A lot of opposition to us getting out of Afghanistan and Syria.
WRT Afghanistan, it should now be obvious to everybody that it was a mistake to Americanize the war, the planning for which was done under Bush, and the follow-through was conducted by Obama.
We’ve been in Afghanistan since 2001 and, still, the Afghanistan army cannot stand up on the battlefield. Nobody thinks the Afghanistan army will be able to stand up on the battlefield any time soon. At some point, we have to accept that we made a mistake attempting to “reconstruct” that Godforesaken place, and announce that for the foreseeable future, we’re out of the reconstruction business, and re-considering our options when attacked by a country such as Afghanistan or by terrorists operating from within such a country.
WRT Syria, it now should similarly be obvious that it was a mistake to support the uprising in this country. This decision was the brainchild of the Obama administration and was mostly the work of Hillary Clinton. This was a catastrophic mistake, with refugee crises in both north Africa and the Middle East, and with the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq and of Boko Harem in west and central Africa.
Part of the re-calibration of our strategy in response to transnational terrorist and criminal organizations has to be that we do not have many allies in the world. NATO is useless and, in the case of Turkey, part of the problem in the Middle East. Our foreign policy and military strategy has to consider what is sustainable in a world in which almost all of our so-called allies have disarmed.
Furthermore, the UN and the UN Security Council cannot play more than a token role in peacekeeping. The collapse of the UN in Iraq following our overthrow of Saddam forced us into a difficult situation. No country, not even one the size of the US, can be both the peacemaker and the peacekeeper in the world. These two roles are almost antithetical.
In any case, with the loss of the small capacity the UN once had for peacekeeping, and with the lose of almost all of our allies in peacemaking, the world should be recognized to be a much more dangerous place. Everybody should be forewarned to be on their guard.
We should after ourselves what few allies we have that are willing to belly up to the bar of mutual self-defense.
Bush wanted to get Bin Laden and get out of Afghanistan. It was Tony Blair who convinced him to attempt the building of a nation, something Bush’s advisors advised against.
The PPK Erdogan is attacking are Maoist Communists who have waged an insurrection in Turkey for decades. IEDs against civilians and all.
So many half truths.