Well, I was half prepared to do a post on General Flynn this week, but with the advent of Trump’s apparently unilateral decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria and the nearly apoplectic response, it seems more appropriate to concentrate on the broader matter of our foreign policy and how it plays out in what passes for our national conversation.
I think it’s worth saying at the outset that I have no idea of what our military’s mission is in Syria. I keep hearing that it’s essentially the same as the one we’re pursuing in Afghanistan – training and equipping a local force to fight the war for us – but that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It is, in fact, a formula for another unending deployment, one that has the support of most of the foreign policy voices in the media. Much of the criticism of Trump’s abrupt decision has been from a right militarist perspective, though one that is broadly shared, much like the criticism of his Korea policy. The only argument that has merit, in my view, is that we will be leaving the Syrian Kurds twisting in the wind – something we have done to the Kurds in past decades as well (ask Kissinger). Maybe that is worth keeping 2,000 plus U.S. troops in Syria, if protecting Kurdish fighters is in fact what they’re doing, but as always, we are pondering policy stacked on top of bad policy decades in the making.
The foreign policy talking heads that populate Morning Joe and other shows see this withdrawal as great news for Russia (aka Putin) and emboldening ISIS, Iran, Hezbollah, etc. No mention of the fact that the government we stood up in Iraq is now busily executing thousands Sunnis they breezily accuse of being in league with the Islamic State. That is next-generation ISIS in the making, folks, as that is the process the produced the first generation. These movements do not come out of nowhere. Al Qaeda was spawned by our intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as was the Taliban. Hezbollah was the product of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. ISIS grew out of Sunni Iraqis who found themselves on the wrong side of the U.S. occupation and subsequent Shia-dominated central government. On and on.
The fact is, we need to change the political calculus around getting out of conflicts. We can discuss the best way to do that – by applying more diplomatic and economic pressure on actors like Turkey, etc., but we need to be able to end these wars. Trump is doing it for all the wrong reasons, in a haphazard and asinine way, but he’s doing it. That after helping to wreck Syria beyond repair. We just should never have been there in the first place … and we need to stop doing this shit.
luv u,
jp
Second, this dumb ass election. The corporate media is obsessing over vice presidential picks this week, for some strange reason (guys …. they are going to announce the names in just a few days – re the fuck lax). Clinton and Sanders did their event together, Bernie burning the house down as usual. It’s not a hard argument to make that, whatever else we do politically, we all need to make certain the wrong person out of the two possible presidential winners never reaches the White House. If the only thing you gain is exponentially better Supreme Court appointments, that in itself is enough reason to mark the ballot for Clinton, at least in swing states. A more reactionary court can do enormous amounts of damage – this we have seen.
Much as the press is obsessing over the terrorism / not-terrorism question, this is in essence another story of the proverbial three-foot creep with a four-foot gun. That these people were prepared for some kind of attack seems clear, but what they had was not all that exotic except in the respect that there was an awful lot of it – something like 4,500 rounds of ammunition. The guns were legally acquired by someone. They’re not very hard to get, frankly, even military-style assault weapons. And as far as ammo is concerned, I am reminded of a kid I knew in my late teens, a musician, whose family maintained a sizable ammunition factory in the basement of their suburban home. I remember rehearsing some songs down there, in a small clearing between the casings, as siblings continued to add to the arsenal. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that my friend and his family had filled 4,500 rounds down there. They never shot up their workplace, but if they had, the basement armory would have been part of the news story.
The thing is, Trump is a mirror to the Republican base, as 
It’s hard for me to see how these calls for military action and pulling up the drawbridge aren’t simply appeals to cowardice. Seriously – the vast majority of the loudest hawks and anti-immigrant fanatics are also fierce defenders of an over-broad interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Given that many, many more Americans are killed by heavily armed family members, neighbors, or strangers than by terrorism, this is an almost astonishing level of hypocrisy. Even more disturbing is the ludicrous background assumption, expressed most consistently on Morning Joe and by career hawks like John McCain, that if we had simply invaded Syria in 2012, all would be sweetness and light in that sorry nation today. Is there any factual basis for that assumption? The question never arises.
Then there’s “Morning Joe” (or “Morning Blow”) on purportedly liberal/progressive MSNBC. Their foreign policy braintrust of, well, Joe Scarborough, Richard Haas, and various senior editors from Politico have been engaging in a narrative that goes something like this, in short – “W” Bush did too much, Obama does too little, and both put us in greater danger from the scourge of jihadist terrorism, which has killed nearly one person in the United States so far this year (call it none). Setting aside the obsessive focus on this rare and sensational threat, I agree with the assertion that both presidents’ foreign policies have put us in greater danger, breeding a new generation extremists, several of whom, for instance, attacked the offices of Charlie Ebdo in Paris. But the notion that Obama does too little is ludicrous. Bush and Obama basically have the same foreign policy. Obama is following Bush’s playbook from 2006-08. And yes, it is murderous and destabilizing and designed to radicalize people.
mazingly, much of what people talked about on television this week was the fact that the Obama Administration did not send anyone to the enormous march in Paris. All I can say about this is, man, this administration really screws up on the simple stuff. I mean, after going through the time trouble to pass a national health care plan (substandard as it was), they couldn’t manage to build an e-commerce web site, right? You have to wonder …. why couldn’t they just send someone to walk arm and arm with all those great champions of liberty? Hell, Obama could have been dubbed King of the Hypocrites, there with Cameron and Merkel and Netanyahu and reps from Saudi Arabia, Gabon, UAE, Egypt, Russia, and other blatant free speech and human rights abusers. They might have chanted La Marseillaise and praised our shared values as Chelsea Manning rots in the brig and another drone flies in Pakistan or Yemen.
that the GOP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, the energy companies, and Wall Street … but that wasn’t possible even on the first day of the session. Our representatives are ready to push forward the Keystone XL pipeline, repeating all the bogus claims that this project will create jobs, jobs, jobs, make America more energy secure, and is only opposed by “environmental extremists”. Sure, blow up the atmosphere on your first day. Good going, Kentucky Mitch.
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.
Even something as seemingly simple as closing Guantanamo. It would have enormous symbolic value, of course. But even though the president professes to want it closed, it remains open. Why? Why haven’t those cleared for release been released? Why haven’t the ones determined innocent / not a threat been moved to some residential setting that isn’t a prison cell? It’s almost as if that policy level is beyond the reach of democratically elected officials. We seem frozen in place since 9/11, unable to adjust our course, unable to accomplish practically anything aside from blowing things up, assassinating people, and spying on their ass. Hunger striking inmates are force fed, even though the president – a constiitutional lawyer – knows that that is abusive and wrong. Can’t change it.