Sunday, August 17, 2014

Jack Kelly criticizes Obama again on Iraq, what a surprise

Jack Kelly continues (from last Sunday) his criticism of Barack Obama's current Iraq policy: Jack Kelly: The Islamic State attacks while Obama dithers: The president still doesn’t understand the terrorist threat. Now I don't specifically say Kelly is wrong about a need to get involved in this conflict, or that a consequence of not doing so could affect oil prices; in fact I don;t deal with those issues in the kind of depth they would really need. I simply point out we have a big level of responsibility for creating the circumstances for this situation (predating Obama) and oil prices may go up no matter what we do. Below is the comment I left on the PG website.

Is this situation perhaps what a seemingly prophetic Colin Powell had in mind when he invoked the (so-called) Pottery Barn "rule" before we invaded Iraq in 2003? ("You break it, you bought it") I don't think Americans want to permanently occupy Iraq, nor do the oil producing states of the region want us there for the next fifty or a hundred years, or even one year more. It is certainly true that oil speculators and traders could use the actions of this Islamic State to drive up the international price of oil, but that can happen for almost any reason, including our re-occupying Iraq.

It is true that we may well need to re-engage in Iraq to prevent a disaster, but doing so will not vindicate the various militarists on the right. It will be a further indictment of the Bush administration when he ignored the Pottery Barn rule of all our behalf's.

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