lord and Bill “Never right, not even twice a day like a broken clock” Kristol, is most appropriate. Heck, the movie even has Doug Feith in it!
shelley
Latest NewsMax headlines
There’s tons of Tea Partier’s that insist it already does.
Betty Cracker
@JGabriel: I understand why the Kurds can’t launch airstrikes, but we’ve sold fighter jets to other regional governments — Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. They don’t want these nutballs sweeping through the country and threatening their borders either.
Glocksman
@Betty Cracker:
I picked up my local library’s copy of The Invisible Bridge today, and the first chapter was about the return of the POW’s after Nixon declared
peace in our timepeace with honor.The parallels with Vietnam WRT Iraq do exist, though at least the ARVN was known to fight, if not very well.
Villago Delenda Est
@shelley: Hell, they want Allah’s Flag to be over the White House. At least Ted Cruz does. Except they call him “God”, not “Allah”. Same mean-spirited son of a bitch, though.
Amir Khalid
John McCain and Lindsay Graham are like joint shadow secretaries of state, right? It doth seem they travel the world together playing at it. (They even fetched up in KL once.) I wonder if the next Republican president will pick either/both of them for that office. Or if any Republican president would.
BGinCHI
Worth a read if you want to get up to speed a bit on some details:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-on-making-sense-of-whats-happening-in-northern-iraq
Sterling
@Betty Cracker: If the comparison to Vietnam is accurate, within 10-20 years the area will be a tourist destination and source of low-wage labor for globalized commercial interests. Instead we’re just going to get a rerun of Lebanon.
Davis X. Machina
@Betty Cracker: Turkey is flying missions in the area, but they’re not advertising the fact.
Citizen_X
Dunno, but I hope our guys in State are having some Words right now with the Saudis about their little Frankenstein’s monster, ISIS/ISIL, that’s running amok right now. (And yes, I’d like that with Israel, too, and a pony while I’m at it.)
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
Nah. They’re really thinking that if we don’t intervene more now, there won’t be more blowback to justify meddling in the future, and then where will the MIC get its money?
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Saudis are among the major funders of ISIS. They aren’t about to launch air-strikes.
The Turks were providing covert support to ISIS until recently. They are regretting that already.
Jordan? Well, there’s no accounting for Jordan …
Iowa Old Lady
If your solution to every situation is the same, your analysis is probably not very subtle.
gogol's wife
@Villago Delenda Est:
Like Slim Pickens!
Suffern ACE
Well wolf blitzer was asking on CNN if air strikes would be enough to defeat ISIS. So we know the mission will be judged a failure if those ISIS folk surrender. Much like the Taliban have All but disbanded after … Oh never mind. Permanent no fly zone. Cruise missile peace talks. Don’t stone em, drone em.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
FSM willing, they will both be long in their graves before there’s another Republican president to think about such a thing.
raven
@Sterling: And they’ll be making dildos.
Suffern ACE
@Cervantes: regret fr the Turks from a group that is attacking their enemies? Hehe. Yeah, their ambassador is kidnapped. They’ll find a new one.
raven
I hate to say it but this is a subject Pat Lang knows a lot about. He’s really hard on Obama but it’s still interesting to read what he has to say.
For instance:
BGinCHI
@raven: The plot is almost completely lifted out of season 2 of Vikings on the History Channel.
Amazing how different eras of time co-exist on this planet.
raven
@BGinCHI: Or the plot of season 2 of Vikings was lifted out of the 7th century.
BGinCHI
I’m guessing Drudge will post this story as click-bait for the “Obama is killing people off” crowd:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/james-brady-homicide
BGinCHI
@raven: You are blowing my mind.
Cervantes
@Suffern ACE: Examples can elucidate but, on the whole, I certainly don’t expect you to take my word for anything.
PurpleGirl
Off topic (but of interest to the BJ community): Today is World Cat Day . Yay!
http://www.cute-calendar.com/event/world-cat-day/6594-world.html
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: I know that Saudis funded ISIS; they funded al Qaeda too, but once the threat came to their door, they acted in their own self interest. A similar moment might be at hand now with ISIS.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Dupe. Stoopit iPad!
raven
@PurpleGirl: And my Georgia football tickets came!!! Woof!
Roger Moore
@PurpleGirl:
Shouldn’t World Caturday be tomorrow?
Mandalay
@Alex S.:
Threats to the world’s oil supply are viewed as serious threats to the United States by those who run our country.
ISIS is directly threatening US oil interests in Iraq, and is possibly threatening Iraq’s oil production (which surprisingly is the second highest in the world right now). US companies that could be affected include Chevron, Exxon, Haliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Occidental.
That may not sway you in the slightest, but our betters probably see that as sufficient justification for going after ISIS, even without any humanitarian considerations.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz to mess with the world’s oil supply, but has never dared to do it. They know a military attack from the US would follow. ISIS is still at the grasshopper stage, and hasn’t reached Iran’s level of understanding. But they will soon.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Right.
ISIS also now controls most of Syria’s oil production.
(We don’t use words like “genocide” lightly in this country.)
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid:
Well the last one certainly didn’t.
Davis X. Machina
@Cervantes: 34th in the world… right after Australia.
Suffern ACE
I know , I know, the us has just never understood the region, it’s language, it’s history, it’s culture. But at what point do we have to pause and wonder if the Arabs, Iranians and Turks understanding of the place is also limited and we just stop paying attention to the nuances that come with their understanding.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina: But to Syria, it’s important. Get it?
Roger Moore
BTW, could you please not use the analogy in the title ever again? I needed a large amount of brain bleach after considering the size of John McCain’s and Lindsay Graham’s set. Something about “that’s what you call chutzpah” would be a better take on things.
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: I thought she meant boobs.
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
I’d really rather not thing about the size of McCain’s or Graham’s moobs, either, TYVM.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
On Lindsay Graham? Let alone John McCain? Ewww. Roger Moore, save some brain bleach for me!
Suffern ACE
So, after exiting Iraq a few years back, which parts of our foreign policy do we love the most?
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
The really idiotic things that we haven’t done.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
They’re changing their mind slowly, but air-strikes are not yet in the offing.
The Saudis fostered their jihadis for use externally against the Shias. This was, and remains, an objective. But the jihadi movement has always been an internal threat as well and the Saudis are now beginning to restrict it more obviously. For example, they’ve now begun to arrest new volunteers rather than paying them to fly the ISIS flag and create chaos abroad.
Quaker in a Basement
We are?
Suffern ACE
@Quaker in a Basement: it’s just not one that can’t be quantified at the moment. It a special price.
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
If it can’t be quantified, how do you know it’s a really heavy price?
srv
@Cervantes:
We are still Enduring the Freedom brought to us by Desert Storm.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Regarding Sens. McInsane and Overcompensation, I say only this: You first, motherfuckers.
Narcissus
Remember when Bush convinced people Saddam had nuclear-carrying-drones he could attack America with?
And people believed him?
Roger Moore
@Narcissus:
McCain and Graham think of those as “the good old days”.
JPL
@Chyron HR: ding. It’s unfortunate that the media won’t mention that again.
Roger Moore
@Chyron HR:
Getting Lindsay Graham in the picture, also, too.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Narcissus: They were balsa wood drones.
Suffern ACE
@srv: they don’t need that money to buy weapons. It must be for the vending machines.
Quaker in a Basement
@Suffern ACE: It’s almost as if they’ll say any damn thing they think sounds good.
Mandalay
@srv:
Well since it’s only August that sentence can’t yet win the “Most dishonest and distorted claim of 2014” award yet. But I doubt if anything worse will come along before the end of the year.
chopper
Aren’t these the same assholes you wanted to arm earlier, numbnuts?
How anybody still listens to these guys is amazing.
Cassidy
It’s really very simple. We destabilized their country. We bombed their civilian populace. We fucked it all up. So, if Prime Minister fuck your face days “I need your help, please bomb these assholes”, then we click our heels three times and drop a fucking Bomb on some assholes.
Also, it gets brought up ever thread on the ME. We don’t need to go back to the 7th century when Sunni Tupac and Shia Biggie decided they didn’t like each other anymore. That’s wannabe intellectual horseshit.
Cervantes
@Mandalay: What’s your objection? Do you have the same objection to the rest of the article, the following line in particular?
Davis X. Machina
@chopper: When both sides are equally valid, because both sides, then, yeah… It’ doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to fit the right-shaped hole.
David Koch
So much for courage being contagious.
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
There’s a big difference between “people in Kuwait are sending money to ISIS” or “Kuwait is being used to funnel money to ISIS” and “Kuwait is funding ISIS”. It’s rather like accusing the United States of funding the IRA because the IRA raised money from American citizens.
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: I believe I have found the images of their large sets.
I don’t think you should worry .
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
Those aren’t massive sets. The set of all black holes is a massive set.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: Those are all different, certainly. I was just trying to understand this unspecified objection.
Dog On Porch
“The President needs to devise a comprehensive strategy to degrade ISIS”.
That’s not what competent Presidents of the United States do with their time (thanks be to God), a fact both republicans know perfectly well.
That’s when the graduates of the academies at West Point and Annapolis are called upon to earn their pay, the point at which their expertise invariably shapes big picture decision making. As McCain damn well knows.
It’s also the point at which in 2003 those graduates and the armed forces under their various commands were betrayed by their commander in chief (et.al.), with more than a little help from their democratic party allies.
Which makes it all the more reprehensible a remark.
Elizabelle
Open thread, please?
Thinking of Droopy Dawg’s and Walnuts’ privates every time I bring up this blog is cruel and unusual.
Watching Orson Welles’ The Trial on TCM. Anthony Perkins and Jeanne Moreau and wonderful B&W cinematography.
Wondering how Max whatever from Hawaii is doing …
Mike in NC
McCain has been in a foul mood ever since Teddy Roosevelt refused to let him lead the charge up San Juan Hill.
Brendan in Charlotte
@BGinCHI: I’d just as soon send them over as our “ground forces”.
KG
Just noticed, the title says “the massive set”… Are you implying that they only have one set between them? Because that might explain something
Mandalay
@Cervantes:
My bad, though I thought that the objection was self-evident based on the article’s inconsistent content. Post #93 nails it.
The article was based on a Treasury press release which clearly stated that our government’s concern was with financiers based in Kuwait rather than Kuwait itself.
Cervantes
@Mandalay: Very good. So your complaint above was about the article as opposed to what Treasury said. Now that’s clear, I have no problem with it.
Roger Moore
@Brendan in Charlotte:
What should he grind them with?
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: well, since it is claimed they have massive sets, I think a rubirosa would be in order for the task .
catclub
@Iowa Old Lady: Cut taxes for the rich?
amk
@BGinCHI:
Heck, I will pay for those chutes. Money well spent.
oaguabonita
I can’t help wondering after reading something like this whether McCain/Graham, if (FSM forbid!) ever at the levers of power themselves, would actually act in as bloodthirsty, warmongering a manner as they constantly kibitz. Knowing that if it turned to shit (see Bush/Cheney, War Crime of invading Iraq under false pretenses), they would be accountable (well, ok, not accountable exactly — see, again, Bush/Cheney, War Crime of invading Iraq under false pretenses — but certainly in line for the blame, at least within the ever-shrinking Reality-Based Community).
Trolls is right.
oaguabonita
@Alex S.: Duh!
Dog On Porch
@oaguabonita: Recall that Chuck Hagel refused to endorse McCain in 2008 for precisely that reason, i.e., in rejection of the viciously bat-shit people in the GOP that McCain had allied himself with, in preparation for their takeover of the Executive branch.
Dog On Porch
@Betty Cracker: People hopeful that the Saudis militarize and put their skins on the line north of their border should be careful what they wish for.
I very much prefer that the status quo be maintained in Saudi Arabia for the time being.
dww44
@Mnemosyne: Seconded.
BruinKid
Charlie Pierce seems to agree with Cole.
patrick II
Wrong thread.