Posted on 01/28/2024 10:02:58 PM PST by RandFan
No need to have troops in Jordan or Syria. If we vacate Iraq, that would cause a vacuum that Iran would fill. I would want to reduce our presence at a minimum though. And maybe the Turkish and Saudis would fill that vacuum instead, if we played the right cards. That said, I don’t have any confidence that either Biden or Trump would fix this. As Trump has always said, our leaders are stupid.
After 9-11, IMHO, the war industrial complex (cliche but real) got a boost, those who politically advocated military intervention everywhere got their way, and with Russia on the decline we started to become more and more assertive towards them. It became politically vogue to blame Russia for everything and make them out as the bad guys again ever since the Democrats lost to Trump in 2016. Of course it had to be the Russians because it surely can’t be the candidate (HRC) or message (Euro style social democracy and big government)!
Along the way, the GWOT and what started out as going after true threats, morphed into expeditionary economically motivated campaigns under the Obama era.
Syria has been a Russian ally since the 1970s with a Russian naval and air base there. Us going into Syria would be like Russia going into Saudi Arabia (they can’t militarily pull that off, but that’s not the point)
We butted into that place, IMHO because it’s an oil producing nation.
In the last few years, what has been happening is apparent:
Iraq (2003): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq
Libya (2011): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya
Syria (2014): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_intervention_in_the_Syrian_civil_war
Venezuela (2020): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020)
Nigeria (>2020): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria%E2%80%93Russia_relations and our play against the Russians: https://apnews.com/article/africa-sahel-blinken-wagner-coups-nigeria-8e14621ee695dda7097f89783a3c42a2
Do you know what the real two constants are between all of them?
1.) They are all Russian allies or aligned.
2.) They are all oil producing nations. In fact, they are all OPEC members.
We started pursuing the Russians, i.e. trying to take away their frontier nations. Ukraine is the tipping point (also economic, and for us political, but not oil) and where we took things to far.
This is all a giant Domino Fall. Everything is sort of loosely connected. Hamas gets support from many Suni Islamic groups and leaders, including some of our allies. Hezbollah is backed by Iran. Iran is backed by Russia. Syria is a Russian ally. The Houthi’s get Iranian aid and advisors (IRGC). The Kurds are backed by us, but the Turks have a beef with the Kurds because they want a Kurdistan which includes parts of Turkey. When we went into Ukraine and started that $hitstorm, the Russian began to loosen whatever control they have over Iran, likewise expect our troops in Iraq to get hit eventually, if that isn’t already the case and we’re just not reporting on it. Why? There are 40+ Iraqi militia groups and none of them really like us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_militias_in_Iraq It’s just a matter of how much they dislike us. Eventually, do not be surprised when a Russian brand new shining still in the box made Verba brings down a US made helicopter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K333_Verba
But this is what we wanted. We thought it’s a good idea, for democracy, human rights and sovereignty’s sake, of course.
Karma is a bitch.
East of the Greenwich meridian?
Nope.
Well, President certainly did with Salamani.
The best defense against radical Islam is to ban Muslim migrants from coming to the West, and to leave Muslim nations alone.
Bombing Muslim nations only creates instability and refugees.
Pat Buchanan: "They're over here, because we're over there."
Buchanan warned us that toppling Saddam would be like breaking a hornet's nest. Saddam had everything under control, as did Gadaffi, and we could deal with them. We can't deal with millions of random migrants pouring into the West.
Ever thought Jordan asked them to be there to protect their northern border from ISIS incursions?
Same with Iraq starting in 2014.
Maybe we should just ‘protect our borders’ from economic migrants and cede trans-national terrorism to terrorist states Iran and Russia?
It doesn’t explain Obiden’s shutting down of our gas fields though...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.