Posted on 08/09/2014 9:11:42 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The president's expansion of the U.S. military mission in Iraq is conjuring up two dirty little words for anti-war Democrats: Mission creep.
Just two months ago, when Obama announced he was going to send up to 300 American troops to Iraq, he emphasized that they would only have an advisory, non-combat role.
On Friday, however, U.S. fighters bombed terrorist targets in northern Iraq. Hours before, the president had announced he was authorizing such strikes as well as the airdropping of aid to Iraqi refugees stranded on a mountaintop.
The White House has stressed that the two missions — the airstrikes and the airdrops — are narrow and discrete. But neither has an end-date, prompting concern from some Democrats and liberal anti-war groups.
“I oppose open-ended military commitments, which the president’s actions in Iraq could become,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I am deeply concerned that these actions could lead to prolonged direct military involvement, which I would strongly oppose,” he added.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), another senior Democrat on the committee, said he supported the president’s actions, but “as one of only 23 senators who opposed the war in Iraq, I do not believe this should be an extended campaign involving US ground troops.”
Reed is running for reelection this fall.
And Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the House’s most strident anti-war voice, said, “I support strictly humanitarian efforts to prevent genocide in Iraq.”
But, she added, “while the president has existing authority to protect American diplomatic personnel, I remain concerned about U.S. mission creep in Iraq and escalation into a larger conflict, which I oppose.”
Although administration officials are insisting that the missions would be limited, and there would be no boots on the ground, one senior administration official acknowledged Friday that strikes could extend outside of northern Iraq.
“We have said if there is a counterterrorism target that involves potential plotting against the United States, we always reserve the right to act,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said on MSNBC on Friday.
“That would be separate, though, from the two missions that the president authorized yesterday,” he said.
Already the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq has more than doubled since June 16, when the president first ordered troops to go back there. Currently, there are more than 700 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq, not including those who are involved in the current air missions.
Some Democratic defense hawks offered approval for the president’s move, however, even calling for further action.
Senate Intellgence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) came out strongly in favor of the U.S. forcing ISIS out of Iraq, not just away from the Kurdish capital of Erbil in the north of the country.
“It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future,” she said, using an alternative acronym for the group.
But others on the left are warning of unintended consequences of expanding the mission.
Liberal group MoveOn.org, which rallied liberal opposition to the 2003 Iraq War under President George W. Bush, called Obama’s use of force in Iraq “deeply disturbing.”
“The risks of mission creep, unintended consequences, and incremental escalation are real and dangerous,” said the group's executive director Anna Galland.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) on Friday said the Congress should formally authorize the airstrikes in Iraq when lawmakers return from recess in September.
The House just two weeks ago passed a resolution that he and Lee co-sponsored calling on the president to seek congressional approval for any sustained U.S. troop presence. The vote was 370-40.
"While choosing sides may be something Congress decides that it wants to support, it goes beyond the humanitarian mission of providing relief to civilians stranded on a mountain in imminent danger of dying of hunger and thirst," McGovern said.
"When we bomb ISIS, which is a horrible group, we have to realize that we are heading down the path of choosing sides in an ancient religious and sectarian war inside Iraq," he said.
I would be more worried about being compared to Clinton standing by while Rwanda’s genocide went on.
Could there be a repeat of the 1960s when the anti-war left protested aginst a sitting Democrat president?
Ah, just get Kerry to recite his ‘pinprick’ speech and the left will go back hugging their trees and smelling the flowers.
No way. He’s their guy. Will they turn to the top?
What are they fretting about? What was horrible when Bush did it can be absolutely heroic and virtuous when Obama does it.
But not worried about the genocide creep.
As Kurt Schlichter has been saying, liberals are secretly delighted when Christians are massacred.
Nobody wants this. But the course of action now has, or will soon be chosen for us. We did not enter Iraq in ‘03 for clear, entirely justifiable purpose, in my view. Yes, there was wide consensus, but I myself was never entirely convinced of the need for action. I have always thought of the mideast as sort of a pinball table, in the sense that any form of instability was more likely than not to lead to intensified Islamization. Just because that is and was the way the table was tilted.
I believe that view has been borne out. Chaos from whatever cause, whether internal or external, just leads to intensified Islamic radicalization in these nations. This has been borne out in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Libya is completely underreported at this juncture and is rapidly disintegrating into total Islamoanarchy a la ISIS butchery. It has *not* appeared to have done so in Egypt, which is ironic, as Egypt was in fact the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Maybe in the passage of time since the 20’s the Egyptians have come to realize their rejection of the MB in the right course of action. We can be thankful for same, if that is so. Meanwhile, trade Egypt for Turkey. Egypt maybe *should* have gone more radical, but instead, Turkey, former strong ally, has now moved towards radicalism.
I think one of the things we in the US are absolutely oblivious to is that ISIS is very much aware that any non-radical Muslims in the Mideast who are tired of Islamic radicalization are headed to the abbatoir as we speak, every bit as much as Jews and Christians. This will be a purification slaughter even more rigid than the Nazis attempted. The West is not ready for this.
I myself believe that ISIS is now the spearhead of radical Islam and I believe that over time, it will acquire powerful following. This is phenomenally dangerous to us, the US, and we damn well better wake up and smell what is coming. It would be one thing if we had leadership in this country that had the capability of discerning this threat. We do not. Our
leadership actually welcomes it. There is no measuring the threat potential of this naive, even traitorious attitude towards radical Islam, but I believe it takes no rocket science to see where this is headed. We are dealing with folks who are very fervent believers in wars of annihilation. Of course, we in the US will wake up to it late, if ever, or never. Complacent spoiled fools that we are.
>> We did not enter Iraq in ‘03 for clear, entirely justifiable purpose
Yeah, but everyone in the Senate except for Obama (ironically) voted for it!
I’m worried about the creep, too. I wish they would impeach the creep.
“Yeah, but everyone in the Senate except for Obama (ironically) voted for it!”
Did the Illinois Senate vote on the Iraq War?
They did, but I myself was unconvinced. I always felt that it was an unrelenting sales job that they could somehow not turn off once they got on their own bandwagon. I felt then and I feel now that if we were willing to “conquer” Iraq and attempt to Democratize as a sort of a science-fair project, that an absolute minimum of 50 years of nontrivial US presence would be required, and that given the intolerance of the folks over there that you could make that 100 years. And I knew that that was therefore a dopey proposition bound to fail.
One can partially make the accusation that US intervention in Iraq from ‘03 is in large part responsible for what is happening over there. Like it or not. Perhaps these annihilators and exterminators of infinite blood lust would have arrived at this state by their very own actions. Who knows, who cares, we can not understand them and there isn’t much to gain in my view from trying to understand them. They really, really, really are pre-medieval savages who want to kill us and they really, really, really hate us, and they really, really, really would go to any lengths, that they have now or that they may acquire or derive in the future, to destroy anything that is not them. Right now, tomorrow, and next week and next month and next year, that would include us. We are on their kill list. It is no more complicated than that. The nuances are useless.
It is not out of fear that I posit that we will soon be facing a war of annihilation from this scourge. It is from certainty.
Will these be “unbelievably small” air strikes?
Wars of annihilation should only be fought when an opponent will never ever stop trying to kill you, when you can never come to terms.
Suppose hypothetically that you represent western civilization. One day, you can’t take it anymore. So You put your weapons down, and say “I’m done, no more blood.” Islam would run you down and gut you alive. You I expect would never do that, but that is what the governments of western civilization are letting happen. One of these days, we’re going to wake up to the news that one or several major cities have been nuked and a terrorist organization is taking credit. It won’t matter who is in charge then, or the state of our foreign policy. The only reaction to it, I expect we won’t take, should be to utterly destroy islam and remove it from the face of the earth. I will never advocate genocide, but in these circumstances I feel it would be an appropriate response. I could never feel like it was right, but these people cheer in their streets when 3,000 innocent civilians are killed (yes, their women and children). They are all for killing us all. It’s a shame, but their actions should be met with overwhelming, utter, annihilation.
Islam has never stopped, not once, not ever in the history of Islam have they stopped trying to kill. The crusaders got it. We won’t, not until we see it firsthand.
I also would like to point out that the phrase you used. “Radical Islam”, is bull. There is no radical islam, ISLAM IS RADICAL, it is a symptom of the holy texts they believe in, a symptom of the environment they live in, and a symptom of misplaced anger and hate for made up wrongdoings.
Their way of life, and sharia law are flawed deeply into the fabric of their culture and society. It has not changed much for islam in 5,000 ycears. We ould be an interstellar space faring civilization and islam would still be there, the same as it was yesterday, the same as it is today.
Well I oppose evil scum and the beheading of children. Get a life you dork.
Then you see it as I do. This choice will at some point be made for us. We’ll have to decide whether to surrender to Islam or to preserve our culture, our civilization, complete with its faults and unfairnesses, or surrender. That is the outcome the other side envisions and as they acquire more and more deadly weaponry, they will move to fulfill that vision. They do not mind using cel phones, they do not mind using Twitter, they do not mind using airplanes, and they do not and will not mind using whatever technology the evil West has brought into being. At some point, all the sophisticated nuances will disappear and pure existentialism , the pure fact of existence will be the choice du jour. We’ll find that out either before or after a few cities are laid to waste with primitive nuclear weapons smuggled into this country, and that will be that.
Under previous names, ISIS was based in Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein, before our invasion, though it was going by different names then. It had a base in the north where Saddam used the group to attack the Kurds and it had a cell in Baghdad - the cell that decapitated a Catholic nun and so on there... well before the US invasion. It used using the same network as al Qaeda’s in Europe to plot ricin attacks in Europe - recall the police raid where the British police officer was slain and the group had manufactured ricin cream intended to be smeared all over public access areas. The group under an earlier name also carried out the assassination of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan - all before the invasion of Iraq. Its training base in Afghanistan was adjacent to bin Laden’s, and members of both groups operated together at times and trained in each other’s camps. The only reason the press got away with not calling the group al Qaeda was because its leader at the time - since assumed room temp- had not sworn the oath to bin Laden. He didn’t swear the oath until after the US invaded Iraq and Saddam Hussein was executed. I would suggest that the reason he didn’t swear the oath to bin Laden until then was because he had already sworn loyalty to another. In any case the lack of a formal oath to al Qaeda leadership gave the press an excuse to maintain the claim “alQaeada” had nothing to do with either Iraq or Iran even if this groups earlier editions did.
I honestly believe that Obama is a manchurian candidate. All you have to do is look at his actions. Forget the words, they are all lies out pf his mouth. Look at his executive orders, the way he responds to our dearest and only stable ally in the middle east. Every action he has taken is to destabilize, provoke, and garner hate all over the world. The borders are wide open, the media is silent. If I am right, then Obama is inviting an attack. Now, I don’t know if islam is ready to make its move into the west yet, but it may be soon. Iran possibly could have nuclear weapons, if they thought the time was right I have no doubt they would smuggle it across the border and detonate.
My gut instinct is that Obama is a kind of fore runner. A silent operative meant to penetrate and shore up defenses for American enemies on the inside. While also trying to get away with as much as they can, when there is a massive public reaction to some of the things Obama puts on the table, they get taken off, and it’s onto the next item on the checklist......weaken economy -— check, weaken military -— check, weaken public trust in government -— check, weaken civilian armament -— pending, weaken borders -— check, the last to do is likely to make sure one of their own is next up for the Presidency. Then I think the real show will start. Even if we have a strong leader through till 2024, we have taken serious wounds.
If my instinct is right, then we have a lot to worry about. If my instinct is wrong, and Obama is just an incompetent fool then we still have a lot to worry about.
islam will strike at some point, it’s a matter of when.
The world cannot afford an islamic caliphate, and I believe everything Obama does is to minimize western civilization.
Don’t believe a word of anything the media tells you, the only reason Obama wants us there is so he can smuggle ISIS weapons. How many queer officers loyal to Obama are in Iraq right now?
Did the left protest Kosovo?
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