The_Walrus wrote:
So, Jacoby, are there any actions you would be happy with Western governments taking in this conflict? Including inaction?
Well without getting into the fact I think the US has taken an active role in creating this mess, we'd still be better off disengaging since we're falling right in the trap that created ISIS. Listen to the old tapes made by Osama Bin Laden, the point of the terrorist attacks wasn't just to kill it was to draw us into a never ending war that would bankrupt us. In 2001 there were how many terrorist operatives in al-Qaeda? A couple hundred maybe? What has our invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq accomplished? Now there is a group supposedly even more extreme than al-Qaeda controlling real territory with a real army with close to a 100,000 foot soldiers and a real economy, they're stronger now than ever before because it is our military and political actions in the middle east that have radicalized these people so more of the same is only going to result in it in getting exponentially worse. You have to understand that these extremists want war and welcome death, the suffering that these wars creates the environment where this extremism thrives and it damages us more than any single terrorist attack ever could.
At this point, the best course of action is to disengage and to reevaluate our who we consider who are our real allies in this region. You've heard a lot about becoming energy self-sufficient in this country but what is the real motivation for this? Saudi Arabia and these Arab Gulf states are not our friends, they're more of a threat to the US than Iran has ever been and our campaign against the Iranians and their ally Syria as well as secular nationalist dictators like Saddam and Gaddafi serves their interests not ours. This also includes Israel, we have to take a more fair approach to solving the Palestinian problem as our closeness is a huge source of tension. Civil strife is unavoidable from the power vacuums we've created, the conflict between Sunnis and Shia isn't anything we ever can realistically solve. Ronald Reagan realized this when he pulled our troops out of Lebanon when our marine barracks were bombed, he wrote in his memoir we did couldn't appreciate the complexities and irrationality of middle eastern politics. You can't fight a conventional war against someone who thinks that suicide bombing themselves will grant them instant entry into paradise. The brutal truth is, this shouldn't be our war and that our directly interfering will only prolong and intensify the suffering felt by these people who will turn against us in the long run.