I think we should do nothing and let the Middle East destroy itself. Every-time the United States and its allies get involved, nothing gets resolved and it only delays the inevitable. People living in these countries are constantly in a state of war with each other and everyone outside of the region. Trying to do anything in the "name of democracy for all" is futile because the people of this region obviously don't want democracy.
When people go to war over religious theology, new terrorist leaders are born to replace the ones that are killed. It's been an unending battle with no solution that benefits anyone in the Western World so long as the old ways of thinking are still used to create international diplomacy.
A few years ago, I wrote a blog about this and why it is that we are always in constant disagreement with Iran, Syria, and Russia. Ever since the end of World War II, after the borders of the Middle East were redrawn by the British and its NATO allies, the United States has been trying to manipulate democratic leaders into key positions of leadership by installing them despite local citizen's sentiments. The US has had a foreign policy that was designed to keep communism from spreading, and it was aptly called "The Policy of Containment." The US has been afraid of the idea that the poverty stricken countries could easily fall into the grips of communist regimes and that it would destabilize world politics if enough of them gained power in the United Nations. The Cold War would appear to be far from over. The Cold War is just redefined. Now, it is a battle of points of view. People are talking over each other and not listening to opposing arguments and getting so polarized over it that conversations are becoming screaming matches. It's not just happening in the world between nations, but within our own borders and among ourselves. Political polarism is obviously taking a front seat on every theater of debate.
Our country has forgotten that WWI and WWII were not popular wars here in the US, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Had the Japanese not done that, Hitler may have won and the facist movement in Europe would have unified it successfully. Americans were concerned that Great Britain was forcing the US into a futile war that was more about the redistribution of colonial interests world wide and less about stability of Europe and Asia.
Barack Obama has been shuffling jobs around in his cabinet for the last few weeks in light of the political tides in the Middle East, trying to find support from within to buttress his desire to send a military strike into Syria. What we know of our intelligence on the situation is not more than what the media has been able to report--probably because the US Government is only going to release the information it needs to gain support of the American public. The bottom line is that the evidence is not sufficient enough to prove that the rebels themselves have not been the culprits responsible for launching Saran gas on civilians in an attempt to make it look as though Al Assad's regime was responsible.
It's like the movie "The Sum of All Fears" where a small political group can launch an evil and ill-conceived plan to kill thousands of people in a terrorist attack, but making it look like the enemy of their enemy is responsible in the hopes that both enemies attack and destroy each other. Meanwhile the culprits can sit back and watch, winning a war that nobody but they know was declared or waged and do so from a safe distance.
Which brings to bear the meaning of "The Enemy of my Enemy is My friend" but now is evolved into "The Enemy of My Enemy is STILL My Enemy, but my unknowing ally." This is where the End of Days begins. When we get involved in these conflicts, what we may think to be the small and unimportant players in international espionage can actually cause a lot more damage than you might think. It's just like what started major conflicts like WWI and WWII. It's always these little insignificant countries full of religious and political fanatics that cause cascading wartime effects.
Then, you have China and Russia--two very big countries with big armies with angry leadership--hellbent on the desire to have their political agendas heard and forced acceptance. China and Russia view the Middle East to be their sphere of influence and take it very personally when the United States and European allies get involved. So they are naturally opposed to any US led agenda in the Middle East and often find ways to circumvent NATO and the UN's resolutions which often times include trade embargoes on regimes that have been cited as inhumane dictatorships in violation of international laws through their actions against their own people. It's the same old story. Not to mention the fact that most Europeans are very liberal in their views to a fault--they also have issues with committing to a decision that may be considered unpopular in world opinion, much like our own government in the US. And when our governement does make a decision to commit to an unpopular resolution through military actions, then many of our so-called allies throw us under the bus, leaving us to hold the bag on the expense in money and political policy and its enforcement.
The world is just as polarized as the US constituency--something that I cite the Internet as being a major contributor for. The media is, most of the time, influenced by the governments that oversee their ability to broadcast. Al Gazer and CNN are propaganda engines serving two very different masters whose differences actually makes them the same as oxymoron similes.
I think it's time for the US to step back and let the world decide what to do. We have so many domestic issues that need to be addressed here, so many jobs and economic distress that spending millions of dollars per bomb dropped in the name of "anti-terrorism" or "national security" and not really be any better off then the day before the surgical strike would seem to be moot. Let these people destroy themselves. Let Russia deal with it. Let China do what they want to do. And as they flim-flam about with their agendas, they can argue and destroy each other. They are on the other side of the planet. We have to fix our problems here. The less we worry about what Russia and China do in their own hemisphere, the better it will be for us in the long run. We have been brainwashed for the duration of the Cold War and now the War on Terrorism, making them out to be the evil empires synonomous in scope with the Third Reich.
My opinion may not be a popular one. But I'm sick and tired of my country stepping up and taking a leadership role in an arena that is bent on destroying us for doing so. The lack of appreciation or support from our allies in the Middle East (a very "loose" interpretation of the world "ally") is a key indicator of what we should be doing.
This leads me to the core of the problem: Israel. While I think that it's important that Israel should be protected, I think that the Israeli track record speaks for itself. I think that if we allowed Israel to deal with its neighbors as is should, that many of these little terrorist cells would eventually dry up. Israel doesn't put up with terrorists. They are known to take the initiative, time and time again, and doing it effectively. I don't always support what Israel does, but the Middle East is their backyard, and they are the ones that have to live with the immediate consequances of military actions waged against their neighbors. Palestinians are idiots. They covet the strip of land that they didn't want in the first place. The Israelis turned it into something valuable, and now they are wanting it back. They are the "trailer trash" of the Middle East and an embarrassment to secular and progressive Arabs the world-over. Hezbollah is also embarrassing. Gihad is not the way of Allah. Anyone that has read the Koran and has a brain in their heads knows that. Muslims have been getting a bad rap for what extremists have been doing in the name of Allah much the same was as their Christian left wing counterparts have in the name of Jesus.
And, we don't need Middle Eastern oil. It's time for the US to open up it's oil fields, create American jobs and flood the world with it. It would stabilize the commodities market and balance the economy in our own country. While our politicians are constantly looking for ways to destroy our Constitution and monetary system, making more and more middle class Americans poorer and the elite wealthy fewer and richer, they could be doing the opposite and building the US up again as a formidable manufacturing power house that it once was in the 1940s and 1950s. People need to understand that the transition to a new world economy is not going to be an easy one, there are always going to be sacrifices made by the poorest of people. There are always going to be the people that are the elite few with the most money. But if we want a larger middle class, we have to be able to accept the new environment that will support it.
Allowing the Middle East to collapse would put Israel in the position to do what it has to do. Take out Iran, but let Israel do it. Take out Syria, allowing Arabs to clean up their own messes. America needs to be less interested in this part of the world. It has been fueled by our interest in its oil, an needless pursuit. It has no basis in common sense and in light of the the world economy failing on our accounting, we need to become less involved and start pulling out of world markets and concentrating on our internal problems. Imperialism is expensive and we cannot afford it. We were stronger when we worried less about the outside world, and I'm not necessarily saying that we should be strict isolationists. We should be promoting free market economy, not colonialism. We should keep our circle of allies small. We do this, it will make it so that over time, and as we gain more stability, we can influence others that want to be part of this circle of allies rather than going out to them like a Ponzi Scheme and have them apply for membership with us.
Our military interests should be about protecting our borders and promoting our security. It should not be about inflicting our dated Cold War Agenda onto the regimes that won't live long on their own in a collapsing world market economy in the next ten years. Many of these old regimes that were allowed to exist during the Cold War, are failing because the internet has connected people in ways never before possible. Now we have Reporters without Borders--independent journalists that are reporting about what is ACTUALLY TAKING PLACE in countries like Syria.
It's like environmentalist that claim we are responsible for changing the environment of the globe. It's hard to prove that kind of a blanket claim, but the public keeps getting packaged and approved information with government and media endorsements supported by our favorite companies that produce goods we want in our lives everyday. It is about political change brought about by lobbyists pretending to be interested in defending the needs and wants of the American public, when all they are really accomplishing is corrupting our government and inflating it to levels so large and full of pork barrel spenders that it's hard to find the truth in anything.
Detroit, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, and now Baltmore, MD--failing cities because of our federal government driving away American manufacturing to third-world countries for cheap labor. Pittsburgh steel mills should be producing and keeping Americans employed supplying Detroit car makers. Massive cities are becoming ghost towns with no hope of recovery.
Who is John Galt?
I am sure that there are people out there that will not like this political point of view, people that would rather shoot me down for my opinions and ideas. That is fine. That is the one thing that makes this country a great one despite its politicians. I can say what I want about my elected officials and try to influence others into thinking with their brains and less with their wallets. I think that an approach that is less imperialistic, with a balance in isolationism, keeping our circle of allies small, and remaining focused on the truth are all vitues that lead to a more ideal way of life for our country, and inevitably, the world. If the majority of people in the working classes are working and living comfortably, we would have less obvious problems, and war would be less necessary with each year. Stability isn't about making everyone rich, or even about redistributing wealth. None of these things have ever worked for any form of government.
I highly recommend that you read "For Us the Living" by Robert Heinlein and "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand.
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