When George W. Bush guessed history would compare him to Truman, I knew he was smoking crack. Kidding, he would have ‘presidented’ much better on crack. While he was banking on the whole eventually-history-will-dig-me premise, I knew he would ultimately be compared to Kim Kardashian (at least gluteuphorically). I believe that’s a Palin-drome. Meanwhile, Obama clearly has a fighting chance at the Truman Show. Granted, most of his cards are resting in the Iran nuke-basket—a basket that could mushroom at any moment. Khrushchev at ground zero? Sorry, it’s a Weird Al joke.
When people ask me, Zano, why are you still hung up on Bush? I say, Did people get over Hoover easily? Whereas we recovered from Hoover, I have always predicted we would have no such recovery post-Bush. As for Messopotmia, it’s a train wreck that left the tracks many centuries ago. For those who still want to pin the fail on the donkey, it’s kind of like blaming the NYC Custodians Union for 9/11. And comparing Benghazi to 9/11 is a symptom of a mental illness. I would say republicans suffer from OCD, but that condition is associated with high IQs. Regressive compulsive disorder? I’ll work on that one.
Sure Obama has some culpability in Libya, but how much worse could Libya actually get? Oh, the horror. Next to no intervention, no American deaths outside of the B word, and its still nicer than Iraq around the holidays. I know republicans like to forget this part, but the Bushies planned to topple seven major Middle Eastern regiments, one more than in the movie Borat. Or was that Battle Beneath the Planet of Borat? I get them confused. Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iran were all in the works already. General Wesley Clark’s related comments, here.
Obama preferred a revolution through the Arab Spring than a heavier, costly and suckier footprint. Bigflub? Of course the Bushies continued to ignore the biggest problem, themselves. Kidding, the Saudis. What Obama could have or should have done is theoritical and vague. I can say the invasion of Iraq was a clear mistake, a mistake complicated by the gross mishandling of the occupation. Yeah…six more like that, please. Order up! Disbanding the Iraqi army and losing track of our equipment helped create ISIS. You know…the Egyptian Goddess of flubbed occupations. Recently McCain wanted to fund a group in Syria that proved radical shortly thereafter. We can exptraoploate from there how the McCain Administration would have followed the fine republican tradition of botching shit badly.
Where is the equally obvious Obama blunder? He should have supported Kaddafi to quell the Arab Spring? He should have backed the radical rebels attacking Assad? He should have gone against Bush’s withdrawal agreement and increased our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan? For what purpose? He’s forced to keep more troops than he wanted in these shit holes, because they never “stood up, so we could stand down.” Add that to the ever growing list of republican blunders. At the height of our Aghansitan footprint, General McChrystal said we had a presence in one in a hundred valleys. You wanted a 100x more presence then? Again, why? Hey, let’s quadruple down on a place called the ‘graveyard of civilizations’. Who’s with me?!
Obama may suck but he’s still a wizard compared to you people. Albus DumbleDem? We elected Obama to back the hell off and let the dice fall where they may, namely, in Bush’s face. I envision Obama looking at a map and scratching his head, as opposed to republicans scratching somewhere else. The illusion of republican competence died long ago. Get the memo. I think it was called Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.
This rant was initially tiggered by a Tweeted image depicting Obama and Hillary drinking wine spritzers while Ambassador Stevens was burned alive in Libya. Then a second Tweet begged the question: Can You Name A Single Obama Foreign Policy Victory? Well, as a person forced to live out his days in this reality, yes…yes I can. Obama and Hillary may or may not have been drinking wine spritzers as Benghazi burned, but against all odds W did manage to finish reading My Pet Goat to a room full of childen…you know, when decidely more people died. Hey, to be fair, I wasn’t sure he’d make it to the end all by himself. McGraw-Hill must be proud. I guess that No President Left Behind program works!
Here’s a few of Obama’s foreign policy successes:
- Ordering the successful strike in Pakistan on Osama Bin Laden.
- The heavy toll Al-Qaeda has weathered due to our drone program.
- Pulling the fuck out of Iraq & Afghanistan. Trust me, pulling out is always a good thing. We don’t want to get those countries preggers, do we? On a related note I heard McCain on NPR this week and, No, Senator McCain, The Surge didn’t “stabilize the region.” You’re smoking crack, you old coot. My old assessment, here.
“The catastrophic decisions by Bush and company are swept away by the success of the surge, which equates to a billion dollar a week pause button in the endless clusterfuck that is the Iraq War.”
Maybe with this region our interventions should be oral or anal only. The Zano Doctrine?
- The handing over of an estimated 90% of Syria’s WMDs (without firing a shot). If you try comparing this to how we handled Iraq …uh, you can’t. It’s like comparing apples and agent oranges.
- The Iran Deal: designed to either delay or stop the eventuality of a nuclear Iran. Let’s not forget Stuxnet, a computer virus likely launched by an Israel and U.S. Collaboration. Stuxnet set back the Iranian nuke program long enough to allow this diplomatic attempt.
Team R will immediately respond thusly:
“The Seals killed Bin Laden not Obama! The Middle East fell into chaos since we pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan! Assad never handed over anything and the Iran Deal will ensure Iran gets a nuke!
P.S. Never forget four dead in Hillary’s Benghazi emails!”
—John Q Republican
I can hear our conservative friends all nodding their agreements. Funny how they can never identify a joke response. It’s why for years they all thought Colbert was one of them. It’s tough to get the punchline when it’s you. Ask you doctor if Bullshitzia is right for you. So I guess Jimmy Carter would have saved the Iranian hostages if it weren’t for our incompetent military. You can’t have it both ways, folks. Kidding, of course you can, you’re delusional.
Reality Alert:
“Our Commander in Chief ordered the Bin Laden raid within Pakistan, which was a gutsy move that republicans called ‘naïve.’ The Middle East has sucked for 1,000K years, almost as long as republicans. Assad handed over his WMDs without your knowledge because you’re not privy to knowledge and, yes, the Iran Deal will either delay or stop an Iran bomb (but only because that’s how our nuclear scientists and our State Dept. designed the deal).“
—Mick Zano
Can I think of any clear thing Obama could have done differently? No, and either can you. If Putin is too good at killing ISIS many of our generals claim this will tip the favor toward our ultimate problem, Shiite radical groups. Sunni radical groups are crazier and more desperate, like Putin, and like republicans. Oh, and why are Shiite groups the likely victors? The main reason remains the invasion of Iraq. So I ask again, how do you keep nearly half our country completely devoid of facts? I believe the much more difficult question is:
What Have Republicans Been right about in the 21st century?
What if a democratic president allowed 9/11 on his or her watch? Mathews echoed this on Maher last week. What if a democratic president secretly sold arms to the Iran Contras? Or a Dem backed the Mujahidin and the Taliban in Afghanistan? ….and, as a cherry on their shit sundae, what if a Democratic president created, trained and armed the then unknown group called Al-Qaeda? …I’m sure Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would give them a pass, right? An honest mistake. Oh, and after disbanding the Iraqi army you sent ISIS their new leaders and sent hundreds of millions in arms and equipment. I have watched the republican debates over the years and the Romneys and the McCains of the world have only one approach, a heavily militaristic one. They remain dangerously short-sighted. They will play this only card despite its recent failures and despite its tendency to create more extreme radical groups. Most of these interventions are not directly related to our national interests. We’ve tracked so far right even lefties are bending the executive branch’s ability to authorize war, here. The further right we track, the further left they think we are. They have lost all perspective, or maybe they never really had any.
History will clearly show how republican interventions failed. Ultimately they only helped to create many of these radicals. After decades of botching shit, they finally tipped the scale toward the Shiites. Hey, but this started in 632 so it’s nice you’ve helped one group to achieve a Caliphate, right? The Deciders, my ass. Then, to show your patriotism further, you send your sons and daughter to fight to make the Halliburtons of the world richer. Yeah, I’m the idiot. If Dems did this, would we still be talking about Hillary’s emails? Yes…yes, we would, because republicans give the word asshole a bad name.