Thursday, September 11, 2014
Some say WW II was just the second half of WW I
So it is no stretch to say that the current war plans are just the fourth period of the Bush Wars against the Middle East. This is, of course, no comfort to all those who will die or be maimed in the days, months and years ahead that will keep pumping $Millions in profits to the Merchants of Death. It probably won't help all those who like to watch those great videos of things getting blown up. At best it may help future historians sort out all the stupid stuff that keeps driving the madness gripping the area. One bit of stupid stuff will be all the assertions that this time it is a different war.
It will be a significantly different kind of war — not like Iraq or Afghanistan, where many tens of thousands of American troops were still deployed when Mr. Obama took the oath nearly six years ago. And even though Mr. Obama compared it to the small-scale, sporadic strikes against isolated terrorists in places like Yemen and Somalia, it will not be exactly like those either.And our biggest bit of stupid stuff is our insane skilz at butting in to the worst situations at the wrongest times. Let no one ever say we aren't exceptional.
Instead, the widening battle with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will be the next chapter in a grueling, generational struggle that has kept the United States at war in one form or another since that day 13 years ago on Thursday when hijacked airplanes shattered America’s sense of its own security. Waged by a president with faded public standing, the new phase will not involve many American troops on the ground, but seems certain to require a far more intense American bombing blitz than in Somalia or Yemen.
The battleground for that new phase will now extend beyond the well-known sands of Iraq into the new theater of Syria, a nation racked by more than three years of brutal civil war. After years of trying to avoid entangling the United States in another “dumb war,” as he called the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mr. Obama is now plunging the United States into the middle of one of the world’s bloodiest, most vicious and fratricidal conflicts.
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