Is Dubya one of the two political fathers of ISIS/Hamas? (The other being Bin Laden)

[gulliver]

George W. Bush's Iraq War seems to be easy to forget for some reason. ISIS was spawned in Iraq after Dubya's Iraq War which, as a reminder, was initiated on false pretenses.

Hamas and ISIS are just aliases, in my book, for the same cancer. Without Dubya, perhaps we would still have two weakened regimes, one Sunni (Iraq) and one Shia (Iran), keeping one another in check. One has to wonder whether Uday or Qusay Hussein (curs though they were) might not be keeping Iran's theocrats busy right now, too busy to make trouble and too weak to avoid negotiating regional peace. The whole ME might have played out differently but for Dubya's folly and arrogance.

[EX500rider]

1. I am going to assume the Shia majority Iraqi's are happy not to have the Sunni..

....Baath Party lead by either psychopath Uday or Qusay as their cruel dictators.

[gulliver]

2. I'm going to assume everyone would be happier now...if we're doing assumptions

Had the two rivals been permitted to tire each other out (instead of Dubya handing the whole thing to Iran/Shia on a plate), maybe everyone would be happier.

On edit: Maybe Uday and Qusay would have been toppled or neutralized. I'm not familiar with the literature on the post-war increase in life satisfaction among Iraq's Shia and Sunni populations you may be referring to.

[sanatanadharma]

3. I assume anyone who thinks they can create a new-american century, can't be trusted ...

I assume anyone who thinks they can create a new-american century, can't be trusted because they, effectively, do not understand cause and effect.

The results of actions are not fully manageable. The billiard balls break by the cue balls action, not direction.
There is many a slip between cup and lip, and that is an easy, one person action. What to think of remaking the world.

The so-called good or holy war destroys as surely as any condemned war upon humanity.
The results of the war, the armistice, the reparation, the justice, all divide as surely as they unify.
The new moment becomes the field upon which the next divided moment feeds.

The new generation grows its own grievances needing to be rectified to their point of view.
Borders always create two different points of view.
Two different points of view make borders that must be defended.
Bush will be defenseless before his God.

[AloeVera]

5. Well said

[gulliver]

6. Good stuff as long as we're talking about Republicans, who really are to blame in this case

Utopian fantasy is tempting (and epidemic now) and doesn't, as you say, take into account the "cue ball and break" unpredictability you mention.

I like your post, but it wasn't clear in the sense that it doesn't stress the fact Republicans (Bush/Cheney, et al) are to blame for the Iraq War. The rest is basically noise, and noise should be attenuated as much as possible if we are to learn a solid moral and practical geopolitical lesson.

[sanatanadharma]

10. De aquerdo, totalmente

[stopdiggin]

4. certainly has bolstered the Iranian theocracy

and regional influence. But, my own read is that radicalization (primarily Sunni) had a pretty good head start and prior history going. Going in to Iraq surely didn't help .. But I'm not sure if we can say that Bush invented the wheel in this case.

[dclarston13]

7. I think Cheney had more to do with Iraq than Dubya

Otherwise I totally agree. No good comes from war. Cheney and Rummy were around since Nixon at least and I think they were executing the same plan ever since. Cheney probably still is. Heck if Nixon did not open China, American manufacturing might still be a thing. Its the same plan by the way. American business cannot make money the right way, so they figure if we make life shitty enough here at home folks will work for peanuts and we can make a profit while poorly running our companies.

[haele]

8. Hamas was around prior to Dubya. 1987, according to Wikipedia.

They were an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been harassing attempts in Egypt to Westernize and turn into a Capitalist Country.
One of the reasons Egypt does not want to take in Palestinian refugees.

Haele

[gulliver]

9. Sure, but I think that might be a distinction without a difference

We might say that ISIS was pre-existing in the sense that it was said to be an offshoot of Al Qaeda. Same with Hamas in the sense of it having history, the only distinction being that the label survived in the case of Hamas.

As I mentioned in my OP, ISIS and Hamas are the same cancer...same organization by different names. I don't recall, let's say, this version of Hamas or it's blood supply Iran prior to the Iraq War. You can perhaps correct me.

And Bush, Cheney, and the Republicans are at fault. I don't see how it can be cogently argued that that isn't so.

[WarGamer]

11. Yes and DEFINITELY no.

Shrub the Lesser had a lot to do with the growth of ISIS... and nothing to do with Hamas which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood from the 80's...

Other than that, agree with all else there.