"Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, to say nothing of the smaller upheavals all over the region, but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?
Nouri al Maliki and Barack Obama: Elections Have Consequences
Of course, that is not to say leadership does not matter. Iraq's fate was sealed by Barack Obama's rush for the exits and Nouri al Maliki's failure to bring in Sunnis into his regime.
The dictators of old had either passed on (Assad's father) or simply gotten old (Qaddafi, Mubarak), and Saddam would have fallen into one of those camps. The sons GENERALLY aren't up to the fathers because they've often been handed too much, whereas the fathers took things themselves. (The Kims in N. Korea and an exception ... so far.) This is the problem with hereditary rulers.
ReplyDeleteLook at when a lot of those regimes got their starts ... back in the 1960s most of them. It's time for generational turmoil.
The problems Iraq is facing now can be traced directly to Obama's failure to press for a "status of forces" agreement before leaving that nation. Don't know how I missed your site all these years, but adding you to my blogroll on one of my primary site TOTUS
ReplyDeleteI remember the smarmy smile on George McGovern's face as the NVA's panzer blitz swept through South Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Barry planned it this way, but I don't doubt he's happy with the outcome.
It's all on Nouri al Maliki
ReplyDelete