What the hell is going on in Washington?
Sure it is a daily cringe worthy soap opera which tarnishes America's global image. Being a laughing stock for exposing all our dirty laundry on an hourly basis via MSM, online, individual tweets etc. is one thing; but recent events --sabre rattling against Russia and Syria without careful thought-- suggests nothing has changed since the Bush II era. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt (which the Egyptian people managed to save via a peoples' revolution in 2013) and Syria. All epic disasters, playing right into the hands of our enemies (and they are quite a few, state and non-state, to include so-called "allies"). Bleeding us. Weakening us.
Exactly what Osama Bin Laden sought to do with the 9/11 attack.
Get us to overreact and get American troops mired in a quagmire(s) in the Muslim world in order to leverage for Al Qaeda and their paymasters agendas. Not to mention getting to fight other peoples' fights that we should prudently avoid if the stakes do not involve our specific American interests.
It is always easy for politicians to send others sons and daughters into harm's way. All this talk about honoring our military.
Which brings me to the question: Who Gains?
Certainly not the American people.
Eisenhower's prescient warning during his farewell address rings true over half a century later: we should avoid foreign misadventures and rein in our military industrial complex. The only war America has fought since WW II that can be argued to have been worth the pursuit was the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. And, even that is stretching it a bit.
This is not a pacifist stance by any means. On the contrary, American foreign --defense-- policy should be based on pragmatic realism driven primarily by one question: how does a specific foreign (or domestic) action benefit the interests of these United States?
On Syria, sober thought would begin with a critical analysis involving the larger, historical, context which constitutes the Syrian crisis and the greater Middle East crises. Irresponsible saber rattling and sound bites can escalate, and the end results could do great harm to these United States and bolster the interests of our enemies.
Foreign intervention(s) that are antithetical to American interests must make our Founding Fathers turn in their respective graves.
Without going into specifics, just a quick assessment would suggest caution. The Assad regime has nothing to gain by killing a few civilians with so-called chemical agents. It would be a propaganda nightmare for a beseiged, friendless pariah regime. A public relations nightmare at a time when the Syrian government is winning. Da'ish/ISIS is on the run.
Given our reaction to the last "chemical" attack --at Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017, just a week after the Trump administration announced it no longer sought regime change in Syria-- a replay seems to be a central component of a desperate entity (Da'ish/ISIS): a Da'ish false flag operation that leads the kuffar ('infidels') to do their (and their state paymasters) bidding: ouster of Bashar Assad and his government. Note this attack almost one year later at Douma (7 April 2018) came days after Trump announced on 3 April 2018 that America would pull out US troops from Syria. The pattern is quite clear. And, a preliminary investigation would exonerate the Assad government since these announcements bolster Assad's rule, not threaten it.
Who is behind this ill advised Washington sabre rattling? That is another question which needs to be raised.
It is foreign interests, not American ones, who seek to compel us to use our blood and treasure in order to attain their own interests. These entities do not seem to realize how precipitous this approach is. Those flippant (or blindly optimistic) about Syrian regime change, have not thought through the long term fall out for the entire Levant and beyond. A completely destabilized Syria (not that it is all that stable today thanks to us) would encourage the flood of refugees, the extermination of what's left of the Christian population (protected by the Assad government) of the Middle East, and the proliferation of Islamist terrorists.
President Trump ran on a platform that advocated getting America out of foreign misadventures that have cost us far too many lives and limbs (not to mention treasure). Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen were/are all "wars" that never rose to a WW II type of threat to our national security. If Trump continues Obama's policies, his base won't stand for it at election time.
If we really are serious about national security i.e. protecting our homeland from another 9/11, we need to get serious about internal measures starting with our visa system, entry mechanisms, and securing our border ASAP. That would be a prudent realistic endeavor to address our national security challenge as it pertains to the post 9/11 environment.
Trying to piss off the Russians and China simultaneously is sheer madness. Better yet, get inventive vis-a-vis dealing with these two entities. Making post-communist Russia an enemy vice an ally against the global forces that favor the type of authoritarianism inherent in communism is fools folly. This is the post-Cold War era. Russia is not the Soviet Union. NATO is a stumbling block to better relations with Russia which frankly should have eventually been abolished after the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991. But that is a discussion left for another day.
Kudos to Tucker Carlson for daring to think and ask some pertinent questions on Syria:
