Sigh.
McCain answered the question about the gun debate by citing Obama’s culpability for the attack through his foreign policy: “Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said. …
When pressed by a reporter on the claim that Obama was “directly” responsible, McCain reiterated his point — that Obama should not have withdrawn combat troops from Iraq: “He pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked, and there would be attacks on the United States of America,” he said. “It’s a matter of record, so he is directly responsible.” …
While the gunman referenced the Islamic State multiple times on Sunday, investigators say they are still working to figure out precisely what motivated the gunman and determine how he spent the months leading up to the attack.
In this post yesterday, I used a lengthy excerpt from an article yesterday at the Washington Post by Mike DeBonis, reporting on that bizarre news conference that John McCain held yesterday. At least I thought it was bizarre, and assumed that readers would by now know enough about the concept of “lone wolf” terrorist sympathizers encouraged via the Internet or even by television news reporting on military conflicts and radical groups—including those who, like Mateen, were born in this country and never traveled outside of it—and also would by yesterday afternoon know that Mateen apparently was gay yet also either was or pretended to be homophobic as a way to deflect suspicions by his father and other family members that he was gay. (The above excerpt is taken from the DeBonis article, and was included in the lengthier excerpt in yesterday’s post.)*
Thus the title of my post, which was intended as a facetious takedown of McCain’s comments, especially because those comments made clear that McCain was conflating ISIS’s military victories in Iraq and elsewhere with the ability of terrorist groups of all stripes to use the Internet to encourage nutcases who have access to assault weapons to commit mass deadly assaults and those who just have access to non-military-type weapons to commit deadly assaults on one person at a time.
McCain’s claim that if Obama had kept troops in Iraq and prevented further ISIS victories in that country, Mateen would not have attacked a gay bar he had frequented and claimed his motive was defense of Islam struck me as so obviously absurd—and the point of my post and its title so obviously clear—that it needed no explanation beyond the sarcasm.
And judging from the comments in the post’s comments thread, most readers understood the post and its title. But via email I’ve learned that the post’s purpose was not clear enough. So this post should clear it up.
*Parenthetical added 6/18 at 10:32 a.m.
____
ADDENDUM: This piece today by NYT columnist Timothy Egan is, I think, the best column of the entire campaign season. It’s not mainly about Orlando, although it touches on it. It’s about Trump, the media, and the Republican Party.
I don’t think any commentary by anyone going forward will surpass this. Don’t miss it.
Added 6/17 at 11:45 a.m.
PS: In a column that sent chills down my spine from beginning to end, these two sentences are the ones I want to highlight:
“Man up,” wrote the Republican strategist Rick Wilson. “Show courage. Say what’s in your hearts; he’s insane. He’s poison. He’s doomed. He’s killing the party.”
And:
In this week of trial and tragedy, Trump showed us how he would govern — by fear, by intimidation, by lies, by turning American against American, by exhibiting all the empathy of a sociopath.
Trump indeed is surely quite literally insane. And a sociopath, which is what Trump University and his other business practices that the news media has reported on in depth in the last two weeks illustrate. These truths should not be shied away from—as politically incorrect.
Added 6/17 at 12:04 p.m.
I see the existence of ISIS on its grand scale as another classic case of Obama-doesn’t-care (Clintons don’t either). To quote the retiring commandant of the Marine corps Gen. James Amos:
“We may think we’re done with all of these nasty, thorny, tacky little things that are going on around the world — and I’d argue that if you’re in that nation, it’s not a tacky, little thing for you. We may think we’re done with them, but they’re not done with us,” Amos said.
“I have a hard time believing that had we been there, and worked with the government, and worked with parliament, and worked with the minister of defense, the minister of interior, I don’t think we’d be in the same shape we’re in today,” Amos said.
“We’re probably the only country in the world that has the resources and the capability to be able to do some of this that others can’t,” Amos added.
“It breaks our hearts,” Amos said, referring to the fall of the Anbar province in Iraq, which Marines won in 2010. He noted that 852 Marines were killed and another 8,500 injured in Iraq.
“They believed that they’d made a difference,” he said.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-marine-obama-fight-191600744.html
Myself, I’m not thinking specifically whether troops ought to have been pulled out or not — Iraq may have wanted us to go, giving us little choice. My rudimentary knowledge is that we installed a reverse-Saddam in Maliki and the death squads were still out every night/bodies left in the streets — as Maliki perscuted the Sunni instead of the other way round (like Saddam) …
… pushing, forcing the Sunni into ISIS open arms …
… much endless, endless effort was needed to mold Maliki into a more inclusive leader — none was forthcoming (Obama-doesn’t-care.)
Ditto for Syria. We have stood by watching a quarter of a million innocent civilians killed and millions of refugees hurled into nearby countries by a sick dictator. I don’t know exactly what we could have done to stop it and him — but I know from the way Obama abandons progressive efforts in this country if the road is not wide open.
Obama makes a speech at a high school about “inequality is the defining issue of our time” — next week it doesn’t poll well — he forgets about. Political pros is his entire perception of reality or something.
Obamacare is 7 years ago, heard from his next step — why doesn’t every man woman and child know the minimum wage was $11 in 1968 and that the economy is twice as productive since. Because Obama — like the Clintons — thinks he cares but doesn’t really know how, so he doesn’t know how to communicate this or any basic change norm to them.
It is a very curious psychological phenomenon.
Truth be told, Denis, I myself agreed with Clinton and others who wanted more U.S. assistance against Assad back in 2012, was it? And then in 2013. I fully recognized the horrible potential that U.S. munitions could end up in the hands of Islamic extremists, ISIS and others, but also felt that that risk was the lesser evil.
I also supported the intervention in Lybia, whose purpose was to save the lives of about 250,000 people in a single city–it might have been Benghazi; I don’t remember–who were trapped and being mowed down by Assad’s military. And once it became clear later that more assistance was necessary, I thought it should have been provided.
That said, I also know that the fear, at least about Syria, was that if Assad fell, groups like ISIS would take over. Again, that very possibly could have been prevented. But also possibly preventing it would have required a full invasion into the country and a long presence there going forward–a big boon to ISIS recruitment and sympathies (lone wolfs, included) worldwide.
There were never any good options. But that wasn’t Obama’s fault.
As for McCain, he’s becoming unhinged.
It’s worse than Trump. As Charlie Pierce observed he’s become the prion disease that has infected what’s left of the GOP brain. Thus He, Donald. Voila.
To this long time observer it’s just the next incremental manifestation of the paranoid style road they’ve been on a very long time. Is he really much more insane than the guy he probably beat out, Ted Cruz? Really?
Spot-on.
And the answer to your question about Ted Cruz is exactly what you think it is: No.
(CNN) ” More than 50 State Department officials signed an internal memo protesting U.S. policy in Syria, calling for targeted U.S. military strikes against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and urging regime change as the only way to defeat ISIS. ” (emphasis added)
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/16/politics/state-department-syria/
See also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/syria-assad-obama-airstrikes-diplomats-memo.html?_r=0
Obama doesn’t care.
I will be working on my third Senate campaign this year. McCain has made a mistake that might swing him right out of office.
Nothing would make me happier than to see this scumbag lose an unloseable Senate seat.
He has been one of the worst persons in the world since he was released by the North Vietnamese.
Denis Drew,
How many non Sunnis get dead if the moderate Sunni jihadis US supports take over Syria? How does it come out better than Libya?
Those 50 odd state department rebels are fools. They have no idea why Libya is such a vast mess, nor do they care that Russia deployed late model air defenses that would make a US air campaign look like Vietnam.
These toadies likely supported the CIA in Benghazi sending arms to mujahedeen in Syria the week in Sep 2012 when the Libyans were supposed to be rioting over some film.
Obama cares; he hasn’t the guts to fire them all.
Amos does not go into the facts on the ground; the Marines in Iraq subdued the smaller Sunni areas, who are now supporting ISIS in Fallujah etc. ISIS did not hold them in Fallujah hostage these two years.
Amos ignores the Army who did most of the lifting with the Shiites who are 2/3 of the p[opulation of Iraq and who are the ones blastting ISIS out of Fallujah.
Bev,
Mc Cain is off his meds, again.
Assad is like Qaddafi, and Hussein, he is keeping a lid on sectarian violence in Syria. You may think Assad the major evil, but judging his activity less evil than Sunni nut cases doing like ISIS to Shiites, Christians and Jews in Syria implies you may need meds as much as Mc Cain.
The root of ISIS, as well as al Qaeda and the lesser jihadis the US is arming is the Saudi (Sunnis) royal family alliance with Arab Wahabbis. Bush hanging Saddam Hussein cut loose the minority Sunni nutcases and the Shiite majority in Iraq. US occupation, suppression of the locals varied by area in Sunni areas like Fallujah USMC was killing Sunnis, while in Greater Baghdad the Army was killing off Shiite militiae.
Sunni in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria range from soft core sectarian warriors to hard core like al Nusra and ISIS..
If you follow the National Defense Auth Act you might see Mc Cain off his meds trying to break up the bureaucracy (Ashton Carter’s job before SecDef) which cannot seem to kill weapons that don’t work into several parts so the kluge is even less effective.
On those DoS toadies, Obama shut down Kerry about bombing to support the cease fire months ago.
“He has been one of the worst persons in the world since he was released by the North Vietnamese.”
Someone here argees with Trump.
Ilsm,
” How many non Sunnis get dead if the moderate Sunni jihadis US supports take over Syria? How does it come out better than Libya? ”
I don’t think it could come out worse than 400,000 dead mostly at the hand of Assad (number quoted on NBC tonight).
It could easily come out better if we identified the good guys (IOW the innocent victims — the millions of) and armed and trained them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jTywqUr4x0&feature=youtu.be
BTW, Russian air defenses are usually easily neutralized by our electronic countermeasures. Vietnam — Linebacker II: 750 sorties, 1,000 AA missiles fired, 25 hits, brought down 15 lumbering B-52s coming in without surprise on one target, night after night..
BTW again, World of 1965, Vietnam decision year: US had 265 AA missile bases around 50 cities, plus 1,000 F-102 and F-106 delta wing air defense fighters (which latter were not good for anything else). Communism a lot scarier back then. BTW, we were upgrading out 25 mile range, conventional warhead AA missiles for 75 mile, nuke warhead. Diff world.
There is a reason the Federation insisted Kirk not meddle. Roddenberry was trying to warn LBJ.
25 B-52’s shot up and US spread all the Christmas tree tinsel from 1972. A pretty expensive thing for the taxpayer that got US nothing but an end to US suffering. 1000 old SAM’s priceless.
Look what US got* from the 750 B-52 sorties, and how much the lost “cost”**.
How many shots did the Serbs take at F-117 stealthy fighters in 1997? I spent a little time in and around air defense, US is investing a bunch! Russians have as well.
I had not heard it was just 2% “attrition” during Dec 1972. I knew a B-52 aircraft commander who left the crew a few weeks before they were shot down in that campaign. They were first home!
Hanoi Hilton was filled. Linebacker XX, and Rolling Thunder, a few other dramas got the US what?
Vietnam thinking. Ho Chi Minh was the good guy.
Media hype, 250000, 400000, all those refugees wanting to get in the EU (anyway) the US can make it worse, see 12 years of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the casualties come from Sunni “good guys”.
Picking the good guys: US batting ZERO since 1944.
The pentagon is not a tool humanitarian welfare, and has proven a hugely costly failure at nation building.
*Ended the long Indochina fiasco thinking US/OSS chose the “good guys”. US has the most corrupt band of pillagers since Ghenghis.
Denis,
What mechanism, aside from 1,000,000 US boots on the ground, implies ousting Assad, like ousting Diem if you were aware in 1963, will defeat ISIS?
Whatever! ISIS might be one of those radical Islamist groups Obama is afraid of riling, of which there are too many ready to rise. Same as Taliban leaders rising after a drone assassination.
Straight from the horse’s mouth: ISIS as an organization was formed between 2004-2011 in Camp Bucca, a US detention site in Iraq for captured jihadists.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story
McCain, for all his authority, is simply wrong, as he so often is. By the time the US left Iraq in 2011, which McCain judges to be the starting point for ISIS, they were fully organized and their plans established.
HRC, as always, is a different matter. In an active though secret alliance with right-wingers in Israel, with Turkey and with Saudia Arabia (the Israeli-Sunni connection to defeat Iran), and though she actively denies it now – and sleeps comfortably every night in blithe denial – as Secretary of State in 2011 she saw the Arab Spring in Syria, as it devolved into violence by the state, as the perfect opportunity to topple Assad – one of the aims of the neo-con project explained in the Project for the New American Century. She opposed the ceasefire efforts by Koffi Annan in 2012 in favor of another armed coup, as they had hoped would happen in Iraq in 2003, as they planned to see happen in Iran. The ambassador killed in Benghazi was there as part of an effort to gather up from Kaddafi’s shattered armed forces whatever weapons they could, transfer them to Turkey and then provide them to the nascent forces of the Free Syrian Army.
HRC, in all her wisdom and as direct evidence of how she will conduct foreign policy, submarined efforts at a ceasefire, armed the anti-Assad forces and is thus directly responsible for her contribution to the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions and the ongoing horrors of Syria.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-clinton-and-the-s_b_9231190.html
To read the stories is to understand how ISIS formed and how the next president will govern.
“Straight from the horse’s mouth: ISIS as an organization was formed between 2004-2011 in Camp Bucca, a US detention site in Iraq for captured jihadists.
“https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story
“McCain, for all his authority, is simply wrong, as he so often is. By the time the US left Iraq in 2011, which McCain judges to be the starting point for ISIS, they were fully organized and their plans established.”
Yes. And wouldn’t it be nice if Obama pointed this out? As always–beginning in the very earliest days of his administration–no matter how important the issue, Obama has not deigned to respond to the falsehoods by actually refuting them.
The ACA; the economic stimulus law (and basic Keynesian economics); Dodd-Frank. On and on and on. Too complex to try to explain to the public. Or maybe just too much trouble.
Thus, the 2010 and 2014 Dem congressional wipeouts.
ISIS had its beginnings in the 1990s when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded the Organization of Monotheism and Jihad. Several incarnations later, it became the group that we today know as ISIS. The time was ripe after Boy-George invaded Iraq, left much of it in chaos, disbanded the Iraqi army, and extremists moved into the area taking advantage of the situation. Many of the disbanded and experience Iraqi army joined up with Zarqawi’s group. Later they joined up with al Qaeda calling itself AQI. It became the leading Sunni group in Iraq and Syria.
Before you lay this at HRC’s feet, it would be good for you to study the history a bit more.
I’m not laying it at her feet. She played a minor role in 2003, and none at all earlier.
See my comment on that below.
Ilsm,
Read that post again. Your comment has no basis of fact.
Why Did 51 American State Department Officials ‘Dissent’ Against Obama and Call for Bombing Syria?
” Close to half a million people are dead in Syria, as the country falls further and further into oblivion. Data on the suffering of the Syrians is bewildering, but most startling is that the Syrian life expectancy has declined by over 15 years since the civil war started. On the one side, ISIS holds territory, while on the other a fratricidal war pits the Assad government against a motley crew of rebels that run from small pockets of socialists to large swathes of Al Qaeda-backed extremists. No easy exit to this situation seems possible. Trust is in short supply. The peace process is weak. Brutality is the mood. ”
” Where are the Syrian liberals, the preferred instrument of American regime change? They are not in the picture. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi-backed proxies dominate the Syrian opposition leadership in Istanbul. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey back them to the hilt. They are not amenable to the niceties of American liberalism. The most ferocious rebel fighters in Syria are under the ambit of Al Qaeda and its many offshoots. The U.S.-backed rebels are weak, while the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces has less commitment to the United States than to its own Kurdish ambitions. To believe that the small bands of fighters from towns like Kafranbel would be able to control the dynamic after U.S. jets strike Damascus is naive. The beneficiary of such strikes would most likely be the most bilious of the forces in the rebel camp. ”
So Al Qaeda takes over Syria; so what? Al Qaeda would not kill half a million Syrians! !!! Once Al Qaeda takes over a country it is on its way to becoming a large bureaucratic entity — more inherently conservative. What are they going to do, declare war on the US; throw their government behind crashing airliners? The specter of a million US boots on the ground would squash that. We do have a reputation for that sort of thing going back to Korea.
My view of the world is the Rick Steves, Anthony Bourdain view — not their ideology (if any) but the Marshall McLuhan/medium-is-the-message view. It’s just land and people — people like us.
* * * * * *
Want freedom from terror in the US? Stop partnering with Israel to push the Palestinian people into the sands (instead of the sea) — stop arming and supporting the ethnic cleansing an Islamic people.
Europe has a problem with AK-47 types because they don’t assimilate immigrants like we do. These types seem to go guns rather easily over that — others don’t — they come from wild Mideast background I guess.
We lost a couple of buildings in NYC and a few thousand people and a few hundred firefighters on 9/11 because of Israel’s ethnic cleansing. Reported their main complaint.
The Orlando killer was crazy to start with — ISIS probably gave him something to attach his craziness too. No ISIS, possibly no Orlando. Or maybe his homophobia would have been his outlet for crime.
If Obama cared about the Iraqi people he would have/could have gotten our reverse Saddam, Maliki, under control and coerced him in the direction of greater inclusion of the Sunni into a new coalition — instead of terrorizing them and forcing them into the open arms of ISIS. Ditto for arming and training the vast majority of innocents. We could have identified most people (the vast majority) that’s not hard, and worked with them.
We could have tried to do both. But, as usual, Obama doesn’t care.
Dennis,
Seriously? You really think that centuries long enmity between these groups would have been solved by Obama caring?
geez
Mike,
I don’t think they would be killing each other by the hundreds of thousands — and making millions of refugees. That’s a dictator trying to hang on. Wonder what they do to you in that place in Hell?
I think that is exactly what they would be doing. The only way it stopped was Saddam holding the hammer. And he was not nice about it.
EM:
As you might know, HRC also caused the invasion of Iraq in 91 and again in 03 which notably disrupted the Middle East. So yeah, I guess she would be responsible for Syria and every other country going through crisis today.
Wait; G.H.W. Bush was president in ’91. Neither Clinton played a role in that at all. I’m obviously not a Clinton fan, but this one isn’t on her.
And Jack’s right that while Clinton helped legitimize the ’03 vote–which was the really disastrous one; the ’91 invasion was not disastrous–she was just doing her usual thing in trying to figure out what was the more politically expedient way to go and, as par for her course, concluding that the “centrist” route was the most expedient. So a “yes” vote it was, for her.
Run; to say she caused it is pretty strong. Contributed to cause is more like it. The principal cause, as you know, lies elsewhere.
I didn’t say such. Read it again tongue in cheek and then read the second post. It was well established before she was a factor.
Run75441,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the emir of the caliphate. The article in the Guardian says, “the small militant group that Baghdadi headed was one of dozens that sprouted from a broad Sunni revolt – many of which would soon come together under the flag of al-Qaida in Iraq, and then the Islamic State of Iraq. These were the precursors to the juggernaut now known simply as the Islamic State, which has, under Baghdadi’s command, overrun much of the west and center of the country and eastern Syria, and drawn the US military back to a deeply destabilized region less than three years after it left vowing never to return.
“But at the time of his stay at Bucca, Baghdadi’s group was little-known, and he was a far less significant figure than the insurgency’s notional leader, the merciless Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who came to represent the sum of all fears for many in Iraq, Europe and the US. Baghdadi, however, had a unique way to distinguish himself from the other aspiring leaders inside Bucca and outside on Iraq’s savage streets: a pedigree that allowed him to claim direct lineage to the Prophet Muhammad. He had also obtained a PhD in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, and would draw on both to legitimize his unprecedented claim to anoint himself caliph of the Islamic world in July 2014, which realized a sense of destiny evident in the prison yard a decade earlier.”
McCain said ISIS arose in 2011. He’s wrong. This is an interview with one of the founders of ISIS and an intimate of al-Baghdadi.
Mine has notable references to. The fact of the matter is ISIS was well on it as way well before 2000. It was well enough know that Bin Laden took them under its wing as a branch. Unless of course you judge being known to Western authorities which is lacking.
Bev did not explain it well enough. You guys throw this stuff out there as the final answer when in reality it is an incomplete answer. ISIS was going well before HRC was a part of Obama’s state department. She is not the cause of it. The disruption in the region by Bush’s Inc. upset the balance which existed.
EMichael,
I am wondering what facts you dispute.
Please tell me and I will provide background.
Denis,
The answer to hundreds of thousands killed anywhere is US bombings and US imposing a “solution”.? Especially when the US is siding with the Sunni side in Islam’s thousand odd year “war between the apostates”.
How does that work?
The impression made by some US pundits is IISIS is run by professional soldiers put out of work by US who disbanded the Baathist Iraqi army.
That is supposed to explain why they do so well with Sunni’s in Iraq booting Shiite draftees out of Sunni citoes.
Sorry, run. My irony detector’s battery ran out.
Happens to the best of us.
Ilsm,
My comments on McCain have absolutely nothing to do with his military career. My comments are based on his treatment of his first wife after he returned to the US.
Run,
I love the way people who have, at the least, inferred that HRC carries some, most or all of the blame for the invasion of Iraq, start backing off when people present actual facts. But don’t worry, they will start up again when no one is looking.
Blaming Clinton for the war in Iraq due to her vote for the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq is every bit as insanely stupid as saying that Bernie Sanders caused the financial crisis because he voted the the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
EM,
HRC’s great sin on Iraq vote.
I am well aware that in 2003 the majority in the senate were either war mongering neocons*, or too afraid to be seen as weak on security or so stupid as to believe W to vote to get 6000 of my kids killed for nothing.
You may think HRC was too stupid, I think she is a neocon war monger.
Small wonder McCain keeps getting re-elected in Az!
Ilsm,
So following your logic, Bernie Sanders caused the financial crisis.
You are beyond on the edge.
Flying my PUMA flag.
Bernie rationalize a vote saying he was dumb enough to be duped by W.
“Bernie rationalize a vote saying he was dumb enough to be duped by W.”
Not a chance for a rational discussion with anyone who can write that sentence.
Make sure you take you meds on schedule. The world is depending on it.