There never has been a way to do it right.
Attempts to forcibly build what you might think of as civilization in the Middle East have consistently failed. Unless and until enough people over there decide they want this kind of civilization, it ain't gonna happen.
I accept that we didn't do it right, but I can not accept that "There never has been a way to do it right."
Israel seems to have established a pretty respectable civilization in the middle east in spite of being under near constant attack by terrorist groups and neighbors who despise Jews.
Many of the political boundaries in the region are artificial and have been manipulated by the British... perhaps redrawing them (...AGAIN *sigh!*) more closely along ethnic lines might help. Finding out how to redistribute profits from the region's oil production and other activities might be ... problematic.
The iraqi police and army are full of cowards who frequently moved behind american positions instead of doing some ass kicking themselves. It's a mindset difference that's pretty significant.
But is it impossible to overcome?
It's a bit difficult to accept that Iraq is full of "cowards" and that there
simply is
NO ONE who is willing to step forward to the task?
However, I will say that since Fitz brought this up, I did hear it reported on Fox News' "O'Rielly Factor" that one reason ISIS was making such advances was that the soldiers defending Iraqi positions broke and ran. Given ISIS is actually an "army" rather than a ragtag band of terrorists at this point, I am not saying I blame them.
O'Rielly is peeved that we aren't using air power to bomb ISIS as it advances, he claims this is possible (which I agree with) and he claims it shows the Iraqis they're not alone (which seems reasonable, though perhaps questionable).
Those with military backgrounds may be better able to answer but isn't breaking and running in the face of danger something that can be addressed by better training?
If so then we didn't do a helluva lot of training, it seems.
Anyhow, we're out, and it seems we're out "for good," and we're not going to do anything about ISIS, not even attack it from the air as Bill O'Rielly suggests. Somehow the ISIS soldiers
HAVE managed to be trained, or indoctrinated, or scared into, fighting ruthlessly and conquering.
Perhaps we should have let them train the Iraqis. ooops. Sorry, that was snarky. And probably insulting too.
Lots of folks are saying 'we didnt do it right, we should have done it right"
but so far, no one has been able to articulate what right in that situation would have looked like.
And, unfortunatly I guess I won't be the first one to do it.
I do think one characteristic of "right" would have been staying longer. Another would be dealing with ISIS in a ruthlessly effective manner (that right there seems to remove Obama from the equation, IMHO).
I don't know how you take people who run from danger and turn them into people who will fight a ruthless enemy save maybe to point out just who and what they're supposedly defending: wives, daughters, parents, sisters, brothers, grandparents....people they love? IS that going to work? Apparently trying to get them to fight for their way of life doesn't work as they have very little vested in that, from what I'm hearing.
If I can't figure out "what 'right' looks like" then all that amounts to is one more wise @$$ on the innernetz spewing opinions around like diamonds before swine.
So what?
But I will say one more thing; if our political leaders in D.C. are either disinterested, detached elitists like Obama, or clueless jackwagons, who can't amongst all those DC think tanks and generals and professors, etc., figure out how to do it "right" we'd better start our defense programs up full-tilt again and keep our troops home, fighting these half-arsed wars and (I use the term advisedly) "nation building" is getting way too expensive esp. considering the far less than stellar outcomes.
