October 25, 2019
Mangled Up in Tangled Up Knots
Timothy Birdnow
Silverfiddle at Always on Watch explains our long term Syrian goals:
Yeah; kinda like that!
Silverfiddle at Always on Watch explains our long term Syrian goals:
President Trump's precipitous withdrawal from Syria was a
blotch-stained end to ten years of US policy incoherence. Our
strategery, such as it is, was a congeries of mutually-exclusive goals
and conflicting aspirations sitting heavily on a shoddy framework of
criminal ignorance, venal Do-Something-ism, and cynical, fatalistic
diplomatic puffery and posturing.
We wanted to topple Assad, while also protecting the minorities he was protecting, while also defeating the jihadis who were trying to topple him, while keeping the Russians and Iranians out (who were already in), while being buddies with both the Kurds (our fighting partners) and Turkey (a NATO ally), despite the fact they have a hateful, murderous feud going back centuries.
We wanted to topple Assad, while also protecting the minorities he was protecting, while also defeating the jihadis who were trying to topple him, while keeping the Russians and Iranians out (who were already in), while being buddies with both the Kurds (our fighting partners) and Turkey (a NATO ally), despite the fact they have a hateful, murderous feud going back centuries.
Yeah; kinda like that!
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:23 AM
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1
That just explains why foreign policy isn't an easy undertaking, and why people such as Hillary and Horseface should never, ever, be put in charge of it.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 25, 2019 09:40 AM (S3Uvu)
2
Yep. It's easy to moralize in foreign affairs but in the end Realpolitik is the way it has to be done - and for that you must have a cogent, careful strategy. Jimmy Carter showed how not to do that with Human Rights as the basis of his foreign policy, and I rather think Bush the younger had a touch of that himself. Trump? He doesn't seem to be smitten with do-gooderism, but I do wonder how cogent his policies are. I think he's on the right track, but I fear he may be too flighty, too changeable.
Be that as it may, at least he had the good sense to get out of a bad situation. I disagree with leaving Afghanistan in this manner, but Syria was never our war.
Be that as it may, at least he had the good sense to get out of a bad situation. I disagree with leaving Afghanistan in this manner, but Syria was never our war.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 26, 2019 09:19 AM (seOjf)
3
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