:shrug: most of my time here has been spent during the Obama administration. For most of the Bush years I was at whistlestopper, where I critiqued him as well, though less, because I agreed with him on more. I thought his passive reaction to the Georgian invasion was an absolute travesty and an abandonment of an ally, I thought his border policy was atrocious, I've critiques the Iraq decision-making process (in that it doesn't seem to have existed), Donald Rumsfeld was an
awful SecDef, :shrug:
One of the benefits about knowing what you are talking about is that it doesn't require that you depend upon shorthand, like believing whatever a politician who tickle your fancy tells you.
:shrug: I would say it proved disastrous, as we were extremely slow to pivot to the threat of Shia insurgency inside of Baghdad, focusing our worry instead on former regime elements until AQI (who is now IS, though I'm going to keep calling them ISIL, I think) was well past stood-up and the Sadrist response a given.
Not really. For example, the Kurds have received US aid and support. They are also Islamic, and militants (quite so. if you do not believe me, please feel free to push into Peshmerga territory without their permission). The Sons of Iraq also received US aid and support, despite being Islamic and militant. So have the Jordanian and Egyptian militaries, who are by definition militant as well as being Islamic.
Heck, we have Islamic militants
in our own military - I've served with several people who were both Muslim and easily as militant as I.
You over-broadly paint in order to try to connect unlike things. We have not ever had a policy of supporting ISIL under any of it's naming conventions.