Well, we’ve gotten our marching orders from the President. Time to start hammering the extremist group that grew out of the chaos we created after attacking and destroying Iraq; the jihadists that have benefited from our aid to the Syrian opposition and from the piles of money rolling in from Saudi and other gulf states whose wealthy are only too happy to support extremist Sunnis. Once again, we’re “taking the fight to” some group that wouldn’t have existed without our bankrupt imperial foreign policy. The last round was with Al Qaeda, beneficiaries of our covert proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now it’s ISIS.
I can’t say which part of Obama’s proposed campaign against ISIS seems the most confused and misguided. It may be the notion that we should fund the training of “moderate” Syrian opposition forces in Saudi Arabia, of all places. First of all, there is no meaningful moderate opposition in Syria. The lead forces opposing the Assad regime are hyper-religious extremists. They have walked off with many of the weapons we have dropped on the so-called moderates, just as billions of dollars worth of weapons have gone missing in Afghanistan (probably falling into the hands of the Taliban or worse). Any effort to train the “moderates” will be symbolic at best and will likely result in yet another stream of jihadist heading from the gulf to the conflict zone.
Let’s face it, folks. When we destroyed a nation as complex as Iraq – a country that represents the ethnic, religious, and political divisions that run through the entire Middle East – we made an irreparable mess that is still exploding; a process of implosion that has continued unabated from the days of “shock and awe”. We are always encouraged to think that our actions have no lasting consequences, that bad situations are somehow reparable through the application of additional force, more bad policy, etc. Not so.
Those who think we should do this intervention need to ask themselves, when has this ever turned out well? Answer honestly, now.
luv u,
jp
First of all, they were not high-value detainees. They were leadership within the Taliban regime of the 1990s – 2001, yes, but they were not implicated in the deaths of any Americans. Nor were they captured at great cost, as has been suggested by some. Two or more of them turned themselves in; others were turned in by Pakistani intelligence, probably in exchange for some payment. Will they return to “the fight”? Well, that may be, but keeping Guantanamo open all these years has inspired more (younger) people to join the fight than we could ever release from that legal limbo on Cuban soil. A lot of people want us dead; are we that worried, really?