What We Left Behind In Iraq

++In a New Yorker piece by the same name, Dexter Filkins does an excellent job in describing the authoritarianism of Prime Minister Malaki and the upsurge in vicious sectarian sighting in Iraq. Filkins analyzes how the U.S. put Maliki in power and what they expected of him. Since his rise,his government has consolidated power in the ministries around his office and embarked on Iraqi-style corruption that one  American embassy personnel person told me was the worst he had seen in all the Middle East and he had served in some corrupt places.

++Filkins justly criticizes the Obama Administration for deliberately avoiding any criticism of Maliki's huge human rights violations and his stimulation of the sectarian violence.

++If you listen to David Brooks, President Obama has "a manhood problem" when it comes to the Middle East.

++Let's examine that statement. This gets to the white male authoritarian complex about acting psychotic to get your way. We see this with the rightwing on the Bundy rancher case. What do the David Brooks want Obama to do? While he wouldn't say,the answer is always "bomb someone." In the theater of acting tough,Vladimir Putin has emerged as the conservative's hero whether because the Right believe he has played Obama or because he cracks down on gays and dissent.

++While people like to talk tough, we might want to consider the consequences of our wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Harvard has estimated that the costs of booth wars will run $4-6 trillion as compared to $1.5 trillion for WWII, which we won. So far we have paid $260 billion.

++Today there are 1.56 million Vets receiving medical treatment. Of those over 50% are veterans of these wars and 1/3rd of those are suffering from mental illness.

++Not to mention that these wars introduced an America that engaged in torture and kidnapped people to be held in "dark sites". Only this past week,a retired C.I.A. psychologist admitted how he came to design the torture program and his excuse was that it had been approved at the highest level of government. 

++Maybe some other people than Obama have a manhood problem.