Planned Parenthood

Today, in the United States Congress, the Republican party is squaring off for a fight. They plan to shut the government down again. This is very much like a little child stomping off when he doesn't get his way, but the effects of a government shutdown won't be good for our economy and won't be good for America.

Lo, let us put this plainly: Republicans do not want what is good for America if they vote to shut down the government.

But let us examine this further: What is it that Planned Parenthood does? Planned Parenthood is a national franchise of clinics that are funded with donations and government funds to offer free healthcare to anyone who walks in. Most of their patients are woman and most of those women are not well off. Where does the money they get go?

By and large, as you can see from the chart above, Planned Parenthood is spending the bulk of their money—76%—on STD testing and treatment as well as contraception. STD treatment and testing reduces the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, which can cripple. Some STDs can also sterilize women, so if you think that women ought to be able to have babies, you should be in favor of Planned Parenthood. 

Bristol Palin cannot seem to practice what she preaches

Then there is contraception. Since contraception tends to reduce abortions and you do not like abortions, you ought to be in favor of Planned Parenthood, unless your position is, like Bristol Palin, that abstinence is the only acceptable to not get pregnant. Unfortunately, for Ms. Palin, that does not seem to be working out very well for her, as she is pregnant once again—out of wedlock with her second child conceived while she was telling others to not have sex. I think that is a big problem for her, even though Planned Parenthood also offers services to married persons as well as single persons who want family planning options.

Here is what the opposition to Planned Parenthood is, more than anything else. It is about denial of the same kinds of health services that wealthy people have to the poor.

Carly Fiorina can afford an abortion. It is legal, it is available and there are still physicians in the United States who will do the procedure. The wives of all of the other Presidential candidates can afford an abortion and they can get one any time they want to. They can also get contraception, cancer screening, STD testing and treatment and any medical service their heart desires.

Carly Fiorina wants poor people to not be able to get healthcare

But Carly Fiorina and the rest of the Republicans do not want poor people to get any of these services. They don't like the fact that poor people can walk into a free Planned Parenthood clinic and see a physician, get medical services and go on with their lives.

You can see this clearly in the way that Republicans absolutely oppose Medicaid expansion in all of their states (with very few exceptions) because they want to punish poor people by reserving healthcare for the very rich. Under the Republican philosophy, poor people are to be denied any access to competent physicians and other healthcare services because they are poor and it's all their fault. Republican policies had nothing to do with this, either (they believe that the teacers' unions caused the 2008 economic crisis and not the banks, the investment bankers and the policies espoused by Republicans since Reagan.

This leads me to a theory howard Zinn proposed in his book, A People's History of the United States. He suggested that, the reason why the wealthy people wanted poor people to stay poor is so that they could pit them against the people they really didn't like—black people. I have to suggest that, after the constant rhetoric I hear coming out of Donald Trump (and not refuted by any of the other Republican Presidential candidates) this extends to Chinese people and Mexican people (as well as those with those ancestries) also.

So, in order to keep the "nonwhites" down, we must have lots of white poor people, whose position is that, at least they have no African, Mexican and Chinese ancestry. These poor white people will have nasty, short, brutish lives without any possibility of ever seeing a physician.

Now, that is a pretty extreme stance, but, as I look at the current Republican rhetoric, I have to wonder if it is really true and that Republicans really want to build an America like that. I would love to see some well-researched refutations of this.

How Trump Works

I think that the GOP would just as soon Donald Trump would have melted down by now but, to their surprise, he is going strong. We are headed into the second Republican debate and he will, once again, be in the center, leading the pack.

I want to note a few things that Trump seems to be all about. He, apparently, hates Hispanic people and seems to characterize all of them as Mexican nationals, no matter where they are from. And all Mexicans are murderers and rapists. This kind of rhetoric caused a lot of companies to decide to quit doing business with him, including the PGA tour, NBC and one of the Spanish-language television networks, Univision. Trump decided to sue Univision when they dropped coverage of his Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.

Since Univision does have a large Hispanic viewing audience, their news division wanted to interview candidate Donald Trump about his statements concerning Mexicans living here in the United States and his apparent issues with them. Their polls show that Trump enjoys a 75% negative rating with Hispanics and the network believes that he cannot win any national Presidential election if he does not have a great deal of Hispanic support. I know what they do in news departments. They task someone with calling twice a day every day to ask for an interview. Someone from Univision has been calling the Trump organization every day for, at this writing, three months. The person making the call may not be a top reporter and certainly is not their national news anchorperson, but these calls are being made. Were anyone from the Trump organization to suggest that Donald Trump would be happy to take an interview request from Univision, the follow-up would be at a high level.

So, after Donald Trump has refused any question from Univision for three months now, evening news anchor Jorge Ramos decided to attend a press conference held by Donald Trump.

I happened to turn on the television at that time—not to listen to Donald Trump but, rather, to see what was happening and to rest from a trying day. And, in tuning around, I noted that CNN, MSNBC and Faux "news" were all carrying the news conference live. I found this fact, alone, interesting. They do not do this with any of the other candidates. And, I think that with Donald Trump, he says such outrageous things that there is some fascination.

I had flipped back to MSNBC when Jorge Ramos stood up. I heard Ramos' questions—CNN did not have good audio on Ramos' questions (I found that out later). Donald Trump saw the Univision anchorman stand up and immediately turned to the center and tried to call on another reporter. The reporter Trump called on did not ask a question and, instead, listened to the exchange between Jorge Ramos and Trump. Ramos was asking how the United States could afford to deport 11 million persons in the United States who had overstayed their visas or entered this country without proper paperwork. He also asked how Donald Trump was going to build a wall over the entire US-Mexico border (knowing that many of the undocumented aliens in this country come by air and other means) and how Donald Trump could claim that he would get the Hispanic vote when a vast majority of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

Each of these questions are fair questions, because all of this information is the kind of information Donald Trump shares with the press and the American people every time he gives a speech. But the situation was interesting. Jorge Ramos was conducting an "ambush interview." And attempting to ambush someone is also fair, as Donald Trump and his organization have refused to offer an interview with Univision for three months. Trump knows this, because he tells his people to ignore their requests.

Rolonda Watts

In an "ambush interview," often the goal is to simply show the response to the ambush of the person being interviewed. In 1990, I edited a number of "ambush interviews with Inside Edition and I became quite familiar with how they work. Ambush interviews are the staple of investigative reporting on television, where the interviewee often does not wish to be interviewed. In 1990, I edited the report by Rolonda Watts with Byron De La Beckwith, the man who murdered Medgar Evers. Apparently, De La Beckwith had kept the murder weapon in his home and it was discovered in 1990. Watts telephoned him from New York and asked for an interview. She told me that De La Beckwith told her over the phone that Inside Edition was not to send a "nigger, jap, Jew or a spick" to interview him. Rolonda, who is black, told him that she would personally do the interview so that he could tell his side of the story.

Inside Edition had two cameras rolling as De La Beckwith threw Ms. Watts off his property. I recall we had to "bleep" out considerable profanity from De La Beckwith. We aired the ambush pretty much as it happened.

A few of my friends have suggested to me that Jorge Ramos was being rude, that he was not recognized, that he spoke out of turn. Not true. Every single reporter in the room knew what was going on. And so did Donald Trump. Trump thought he could simply refuse to call on Ramos and that would settle the issue. But Ramos was all set to jump in as soon as Trump drew a breath and went looking for another "softball." And the rules of decorum change in an ambush. This is an ambush that Donald Trump set up as soon as he decided to ignore Univision for three months.

Jorge Ramos

For my readers who are not Hispanic, that is like throwing Lester Holt from NBC or David Muir from ABC or Scott Pelley from CBS out of a press conference. You don't do that. You take the question and you try to maintain some dignity if you think the news anchorperson is going to make things hot for you. Instead, Trump revealed his real feelings for Hispanic Americans. He glanced at his bodyguard, who all but shoved Ramos out of the room and as that was happening, Trump told Ramos to "go back to Univision."He couldn't say Mexico because he knew the rest of the reporters in the press conference would immediately all start asking questions about his latest insult to Hispanic-Americans. Once out in the hallway, Trump's bodyguard said "Get out of my country" to Ramos, who was naturalized as a US citizen in 2008. Ramos is a respected, award-winning journalist and deserves treatment as such. Donald Trump treated him like he would like the United States to treat everyone of foreign origin.

That treatment is the reaction that Ramos' questions created in Donald Trump and, just as in the case where Byron De La Beckwith threw Rolonda Watts off his lawn, demonstrating his extreme prejudice, Trump demonstrated exactly the same prejudice with Ramos.

I would say that the score is Univision 2, Trump 0.

Now, Trump, realizing what just happened, did invite Ramos back to ask his question, whereupon Trump wanted Ramos' question to be all about Trump's lawsuit, but this would serve to be more mistreatment. At one point, Trump announced that he "liked Ramos." But he also said he did not know Ramos—even though he had refused to take a question from him, had him ejected from a press conference and also told him to "go back to Univision." Trump does something outrageous and has a meltdown in front of live crowds (throwing red meat to the isolationist radical racists in the Republican party) and then acts like it's all in fun.

I am hopeful that these meltdowns become more frequent so that America can really see who the Republican front-runner is. This says a whole lot about the Republican Party in general that they would accept Donald Trump as a candidate. I don't think America wants to hire such a volatile person as President.

The Trump Card

So, The Donald has decided to actually run for the Republican nomination. And he was immediately dismissed by that party as "not a serious candidate." Then, to everyone's surprise, his candidacy took off. Polls show him—even after his little spat with Faux "news" personality Megyn Kelly—leading all other candidates.

At first, this was amusing. It was so amusing that Arianna Huffington decided that all coverage of the Donald would be in the Entertainment section in the Huffington Post. True to form, he launched an attack on the Huffington Post, Ms. Huffington and on all media coverage in general. More red meat for the masses.

But the dustup with Megyn Kelly seems to have been "important." One of the things that Donald Trump called her was "a lightweight." and he said "she was reading from her little script." And this points something out. We were not actually watching a Presidential debate. The men (and they were all men, because Carly Fiorina was relegated to the "Kiddie Table Debate") played a role and acted as if though Faux "news" actually does news and has real journalists. And the people from Faux "news" played the part of serious journalists, by carefully reading serious questions that were given to them and designed to actually challenge the candidates. This caught several of the candidates off-guard, especially Donald Trump, because they are all used to the softballs thrown at them by Faux "news" personalities.

Megyn Kelly is a "lightweight," just as all of the personalities on that network are. Despite the fact that she worked for ABC affiliate WJLA-TV, she is permanently blacklisted from ever working in any capacity as a real journalist again. Anyone accepts a job from Murdoch is permanently blacklisted. You will never see one of their personalities hired by CNN or any of the broadcast networks. This is because they do not make news, they do not report it, they do not hold to any of the standards of journalism, they have no ethics and they do not appear to know the difference between what they are doing and real news gathering and news reporting. Real news organizations do not exist to train people up—that is what you are supposed to have done in college.

What you saw on that network was a "reality show," or "reality-based television." where everyone is an unscripted actor (save, perhaps, the Faux "news" personalities reading from their scripts). And, since the ratings were nice and high, Roger Ailes "made nice" with Mr. Trump after having surprised him with the questions asked, because he knows that Donald Trump is the reason why the viewership of this reality show was so high. He wants more ratings like that.

So, now, let's get to the whole reason why Donald Trump is able to run on the Republican ticket.

Donald Trump knows that he needn't be specific as to what policies he would espouse as President. He need not be specific because the Republican candidates do not debate each other. Instead, they launch attacks on a President who is not running for office and try to attack the person they think the Democrats will nominate. And the reason why Republicans are so light on specifics is because the party's platform is specifically designed to harm the majority of the voters, so they would rather talk about their opponent than what they plan to do.

So he ran knowing he would never be asked what he would do if he were President. He can always side-step all of these questions very easily, because none of the other candidates will ever call him on this and because he can always attack the press. Attacking the press is not informational. Attacking Democrats or the President is not informational. When you go on the attack, you cease to state what you will do. Anyone who questions Donald Trump will face a personal ad hominum attack from Donald Trump. And this is exactly why Roger Ailes gave Megyn Kelly the script that called for her to ask about how women see Trump. He knew right away that her ratings would increase after the spat and Ailes is all about the money he can make by having a non-news network.

The paranoid Hillary

I am one of the few Americans who has all ready voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for her to be a New York State Senator. Up until then she had not run for office and had not served in any administration. Subsequently, she ran for President against Barack Obama and I voted for Obama. I voted for him because he said he would do what I did not think Hillary could do: end the petty

partisanship in Washington. I believe that Republicans, who had been thrown out of power in both houses, wanted so badly to prevent President Obama from being able to keep that campaign promise, as well as any others, that they did everything they could to actually increase the petty partisanship.

Hillary is particularly qualified to be President of the United States. She served as First Lady, served admirably in the Senate and served as Secretary of State. There is no Republican who can say they have held both a seat in the Senate and also served as a Secretary of State.

But is was while she was Secretary of State that, I think Hillary's paranoia got the better of her. In 1998, Hillary, in defense of her husband, claimed that there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to try to take down the Presidency of her husband. Certainly, as a special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr did everything he could—Whitewater morphed into Filegate to Travelgate to allegations that Bill Clinton had an affair with Paula Jones prior to his presidency and finally to the Lewinsky affair. But this is Kenneth Starr, who ought not to have ever been granted the power granted to him by Janet Reno to do open-ended investigations.

Hillary needed control. As Secretary of State, she could not handle the possibility that someone would endlessly investigate her job in that position and, she was right. The Benghazi investigation in the House of Representatives concluded after two and a half years just before Thanksgiving, 2014, where the results (no findings of wrongdoing) could be buried in the other news of the day.

So she had an IT person build her a special server to handle her email in Chappaqua, NY and not one under the control of the Obama administration or the government. I have heard a lot of concerns about security with respect to this server but, if the IRS's computers could have been hacked, certainly the system used by the State Department could have been hacked. Her computer was probably as safe as any.

But it's the paranoia in having someone set that up that bothers me. I think that, as President, her paranoia will continue—if it doesn't get worse. I lived through a time when we had a President who was paranoid. And that did not work out well for us. I'm not sure why Richard Nixon was so paranoid—there was certainly no "vast left wing conspiracy" trying to remove him from office. The calls for him to step down came from both sides of the aisle.

Nixon was, certainly, the 20th Century's worse President though, in terms of policy, I think Reagan was worse. Nixon tried to create an imperial Presidency with more ceremony, more exultation of his person, more protocols and a clear way of thinking that strongly suggested that he thought that the President was above us all and above the laws of the United States.

And it is precisely that that bothers me about Hillary. While she was raised middle class and while I believe she does retain middle class values and aspirations, which I prefer any President to do, her paranoia may encourage her to take steps to hide from the record-keepers, take an adversarial stance towards the press (which has a right to know) and the public, which also has a right to know what is going on within her administration.

Today, we have Bernie Sanders with his straight talk and, possibly, Joe Biden as well as Hillary Clinton running for the Democratic nomination. I don't think Vice President Biden will run. And I am completely undecided. I don't want a paranoid President.

"Culture of Dependency"

I was reading about Kansas recently. I cam across an article in The Nation about how Kansas deals with people who need help with their healthcare. It's pretty depressing. You see, Kansas had such

promise. Led ably by common-sense moderate Republicans for years, the state of Kansas was all set to demonstrate how a red state could be a pioneer in insuring most of its residents, using the Republican plan that was developed as a response to Hillary Clinton's Single-payer Healthcare system.

That's right, the "Obamacare" plan was largely designed by Republicans. It was the Republicans who wanted "market forces" to control health insurance for Americans, rather than have a federal program like Medicare simply take care of everyone (the Clinton plan). It was the Republicans who wanted everyone in the pool and wanted to fine anyone who didn't carry health insurance (the individual mandate). They're denying this now, but it is all true.

So they are, in essence, saying their plan is a bad plan. I do  not think that any other plan would be to their liking, either.

The specific wording that Republicans in Kansas are using to describe assistance from the government (even if it is a tax reduction, mind you) as something that creates a culture of dependency.

Let me just take issue with this whole "moral rejection of 'dependency'" that Brownback and the Republican Radicals talk about. Essentially, what they are saying is that if you need help at any time in your life for any reason, you are morally wrong, you have no morals and you are a problem. But here's the problem with this rhetoric. Kansas, itself, is a truly red state. The federal government receives 65¢ for every federal dollar that goes into that state. So, if that is the case, Kansas, itself, has a moral dependency problem.

So if it doesn't apply to states, it applies to people. And this is exactly like driving by someone standing in the street with the wreckage of their home all around them after a Kansas tornado and refusing to stop. Furthermore, it is like blaming the person standing there, surveying the ruins of their home for having the poor judgement of building their house there. If you help this person, you are not creating a culture of dependency, you are assisting in rebuilding a life. And you are doing a very good thing.

Another common myth that these Republican Radicals like to make believe is true is that our Revolution was a "tax revolt" and, somehow, lines up with their current rhetoric. As I have said elsewhere, nothing could be further from the truth,

but this raises an issue: From the very start, the colonies in America were dependent on each other. And the individuals in these colonies were, similarly, dependent on the governments they created to keep order, peace and provide a framework so that they could prosper.

As early as 1754, Benjamin Franklin ascertained that divided colonies here in the Americas would have considerable problems if they did not unite and did not act in concert. Later, during our Revolution, George Washington determined that the only way that New England could be freed from the British occupation in Boston was to march his Continental troops to the outskirts of Boston, overlooking the Harbor and force the British to evacuate. George Washington was a Virginia Planter and he brought troops from the south and recruited troops from the colonies south of Massachusetts as he traveled north to oppose the British. This unification of forces proved the concept that, if these United States act in concert, rather than creating a "culture of dependency" they would create a culture of interdependency that would create a new, strong nation.

Radical Republicans want us to forget this. They are wrong. They want us to rewrite history and ignore what Washington did. If your government offers you a subsidy, you are not—somehow—dependent. Instead, you are more independent. You are more capable. You can stand up for yourself, just as Boston did in the face of an unwelcome British military in Boston.

The Islamic State in the Levant

We have labeled the Islamic State in the Levant, (ISIL DAESH or ISIS) as a terrorist organization. I am not choosing to take issue with that. I have to believe that what they are doing is committing acts of terror in wholesale killings and other atrocities. Additionally, they are urging adherents to their cause to commit acts of terror globally—usually without any help from them and any planning. Because they are in a war in their own region.

The United States is bombing them from the skies, presumably without any ground controllers to call in these airstrikes. While our planes and bombs are more accurate today than they were during WW II, without ground controllers, our accuracy is limited. The military briefings may show pinpoint airstrikes, but those are the rounds that looked good. They edit out all those who may have killed civilians and non-combatants. The US military doesn't like to look bad.

So, we're fighting the bad guys, or the terrorists, but it is very important to know why they are "bad guys," or "terrorists." Firstly, the name of the group is important, "The Islamic State in the Levant." We are calling them transnational but the national borders that were drawn were drawn up by an Englishman and a Frenchman just after WW I. They used existing maps and a straight edge to draw nice, neat borders where there were no rivers or natural borders. ISIL is "transnational" because they don't recognize the borders drawn by these two Europeans. I do not believe they are transnational in the same way that al-Qaida is.

ISIL are, essentially, Sunni Muslims. The Sunni used to run Iraq and provided a neat foil that the United States used to offset Shi'ia Iran. Until GW Bush. I recall that when the Governor of Texas was running for President, he seemed to have considerable problems understanding anything about foreign policy and could not locate many countries on a map. Quickly, as his lack of any semblance of understanding about anything outside of the United States became apparent, his campaign trotted out Condoleeza Rice, a well-respected associate professor of Political Science at Stanford University to paper over Candidate Bush's frightening lack of knowledge.

As President, it is pretty apparent that the addition of Condi Rice to his team offered little in the way of security based on any kind of understanding of the world as it was in 2001. The Bush administration completely ignored the warnings given by the outgoing Clinton administration about al-Qaida and Osama bin-Ladin, and Bush, himself ignored the Presidential briefing he received that a terrorist strike was imminent 36 days before 9/11. Today, former members of that administration continue to lie about the significance of that briefing and also continue to suggest that it had no relevance to the 9/11 attacks.

Condi Rice was never able to get GW Bush's attention appropriately focused on the reality of the world outside of the United States during his two terms and the blunders he made during those eight years will continue to harm the United States for decades to come.

Bush never appreciated the nature of Iraq. It was a country that was held together by a dictatorship who was a member of a minority population in that country. The only way Saddam Hussein could hold the nation of Iraq together was by appealing to nationalism and by finding an external power that his country could unite over. For a while, that was Iran from September 1980 to August 1988 during a war with that nation. Then, after the first Gulf War (during Poppy Bush's administration) it was the United States. Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant but, at least he was under control.

So we invaded. And the end result was a government that L. Paul Bremer helped to set up, which did not provide any guaranteed role for the Sunni population (which he had thrown out of work). Nuri al-Maliki immediately got to work, shoving all Sunni out of any position in government and proceeded to allow the Kurds to begin the formation of a Kurdistan in Iraq. It is not official, but their autonomy was traded for allowing al-Maliki to run things as he wished. And he wished to disenfranchise all Sunni in his county.

No hope

This created a situation of no hope for the Sunni population, who had previously made up the government and the heads of the military in the country. And, when you have a minority in a country that has no hope, you have created a perfect situation for an insurgency and a terrorist force inside of your own country.

Condi Rice had no effect on GW Bush's ignorance.

When we took over Iraq, we failed to even post guards on the many arsenals in that country. As a result, they were looted—initially to fight us, but later to begin the Iraqi Civil War. The Sunni have no trust for the Shi'ia in the country. Of course this is reciprocal. The Sunni were hardly kissing cousins to the Shi'ia when they had power under Saddam Hussein.

So, with the state of affairs in neighboring Syria, many Sunni must have thought that they ought to do what the Kurds did: Create a nation based on their background. This is probably what ought to have been done after WW I and the Bush administration ought to have known better than to "cleanse" the government of Sunnis. But, remember, GW Bush was "the decider," and his decisions were based on nothing more than his ignorance.

When you have an oppressed minority, you hope that they will become a "Loyal Opposition" and try to have their views heard via the ballot box. But what the Bush administration created was the seeds of a "Disloyal Opposition," dedicated to the overthrow of that government by force. And they have declared their own state (in the same way that the South declared their own state during our Civil War). The difference here is that it spreads into Syria as well as Iraq, redrawing borders.

I would ask that the United States begin talks with these terrorists—not to reward their terror but to either try to get them to be a Loyal Opposition, like we did in Northern Ireland or, alternatively to create their own nation, which eschews terror. Terror is the act of desperation. But I think that United States and Nuri al-Maliki may have driven them to that.

The War in Iraq

American troops approach the hideout of Saddam Hussein's sons

Why are we rehashing the war in Iraq? It is all in the past. And, in that several people running for President have all jumped in and disqualified themselves as potential leaders, that should count for something.Instead, it's re-opening a debate that we never had prior to the war in Iraq.

We were supposed to have had that debate BEFORE committing troops, not this many years on.

Fact is, what the Bush administration did was wrong, pure and simple. I knew it at the time, I know now. We all know now. And, a bunch of Republican candidates have all tried to re-argue everything. Thus disqualifying themselves. In fact, this should disqualify them from holding any elected office.

The war in Iraq is not the CIA's fault. The CIA had very few assets in Iraq because we didn't have any kind of a diplomatic relationship with them. Just like the CIA has no assets in North Korea. So, in every report to the President, they always offered the "we believe with very limited assurance that…" This means, "we are speculating." Just like, today, we are speculating that North Korea does not yet have the capability of launching a submarine-based missile. We don't have a "mole" in North Korea who knows for certain because the CIA has zero to very few assets in that country.

Saddam Hussein pulled out of his spider hole

The war in Iraq was a personal vendetta between the Bush family and the al-Tikriti family (Saddam Hussein's family). Saddam Hussein chose to try to send a hit squad after Poppy Bush and it was not successful. GW Bush thought he'd use the entire United States military to kill Saddam Hussein and he was successful. Then, after doing that, he didn't know what to do with the country. He also didn't know how to help New Orleans or Mobile Bay recover from Katrina, either. He was incompetent.

Iraqi soldiers graduate from basic training
after being trained by United States military advisers

We trained the Iraqi army. This was back during the war. The first thing is that we got rid of the all-ready trained army that Saddam Hussein had put together (because they were disloyal to the United States). Then, we accepted applications from people who were kept out of Saddam Hussein's army because they might have been disloyal to Saddam Hussein. Then, we "trained them." And, we had them all trained up before we left Iraq. And we left Iraq after GW Bush had signed an agreement with Nuri al-Maliki's government to GET out. So, the exit from Iraq was something that President Obama faithfully executed due to prior agreements with a generally hostile government in Iraq that wanted us out.

Today, Iraq is in a crisis. But President Obama did not create this crisis. It was created when Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot drew boundary lines and created countries in the wake of WW I after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. They created an Iraq with several different ethnic groups that Saddam Hussein held together using fear, brutality and a kind of strange nationalism based on hating the outsider (Iran, the US, Israel…)

Iraqi insurgents

When we marched into Iraq, I had previously educated myself about that country—we were there under Poppy Bush. I knew that they had several different ethnic groups and those groups didn't get along. Saddam Hussein's Baathists were running the show and they were the Sunni minority, based in the north and west of the country. Since they were the army and the government, they had control.

It was always a given that Iraq would descend into a civil war. The three main ethnic groups don't get along and won't unless they have a dictatorship. And al-Maliki made sure that the government in Iraq was all Shi'ia. The Bush appointee to run Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, had previously "cleaned out" the Sunnis, preventing them from holding any jobs in the military or the government and setting up a system that would create Sunni-Shi'ia conflict that would result in civil war. For members of the Bush administration to claim that they didn't know this would happen is a confession of complete incompetence. But we all ready knew they were incompetent. The primary focus of the Bush administration was to please those big corporations that made the most money from the war in Iraq, Halliburton, GE, Boeing, GM, General Dynamics and so on. This would also please the American oil companies for whom the Bush administration hoped would get extremely lucrative contracts to drill, produce oil and refine oil in the oil-rich nation of Iraq. The al-Maliki government didn't play along, though and awarded those contracts to companies from outside of the United States. The only ones who did play along were the Kurds.

Saddam Hussein statue toppled in Firdos Square
at the same time, an effigy of GW Bush is being
burned by Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers
but we didn't have a video camera on that.

We tried to re-fight the Vietnam war when John McCain ran for President. I thought that was really foolish. We made mistakes in Vietnam but McCain tried to re-fight it and declare failure a success. Unhappily, Vietnam's mistakes were the result of the failures of two administrations, one Democrat and the other Republican. The Iraq fiasco was not the result of the failure of the Obama administration. He, largely, followed what the Bush administration left him with—an agreement to get out.

So, now we're "training the Iraqi army" again. Remember, we did this before. We spent untold millions of dollars training them (instead of rebuilding New Orleans, instead of paying for a prescription plan for seniors, instead of rebuilding our infrastructure, instead of funding schools). If we are training them again, we are picking the Shi'ia side in a civil war. And we are doing this because the only way the Sunnis could possibly challenge the Shi'ia is to create a terrorist organization: ISIL (DASH, ISIS).

I am not an isolationist. But I would ask that we clearly define why we are so interested in the Iraqi civil war. Granted, our invasion certainly did create it, but after Bush and al-Maliki did everything in their power to plant the seeds of this civil war, we ought to simply recognize Kurdistan (our only friends there) and encourage the Sunnis to form their own political entity that we will recognize as a separate country—if they will agree to eschew terrorism.

The result will be three countries. Which is the way it ought to have been after WW I. Now, the Sunnis don't particularly like us because of Bremer, but if we promised them a country and recognition, they might stop the terrorist gambit.