Drowned Out by the Loud and Stupid!

I feel like I need to weigh in on Iraq. I mean, well, I have no great expertise on the subject. I am fairly well-informed, but the country, and the conflict there is quite complicated, and has a long, long history, and our country has often been involved, at least on the margins, over the years, and we have never really recovered from our misguided, and illegal, and morally questionable invasion and occupation during the Bush years.

If you want to review history, and try to better understand what's happening there, I recommend you read Juan Cole, a Middle Eastern historian.   He will explain what a Sunni and a Shiite is, and how they have been in conflict for centuries. It seems there are lots of grievances, and it has led to lots of bloodshed, and it's all related to religion, power and the madness of being human.

I am with President Obama on all this, I voted for him because he said he would get our troops out of Iraq, he admitted that the invasion was a mistake, and he has done all he can to extricate our country out of that ongoing catastrophe.  With all the talk, and back and forth, and finger-pointing, and hot-air, from all those people who lied to us, and lied us into a war we didn't need, over "weapons of mass  destruction" that didn't exist, I think it's important to remind everyone that Barack Obama was right to be against the war, and to get us out of the conflict.

And he is right, to be hesitant to get us back in the middle of this bloody, human mess. As Matthew Yglesias puts it: The Mess in Iraq Proves Obama was Right to Leave. It seems obvious. But if you listen to the political chatter, you realize the obvious is often easily drowned out by the loud and stupid. 

Update: And it turns out the loudest, stupidest, and most war criminalist turns out to be the architect of the tragically grand fiasco... Dick Cheney, and his daughter...