Trump Blunders into Doing the Right Thing
by John Lawrence, December 22, 2018
Getting the US out of Syria is the right thing to do. Ditto for that money pit - Afghanistan. Let us not forget that the purpose of going into Syria was regime change. The US wanted to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. However, Assad with Russia's and Iran's help won the civil war so then the dialog has been all about ISIS. A little history is in order perhaps. Assad practices a flavor of Islam which is close to the Shiites. Assad is an ally of Iran which is majority Shiite. But the people of Syria are majority Sunni. It is just the opposite situation that existed in Iraq before the US invasion. There a majority Shiite population was governed by a Sunni government. By overthrowing Saddam and instituting a "democracy", Iraq became a country governed by Shiites allied with Iran. The Saudis, who are the largest Sunni nation in the Middle East and a US ally were saying the Arabic equivalent of "What the fuck?"
So Obama and Hillary in all their zest and zeal for "democratic values" were of the opinion that the US should institute "regime change" in Syria so that the majority Sunnis could be in power there. That would be lovely as far as the Saudis were concerned. However, please don't forget that ISIS is Sunni. ISIS was spawned by Saudi Arabia in their virulent Wahhabist schools which preach "Death to the West." Lest we forget, Usama bin Laden came from a wealthy Saudi family and 15 0f the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. So getting back to Syria, if the US had been successful in unseating Assad, it is likely that a Sunni caliphate aka ISIS would have taken over. In fact the US and ISIS were fighting for the same objective - a Syrian government dominated by Sunnis and allied with Saudi Arabia.
So getting out of Syria is the right thing to do. Hurrah for Donald Trump! Lindsay Graham needn't worry about ISIS taking over now. Assad, Russia and Hezbollah (Iran's proxy) will make short work of ISIS in Syria. The Kurds which had hopes of establishing an independent state in northern Syria - Kurdistan - will have to retreat into Turkey where they and the majority Turks are Sunnis. So the status quo ante will have been reestablished and the fighting will have ceased thanks to Trump's decision to declare victory and get the hell out of the way. (Actually, it was a US defeat, but what the hell.)
So to sum up, Syria will remain governed by Assad aligned with Iran and Iraq had a regime change which aligned it with Iran. US meddling in the Middle East has caused nothing but death and destruction and cost a trillion dollars which could have been spent more wisely at home rebuilding US infrastructure. Instead, we destroyed civilian infrastructure in the Middle East. The US is left with its human rights violating ally, Saudi Arabia minus an ally in Iraq, the legacy of being friends with the murderer of Kashoggi and a money pit in Afghanistan. Might we venture to say that US foreign policy is a shambles? A shambles that makes a mockery of human rights and allies itself with the worst actors? Oh what tangled webs we weave.
