Failed Foreign Policy

This week Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with his Russian counterpart and today even made a trip to Russian President Putin’s home in Sochi. The Russians have been laughing at us for the last few years once President Obama made his famous open-microphone remark to Putin-Puppet and former Russian President Medvedev. You remember that remark…the one where Obama said once the 2012 election was over he would be able to do whatever he needed to ease the Missile defense woes of the Putin Regime.

You know; the missile defense network that is in place to help protect the west from Russian aggression.

Of course the Obama chuckleheads have been under the impression that Russian aggression is a thing of the past – Tell that to Crimea and Ukraine. It’s just hard to believe that there might be someone on earth who honestly believes this current administration has even the slightest clue as to how to handle anything when it comes to foreign affairs. Just look at their track record.

Shortly after Obama comes into office there is a student uprising in Iran that could have tilted the balance of power there and overthrown the Iranian government putting the U.S. in a position to influence the future of Iran. What does the White House do – Wait for it – NOTHING. Nothing done by a new president who could have immediately set a high mark but instead dropped the ball and left thousands of students and revolutionaries out-to-dry (i.e., executed and imprisoned).

Then there’s Obama’s first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “Reset” button with the Russians in 2009. We should have known this would be a failure when the button actually had the Russian word for “Overcharged” on it rather than the planned “Reset.”

You would think the State Department might have one fluent Russian Speaker – I mean at least ONE!!

Then President Obama exercises his delusions of grandeur and gives the OK for a SEAL Team strike on Osama bin Laden’s family rather than just bomb the tar out of the terrorist leader’s home. So, for this stroke of the President’s Ego, several of our finest were risked and we lost a Top Secret Helicopter. THEN the Pakistani Doctor who helped our Intell folks find OBL’s actual location gets left behind and is jailed by the Pakistanis……You Know, our allies.

Then there’s the Chinese takeover of several atolls in the Spratly Islands. The Spratly Islands are a set of reefs, atolls, and small islands in the South China Sea that is both strategic and oil-rich. They have been disputed property between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia for years. Until the Obama Regime took command the balance of power in this strategic region had been kept mainly by the U.S. Navy to maintain the peace and allow for free use of international shipping lanes. Since 2009 the Spratly Islands have been highly militarized by the Chinese as they have been dredging and building up the islands with airstrips, piers, and other permanent structures. Ahh…..who cares about freedom of navigation?

Next is the Arab Spring. Remember how that was supposed to create peace, stagnate Islamic extremism, and allow for greater freedoms while cooling extremist terrorism………How’s that working out?

Of course then there’s:

-          -ISIS

-          -Benghazi

-          -Crimea

-          -Ukraine

-          -Fighting alongside the Iranians in Iraq and against them in Yemen

-          -Fighting again in Iraq

-          -Trading five terrorists for a traitor

-          -Failed Iranian Nuke Deal (be honest, there is no deal)

-          -Allied Arab leaders not coming to DC this week even at Obama’s request

There isn’t one significantly positive foreign policy item the President can hang his hat on – AT ALL.

Al Qaeda is still alive, ISIS is not the junior varsity, Russia is stronger than at any time since the cold war, our European Allies are extremely leery since the NSA leaks, and the prestige and clout of the United States and the office of the President has gone to absolute zero with all the failed “redlines” and all the ambiguously diluted “Let me be clear on this” statements made in the last six years.

Just Sad, and that’s just his Foreign Policy; unfortunately it’s also our foreign policy.

19 more months to go…….

Bill

Iraq….An Attempt at a Scorecard!

Okay, I am going to try to explain some of the complexities of the war(s) in Iraq. There are so many an intricacy in this situation that it barely makes sense much less even seems possible - So I’ll try anyway!! I am going to try to make a little sense of it, or at least expose the unsettling complexity and nearly impossible positive outcome of any involvement there.

Before I start I think it is important for me to confess that I was one of those who thought our involvement in Iraq was a bad idea when we invaded in 2003. Not because I thought the situation with Saddam Hussein didn’t warrant some sort of action, but because I knew that there would be no easy answer to the question of what’s next once Hussein was removed as leader of Iraq, and I was concerned for the number of veterans who would be returning from that conflict with lifelong disabilities – Mental and Physical.

When you look at the Middle East you must understand that while these countries have ancient names, they are not of ancient geographical origin. The countries that are found in the Middle East were drawn up following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Unfortunately, these borders were based on geographical boundaries and not along the true ethnic homelands of the peoples involved. They were based on borders that would benefit the victorious nations of Europe as they began to rule these nations as colonies or as puppet regimes.

Since we are discussing Iraq we can start there. Iraq includes three specific cultural groups; the Kurds to the north, the Sunnis in the middle, and the Shiites in the south. What is the difference between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam? Well about 1300 years ago or so these two factions disagreed over who should be Muhammad’s successor and they still haven’t worked it out. That may be a little simplistic, but it’s all we have time to talk about here as this blog is already going to be way too long.

Now comes the tricky part.

The Kurds actually inhabit a loosely defined area known as Kurdistan that falls into portions of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Armenia, and Syria. They have their own language and culture but unlike many elsewhere in the Middle East, there is not one specific religion considered Kurdish. While most are a Muslim base, many are Christian as well as other religions including Judaism. These folks live in the northern portion of Iraq and make up about 20-25% of the Iraqi Population.

The Shia Muslims are the minority portion of the Islamic world, but they make up approximately 60% of the Iraqi populace and reside mostly in the southern portions of the country. The Sunni Muslims make up the majority of the world’s Muslim population, second only to Christianity in numbers; however, in Iraq they only constitute 15-20% of the population and live in the mid-regions of the country. Even though the Sunnis are the minority in Iraq, until the 2003 invasion they had been the ruling sect of since Iraq has been independent. To do this they used brutal coercion and intimidation to reign over the Kurds and Shiites.

Many folks have questioned the reasons that we did not go after Saddam Hussein following the Gulf War in 1991. Simply put, the allies needed the use of staging points and bases in Saudi Arabia and the Saudis would not go along with Desert Storm had Hussein been removed. The Saudis were concerned that the removal of Hussein might come with the installation of a Shiite regime which in turn might invite the Shiite-led Iranians into Iraq and the Saudis wanted a Sunni buffer between them and Iran.

A decade later, following the 2003 invasion and the subsequent overthrow of the Hussein regime, the power vacuum in Iraq became apparent and the cultural rifts and ancient divisions between the long ruling Sunnis and the Shiites came painfully to the surface.

With the 2011 pullout of US and allied troops in Iraq, a huge leadership void emerged and was all too quickly filled with the influence of the Iranian government. Then, following the subsequent Arab Spring and the Civil War in Syria, the real complexities of the Middle East have now come in to play and the current administration has absolutely no clue how to deal with it. Then again, neither have any of the previous administrations since the colonial influences began to fail in the Middle East.

In the last few weeks, news of a Sunni faction called ISIS or ISIL has come to light in the press with news of their control over cities like Mosul and Tikrit; cities where many US troops gave their lives to secure. These ISIS extremists also have ties to Al Qaeda which is bad; however, they are also part of the rebels that are fighting the Shia government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – our enemy. But how can the enemies of our allies, the Iraqi government be the same people fighting a Syrian government seen as our “Enemy,” AND be a part of the Al Qaeda the President swore was decimated while he ran for office in 2012 – DOWN RIGHT PUZZLING?

But now it gets even more complex. The ISIS uprising in Iraq has been around since last year and briefed as far back as August of 2013 by US Intelligence Sources. So now the President has ordered 300 Special Forces troops into Iraq to train up the Iraqi army; however, he has refused them air support. But that’s fine as that bit of assistance is being picked up by Syrian Air Force and Iranian drones - BRILLIANT. 

Then this week the President announces that he wants to give $500 million to the Syrian rebels (mostly Sunni) to help fight Assad’s forces. Rebels that include the same ISIS troops who are working to fight the Iraqi army he is sending 300 troops to train. Seems rather counterproductive doesn’t it?

Don’t worry, the President says they will vet these rebels - but how? Are they going to be carrying an ID card to show what part of the rebel army they are in? Nah….we’ll just take their word for it. After all, that’s how their buddies in Iraq got the US equipment that we left for the Iraqi Army!

Let us not forget the Kurds in the north, they wished for autonomy in 1991 but were refused as the only way to get Turkish assistance in enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq during the 1990s was to ensure that there would be no Kurdish independence. Now the Kurds have a chance to be free and possibly have a country of their own. They have been relatively silent and have gone into self-preservation mode as far as this current round of fighting has gone.

In summary, what is completely lost on the last few administrations is that fighting in the Middle East is not just about the geographical entities involved, but also about cultural, religious, and regional entities that might or might not be diametrically opposed in any given country, AND how these entities of all shapes and sizes might or might not be colluding with each other regardless of whether they are a nation, a culture, or a military sect.  Confusing isn’t it?

In short, we are trying to help the rebels that are opposed to the Syrian government; the same rebels who are part of Al Qaeda and fighting the Iraqi government we are also supporting; the same Iraqi government who is allied with the Syrian and Iranian governments we oppose and have sanctions against. AND we’ll train the Syrian rebels in Jordan so that Jordan can get involved and become unstable like the rest of the area.

I hope this has removed your confusion on being baffled by the mysterious entanglements of the complex intricacies of this region of the world. The one thing I take from it all is that since there is no way to know who is helping who and who is actually opposing who, then there is no reason to try and make any long term plans in this region. The Middle-East is a region of conflicting political, religious, and ideological beliefs inhabited by a majority of folks who are divided based on overlapping geographical methods who will take up arms to settle almost any disagreement. There are some sophisticated peoples in the region, but overall they do not have enough authority, nor do they have adequate support, to exert Westernlike-Civilized control.

There!! That was pretty simple…right?

Bill