Debacle?

ISIS (aka ISIL), Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (the Levant)

The crisis in Iraq

Nearing Baghdad

Apparently the most likely successors to Assad in Syria are even now threatening to plunge Iraq into chaos.

Sunnis more aggressive and radical than al-Qaeda.

Remember Bush pere intentionally refused the pleas of his neocon advisers to force out Saddam Hussein for fear of worse that would follow him.

Pleas his son, inheritor of those same advisers, would later accede to.

"Nobody could have foreseen . . . "

Oh?

I remember the fall of Saigon and the terrible sight of the helicopters carrying people from the roof of the US embassy and other last vestiges of safety to carriers offshore, only to be pushed into the sea once emptied to make room for more arriving behind them.

I remember the fall of Phnom Penh.