So we had a second beheading of another journalist from ISIS yesterday. Fox is (naturally) positive that they know this is all Obama’s fault. Listening to some of them yesterday actually made my ears bleed. The ignorance and complete lack of facts is becoming too hard for me to take. So I’m going to give you my analysis.
This is the Bush administration’s fault.
If I were Fox, that would have been the end of the post and millions of incredibly dim witted people would be very satisfied with that analysis. So satisfied, that they would parrot it to their friends and on social media with the impunity of people who are well informed and intelligent.
But since I’m not Fox and I expect my readers to be more discerning and more demanding that to settle for my opinion, I’m going to do something unconventional by showing you the basis of my opinion. I know! Weird, right? In the interest of keeping this post at a readable length, I’m going to stick to basics.
Let’s start with President Obama and see if we can find a way that this could possibly be his fault. First off, there was a rescue attempt made. It would have been great, had they been successful but these missions usually don’t work out that way so it failed. That’s just an unfortunate fact of life. Here’s what Fox had to say about the rescue attempt;
President Barack Obama’s “hesitation” to make a decision about American reporter James Foley’s rescue mission delayed the failed operation, according to a report.
Personally, I like hesitation and pensiveness. I wish Bush had (ever) partaken because I suspect that things would have turned out better for us if he had. Let me digress for a moment; I don’t understand how a person who writes at a junior high school level gets paid to write things for grown-ups. I’ve never heard of Sarah Hurtubise, who wrote this piece for Fox (she appears to be on loan from the Daily Caller), and I hope that I never do. Look at that sentence structure for a minute. First off, why is hesitation in quotes? Who is she quoting? Or does she maybe think that the word hesitation was erroneously used, and wants to highlight that opinion? But that wouldn’t make much sense because the criticism of the hesitation seems to be the basis of her piece. Maybe there were just some random crayon marks that the transcriber of the piece mistook for quotes? Also, shouldn’t the sentence begin with "according to a report"? Is she Yoda? Seriously, who reads this crap and thinks they’re getting information?
Anyway, enough of my twit rant. Let’s contrast that pile of dung with the way that everyone else reported the story. NBC just put forth the facts. Here’s what happened, here’s our sources, and here’s how it turned out. Newsweek likewise told us what happened, who they spoke to, and how it turned out. CNN, The Washington Post,USA Today, ABC, Business Insider, and every other journalistic outfit presented the facts of what happened. They all used the word "failed" in the headline, which is perfectly fine. It was a failed attempt. The Fox fucks talked about the hesitation without bothering to demonstrate how said hesitation affected the mission. Did the hesitation cause it to fail? Was there a delay that changed the outcome of the mission? Or is the point that hesitation in and of itself a bad thing? Does anyone remember Fox touting how Bush made another huge decision without giving any thought to it? If hesitation is bad, shouldn’t the opposite approach be good? And what kind of critically thinking impaired idiot reads that tripe and walks away feeling informed?
Okay, I spend way too much time on that. Onto the next point. Before the actual beheading of James Foley, Isis demanded cash for his return. They wanted A LOT of cash, and the release of a prisoner. Was President Obama supposed to hand over one hundred and thirty million dollars and a bunch of terrorists? Was that where he fucked up? Would this have satisfied Isis and been the end of our troubles with them? Cause they definitely didn’t want to use that money to do bad things, right?
Okay, so they behead James Foley because President Obama fucked up by not giving them what they wanted. They were thoughtful enough to produce a video with, not only the beheading, but also an explanation of why it happened and a list of things that the US needed to do to prevent the next one. Here are some of the key points contained in the video entitled, "A Message To America". In the video, Foley was made to say,
[The American Government] effectively hit the last nail in my coffin [with the recent airstrikes in Iraq]
He’s referring to the strikes we assisted with to save the Yazidi. Is that where Obama fucked up? By not sitting idly by while Isis exterminates people they don’t like in Iraq? Would abiding by a genocide have been the right course of action?
The charming fellow who actually did the beheading had some tips for President Obama, on how to prevent the next beheading. He’s of the belief that Isis isn’t an insurgency so he refers to them as a "state".
State that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide.” He threatened: “Any aggression towards the Islamic State is an aggression towards Muslims from all walks of life who have accepted the Islamic Caliphate as their leadership. So any attempt by you, Obama, to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic Caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people.
The video concludes with the fighter holding Sotloff in a similar outfit and saying:
The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.
Okay, so allowing Isis let their genocidal freak flags fly unmolested would have prevented the next beheading. Is that where Obama fucked up? By proceeding with bombings even though Isis told him not to? Should he let them be in charge now? They’re bigger than Al Qaeda ever were, with an estimated 50,000 members but President Obama fucked up by not letting them get bigger and stronger?
Where exactly did Obama go wrong, other than being too pensive for Fox’s taste?
Now onto why this is Bush’s fault.
Everyone who knew anything about the middle east was opposed to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. They were opposed because they all knew that getting rid of Saddam would mean that Iraq would splinter into warring factions and come apart at the seams, paving the way for extremist groups to fester. You can Google Russ Feingold, Juan Cole, Reza Aslan, and a slew of other people’s statements about what would happen for yourself (set the search parameters to dates that preceded the invasion), but I’m going to give you just one. Here’s Dick Cheney in 1994, before he lost his fucking mind.
That would be precisely what happened. Isis is an acronym for "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria". Bush paved the way for Isis, just like Cheney said would happen. But creating the environment in which they could thrive and grow isn’t all that Bush did. He pissed them off and gave them permission to behave barbarically.
Let’s go back to the Foley video. I’m not going to post it (but I did provide a transcript above), and I haven’t watched it so I’m relying on journalism from people who have watched it. In the video, Foley is apparently wearing an orange jump suit, a la Gitmo. That wasn’t an accident. Isis said that it was a statement about Gitmo. Who could have guessed that Guantanamo Bay was going to come back to bite us in the ass? Oh, right. Never mind.
Guess what else Bush did to piss off Isis? I’ll give you a hint; it was Cheney’s precious waterboarding. Thanks to Bush, Isis is doing it to our people with the impunity that only Bush could have given them by doing it first. Again, who could have possibly seen this coming?
So yeah, I blame Bush. I don’t blame Bush because I have a hard on for Obama, who can do no wrong in my partisan hack mind. I blame Bush because Bush is to blame. Ten or fifteen years from now when the children of Pakistan, who grew up under a barrage of drone strikes come for us, I will blame Obama because that will be Obama’s fault.
But not today. Today, we’re living with Bush’s colossal fuck up.
