If you want to see the state of this Administration and the seriousness of our current leadership, the cartoon above and this headline pretty much says it all....
Father's Day: Obama Vacations Despite Iraq, Ukraine, Immigration Crisis
Now, I know, the Kool-Aid drinkers will sputter--"But Bush took vacations!!! Every President takes vacations!!!"While this is technically true, it is also irrelevant.
The current Administration is standing on this sidelines and watching as one of the most FUBAR but strategically important regions of the world literally is going up in flames. Now, you won't hear about this, at least seriously, from the American press, as they have given up all pretensions and are totally sycophants to their Dear Leader, but ask yourself this...if the situation in Iraq was happening during a Romney Administration....think it might be getting 24-7 coverage???
Just a little bit.
But while pundits, pollsters, and morons (most of CNN and MSNBC) are giving their insightful analysis of the situation in Iraq as they dazzle us with their brilliant scholarship of the Sunni-Shia conflict, etc, most of them are not pulling this string to its worst possible conclusion.
Have no fear, the Grouchy Historian will. As I've said before, in a Bismarckian way, I really don't care how much Al Qaeda and Hizballah kill each other, the more the merrier I say...however, if you step back a little bit..two nightmare, but not inconceivable scenarios become possible.
1) The ISIS or ISIL (whichever you prefer) knuckleheads don't stop in Iraq and keep going into Saudi Arabia. Given Barry Soweto's aversion to anything that might detract from more Obamacare spending, I would not bet on the Saudis chances either. The ol' saw that you can only feed the alligator so long to keep it from eating you, may come true for the two-faced royal family. While I would normally say good riddance, the billions of barrels of crude would make a big impact on the global economy and very likely tip the world (and the US) back into recession if disrupted. (Of course in this 6th "recovery summer" with the Obama Administration's "laser focus" on jobs, it might be tough to tell).. Coupled with the green energy lunacy and environmental whacko hatred of domestic energy production and this would represent an "oil shock" that even MSNBC couldn't ignore....nah, they'd just blame it on Bush.
2) The worst scenario is that once Obama completes his retreat from Afghanistan...and the FUBAR in Iraq has not taught this Administration any lessons about the price of a premature bug-out...the Taliban will come back...just like ISIS is...take over Afghanistan...which is likely, and then expand their efforts into Pakistan...OR those two-faced Pakistani bastards could just come out in the open and ally themselves with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the rest of those thugs. AND, here's the fun part, the Pakistanis have plenty of nuclear weapons. Yup, that's right...the ISIS guy who said "See you in New York" when Obama released him from Gitmo in 2009 (just for all you "Bush did it" morons, that was AFTER Obama became President) might just be coming back not with a couple of airliners, but a nuke or two...if the worst case scenario plays out...and with the Apple Dumpling Gang in charge for two more years, the worst case could become the likely case.
SO, take your pick, this Administration's complete lack of a coherent Middle East policy and absolute strategic blind spot about Iraq makes it possible the US could face either a return to the 1973 oil crisis (preventable by energy independence, but not with this clown in the White House) or a Nuclear 9/11. Pretty chipper huh?
I won't even delve into the numerous comparisons to Iraq and Vietnam and how the Democrats fundamentally LOST two wars the Republican Administrations won...or at least stalemated. Sure, there were lots of issues with both regimes we left in charge, but in both cases, a swift and minor intervention by the US might have made all the difference. Whether the Shia militias, Iraqi Army and their Iranian masters can save Baghdad remains to be seen. I think Clausewitz will (as always) kick in here and the ISIS hordes may reach their tipping point where logistics and exhaustion kick in, but even if a Shia rump state remains in Iraq, the Sunni forces have won a tremendous victory.
This brings me to the map below, crafted by my favorite grouchy guy, Ralph Peters. Besides writing outstanding Civil War fiction, he has written some outstanding strategic analysis about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason he is my favorite grouchy guy is that he will say what others often won't because it isn't PC. In 2006 he wrote a pretty darn prophetic article saying that the ol' Sykes-Picot borders in the Middle East (link attached for public school educated liberals) are quickly becoming obsolete and causing most of the conflict today and need to be done away with. The map below shows his vision for a new Middle East divided by tribe and politics, and is pretty darn close to how things are going...except that Syria is splintering just like Iraq.
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