American Assassins

I have about had it with the lust of the Republicans and Hillary Clinton for the blood of Arab leaders.  America killed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Kaddafi.  It didn’t kill Egypt’s Mubarak, at least not yet, but it has gotten him locked up as a political prisoner.  Now they want to kill Syria’s Assad in the worst possible way, but the rise of ISIS has thrown a monkey-wrench into those plans.  Everywhere they depose a leader, they leave a horrendous mess of a political vacuum.  If they succeed in deposing Assad, they will most likely turn Syria over the wild men of ISIS.  We are still in Afghanistan, but the latest reports indicate that there really was significant electoral fraud in the presidential election and that after Karzai’s corrupt rule, Afghanistan will once again sink into feudal tribal warfare in which the Taliban will have the upper hand. 

Everywhere we intervene, it is the kiss of death for civil society.  These are wars led by fools, by idiotic, incompetent jerks.  They have fouled the reputation of the US military and the Foreign Service.  Monkeys in a barrel could do better.  The biggest incompetent jerk was George W. Bush, aided by his devilish buffoon of a sidekick, Dick Cheney.  General Tommy Franks, who failed to catch Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan and then utterly botched the “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq certainly takes the prize for being one of the most incompetent generals in American history.  It’s becoming more and more clear that David Petraeus’ surge was not a military victory, but just a victory for American money buying off corrupt Sunni sheiks.  It was a Potemkin village that has now collapsed.  In Syria, we claimed we only wanted to arm the Free Syrian Army to fight Assad, but the Free Syrian Army is too poor an army to win against Assad or ISIS.  What aid we have provided the Syrian rebels has probably had the principle effect of strengthening ISIS, just as we created Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan during its war with the Soviet Union. 

ISIS appears to be a terrible organization.  Let’s kill some of them, but don’t try to do any nation building.  In fact, it appears that Iraq is a lost cause.  The government in Baghdad will not represent all of the Iraqi people.  It’s worthless.  If the peshmerga can lead the fight against ISIS, let’s help them, without trying to get involved in Kurdish politics.  In their hearts, the Kurds still want a Kurdistan nation that would include parts of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, a NATO ally.  Let’s don’t encourage or arm the Kurds to start fighting Turkey.  Just kill some ISIS guys and get out.  Kill the guy who beheaded the journalist James Foley if you can.  But please don’t do any nation building, which has turned out to be nation destroying.