Can this even be happening?
Not since Richard Nixon has an American President actually managed to end an armed conflict that wasn't just won outright. Let's face it, this country no longer fights wars with winning them in mind. Not at all, we fight them to keep the military arms industry afloat.
The United States is the top seller of military arms in the world. We sell twice as much weaponry around the world as #2 Russia. For our weapons industry, PEACE is the enemy. Having peace break out anywhere in the world is bad for business. And because of the diligent efforts of past Presidents and war industry Senators in the U.S. Congress, business has been very, very good.
Since the end of WWII, the war strategy of the U.S. has changed from winning to a constant rotating presence that hasn't proved a bit effectual in winning, stopping or preventing further pain and misery to the countries we occupy. It's really about not killing the job. And if some people get killed along the way, well, that's just business.
Finally out of Syria
We had no business being there in the first place. It was not our conflict since Syria is and remains a sovereign nation. That's supposed to mean something. If it wasn't for the Obama financed "Arab Spring" and his blatant arming of ISIS in the region, the Syrian civil war would have been over years ago and much less blood would have been shed. This intervention only prolonged the war and the pain war inflicts. Russia has every right to defend it's interests in the country since it has had a strong and legally binding relationship with Syria and Assad since at least WWII. That's supposed to mean something too.
Colonial interests drive Europe to press for Syrian intervention. The French in particular remain keenly interested in getting their hooks back into the region and have been behind much of the information surrounding the phony "gas attacks" that seem to serve as an excuse to deplete Syria's dictator Bashir Assad's ability to defend his government from the outsider-backed insurgency.
We were only in Syria so that Bashir Assad and Russia would not win. But legally and in the eyes of the world, there was only so much we could do. Our government and that of France kept trying to manufacture a reason to commit more resources to ultimately overthrow Assad to plunge the country into Libyan style chaos in the hopes that Russia would find their base on the Mediterranean no longer tenable but U.S. public opinion and independent voices in our government would not support such subterfuge.
Now it's time to end the charade.
The United States efforts to overthrow world powers "we don't like" has no basis or support in our laws. It has no reasoning beyond those of a tyrant and have brought us no satisfaction or good results for all the money and time we've spent.
But the U.S. military machine has plenty of time and plenty of money, doesn't it?
Enter the War Hawks.
Representatives of the Military Industrial Machine have come out against President Trump's move to end a military conflict. Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been a big supporter of armed conflict in the Middle East in his 8 years in office. It didn't take too much checking to find out why.
Florida has the largest war industry machine in the nation with 20 major military installations and nearly all of the nation's leading defense contractors. Florida also boasts $13.6 Billion in Department of Defense contracts. In fact, the scope of the state of Florida's involvement in the American "War Effort" is outright staggering.
Now what are they going to do if we stop fighting in the Middle East? Doesn't America know that all those bombs feed people?
At least now I know how Senator Rubio got elected. He's made a deal with the Devil.
A quick search on North Carolina, home to Senator Lindsay Graham, another sudden war hawk, brags on it's "Invest in North Carolina" brochure that they have the Third Largest active duty and reservist population in the United States and yields a skilled workforce pipeline for the defense industry. It has 5 major military bases and is #4 in military economic output with $11 Billion in Department of Defense contracts.
This is why Senator Lindsay Graham supports continued fighting in the Middle East. After all, it's only uneducated non-American poor people we're killing.
The Longer We Stay, the More We Fight
I originally hadn't bought into the "We're making more Radicals" argument when it was originally posed, incidentally, by the Democrats who now suddenly want us to keep our military presence in the Middle East, but over time I find that the region just never seems to run out of people wanting to throw themselves at a tank with a bomb strapped to their body. It reminds me of Major Colonel Bill Kilgore's line in the Vietnam movie "Apocalypse Now" when he asks rhetorically, "Don't these people ever give up?"
It's easy to convince people that the United States is coming for them when they are in your country shooting the place up.
Getting out of Afghanistan
After 17 long, long, long, long years in this country, are they any better off? Are WE? I mean all the "good will" we have sewn over there will come back in Spades, right? They still hate us. They hate us when we are there and they say we've abandoned them when we leave. All they want is our money and they'll never become an independent nation if they take it. It's a circular paradox that is no longer our problem.
We defeated the Talaban when they blew up the Twin Towers in New York way back when and now they've undergone a number of reformations and they either are still a force to be reckoned with or they aren't but frankly they aren't. They are a bunch of armed radicals that will exist whether the U.S. is there or isn't there but without us being there, they will have less guns and weapons to be anything but a group of Muslim killing Muslims since there will be no more Americans to shoot at.
We can't stay there forever and at some point either they will have to take care of themselves or they won't. It's been 17 years. GW Bush spent 7 years trying to get the Afghans ready to fight for themselves. Obama spent 8 years trying to get them ready and they've had 2 years under President Trump. How much more time will they need if they still aren't ready after all this time?
Anyone saying we are "abandoning" Afghanistan now after spending more time there than anywhere in the United State's history of warfare, is just trying to stay on the War Gravey Train that being on the side of Rome often provides. It's a spurious argument.
The Kurds
There is no easy, cheap or quick solution to the Independent Kurdish State issue. The Kurds have always helped out the U.S. in the region. They've fought under both GW Bush and Obama and they're helping now but the glaring fact remains that the United States has neither the authority to establish a Kurdish State or the resources to defend one should they try.
Turkey will not allow an independent Kurdish state under any circumstances and will bring their considerable might against one if established. We weren't in Syria to help the Kurds establish an independent state. They know this. They will have to keep fighting for their independence.
We Have our Own Problems
And a major problem right now is Security at the U.S. Boarder. There is no logic in fighting foreign wars for foreign interests when are going to end up losing the nation here at home.
The American Taxpayer shells out more money than most people in the world produce in a year on defense and welfare spending and both are out of control. The working U.S. citizen scrimps and saves for their retirement and most workers try to sock away dough for their later years. This becomes increasingly hard to do when so much is taken out of your paycheck before it even gets to you.
War is frivolous when it accomplishes nothing. As an industry, it is immoral at best. At worst, it's industrialized murder and whether it is waged in a "humane" fashion or not makes no difference if we are just going about it by rote.
Time to think of the people who fight our wars. We owe it to them and the military families that when we fight, we will fight with purpose and to ultimately win and not so that a military corporation can keep it's stock numbers up. We don't need to have a war for every generation to keep military traditions alive. We should try to interrupt this pattern one time just to see what happens.
Peace could become a habit.
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