Yep, seems no lessons ever learned…
STFU! You are such an Asshat who doesn’t k now what the fuck they are talking about most of time! You are a wastes of space here! You are not worth the efforts!
I invited you to tell me what it was that I’ve got wrong, and saying that you ‘saw things with your own eyes’ doesn’t cut it. You’re asking me to believe you because you were there rather than what the mainstream media sources’ reportage was at the time, gathered by seasoned and unbiased war correspondents. I mean, in what capacity were you there? Were you in the upper echelons of the designated observer force, or a ‘grunt’, or just passing through? So tell me one thing that I’ve concluded that was wrong, and maybe you can convince me?.
Dude go reread what I said! What is annoying about you at times is that I have to repeat myself! I hate repeating myself Check your reading comprehension please!
Which is BS, if we had left immediately the Bathists would have remained in power and the slaughter from the internal sectarian war that resulted would have produced many times the casualties that resulted from the insurgency.
ISIS would have formed right in Baghdad and taken the entire country in short order.
Yep, and one must wonder why you’d do that…[quote=“cerberus, post:163, topic:5231”]
I invited you to tell me what it was that I’ve got wrong,
[/quote]
Nobody in the western world understands the Middle Eastern mindset, and that includes you. I might get things wrong now and again, but I don’t post BS.
Actually he does know, don’t make assumptions about people it only makes an ass out of you!
Unlike you I’ve actually had my boots on the ground there and spent decades studying the ME.
And I’d guess that many experts from your Pentagon have studied the ME for decades, too, but they still can’t understand the mentality of the region. They’re different to us - very different, and as I’ve said before ‘ne’er the twain shall meet’.
Well lmao. You certainly got that one right…
That is painting with broad strokes to make such assumptions! I have lived in the ME and using the word “region” is a bit misleading to surmise to making such sweeping generalisations! The are many countries with different traditions and cultures that comprise of the region you refer to.
For example being in a place like Quatar, or Oman, where I can legally drink, hook up with a Ethiopian escort and smoke hasheesh (not that I myself did those things) till my hearts content, is something I couldn’t do in other places like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Then you have the differences of Sunni’s, and the Shiites, the Persians and the Arabs, the languages, the customs etc. There are also places more sympathetic to US personnel or citizens and others where they are not but are more welcoming to European nationals depending on the culture. I have been to a lot of these places, experienced these cultures in both tense and welcoming situations; which I can also say that not too many people in a life time can claim on their bucket list is to have traveled in the remote regions of Iran, which in of itself is an amazing place.
The point is studying and having experienced these cultures are completely different perspectives and usually intelligence assets don’t employ some white Ivy Leaguer who studied the language, culture and tradition in some colleges to be deployed in the field where a particular interest in achieving an objective is executed! The people they recruit are usually people who have family ties, speak the language and look the part ethnically.
Lastly the part about your assertion about not knowing how people think is absurd! I think the issue you are trying to illuminate upon is bad policy decisions made by our respective governments. The main thing you are ignoring in all of is the political motives that go into such decisions. There are selfish intentions that don’t act in the best interest of the people who elected these bureaucrats that leads to bad policy and I argue its because of orchestrated intentions to attain a specific result. You should know this, you had Tony Blair making such decisions and for the same reason we had Bush who were Globalist shills motivated by profits being sought by their corporate lobbyists! The end does not justify the means Nor make up the sum of all parts, it’s a zero sum game in the greater scheme of things and understanding the perplexities is only done so through a lived experience than pounding away on a keyboard somewhere in a damp cold cellar obsessed with a silly conspiracy theories!
Blatant conspiracy theory, chief.
(Not that I disagree)
Village Idiot strikes again! It’s not conspiracy when there are facts that substantiate a statement! Go back to school and learn the definition of words, your ignorance reveals itself again!
You keep accusing me of using broad brush strokes, but quite often a concise precis cuts straight to the salient point(s), thus saving a lot of unnecessary rhetoric. Just tell me what it is that you think I’m not getting, by my assertion that they ‘think and rationalize differently to the Western mindset’? I mean, would any of us disfigure with acid, or even kill our daughter just because she refused to marry who we tell her to marry? Or bury a a person in the ground up to their necks and hurl stones at the head?
OMG dude! Just analyze your own words! Can or are you capable of self correction when someone criticizes your statements? Do you require everyone to hold your hand in every single response to your posts?
I already did that, do you have a reading disability of some kind that we should know about? Holy crap!
Seriously dude, if you don’t know what it is that I am responding to, as in what you put forth in your statements, then I can’t be bothered. I just put forth a very well articulated response to your previous statement and all I get from you is “unnecessary rhetoric?” Holy crap! Talk about obfuscating and being obtuse from a conversation. Sorry I bothered if that is how you are always going to respond!
Since you’ve never set foot there much less put any study into how they live, what they believe, what they are willing to die for what makes you such an authority on the subject?
I don’t need to live in Russia to know what the Russian culture is? They’re willing to die for their cause - the clue’s in the word they live by viz. ‘suicide bombers’?
That is pretty much the whole point in what I was saying. You can’t know a culture or a people until you have actually experienced it yourself. Trying to make the argument that you don’t have to do that and you simply can watch a Youtube video to get the same effect is a pretty flawed argument!