The GOP candidates keep talking about how our military is “deflated” and insinuate that that’s the reason ISIS exists.
What nonsense. ISIS’ existence has many sources, but our lack of fighter planes, technology, aircraft carriers, ships, guns and ammunition, if there even were such a lack, has nothing at all to do with it.
ISIS exists because of policy decisions by Bush and Obama, not because of anything the military did or did not do, or could or could not do.
ISIS exists because Bush purposely and thoughtlessly invaded Iraq, destabilized a nation and toppled a dictator that we understand in retrospect held together the Middle East. ISIS exists because Obama pulled out the military, following the wishes of the majority of Americans. If he had not done that, many thousands more of American soldiers would now be dead. ISIS exists because Obama and Clinton destabilized Libya and helped topple Qaddafi. ISIS exists because Syria became a failed state.
The “solutions” the GOP candidates propose, if those can even be called solutions, are more gasoline on the fire, nothing else. After toppling several dictators, they want to topple another one, Assad. Cruz wants to carpet bomb “them” whoever “them” is. Trump wants to bomb them into oblivion. Rubio wants “more military.” Great stuff.
Let me say this:
If we had left Saddam Hussein alone in 2003, he would still be there, or his sons would be there, tyrannizing the Iraqi people, but the region would be “stable” and there would be no ISIS. Oil would be cheap. Thousands of American soldiers would not be dead, and tens of thousands of soldiers would not have lost arms and legs, and would not be suffering from PTSD. We would have two trillion dollars less debt – at least. We could have written checks for $6,250 instead to every one of the 320 million Americans, men, women, children and infants.
And rather than stopping all this insanity in other countries, our “leaders” want to do more of it.
This is all so wrong! Do we not see? Do we not learn?