Tom Toles for November 22, 2015

Missing from this strip: the bit where the guy in the top hat and flag outfit deliberately created the crisis in the first place.

George Santayana ignored again.

ISIS was created by people who were angry because their country was invaded, and desperate; who had lost their livlihoods and felt they had little left to lose. It was also the product of opportuniistic, ambitious people. ISIS would not exist if the US and its allies had not been in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Actually, the US was a latecomer to the process of cooking up ISIS. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Great Britain, France, Russia, and Germany all prepared the ingredients. Stir the mess well and cook it a while … then religious fundamentalism (of any stripe) will offer what appear to be answers to the discontent.

….um, is’nt that "boots UNDERground?…

Toles left out the part where, after the US funds the opposition, they turn on us. (See Al-Qaeda, for instance — we were happy to fund them when they were fighting the Soviets in the 1980s, but then they turned around and came after us as well.)

Whoever started the problem between Christians and Muslims, it was at least 10 centuries ago, probably more. We didn’t “create” a problem by invading Iraq, much as I would enjoy blaming the whole current mess on George Bush ( with Chaney controlling his strings), it was after 9/11 and a bunch of less spectacular attacks in the 10-20 years before that. Granted Iraq was the wrong country, and Chaney and Bush are idiots, but they are minor players in a very, very long conflict. The Issue now isn’t who started it, the issue is how do we go about ending it. Helping the people fleeing the terrorists is a good beginning. We need people to populate the area who don’t hate us, and refusing to help refugees isn’t helping to produce any such people.

And the next time some accursed chickenhawk wraps the flag around himself and dances around chanting “Support the troops! Support the troops!” we’ll be off to the races again. Works every time.

Thank you Tom. It really disturbs me that the media is so bent on pounding the drums of war. This really seems to me to be a case of the trying to make a story instead of reporting on one. I’ve been noticing over the past decade that the media seems more intent on making a story out of whole cloth rather than simply reporting things as they are. I’m not some whackadoodle Teapublican who blames everything on the Media but still I think there needs to be some guidelines and that some reporting has gotten out of hand while other types of reporting has gone extinct.

piobaire said: “ISIS was created by people who were angry because their country was invaded, and desperate; who had lost their livlihoods and felt they had little left to lose.”

Night-Gaunt49 said to piobaire: “The main people of Daesh were military men in Saddam’s army that were dismissed by the occupying US forces.”

NG, you simply explicity said what piobaire said earlier.

FredcritterUK and Russia were major rivals in Afghanistan in the 19th century, with minor participation of the others. Read your Kipling, he was there, and then read his Recessional in the context of Victoria’s Jubilee observance..JmcaRiceNeither one was involved in 9/11. 17 were Saudis (our friends), three were Egyptians (our friends), and one was Yemeni (our friends)..The last real chance at stopping this was in the carving of the remains of the Ottoman empire in 1920, but the imperialist nations would not listen to an anthropologist with long experience in the region like T.E. Lawrence, who was interested in creating stable nations in the region; divide et regium was preferred.

“Except you fail to see that I identified some of them in a less general way, Piobaire did not.”

omq R said :“NG, you simply explicity said what piobaire said earlier.”

I didn’t fail to see that, I mentioned it, in fact. See my bold above. What you fail to see is your comments often seem to correct others’ posts when you should actually perhaps start off acknowledging/agreeing with their point and expound on it if you want. Like how you missed what I said, too. However, I must apologise to you and piobaire. I’m using another poster’s comment to underscore my minor annoyance with your posts. I’m being petty.Nevermind me, sorry, bad early morning start.

CNN loves their “war room” but there’s no “peace room”.Former generals are held in high esteem as analysts across all media but no pacifists are interviewed.