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Former Department of Defense Chief Expects "30 Year War"
HughPickens.com writes Susan Page writes at USA Today that Leon Panetta, former head of the CIA and Secretary of the Department of Defense, says Americans should be braced for a long battle against the brutal terrorist group Islamic State that will test U.S. resolve. "I think we're looking at kind of a 30-year war," says Panetta, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere. Panetta also says that decisions made by President Obama over the past three years have made that battle more difficult — an explosive assessment by a respected policymaker of the president he served. Not pushing the Iraqi government harder to allow a residual US force to remain when troops withdrew in 2011, a deal he says could have been negotiated with more effort "created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it's out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed." It is no surprise to Panetta that the assessment in his new book "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace" is drawing White House ire. "Look, I've been a guy who's always been honest," Panetta says. "I've been honest in politics, honest with the people that I deal with. I've been a straight talker. Some people like it; some people don't like it. But I wasn't going to write a book that kind of didn't express what I thought was the case."
Your both wrong the democrats and the republicans are exactly the same. They are just two sides of a authoritarian expansionist kleptocratic coin.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Is this a technology site or some kind of political blog. What has happened?
What? You nuts? How should the military industry complex benefit from that?
Why the fuck do you think we went on this eternal war? To end up with peace again?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Reagan was a moderate Republican. People don't remember those much because just like the moderate Democrat they're pretty much extinct. Everything is extremism now.
I think he's referring to the Thirty Years' War.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Pull out.
We've bankrupted our nation to pay for a war that was waged on false pretenses, bankrupted our nation, and corrupted our spirit. What more do we need to pay for a complete failure to accomplish anything other than creating political instability in both nations we invaded?
Reagan was a moderate Republican. People don't remember those much because just like the moderate Democrat they're pretty much extinct. Everything is extremism now.
True Reagan negotiated, compromised and made deals with Democrats. For example he made a compromise with Democrats on the budget, that new spending would be followed by budget cuts. Reagan got his new spending but the Democrats never got around to the budget cuts. And then the Democrats attacked Reagan for a growing deficit. Its things like this that contributed to the modern era of mistrust and extremism. Whether it was a trick by the Democratic leadership or simply a leadership that was ineffective and couldn't fulfill its promises I don't know.
For as long as Winston can recall, Oceania has been in a constant state of war – with whom it was at war is of neither importance nor consequence.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
There's a false dichotemy. Everyone's moved to the right to the point that Mitt Romney's quite successful healthcare program is considered "socialist" if you attach Obama's name to it (actual socialized medicine is quite different)
There is no left any more. Obama's continued warmongering is the best evidence.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
It's not actually necessary to nuke anyone. But you won't have a lasting peace in the middle east without reducing the injustice.
The USA was founded on the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people. And by "the people" the founders meant ordinary people - that the USA would be different from Europe where ordinary people were being exploited for the benefit of a small hereditary ruling class. Fundamentally, it's about individual freedom - that a person should not be artificially limited by the circumstances of their birth. Not that the USA always lived up to that ideal - e.g. slavery.
So that means two things. First, that USA needs take a stand for democracy and stop supporting hereditary dictatorships - even if those dictatorships are beneficial to a few rich Americans (e.g. the Bushes). Second, the USA needs to take a stand against all racial, religious and ethnic discrimination in the middle east. And that includes Israel. It's a nice fantasy it's possible to discriminate in favor of a particular group without discriminating against everyone else. But you can't. It's not possible to have a "whites only" (or even "whites mostly") drinking fountain that doesn't discriminate against people who aren't white. To put it bluntly Israel would need to outlaw absolutely all discrimination against people who aren't Jewish.
We live in a world where it's technologically possible to hop on a jet plane and be literally on the opposite side of the planet in 20-30 hours. We live in a world where it's technologically possible for a Palestinian to go live in Japan and eat palak paneer while wearing a sombrero and listening to Beethoven. But politically we are still limited by the circumstances of our birth - the notion that someone born within some arbitrary little geographical boundary should be constrained to live out their entire life within that boundary - perhaps even that the people should be constrained to live in the same little region as their distant ancestors and that they should have to eat the same food and wear the same clothes and believe the same things as their distant ancestors.
There is little awareness of the benefits of taking the good from a variety of different cultures. Instead there is this simplistic desire to paint one culture as entirely good and all other cultures as entirely bad - and to then imagine some global conflict between the "good" culture and all the other "bad" cultures - where the fate of humanity rests on the "good" culture obliterating the "bad" cultures. In the end, the goal should be for the middle east to look something like the European Union - where people are free to live and work and travel throughout the region regardless of which particular country they were born in - or their race or religion or ethnicity or who their parents were.
The US military industrial complex created them, the US military industrial complex fights them and the US military industrial complex keeps them going. It has spent years goading Russia to try and kick over the cold war again and is now poking China as well. The US military industrial complex runs around the war trying to put out fires with a flame thrower and then blaming everyone else when they fail at it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Hey, you are right. Russia had every reason to steal part of Georgia. And Crimea, they were told to that by the U.S. military industrial complex, they've long been known to take orders from it. Ukraine? Same story, there's no history. And Taiwan? The U.S. m.i.c. moved Chaing there after the war just to give China a foil. The S. China Sea? China has long been taking orders direct from the U.S. to steal it. Islamo-Fascism? Why that's just another CIA plot, nothing home grown about it. Gee, now that I get to look at the world through your eyes, there's just nothing for which the U.S. is not responsible.
No it isn't, no more than christiantity.
Seriously, meet a few muslems before you parrot lines off groups that have been looking for another demon to finance the MIC, and often had a hand in creating (Al Quaeda, orginally financed by the US to fight the commie threat.. etc).
95% of muslems want exactly what most 1st worlders want, a safe place to raise, feed and educate their children, and hopefully some opportunity for those children to do better.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!