Posted on 01/07/2020 6:51:01 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The answer is exemplified by the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq War, where we allow, even encourage, the fanatics to kill each other, given their seemingly insatiable appetite for internecine warfare, preferably, without an American presence.
It is a foreign policy based, not on altruism or quaint notions of “breaking the cycle of violence,” but on leveraging the chaos.
That is, the U.S. should begin a transition from policies relying on military intervention to strategically disrupting the plans of our adversaries by exploiting the instability of which the U.S. itself has often been the victim.
Even without the Islamic State, the Middle East remains an epicenter of Islamic extremism and a complex political-military environment dominated by the Sunni-Shia religious conflict, but also influenced by ethnic aspirations, tribal rivalries, regional hegemony, superpower competition and ever-shifting allegiances.
We must disabuse ourselves of the expectation that there is some yet unidentified grand design, a one-size-fits-all strategy to defend our national interests.
In a region with a chronic level of instability, of ambiguities and animosities, we have no permanent friends or enemies and need to reexamine our relationships on a continual basis, including using the mutually destructive behaviors among opponents for our short- or long-term advantage.
A heathy first step in transitioning to a more rational and practical foreign policy is to admit that the War on Terror is over and the methods we used to fight it are obsolete.
We didn’t lose that fight, but we haven’t exactly won either. A further pursuit of stalemate would be an unnecessary, even tragic forfeiture of blood and treasure, which would not honor our dead and wounded, while producing more of the same.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Historically, the Middle East is where great nations go to die.
What does it look like? Picture a smooth glass like ceramic parking lot as far as the eye can see.
Success is a billion Muslims killing each other with American-made weapons, and — like this Iranian guy SoulMan yesterday — a Chevy truck for every leader’s funeral hearse.
Success would be seeing Arab countries making Christianity their official religion. Arabs are like wild dogs, all you can do is contain them.
What does it look like? Picture a smooth glass like ceramic parking lot as far as the eye can see.
—
But with some oil dereks poking up out of the glass, manned by American oil workers.
Later, after the glass all cools and solidifies.
Turkey has just entered the Libyan fray. More dead muzzie from both sides of the docket:-) Let them kill each other.
American weapons are being used to kill people in Yemen. The Saudis have the super hand. Do we arm the little guy? Most of the 911 hijackers were Saudi.
Lawrence of Arabia explained it all half a century ago. Our leaders should watch it sometime.
L
The middle east has been at war since long before Christ. It isn’t going to change by man’s intervention. That’s been proven. There is no perfect anything. And they are more than a lifetime from it.
It was once said, “You can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it.”
And the ramifications of even that are far advanced upon what our snowflake society will accept.
rwood
No matter what you do in the ME you cannot win. This is why, after the fall of the Soviet Bloc, BushI followed his masters’ orders and took the first opportunity to intervene, via a CIA operation that encouraged Saddam to invade Kuwait. The Bankers knew that a ME war would never end.
And it never will end. Our presence only worsens it. Every clever strategy that might work elsewhere in the world will never achieve peace in the ME. Never. Even the Romans got brutalized and they freaking crucified troublemakers.
GTFO!! Let China and Russia get brutalized for a couple of decades. Only act to destroy nuclear weapons programs. Anything else will only result in more dead Americans.
Yep....time to leave....and turn it into glass as we wave bye bye.
Didn’t Bush already take care of that?
Many anti-American people in various guises complained in advance about collateral damage at the beginning of the war on terror. Two things can be expected from that.
1. The war is taking a long time. Don’t like it? Tough titties.
2. Foreign policy looks like a mess tailored specifically to the Middle East. Don’t like that? Same thing.
American casualties have been very low proportional to other wars. Well done.
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