Let’s invade the bad people’s country immediately!
by digby
The issues are even more complicated than this short Vox video explainer shows and the previous history is important, up to and including the US invasion of Iraq. But if you’re confused about who’s who in the Syrian civil war it is helpful:
Unless you are of the “kill ’em all and let God sort it out school” it’s obvious that this is an extremely difficult problem. President Obama has done the right thing by holding back from getting into the middle of it. It’s dragging the US in anyway — and hell, maybe we deserve it in the abstract since we were instrumental in tearing up the mideast. But still, it’s an awful mess, a basically sectarian religious war overlaid with massive amounts of valuable resources.
And all you have to do is read what these Republicans are saying should be done to see that they don’t have a clue either. Here’s the GOP’s new neocon “It-boy” fulminating about “the clash of civilizations” like it makes sense.
I guess he thinks Iran is on our side in this great clash. Or not. Or whatever.
He tends to get confused on this point:
At the recent CPAC gathering, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a likely Republican presidential candidate, seemed to stumble on one of the basic facts of the Middle East. “The reason Obama hasn’t put in place a military strategy to defeat ISIS is because he doesn’t want to upset Iran,” the Florida Republican said.
The senator seemed confused. In reality, President Obama has put an anti-ISIS military strategy in place, and that’s fine with Iran, since Iran and ISIS are enemies.
I’d hoped that Rubio just misspoke, or had been briefed poorly by an aide, but apparently not – -at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this afternoon, the far-right Floridian continued to push this strange theory, pressing Secretary of State John Kerry on the point. “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”
And so, Kerry told him why he’s wrong.
.@JohnKerry takes @marcorubio to school ok Iran nuke talks not linked to Iran ISIS war strategy at foreign relations session
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) March 11, 2015
This is the guy the GOP intelligentsia wants to put in charge of American foreign policy. I assume they intend to bring Dick Cheney out of mothballs to pull his strings.
Update: ICYWW, Jeb Bush wasn’t any better.