Posted on 05/10/2019 4:48:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
In 2003, George W. Bush took us to war to liberate Iraq from the despotism of Saddam Hussein and convert that nation into a beacon of freedom and prosperity in the Middle East.
Tuesday, Mike Pompeo flew clandestinely into Baghdad, met with the prime minister and flew out in four hours. The visit was kept secret, to prevent an attack on the Americans or the secretary of state.
Query: How successful was Operation Iraqi Freedom, which cost 4,500 U.S. lives, 40,000 wounded and $1 trillion, if, 15 years after our victory, our secretary of state must, for his own security, sneak into the Iraqi capital?
The topic of discussion between Pompeo and the prime minister:
In the event of a U.S. war with Iran, Iraqis would ensure the protection of the 5,000 U.S. troops in the country, from the scores of thousands of Iranian-trained and Iranian-armed Shiite militia.
That prospect, of war between the U.S. and Iran, had been raised by Pompeo and John Bolton on Sunday when the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier task force and a squadron of U.S. bombers were ordered into the Middle East after we received reports Iran was about to attack U.S. forces.
The attack did not happen. But on Thursday, Tehran gave 60 days' notice that if it does not get relief from severe U.S. sanctions, it may walk out of the nuclear deal it signed in 2015 and start enriching uranium again to a level closer to weapons grade.
The countdown to a June confrontation with Iran has begun.
Wednesday, North Korea's Kim Jong Un, for the second time in a week, test-fired two missiles, 260 miles, into the Sea of Japan. Purpose: To signal Washington that Kim's patience is running out.
Kim rejects the U.S. demand that he surrender all nuclear weapons and dismantle the facilities that produce them before any sanctions are lifted. He wants sanctions relief to go hand in hand with the disposal of his arsenal. Few believe Kim will surrender all of his nukes or his ability to replicate them.
The clash with Kim comes days after the failed U.S.-backed coup in Caracas, which was followed by Pompeo-Bolton threats of military intervention in Venezuela, a country 100 times the size of Puerto Rico with 10 times the population and a large well-equipped army.
This week also, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford told Congress that the U.S. will have to keep counter-terrorism forces in Afghanistan "until there is no insurgency left in the country."
Which sounds like forever, as in "forever war."
Before flying to Baghdad, Pompeo was in Finland. There, he warned the eight-nation Arctic Council about Russian aggression in the region, suggested China's claim to be a "near-Arctic" nation was absurd and told Canada's its claim to the Northwest Passage was "illegitimate."
Our Canadian friends were stunned. "Those waterways are part of the internal waters of Canada," said the government in Ottawa.
After an exhausting two weeks, one is tempted to ask: How many quarrels, clashes and conflicts can even a superpower manage at one time? And is it not the time for the United States, preoccupied with so many crises, to begin asking, "Why is this our problem?"
Perhaps the most serious issue is North Korea's quest for nuclear-armed missiles that can reach the United States. But the reason Kim is developing missiles that can strike Seattle or LA is that 28,000 U.S. troops are in South Korea, committed to attack the North should war break out. That treaty commitment dates to a Korean War that ended in an armed truce 66 years ago.
If we cannot persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons in return for a lifting of sanctions, perhaps we should pull U.S. forces off the peninsula and let China deal with the possible acquisition of their own nuclear weapons by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Iran has no nukes or ICBMs. It wants no war with us. It does not threaten us. Why is Iran then our problem to solve rather than a problem for Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and the Sunni Arabs?
Nor does Russia's annexation of Crimea threaten us. When Ronald Reagan strolled through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988, all of Ukraine was ruled by Moscow.
The Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro was established decades ago by his mentor, Hugo Chavez. When did that regime become so grave a threat that the U.S. should consider an invasion to remove it?
During the uprising in Caracas, Bolton cited the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. But according to President James Monroe, and Mike Pompeo's predecessor John Quincy Adams, who wrote the message to Congress, under the Doctrine, while European powers were to keep their hands off our hemisphere -- we would reciprocate and stay out of Europe's quarrels and wars.
Wise folks, those Founding Fathers.
We still benefit from having the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as buffers between the US and the Old World. We also benefit from a relatively friendly Canada to the north.
Our southern border is another story and should be our primary area of foreign policy as there is an immediate and direct threat from that sector.
Really Pat? What is it about the phrase "Death to America" that do you not understand?
Blaming America is the lazy man’s answer to the problems of the world!
Of course, there is NO ‘journalistic’ curiosity into that very obvious fact.
The MSM is totally in the ‘wag the dog’ mode.
“We still benefit from having the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as buffers between the US and the Old World.”
That is still mostly accurate... but technology is steadily shrinking the ‘benefit’.
Remember that they turned Iraq over to a MUSLIM ADMINISTRATOR—who’s FIRST rule was that their new ‘constitution’ would STRICTLY FOLLOW SHARIA LAW???
Remember, dummy? How’d that work out? How would you expect it to work out?
And yeah, Bush is an idiot.
We should concentrate our resources, forces, and monies on making our borders secure, deporting illegals, and reducing legal immigration to reasonable numbers of people actually NEEDED here, rather than roaming the world to fix other nations’ problems.
It rarely works out well to intervene, the recipients of our help are rarely thankful, and it adds hundreds of billions of dollars to our debt.
Iran has been at war with us since 1979.
At the end of WWII, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Stalin came to an accord that they would police the world in combination with one another. That didn’t really turn out how they envisioned. Or at least, not how Ike and Churchill did...
A nation that pisses away thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on military campaigns all over the world while at the same time allowing 100,000 foreign invaders pour across its borders every month, has no reason to exist anymore. In fact, it doesn't even meet any objective definition of a "nation" in the first place.
There are some people who cling to the notion that there is no such thing as a stupid question. The headline proves that notion wrong.
Of the MANY reasons (if you agree with them or not) that we sent troops into the Middle East being the world’s policeman was not one of them.
Let’s get involved! Our success in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan has demonstrated how competent we are. I’ll be glad to chip in for a ticket and a weapon for ealgeone to any country he thinks he can improve.
Ok...let’s withdraw from the world. Hope you speak Mandarin Chinese or Arabic.
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Iran has no nukes or ICBMs. It wants no war with us. It does not threaten us.
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Really Pat? What is it about the phrase “Death to America” that do you not understand?
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And what part of ‘not decisively winning any conflict/war since WWII’ mean to YOU??
We’ve waged a POLICE response to 9/11 (ostensibly) in the M.E. for 16 YEARs+ I’d *love* to hear anyone opine on how they believe it’s been fought to W-I-N.
“Death to America” doesn’t stop the G-O-V-T from halting all Visa\immigration. S*, they didn’t even close the border for any length of time after 9/11.
So, yeah, let the rest of the world fark-off; we got enough problems w/ our S. border to throw $$ & blood for those whom won’t police their OWN back-yard.
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