Early on, the undeclared wars, like Korea, were called something else, like "police action" or "training mission"; later on, they were passed off as military "support" of some foreign ally or vassal, like Viet Nam that just kind of boiled over into a full-blown conscripted army engagement, without ever getting declared. Then there was military "presence" to safeguard US interests. A whole lot of secret wars have been carried (in South and central America most ass-bitingly ... see US southern border) without calling them anything. Then the Bushes brought their aggressions out into the open - albeit on extra-factual grounds - and made speeches about "war on terror", as their predecessors had declared war on drugs and poverty - and carried out their wars with the same degree of success. You can't just end these things. You have to mend them. Presidents are not equipped to do that.
Who is? Being from a different culture, can any of us mend a broken country for another culture without ruling that country? I think not--------ergo insane regime change military adventurism. It does not work it has never worked.
Nobody, unilaterally. It takes thoughtful negotiation, compromise and disinterested arbitration, plus, sometimes international peace-keeping oversight. But none of that means a thing, so long as even one powerful faction doesn't want peace. Culture has nothing to do with it! Your bombs were culture-neutral, whoever was beneath when they fell; the plight of refugees is much the same in any culture; roads, houses, farms and water-mains are culture-independent. Sure, it would have been better not to go around breaking things in the first place. But you have, so you're responsible for the damage. You're already ruling - directly by military occupation and indirectly through political proteges - so you have to arrange for an orderly hand-over, preferably to a government that won't immediately turn around and use your discarded weapons to exterminate their own minorities. Rebuilding would be expensive, though not as expensive as the military equipment and its fuel and maintenance. The big difference is, arms manufacturing is highly profitable, while infrastructure, food-supply and civilian-rescuing is a long-term, low-yield investment. Steadier returns, though. Obviously. Don't vote for aggressive leaders. Especially stupid and arbitrary ones.
Not MY bombs======those were Obama's bombs! "Arrange for an orderly hand-over..." Um, no that still leaves the (deleted expletive) mad bomber in charge. Better to let the people sort it out themselves. Most of the countries in question have borders that were drawn by nations on another continent ---and that is part of the problem---if we continue with that we remain part of the problem. These people are entirely capable of creating their own governments without our interfering with their progress. Should they choose to do away with the arbitrary borders and form smaller(tribal?) governmental units, that is their right of self determination. If they want our help, then we should do as they ask for awhile. eschew "The white man's burden." but, be a good neighbor ........................ There's an old joke about a boy scout trying to do his "good deed" for the day. He sees an old woman standing at the curb and decides to help her across the street. Pushing and prodding and physically helping, he finally manages to get her across the street. Congratulating himself on a good deed well done, he wanders off in search of other adventures. Meanwhile, the old woman re-crosses the street back to where she was waiting for the bus.
It seems most likely that a small syrian kurdistan would be vulnerable ..... It will be interesting to see how they reintegrate into syria
They're America's bombs. If you paid taxes under a Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Shrub, Obama or [ack! ack!] Trump, they're your bombs. Then it's not orderly. Did I not mention securing the civilians? You should have done that, before you wrecked their whole way of life, economy and social structure. ...with the USA prominently among them. They were. And then you stepped in and "fixed" it. They could be again, if only the "developed" countries didn't want to use them for a few decades. Sounds good. Doesn't pay. Can't be done. Besides, what if they elect a * gasp* socialist government?
How quickly they forget W& Cheney, apparently. Nothing in Syria "started" under Obama/Clinton. Especially not under Clinton, if you meant Hillary - that's silly. Sideshow. A sideshow and auxiliary campaign of the main Republican Party event, launched in Iraq and not ended yet. Voting for the likes of Reagan, Bush, and W&Cheney, has had consequences. Launching land war in Asia Minor on the credit card was among them. Sure. Any time. Forty years late, you want to help? Great. First step: destroy the Republican Party, local and national. No? Of course not. Because "we" isn't really involved, is it. We - the "we" that includes me and mine - have been trying to stop this for your entire adult life.
Again: why do you believe what Trump says? Seriously: wtf? The only President you've seen do anything along those lines was Obama, pulling back from Iraq and reducing US presence in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Trump's big talk and Russian-friendly ineffectualities look to be starting one in Mexico, if he isn't stopped.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration. Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day. While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
But that's exactly what was happening. A bunch of Syrian citizens, like elsewhere throughout the middle east, were tired of living under the thumb of their dictator du jour. They started protesting, Assad started shooting, and only then did Obama speak up in their support. Turkey had far more skin in the game at that point, it was on their borders that the rebels found shelter from Assad and started forming the rebel militias that almost overran the country. The rebels begged America for years to get involved and it never did get involved beyond the periphery, especially with Donald Trump defeating Clinton and standing by while Aleppo burned. Yet you have consistently called the rebels a bunch of terrorists and faulted the US and its allies for intervening, and have said nothing to date about other nuclear powers getting involved and bombing the country to rubble, nor foreign shiite militias coming to occupy the country with 100,000 soldiers and massacre non-compliant populations.
So Trump's immediate increase in the drone strikes and so forth was on top of an already bad situation, and not a hopeful sign of modesty and retrenchment. btw: In addition to noting that the dramatic expansion of "special forces" operations was begun by W&Cheney, and continued by Obama: Where are you getting your comparison figures, for previous administrations? They hid and lied, you know - and bombed quite a bit, despite not having the modern drones and missile tech ready to hand. The US never did quit bombing Iraq after the '92 invasion over Kuwait, for instance. All of which had been hit by US bombs and missiles before Obama took office, except possibly Yemen - which was where US bombs and missiles were launched from, more so than at, prior to Obama's election. Remember Reagan trying to kill Qadhaffi with early tech cruise missiles? Not defending the US military and government getting off leash and out of hand - just remembering how this started, and who started it, and who was trying to rein it in, and who was abetting it, in the US.
We should probably take the moment to note— —that one month has now turned into four. Perhaps this ought to be enough time for the basic logistics, but some part of me thinks the brass are buying time for the diplomats in order to figure out how to handle the allies and strategic partners President Trump is betraying. We'll have to see what happens, next.
We are much like fans in a stadium, Or, drunks in a bar arguing about the latest football game We ain't players and we ain't on the field all we can do is watch
I'm an American, remember? When you say fans, stadium, drunks, and football, it's true I'm not thinking of a bar. In either case, though being drunk is merely an excuse. The number of fans who call in to sports radio yet don't actually know what they're talking about ought to be shocking, except it's sports radio. Furthermore, if all we can do is watch, as such, that still doesn't explain the dude at the end of the bar popping off about bullshit. That is, of course there will be chatter as we watch, but maybe the guy speaking is ill-informed, or maybe he's a drunk, clumsy partisan. In any case, there remains a question of going out of one's way to make problematic circumstances worse.
So no reason to be ignorant and misled and so forth - no reason to duck and compromise. We can analyze without fear or favor. The question was why you believe the things Trump says - post them as evidence of something, as support for viewpoints, etc. We know (people in my little circles were objecting at the time) that CIA and related "regime change" operations in Syria date to W&Cheney at the latest. Your link says 2006, but involvement almost certainly goes back much further - Syria was on the Republican Neo-con short list for regime change when W took office. (Like most countries at the Oil/Israel/Russia intersection).
It's a mistake to think America's involvement in the affairs of other countries is a Republican or a Democrat thing. Roosevelt and Truman (D) were President during WWII, Eisenhower (R) during the Korean conflict and Kennedy (D) and Johnson (D) for most of the Vietnam conflict. Johnson didn't run for re-election because of it, Nixon (R) "ended" it Bush (R) has done much of the damage recently. We keep finding that it is easier to get into a conflict than it is to end it or to rebuild a country afterward. When we don't get involved militarily we tend to support "strong" leaders who can handle their dissidents. That never works out well for us either. If we do nothing (usually the best choice) we have to worry about oil supplies, shipping lanes, other countries that were being kept in check that now aren't. Dictators that are embolden to disrupt our overseas business relationships. It's all cynical to think about and yet doing nothing can bring its own set of problems (although I would prefer this approach). Like everything in life however, there aren't easy clear-cut choices since every decision has seen and unseen repercussions.
Since Reagan the manner of it - the means and ends, the practice and agenda - has been a Republican thing. Dem contributions have been an order of magnitude less significant, and largely in the diplomatic arena (Dem executives appoint more competent diplomats, rely on diplomacy). There has been no Democratic equivalent of Iran/Contra, Kuwait 92 gin-up, W's Iraq War, Guantanamo and Bagram et al torture prisons, Star Wars and Space Force absurdities, and so forth. When somebody wants to severely criticize some Democratic policy or official, the worst they can come up with is that they continued or carried out Republican policy. This has not been a "both sides" issue since 1980 at the latest - possibly 1968. It has been a Republican thing. It is a Republican thing now.
