It's about time we talk about Syria...

[kandrathe]

Side track: I'm interested in what kind of intervention you feel the USA could have done in Syria that would have any significant improvement in its situation. I just don't see it. From my perspective, it was lose-lose for everyone there. By not intervening, the rebels lost. But an intervention would have resulted in far more death, destruction, and misery for the general population.

The politicians wanted to exit, but we didn't care what exit meant. First and foremost, we took our eyes off the ball again. Once OBL was killed, we mentally put up the "Mission Accomplished" banners and started figuring out how to pack up and get out.

The way we beat the insurgency in Iraq was to stop commuting to the fighting, embed the forces in the towns with the people, and make sure you are bigger and tougher than any tribe in the region. We left. It was a gap that the extremists found easy to fill. Not that we should never leave, but our exit was a political move rather than a measured, and well planned military move. When we leave an area, we need to be sure what we leave behind is self sustained and capable, that it has an adequate means of supply, and administratively is tied into as a part of the larger whole. That means for Iraq needs to have checks and balances to prevent corruption, especially if those oil revenues are going to flow equitably.

Once we left Anbar province, ISIL began to regroup, and to grow. Malaki didn't help, drove a wedge of suspicion into the Sunni tribes and so much of the "fault" lies with him. They wanted us out, and we didn't resist exiting very hard. If you believe the "We broke it..." Then we didn't do very good by leaving Malaki running the store.

Our other big problem in Iraq is that we didn't leave them with a very functional political system -- they need more of a federation of tribes, with a parliament. Some way that a confederation of disparate tribes can feel that Iraq is their nation, and not Western Persia, or Southern Kurdistan, or The Levant.

Then... Syria. There was a time a few years ago when we might have negotiated with Assad -- as hard as it would be to shore him up, it was better than chaos. Instead, we adopted the Arab spring ideology, where democracy would tear down the bad guys. We blustered about crossing a fuzzy red line on chemical weapons, and then once crossed tripped all over our rhetoric about how, where, and when something happened. But, the bottom line is we signaled just how willing we were to do anything in Syria. The extremists rejoiced. It was another Beirut barracks.

So, that Arab spring ideology sort of worked out OK in Egypt, but we shall see in the long run. Our on again, off again support for the Muslim Brotherhood and all. But, the it didn't go so well in Libya, north Africa and not so much in Syria. They went more the way of civil war. We might have gone on that side of the fence, but it was pretty clear we weren't invited to that party. It's a hard pill to swallow, but a strong military regime however bellicose that we can live with who keeps things in line seems to be better than utter chaos.

Or, we might have fallen onto the other side of the fence and come down hard and quick, then do what we always do. Set up a moderate puppet regime, and deal with the eventual insurgency until the puppets are strong enough to keep their people in check. That option would have never happened with our current President, and the mood of the US toward yet another war in the middle east.

Back to the beginning. We took our eyes off the ball. We lost the big picture, which is we can't allow extremists a safe haven. So we need an international coalition, with all the current supposed actors who've once again come together to destroy ISIL. When it comes to that international level of cooperation, diplomacy, and shared vision of peace, we should have never stopped fighting the fire. We all went home while there were still embers smoldering, and now we need to get back together and figure out how to fight this raging blaze that's reignited having killed 1/4 of a million, and displaced 6-7 million more.