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A comment on Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002. Parent comment

Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by im4w1l on Monday July 18, 2016 @04:47AM (#12113890)
ISIS' rise to prominence happened under Obama, a long time after the invasion of Iraq.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by nl on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:16AM (#12113971)
ISIS' rise to prominence happened under Obama, a long time after the invasion of Iraq.

Absolutely true, technically. Also a completely useless and misleading statement.

The ISIS group splintered and grew out of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq after its defeat during the Anbar Awakening[1]. Ironically, the Iraqi goverment's behaviour towards the awakening groups[2] directly contributed to this.

Many of the same people involved in Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Anbar Awakening groups as well as the Ba'ath party ended up fighting for ISIS.

There is plenty of blame to go around, but the range of possible actions and outcomes Obama had was much smaller compared to that Bush had.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anbar_Awakening

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Iraq

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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by jacquesm on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:08AM (#12113947)
ISIS could only rise to prominence because of the power-vacuum the Iraq war left behind.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by im4w1l on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:19AM (#12113977)
The power vaccuum happened when the troops were withdrawn.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by jacquesm on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:36AM (#12114034)
The troops would have been withdrawn sooner or later anyway, this was something that was known before the Iraq war was even started. Unless you want to argue that the US had plans for a permanent occupation of Iraq after getting rid of Saddam.

Please do not try to re-write history in a way that suits your narrative, it is pointless and counterproductive.

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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by Turing_Machine on Monday July 18, 2016 @08:57AM (#12114762)
Define "permanent" and "occupation". You mean like the way the U.S. still has troops in Europe after 75 years, and Korea after 60? Do those count as "occupations"?

There's a lot of room between keeping support troops on hand and a full-scale military occupation.

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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by eumoria on Monday July 18, 2016 @09:24AM (#12114887)
US troops do absolutely nothing on Korea and Europe other than as stand-by and a geopolitical deterrent. The troops in Iraq were acting as the fighting force for the official regime. These are very VERY different things. US toops were occupying Iraq, they are not occupying South Korea.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by Turing_Machine on Monday July 18, 2016 @09:31AM (#12114917)
That's more or less my point, isn't it? It would have been possible to (attempt to) hand over responsibility to the Iraqi military while still keeping troops there in case things went south (as they did).
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by Noseshine on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @01:35PM (#12123278)
This NYT article has some very interesting background:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast/united-st...

After reading the article and learning some of the intricacies I really don't feel ready to blame anyone in particular. It seems to be a "system outcome" of the interactions and the (local) conditions.

Let's not forget a lot of Irakis wanted the US to leave, fully and completely:

> Possibilities being discussed are for some troops to return in 2012, an option preferred by some Iraqi politicians who want to claim credit for ending what many here still call an occupation,...

That "some" is about the politicians, the mood in the streets wasn't just "some" people who wanted all foreign soldiers to leave, if I remember anything from the news we heard at that time.

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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by hx87 on Monday July 18, 2016 @11:40AM (#12115699)
Given the state of the Iraqi military, things would have gone south immediately, and the troops would never leave.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by Turing_Machine on Monday July 18, 2016 @01:22PM (#12116523)
Would they, though? I think it is a plausible argument that things would have been less likely to go south if the opposing force knew the U.S. forces were there to step in if necessary. While things might still have ended badly, I think there's no question that pulling the U.S. troops out so soon made the collapse a certainty.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by brbsix on Monday July 18, 2016 @04:28PM (#12117879)
At the very least, ISIS would not have been armed to the same extent by fleeing Iraqi security forces.
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Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since... by im4w1l on Monday July 18, 2016 @01:35PM (#12116649)
You only get to shift blame to your predecessor if you predict and warn about the unavoidable problems and state your plan for how to handle it.
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