Saddam, Osama, Baghdadi, Hello?

‘Range of options’ under discussion to combat Islamic State - The Washington Post:

I must have read a hundred articles, columns, references in books, etc, etc on how "Reagan  made Saddam and Osama". The US wanted to contain Iran in the '80s, so we at least turned the other cheek relative to Saddam and probably gave him some aid, even though he was a nasty guy. Likewise, we supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against Soviet forces, and Osama Bin Ladin was one of their fighters.

One of the books I read on the topic was called "Blowback", and there was article after article on how "naive" Reagan was, and how he "created the whole terrorist problem". As I read those books and articles I always marvelled at the intelligence of the authors. I'm such a stupid guy I could have swore that the USSR was an ally of ours during WWII -- but naturally that can't be true, or FDR and Churchill would have been castigated just like Reagan, right?

Now we have a certain Baghdadi, released by the US in '09  ... my guess is that this piece of history will become even harder to find and may likely be re-written, because one could almost perceive BO as having some responsibility for major terrorists released on his watch. The way history is written though, I'm guessing this will "all be W's fault" ... if he had "done the right thing either after 9-11, or somehow "prevented it" ... or maybe it all goes back to Reagan. If he had never challenged the USSR, tben they would have kept the lid on ...

Oh, but wait, if you listen to the left on the re-write of the end of the USSR, it was "inevitable" -- Reagan maybe slowed it down!

It is clear that "Republicans are stupid and at fault", and "Democrats are brilliant and responsible for good things" .... so it's easy. Current ISIS rise has to be W's fault. So now BO and company are valiantly working to correct this wrong ... we just need to support them.

Back when 9-11 hit us, the left was (and mostly still is) certain it was W's fault for "failing to heed warnings" -- they had a big special investigation and there were a series of books on how W failed to protect the nation ("Your Government Failed You" by Richard Clarke was one). Of course it was only about 2/3 of the Democrats that believed W was incompetent in not protecting the country -- the OTHER 1/3 were certain that 9-11 was an "inside job" ... the "truthers", certain that Cheney and his minions, possibly with Jewish help planned and executed the whole thing as a pretext to war.

We listened to 20 years of stories about "Blowback" relative to Saddam and Osama, now, "strangely", even though the leader of our new dangerous foe was released by the US in '09, don't expect to hear much about it.

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