The Republican party just doesn’t get it. Their counterparts only vaguely understand. Let’s put it this way. A town called Tal Afar fell Monday in northern Iraq, and call the whole region “All Afar.”
Dozens died in Kenya, and more elsewhere.
With thousands of American veterans unable to get medical care in a timely fashion, the Republican party is pressing President Obama to do something forceful about the rising power of jidahists in Iraq.
They are even willing to talk with Tehran, though it still has more to do to prove it is not building nuclear weapons to use on Israel.
This is the same party that removed Saddam Hussein, who kept the country under control at least within its borders, from power. It is now clear that former President George Bush manipulated the American people, combining hubris and a desire for revenge for 911, to invade the country that had embarrassed his father.
Now, these same Republicans are worried that the war they started has made Iraq a breeding ground for anti-Western terrorists.
How any new intervention would make things any different is not clear.
Certainly the massacre of how many thousand US-trained Iraqi soldiers by the jidahists, is not going to help the Republicans regain the White House any more than its resistance to health care and immigration reform, support for womens’ rights, anti-government rhetoric or denial of the threat of climate change.
They were shown the door in 2008, some would say they stole the White House in 2000 or they never would have been in power for Sept. 11. Their redux was to trash a Vietnam veteran who actually served while Bush 2 was drinking beer on national guard bases in the south.
There are no easy answers, or perhaps any answers at all, but the US media is going to have to do a better job to retain any semblance of credibility it has. If American wants to see cheerleaders they can watch the NFL.
At the same time, Russia poses a real threat.
Even after it became clear that the Iraq war was a fraud, the US media reported the 2010 Iraqi elections as a democratic exercise of power, writes Iraq veteran Chelsea Manning from a US prison.
In a column published by the New York Times, Manning remembers being ordered to help suppress opponents of the US-supported candidates.
“I was shocked by our military’s complicity in the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling details flew under the American media’s radar,” writes the whistleblower who saw a higher duty than just following orders.
Manning also writes that the issues that concerned him about the fraudulent use of US power “have not been resolved.”
Perhaps by the time his 35-year prison sentence ends the Republicans will admit climate change is real, same-sex marriage will be a nationwide right, marijuana legal and all Americans will have health care.
But don’t bet on it. A safer bet would be that there still are lines for health care at Veterans Affairs hospitals. Meantime, the helicopter blades are already whirling and the Baghdad embassy evacuation has begun.
Sources:
Chelsea Manning
New York Times
Guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment