Shamus Cooke, Truth Out - By attacking the Islamic State in Syria, Obama will become a de facto ally of the Syrian government, just as Obama and ISIS were de facto allies when they were both targeting Bashar al-Assad. Most Americans are likely fed up with Obama’s zig-zagging foreign policy, and with each new u-turn support drops for the next war.
But the US has no plans to leave the Middle East to its own devices, and “fixing” the current problems will mean that Obama will need to tear up the patchwork of alliances previously pieced together amid past US wars. The next US-led “solution” will only compound the catastrophe, and continue the senseless logic of permanent war.
The situation has become so absurd that the US is now spending millions of dollars bombing US-made military equipment in Iraq — itself worth millions, previously gifted to the Iraqi government and then taken by ISIS.
Obama’s constant Middle East flip-flops have made it difficult to keep allies. After having built a coalition of nations to wage a proxy war against Bashar al-Assad, Obama backed out of his promised air strikes last year, in effect abandoning his anti-Syrian partners, many of whom still bear a grudge.
As a result, Obama faces a “credibility gap,” as does anyone who doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do. Obama also said he supported a two-state solution in Palestine, but then backed Israel 100 percent in its ongoing slaughter against the Palestinians and its continued building of settlements.
Obama also promised to wage a “war on terror,” but allowed the growth of jihadi movements in his fight against the Libyan and Syrian governments, since they were de facto allies against the targeted governments. This is one of the reasons given by Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn on why the “war on terror” failed.
But there are other reasons Obama has few allies to fight ISIS. The unbreakable bond between the US and the Saudi dictatorship can never be too public, since the overwhelming majority of Saudis hate the United States government, as do the vast majority of people across the Middle East, according to a recent poll.
Why do they hate the US government? Unlike the American media perception of US foreign policy goofily stumbling from one good-intentioned mishap to the next, the average person in the Middle East views the American military as a sociopathic power hell-bent on annihilation.
1 comment:
We don't need allies in the Middle East. They do. Let's help them kill each other. It's the right thing to do. What we should be working for is open warfare between the despicable would-be Caliphs, Sheikhs vs, ISIL. As long as we continue to make ourselves available as mercenaries, we will stay enmired. This has happened before. It is the story of the crusades. For all their talk, ISIL did not do 9/11, the Saudis did.
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