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[mainiac]

Sanders has been on my side of those issues from the beginning.

Quick question: Did the anti-war Senator from Illinois who was "on your side" from the begining and never had to make a compromise at the national level live up to your expectations when he became president?

[Bohandas]

Sanders has been on my side of those issues from the beginning.

Quick question: Did the anti-war Senator from Illinois who was "on your side" from the begining and never had to make a compromise at the national level live up to your expectations when he became president?

The continued involvement in Iraq was due to events that nobody could have forseen. We all knew that history wasn't going to vindicate George Bush, but who could've guessed that history would actually go on to vindicate Saddam Hussein and that things would actually be +worse+ without him?

That said, President Obama is indeed a disappointment, but that's due to his policies on the economy and foreign trade. I was told that he was anti-business and that's part of the reason why I voted for him, but with with all this Transpacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership nonsense he has NOT lived up to my expectations.

He has however lived up to the main thrust of his campaign promises, namely that he is not George Bush and he is not affiliated with George Bush

[RedKing]

The continued involvement in Iraq was due to events that nobody could have forseen. We all knew that history wasn't going to vindicate George Bush, but who could've guessed that history would actually go on to vindicate Saddam Hussein and that things would actually be +worse+ without him?

Umm, a number of folks, actually. And not just hippie antiwar liberals, but conservative IR realists like John Mearshimer. Nature abhors a vacuum, and geopolitics abhors one even more than nature. In 2003, guys like Mearshimer and Stephen Walt were arguing vehemently that the Iraq War was going to be a costly, unnecessary mistake (and it should be noted that Mearshimer correctly predicted that the first Gulf War was going to be a cakewalk, when conventional wisdom was expecting a long, bloody campaign).

[MaximumZero]

Whats one of those political analyst site things that compare them and their policies? I can't remember the name right now. It's not politico, at least I'm pretty sure that's not what I'm thinking of.

www.isidewith.com

[smjjames]

Whats one of those political analyst site things that compare them and their policies? I can't remember the name right now. It's not politico, at least I'm pretty sure that's not what I'm thinking of.

www.isidewith.com

Not even close to what I was trying to remember.

[Helgoland]

The continued involvement in Iraq was due to events that nobody could have forseen. We all knew that history wasn't going to vindicate George Bush, but who could've guessed that history would actually go on to vindicate Saddam Hussein and that things would actually be +worse+ without him?

History hasn't vindicated him. His rule is one of the main reasons for Iraq's current situation - he has actively prevented a development in a better direction.

What you advocate is known in German as 'graveyard silence': Better a continuous stream of atrocities by a stable dictator than an outburst of violence hopefully followed by a slower stream of atrocities, or none at all. Basically it's the 'Let's not make things better, we might make them worse' mentality.

I'd like to go on record to say that I believe it was a good thing that Hussein was toppled, though the Iraq war was not a good idea. His disappearance - whether by natural or violent means - would've released the tensions we currently see anyway, and it's better to get that over with sooner than later.
Not that the way he was toppled was in any way optimal, of course.

[Lord Shonus]

I suspect that the real mistake was trying to keep something called "Iraq" intact after Hussein was gone - it would have been better to let the various parts go their own way and form five or six nations out of the old state - instead we had cultural and ethnic groups that never got along to begin with that now lacked the reign of terror that Hussein imposed, which is the perfect recipe for civil war.

[redwallzyl]

trump just lost all his Latino votes if he had any to begin with.

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/25/417586527/univision-cuts-ties-with-trump-after-comments-about-immigrants

[Dutchling]

wat

...

oh, that trump

[FearfulJesuit]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT

[smjjames]

I suspect that the real mistake was trying to keep something called "Iraq" intact after Hussein was gone - it would have been better to let the various parts go their own way and form five or six nations out of the old state - instead we had cultural and ethnic groups that never got along to begin with that now lacked the reign of terror that Hussein imposed, which is the perfect recipe for civil war.

Five or six? Could you show me how you would get that many out of it? The most possible that I can see coming out of it would be 3, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shii'a. Though theres a possibility that the Sunni one might get absorbed into Iran, a distant one though considering that the Iraq-Iran war is probably still relatively fresh.

trump just lost all his Latino votes if he had any to begin with.

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/25/417586527/univision-cuts-ties-with-trump-after-comments-about-immigrants

The GOP leaders and influential people are probably wishing right now that Trump was stuffed in a dark closet somewhere as it's the exact opposite of what they're trying to do with minorities.

[Bohandas]

The continued involvement in Iraq was due to events that nobody could have forseen. We all knew that history wasn't going to vindicate George Bush, but who could've guessed that history would actually go on to vindicate Saddam Hussein and that things would actually be +worse+ without him?

Umm, a number of folks, actually. And not just hippie antiwar liberals, but conservative IR realists like John Mearshimer. Nature abhors a vacuum, and geopolitics abhors one even more than nature.

That here would be another dictator was forseeable, that it would be someone so bad made Saddam look kind and levelheaded by comparison was less likely. I mean a lot of these ISIS guys are people who were kicked out of al-qaeda because their views were too extreme

[Dutchling]

I suspect that the real mistake was trying to keep something called "Iraq" intact after Hussein was gone - it would have been better to let the various parts go their own way and form five or six nations out of the old state - instead we had cultural and ethnic groups that never got along to begin with that now lacked the reign of terror that Hussein imposed, which is the perfect recipe for civil war.

Five or six? Could you show me how you would get that many out of it? The most possible that I can see coming out of it would be 3, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shii'a. Though theres a possibility that the Sunni one might get absorbed into Iran, a distant one though considering that the Iraq-Iran war is probably still relatively fresh.

I count six.

Kurds
Yazidi Kurds (not sure how much overlap this has with Kurds in general...)
Shia Arabs
Iraqi Turkmens
Sunni Arabs
Assyrians

[smjjames]

I suspect that the real mistake was trying to keep something called "Iraq" intact after Hussein was gone - it would have been better to let the various parts go their own way and form five or six nations out of the old state - instead we had cultural and ethnic groups that never got along to begin with that now lacked the reign of terror that Hussein imposed, which is the perfect recipe for civil war.

Five or six? Could you show me how you would get that many out of it? The most possible that I can see coming out of it would be 3, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shii'a. Though theres a possibility that the Sunni one might get absorbed into Iran, a distant one though considering that the Iraq-Iran war is probably still relatively fresh.

I count six.

Kurds
Yazidi Kurds (not sure how much overlap this has with Kurds in general...)
Shia Arabs
Iraqi Turkmens
Sunni Arabs
Assyrians

The main problem though is that there is a LOT of overlap between the groups and the areas that they live in, there isn't some area where 'this is my side, that is yours', at least not discretely.

A good one is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq#/media/File:Ethnoreligious_Iraq.svg , although ISIS has re-arranged things already (the Yazidis especially), so, that isn't neccesarily 100% accurate for the northwestern area.

[Powder Miner]

My whole problem with the "splitting Iraq into separate nations" thing is that it sure reminds me an awful lot of what started the entire mess in the Middle East in the first place: Britain and France divvying up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves.

Whenever you take a chunk of land, decide to make it its own nation, and put a sect in power, everyone else is likely deep in the territory of "screwed" and/or "very angry", and instability and unrest following that shouldn't be too terribly surprising.