Right now, the DC establishment on both sides of the aisle
is going nuts about Trump pulling U.S. troops out of Syria.
The media are reporting Pentagon officials and Defense
Department types are shocked and stunned by his decision. Blindsided. The media are also reporting our allies are
questioning whether Trump can be trusted to defend them and our strategic
partners.
Everybody in DC is horrified.
Me, not so much. I don’t always agree with Trump. But this
time he’s right. We need to get out of
pointless and seemingly endless wars. Leaving Syria is a good start.
What about the Kurds? Haven’t they been loyal partners with
us in fighting ISIS? And now we’re
simply going to abandon them to be slaughtered by the Turks?
I’ll get to that in a minute.
First, here’s what all those outraged people forget. You can’t trust anyone in the Middle
East. No one. Not the Syrians. Not the
Kurds. Not the Iraqis. Not the Afghanis. Not the Qataris. Not the
Iranians. Not the Turks. And especially not the Saudis.
For that matter, not the Israelis, either.
We’ve wasted trillions of dollars and thousands of U.S.
lives trying to push a rope. We have
absolutely nothing to show for all that. The Middle East is still a corrupt
cesspool of oppressive, murderous regimes. Various factions will continue to
kill each other, and us if we stay there, no matter what we do. And they'll continue to hate us.
Our “allies” there will also shift sides whenever it suits
them. One day we are arming them to the teeth to fight our enemies du jour. But
if they get a better offer, they’ll turn on us using the weapons we gave them.
It happens to us all the time.
And we never seem to learn.
We armed the mujahidin under Osama Bin Laden to drive the
Russians from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda sprang from that and we know how well that
turned out. 911 ring a bell?
We unwisely invaded Afghanistan 18 years ago to destroy the
same Al Qaeda and stop the Taliban, solidifying hatred of American “invaders” across the Middle East. We supported one corrupt, inept Afghan government
after another, built up and armed their army – which in turn ran and abandoned
those weapons, trucks and tanks to ISIS time and time again. Some of the
defectors from the Afghan army joined ISIS and used the uniforms we gave them
to get into our bases and kill American soldiers.
We invaded Iraq to take out Hussein and his nonexistent ties
to Al Qaeda and his equally nonexistent stockpiles of WMD our intelligence
agencies wrongly convinced us were there. We conveniently overlooked that
Hussein’s Iraq was the only country keeping Iran in check. Iraq’s still a hellhole and the militias we
armed to help us “pacify” Iraq now work for Iran – who sponsors terror groups
in Iraq and around the world and still kills our soldiers in Iraq.
In Syria, we armed the Kurds to fight ISIS, which they did. In
truth, we probably couldn’t have beat back ISIS without them. But the Kurds
didn’t do it for us; they did it to secure territory in Syria for the Kurdistan
they’ve always sought. That was their
motivation.
But there’s more. There always is.
To gain their sovereign, independent Kurdistan, the Kurds have
been engaged in a terror campaign of indiscriminate bombings and shootings in
Turkey for over 30 years. This landed the PKK, the
Kurd’s avowed Maoist political arm, on the U.S. list of terror organizations.
The Kurds want to take over a part of Turkey for a Kurd
nation. The Kurd holdings in Syria along the Turkish border would be part of
that. It would also give them proximity
to launch even more terror attacks on Turkey.
The Turks, not surprisingly, are not eager to let that happen, which is
why Turkey is now attacking the Kurds to drive them out of that Syrian enclave.
Frankly, the Kurds don’t care who helps them get their
Kurdistan; they’ll flip in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kurds go
over to the Russia-backed Assad regime. They have more in common with the
Russians and Assad than they ever did with us.
Before we forget, let's not overlook that our other "loyal" ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, helped the 911
hijackers kill over 3,000 innocent Americans.
Then, they had our government help them extricate the families of those
who committed this atrocity before they could be arrested here. We blamed Al Qaeda for the attack and let the Saudis off the hook.
But the Saudis actually inspired Al Qaeda though their promotion of Wahhabi beliefs. They operate religious missions around the world
preaching this radical version of Islam that approves of murdering infidels –
basically anybody who doesn’t believe exactly what they do, including Jews,
Christians, and yes, even other Muslims. If anyone wants to know the underpinnings of Al Qaeda and its murderous actions, look to madrasas run by Saudi Arabia.
Finally, our buddies the Saudis recently dispatched a hit squad to Turkey to
murder a problematic journalist, chop up his body, and ship the parts back, all
at the request of the new, more "moderate" Saudi Crown Prince.
Here’s the overarching lesson that continues to escape us:
there are no good guys in the Middle East. There’s absolutely nobody there we could ever
trust. They’ll never change.
Why are we there at all?
Good question.
The DC establishment – again, both Republicans and Democrats
– wants us to continue to pour money and lives down what is a proven,
bottomless rat hole. Apparently, the Pentagon and Defense Department types
agree wholeheartedly. The case is often made that if we don’t exert influence
in the region someone else – Russia or maybe China – will.
There are also the desires of what President Eisenhower famously
warned of – our military-industrial complex. Conflict and deployments mean more
money for weapons they can sell to our government and governments
overseas. Representatives and Senators
want the jobs those weapons industries bring to their districts and states, and
the campaign money lobbyists for those industries provide.
Of course, the Afghan and Iraqi governments, more of our "loyal" allies, don’t want
us to pull out because they are almost wholly dependent on our military
spending and aid programs to prop up their corrupt regimes. They may hate us but they love our money.
But the biggest publicly stated rationale is that Russia or China
will move in if we leave.
To which I say: let them.
Let them get mired in endless wars. Let them spend trillions
of their own, and thousands of lives for absolutely nothing in return.
We can sit back and watch them repeat the errors of the
past. Which they surely will.
Because they won’t find anyone in the Middle East who won’t
stab them in the back at the first opportunity. That’s been our
experience. It’s their turn.
As much as everyone in the Middle East hates
each other, they hate foreigners even more.
It makes no difference whether those foreigners are us, Russia, China or anybody else.
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