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.