Anyone who has ever studied the Vietnam War knows that military victories and political victories are two different things. The U.S. Army is aware of that lesson.
Once upon a time, there was relative peace in the NE (near east, which is a more precise location name for the Levant and nearby areas) despite simmering resentments and hatreds. Along came crypto-Muslim B. Hussein, who liked to play with matches, many of them thoughtfully lit for him by his handmaiden, Hellery. First they thought Africa might be a nice experimental area for their wars of oil, gold, riches beyond belief. Enticed by the victorious battle cry of "We came, we saw, he died.
The global war on terror has redefined what constitutes failure.
At one time sending kids to die in a generation-long quagmire without end in a narcostate would unquestionably constitute failure.
That is the situation in Afghanistan today, but no one in politics or the news media bothers to point out the obvious.
The bar for foreign policy failure has been lowered to a back-breaking limbo champion level.
Yesterday I pointed out that the Syrian government is coming to the assistance of the Syrian Kurds in the Afrin canton, who are under attack from Turkey.
This is how it went today.
Turkey's invasion of the Kurdish areas of Syria was always going to be a threat for the region. Yesterday it happened.
Were you under the impression that America's days of poorly-planned, unprovoked, regime change wars were over? Did you not vote for Hillary because Donald seemed like less of a neocon?
Well, think again!
A week ago we bombed Syrian government forces near Deir Ezzor, killing around a hundred troops. Some of them were mercenaries from Russia.
The clash has been framed as "we acted in self-defense".
The horrors of our foreign policy have been haunting me this week....along with the media promotion of the war machine. Lots of hand wringing about the budget, DACA, and the market, but not much discussion of our illegal presence promoting an immoral war in Syria, nor Yemen...nor Palestine. No, it's seventy six new nukes in the big parade, and a hundred and ten drones flying right behind. And let's get this straight, we shall not tolerate peace on the Korean peninsula, nor allow the Iranian nuclear agreement to stand. But wait, there's more...we have to shift our attention to China...and of course, big, bad Russia. Why? In order to protect “our” interests. Yeah, right. Well, we are promoting our brand of democracy in the Americas...recognizing fraudulent elections in Honduras and ignoring fair elections in Venezuela. This is nothing new...it just seems to be on steroids.
These were back-to-back tweets on today's Syria Live Map.
Israel had bombed Syria around 100 times since the Syrian Civil War started. Yesterday Syria finally got lucky and shot down an Israeli jet.
Israel then responded en mass.
This is happening in the exact same area where we killed 100 pro-Assad troops yesterday.
