I_Like_Dirt wrote:dckingsfan wrote:I think I was one that was critical of Obama's decision to pull out early from Iraq. And also not engaging in Syria at the beginning.
I think I was even more critical of Bush going into Iraq in the first place. That put Obama in the position of either staying long-term or creating a bad situation.
Bush's move I felt was driven by bad intelligence. I think Tucker Carlson is questioning those same types of intelligence sources and reactions they cause.
I don't think being critical of Obama's decision should negate his position on the gas attack and where it came from. I haven't followed Tucker Carlson's work - he could very well be a shmuck but I think that his point is we shouldn't be pulled into these types of engagements without some serious evidence (learning from Bush).
I also don't think Trump (like Obama) has an actual effective plan for the region. And if you don't have a plan - GTFO, right?
I think Tucker Carlson is entirely irrelevant to the conversation, to be honest. He's welcome to an opinion, but I'm not particularly inclined to bother with it, whether we agree on things or not at any given point.
As for not having a plan, I don't necessarily think it's as simple as just getting out. That's one option, but that's far from ideal, too. Obama trying to get out of Iraq didn't work as well as was hoped. People like to pretend that what happens elsewhere in the world doesn't impact where they live, but that just isn't true, both socially and economically. A bigger problem is that issues like Syria isn't immune to the same troubles that plague other parts of government: largely the competing economic interests are driving it to rather poor decisions with long term consequences for the potential of short term gains.
And like I mentioned before, this was always going to be messy as Syria is clearly, amongst other things, a battlefront between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And that's where I kinda get what Obama was trying to do with going in while also negotiating with Iran as well. It was pretty obvious that it was an attempt to rein both sides in as much as possible in what is an incredibly volatile situation. I didn't particularly love the strategy myself, but I also don't really have any better ideas. I do tend to prefer the negotiation angle to the invasion one, and that's where I was always a little confused that Obama was catching so much flak for the Iran treaty rather than going into Syria in the first place.
As for Trump... I'm not optimistic. I mean, it's possible that getting out of Syria doesn't result in the same kind of vacuums that resulted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, etc. but if it doesn't, it's going to be because that vacuum was plugged by Russia, China, etc. and that may be better than a vacuum, and may or may not even be better than staying in Syria, but it's not a particularly great outcome, either. This is a lose-lose-lose situation no matter how you slice it. I have no idea what Trump's going to do because it's extremely clear that his words are entirely irrelevant at this point with respect to his actions. I don't expect he has any more answers than his predecessors. My only concern with him is that he looks out for Trump and Trump alone, and trying to profiteer in this kind of situation is a rather dangerous game I hope he resists getting involved in.
If you were gonna do a forced regime change it was pre-2015.
But Obama wasn’t going to do it. And Hillary Clinton also said you’d have to kill a lot of people taking down the air defenses. Syria's air defenses could be taken out but it'd be costly. So what did Obama do instead?
The $1 billion per year CIA program training rebels at the Turkish and Jordanian borders was basically it and then the support from Saudi, Qatar and Turkey for various groups. You could legit have said you're fighting to oust the regime, bring Sharia, and unite Syria under the banner of Islam and you could get millions from the Gulf.
The opposition quickly turned into a variety of Islamist groups with their own agendas and the only unifer was vs. the Assad regime. Now you have the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven in Idlib province and the group, Hayet Tahir Al-Sham (HTS), is fighting Turkish backed groups in that province.
The Iranians have been allies to the Assad regime since the 1980s. Its nothing new there.
Also, the issue of class dynamics isn't talked about in Syria. The urban and rural poor have been anti-Assad for years and the economic policies of the government festered the dynamic (not unlike other countries in the region). The Sunni middle and upper classes in Damascus and Aleppo have maintained their support and if they didn't, Assad would have been gone long ago in some fashion. He also has the support of not only his Alawite sect but the Druze and the Christians.
Once the Russians came in September 2015, that stopped a Libya style no fly-zone from being implemented by NATO. Erdogan was screaming for one for years.
The Russians and certain times Chinese have given Assad the diplomatic cover to survive.
They abstained in 2011 regarding Libya.
Also, I wish the "Will Trump Intervene in Syria?" articles noted the US bombed the country 13,000+ times in past 3 1/2 years, plus deployed 2,000+ troops. Not sure if people noticed but the U.S. has already bombed entire cities into rubble, killed thousands of civilians in northern Syria in the name of fighting terrorism. Only attention and some outrage now because they might bomb something that Assad cares about?
with vision and a ruthlessness to make hard changes in how America is run. Dckingfan we are both fiscal "Hawks" but "Socially Liberal" on most issues where the cost drivers are controlled. We can both agree that major changes need to be made.
