What should the US policy be re: intervention in the ME?

[Nichevo11]

I used to watch developments in Syria pretty closely.

My sad conclusion, from my read of the problems of the region, is that any military intervention there - no matter how well intentioned - will always backfire. So we should stay out of it.

I would favor humanitarian aid to the refugee camps in the surrounding region and that's about it.

But then, I have to think about the possibility of an impending massacre, like what happened to the yazidi, or possibly something far worse. Should we stand by while helpless civilians get slaughtered as they were in srebrenice - which spurred us to intervene, I think successfully?

A lot of people said "never again" after Rwanda and the holocaust.

On the other hand: I think what the ME really needs is 500 years of being left alone to evolve (out of tribalism and fundamentalism and internecine hatreds and misogyny), just as Europe had.

Thoughts?

[EdwardBernays]

1. Welllll

The US and the West have been meddling (ie killing civilians, running coups, propping up dictators, arming terrorists, etc.) in the ME for decades. This - most recently - resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and three civil wars... Four of you count Yemen.

Now the US wants to not even help refugees of US war crimes, etc.

The obvious conclusion is that the main baddie in the ME is us. The most we SHOULD do is write a blank check to European nations to pay for refocusing millions of refugees and stop arming dictators and leave Iran alone.

[Nichevo11]

3. I think a problem with "stop arming dictators"

is that we have allegiances with those dictators.

For example, with the despicable House of Saud. Which fears and hates the Iranian government. So if we smile toward Iran (as Obama recently did, with the treaty) and don't immediately reassure KSA that they are still our BFF's, the Saudi leaders get nervous and angry. What they do when nervous and angry is fund more Sunni Islamist militias, to beat back the Shiite threat.

A smile towards Iran sounded nice in theory, but it destabilized the status quo, which is a dangerous thing. Time will tell how kSA reacts. Right now they are reacting by bombing hell out of the Yemeni shiites.

Not that the status quo is any damn good. But destabilizing it, generally doesn't work out.

[EdwardBernays]

5. Sure sure

But we shouldn't have allegiances with countries that are doing things we condemn as evil on a nearly daily basis.

As for the status quo - that's what's got us into this deplorable situation. I can't see how challenging that is a bad thing, especially considering the amount of blood on our hands as a result of it.

I'm not talking about a smile either, but realigning with Iran instead of with Sunni dictators and butchers. In Yemen we're demonstrably helping ISIS and al Qaeda and helping SA bomb hospitals. Including a pediatric hospital. Anything that challenges that sort of behaviour is preferable.

The status quo doesn't help the average American or the average ME citizen. The people desperate to protect it are, because it benefits them. And you know, fuck them. I have zero interest in protecting their interests at the costs of everyone else's.

[bemildred]

2. War does not fix things, it breaks them.

Therefore, if one wants to fix things, one ought not be eager to go to war.

On the other hand, aid in the form of the necessities of life, education, and the means to employ them, does fix things, so if we want to fix things, that's the way to go. You win more friends that way too, and it's a lot cheaper.

[bemildred]

11. Afghanistan has been at war for decades, you are making my point.

What you are talking about is a bunch of corruption and propaganda bullshit. Not only did we not try to fix Afghanistan, we made it a hell of a lot worse.

[bemildred]

15. Right, we should do nothing, We should butt out, or work incrementally.

Not pretend we know what to do.

And no guns, not unless you plan to arm the women too.

[Kip Humphrey]

26. Much more importantly to the Bushes than blowing up ancient & magnificent Buddhas or anything else

Taliban was the fact that the Taliban destroyed the poppy crop. I'm glad to report the Afghanistan poppy crop is back to bumper crop levels! USA! USA! USA!

for the uninspired: the last bit.

[Kip Humphrey]

29. The Google is your friend...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/01/internationalcrime.drugstrade

[bemildred]

38. No, you walk forward with me in time to today.

I am not interested in anybodies self-serving whining about their moral struggles back then: "We're an empire now, and we make our own reality ...", that is why we went into AfPak: "We have to hit back." And then we did Iraq which is what they were really after. They never even took Afghanistan seriously, until they had already screwed the pooch in both places.

It is now 14 or so years later and Jack Shit has been accomplished, and yes, President BeMildred was very much of the opinion at the time that that is what would happen, and he said so, and he posted here among others Vo Nguyen Giap saying so too, so it was just our political leaders being dicks like always is why we went in there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B5_Nguy%C3%AAn_Gi%C3%A1p

[GreatGazoo]

4. You can't "stay out of" a place you have been since WWII.

US policy should be to make a faster transition to clean renewable energy sources.

ISIL is essentially a mercenary army of Saudi Arabia and Qatar trying to carve their way through Syria:

It all started in 2009, when Qatar proposed to Damascus the construction of a pipeline from its own North Field – contiguous with the South Pars field, which belongs to Iran – traversing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria all the way to Turkey, to supply the EU.

Damascus, instead, chose in 2010 to privilege a competing project, the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria, also know as «Islamic pipeline». The deal was formally announced in July 2011, when the Syrian tragedy was already in motion. In 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with Iran...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/08/syria-ultimate-pipelineistan-war/

The US has a long standing relationship with Saudi Arabia and SA seems to play Good Cop Bad Cop with us. The Good Cop props up the petro dollar and helps hedge Iranian influence in the region. The Bad Cop is ISIL.

As long as we depend on oil for the value of our money and fuel of our economy there is no staying out of this.

[Meteor Man]

7. War Is A Criminal Enterprise

A quote attributed to General Butler, [link:http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/major-general-smedley-butler]

The military is a great hammer, but not every problem is a nail.

The only solutions to Middle East conflicts are OOTW, Operations Other Than War, which Gen. Zinni effectively implemented in saving the Kurds from genocide. http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-15176-7]

[Meteor Man]

9. Dammit!

Link for Gen. Butler:
http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/major-general-smedley-butler

Link for Gen. Zinni:http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-15176-7

[Scuba]

8. We should leave those poor people alone.

Everything we touch turns to shit.

[MisterP]

16. yeah, we wildly flounder from "they're just mini-Americans!" to "foreign fiends!" very fast

even IS is tied to the WASP establishment's demand for a "Muslim Reformation": we told them to stop listening to their ulema because the Beltway twerps thought terrorism was a funciton of being "too Muslim" or whatever

the Kurds do most of the Mideast's infibulations, and Rojava is very purge-happy, but every group's representatives know they have to dress up their group with flag, apple pie, and mini-constitutions

[MisterP]

18. the problem is we're almost incapable of treating any of these factions as real entities

with pasts and motives of their own--we either valorize or demonize, and then seek out some quirk in their ideology or theology that we can pin all the blame on: that's how we misjudged AQ so badly as a country

I do know that you have to be the RIGHT kind of Kurd, no matter which faction you're under

[MisterP]

41. well clearly one opium-fuelled group of mercs was clearly different from the other opium-

fuelled group of mercs

[TipTok]

12. What we've been doing...

Support those who can protect or advance American interests.

Hinder those who would work against them.

Both of those have a huge spectrum of possible actions in them.

Head in the sand is the worst option.

Maybe a feather touch, maybe a sledgehammer. Doing nothing all the time isn't smart.

What we need to do is be smarter about applying that touch.

[bemildred]

13. Deftly applying that touch at just the right moment requires a good deal of waiting at times.

Which can look an awful lot like "doing nothing" to the uninformed and naive.

The impulse to "do something" is far more destructive than the urge wait and learn a bit more before you decide what to do.

Obama has been refreshing partly because he is less predictable and more patient, he has political courage, he doesn't let anybody give him the bums rush.

Otherwise, we agree.

[TipTok]

21. It takes a lot of preparatory work...

A. K. A. 'left of bang'...

Many a crisis has been avoided because of relationships and assets in place in a previously cold or even warm area.

[bemildred]

36. Yes.

Many a crisis can be avoided altogether with just a bit of forethought. Think how much better off Custer would have been with just a bit of patience and forethought.

The problem is many of our politicians and bigshot military believe (incorrectly) that war is hot shit for your career.

Thank you for your service TipTok, I always liked the Army best. Smaller egos, less bullshit, and the guys that get the job done if if ever does get done.

[KentuckyWoman]

19. How about we just quit deliberately stirring the shit so we can

take the resources out cheaper.

US taxpayers are funding dictator after dictator after war after war to make it more profitable for Saud and assorted corporations to walk away with gazillions.

It would be a lot cheaper to pay $7 a gallon for gas and move on.

[jwirr]

24. Agree with you except the 500 years to evolve. Their society

is older than Europe's society. I don't think they want to evolve.

[jwirr]

30. I will hold out hope also because these wars since God only

knows when have done nothing to help evolution. Something has to give - we are destroying our own nation by overreach and spending on wars when we need to spend on our own nation.

And if we are forced to finally get out of the ME like the Europeans were 1000s of years ago maybe then the people of that region will once again be able to make changes.

I do fear that women will have a much harder time of gaining any kind of peace because they have so far to go.

Oh well as long as our rich continue to make money off of the wars - this is not going to get fixed.

[Bigmack]

28. Allow me to quote the Republican deficit-hawks...

"We can't afford it."

See...? Wasn't that easy?

[Odin2005]

31. We need to quit supporting Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia spends a good chunk of their oil money promoting Wahhabi fundamentalist Islam in other Muslim countries. For example, Pakistan traditionally practiced a very open, tolerant, Sufi-influenced form of Islam until Saudi-backed madrassas started popping up. Those madrassas gave rise to the Taliban.

[karynnj]

32. Very complicated -- and it does seem that there have never been good options

I think the best hope is that the diplomatic effort that Kerry and Lavrov have been laboriously working on will succeed. No one gave any chance to either the resolution they got through the UN or the cessation of hostilities that has now been in effect for a month. These are big deals but pale next to the things that have to happen.

One source for what they are looking to now comes from their joint statements in Russia last week - here is a link to the final Lavrov/Kerry press availability - http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/03/255138.htm As can be seen, they are working on many of the things that affect life on the ground - even as the big decision of how to end the civil war and have an inclusive government are still being worked.

Here is the key excerpt:

There is no doubt that the overall level of bombing and of shelling has decreased sharply, and that many people who had been living in constant fear for five years have at least achieved a small measure of relief. Meanwhile, importantly, access to humanitarian supplies has increased in areas that have long been denied food, water, and other necessities. Now, these improvements are welcome but they are not sufficient, nor are they permanent. And it does not represent a job finished.

That’s why we came here to talk today. We are mindful that there are still hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are unable to meet their basic needs. And part of what we discussed today is the urgency of addressing all of the elements of this ongoing crisis. We agreed today to build on recent gains by taking immediate steps to reinforce the cessation of hostilities, including by working to end the use of any indiscriminate weapons, to end the – to halt attempts by either side to seize new territory, and to finalize a common understanding for how this cessation can be institutionalized, how it can work even more effectively.

We agreed today that the United States and Russia would push for expanded humanitarian access in order to reach all parts of Syria, while at the same time preventing any party from interfering with the deliveries of essential supplies. We agreed that the regime and the opposition need to begin releasing detainees, and they need to begin as soon as possible starting with those who are the most vulnerable. We agreed on a target schedule for establishing a framework for a political transition and also a draft constitution, both of which we target by August.

And we agreed that the next steps in the Geneva talks is to immediately take up the details of the political transition – the best and perhaps the only way of ending the war – and also to do so under the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the 2012 Geneva communique combined. On this front, I just – I want to commend the leadership and the tireless efforts of Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura in recent weeks as he works to convene the talks between the parties and to push for concrete steps to try to bring this very dark chapter to a close.

Note that these are comments that both diplomats read side by side. That makes them more real than most pronouncements. In reading all their statements they are very clear where there are agreements and where they still disagree. Having read them over the last half year, especially, there is a sense that both countries want an end to this proxy war .. and they are using their power to try to pull Saudi Arabia and Iran in - because it is also a Sunni/Shia proxy war. It sounds like both sides see that this needs to end. The question is whether they can put Humpty Dumpty (Syria) back together again. Sadly, even if they do it won't be what it was before the war.

[liberalfromaustin21]

35. We need to stay out of that mess

We've sacrificed too much blood already.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. Our "help" usually has the same effect as throwing kerosene on fire.

And, not just in the ME.

[Victor_c3]

42. I think the best thing we could have done after September 11th was to just step away from the ME

We should have pulled everything out and said "Fuck you guys, we don't want your oil" and instead of wasting trillions of dollars fighting wars and interfering with their politics, we should have dumped the money into developing renewable energy on our shores. That would have made the middle east totally irrelevant to us.

Genocide should be stopped and there are some truly evil people out there, but we should stay out of all of these situations unless there is broad international consensus that we should intervene. With a situation in the middle east, we really should make sure that the Arab League wants our involvement.

[Mc Mike]

43. Fix what we broke by nationalizing the treasonous oil company's assets,

then get the hell out.

More of an overall long term aspirational answer, but it's all I've got.