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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."
ISIL is both financed and given logistics support from primarily three countries that are "supposedly" allies of the US UK etc.
Turkey.
UAE
and Saudi Arabia.
Nuke those and ISIL dies.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
God damn it. Why the fuck did the US invade Iraq in 2003?. Hussein was a madman but he kept a lid on things.
BTW I'm not American so my kids aren't going to be fighting in Iraq, its the US young service men and women I feel sorry for.
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?
Your both wrong the democrats and the republicans are exactly the same. They are just two sides of a authoritarian expansionist kleptocratic coin.
Well the Democrats want it to be a gay authoritarian expansionist kleptocratic coin.
So that's a small difference.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
I like to think of it as a square. The top half of the square is the authoritarian, war is peace, big government, power hungry thieves. Those people are in it for personal power, and everyone else be damned. The bottom half of the square are the idealists who genuinely want to do what's best for the country and the people.
Somehow, the media has managed to slice this square though, not into top and bottom halves, but into left and right halves. As a result, regular people who identify themselves as Democrat, point to the upper right corner of the square and see authoritarian, power hungry scoundrels, and yell: "Evil Republicans!". Meanwhile, regular people who identify themselves as Republican, look at the top left and identify the authoritarian, power hungry scoundrels they see as: "Evil Democrats!". Each unable to see that the "misguided people in their party who are wrong on *some* issues" are just as bad the set of scoundrels they criticize.
Just notice how often big controversial issues are brought up (and their often suspicious timing - like trying to fast track immigration reform the week after the Snowden leaks), and how often those issues are actually solved (hint: never - they're far too convenient for demagogueing the other side ["we wanted to pass Issue A, but the other side wouldn't let us" vs. "Issue A be damned, but they included issue B in the bill which they wont budge on which will end America as we know it!"]).
Saddest part is that because the battle lines are so clearly (mis-)drawn in people minds, they don't listen to the people they "hate". Thus almost all information they get about the people they "hate" they find out from non-neutral 3rd parties. These 3rd parties, use their role to aide the authoritarian scumbags in painting the idealists in the opposing parties as the anti-christ (effectively flipping top and bottom of the other side in their follower's minds).
A coalition government containing: Ralph Nader, Bernie Sander, Ron Wyden, Sarah Palin, Justin Amash and Glenn Beck would oddly be more unified in purpose, more functional, and more for the people than one composed of "moderate centrists" like John McCain, John Kerry, George Bush, and Barack Obama.
The problem with the USA right now is the square is very top heavy.
Planning a 30 year war with Eastasia now is only the authoritarians following Orwell's 1984 instruction manual.
WWI was a pointless battle between imperial powers and we should have stayed the hell out of it. The Pacific battle of WWII would not have happened if we hadn't played the empire game in the Pacific, stealing Hawaii and threatening Japan with Perry's "black ships"; the European theater was a straight-up result of WWI.
We should never have been in Korea or Vietnam. Or Iraq or Afghanistan. Or the Philippines or Cuba or Puerto Rico or Guam.
Our history since the Civil War shows that the founders were 100% right about the temptations of a standing army: once you've got one, you want to use it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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
But I was curious about the opinion of Europeans and Leftist Americans — they don't think all wars are wrong...
For someone who likes to use the word "communism" a lot, you sure don't seem to be well acquainted with its writings. Communists called WW1 a mindless imperialist massacre long before that became, essentially, the prevailing view - in fact, before it even began.
The more emotional argument is analogous to interfering, when you see somebody being beaten by thugs — no law requires you to interfere. Except honor...
Your honor seem to be quiet about using other thugs, though. Do the people massacred on the stadium in Chile in the name of fighting communism - most of them for nothing more than words - weigh up on your consciousness at all?
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.