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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Why We Should Outsource Foreign Policy






Just think how far we have come since we sat around the TV set in the 1990s and watched Baghdad being bombed in the Gulf War.
Great TV!
They picked up the option and it has been running ever since.

 
Syrian Rebels Buckling in Face of Jihadis
BEIRUT — Jun 27, 2014, 4:28 PM ET
By ZEINA KARAM Associated Press
Associated Press

The Syrian rebels that the U.S. now wants to support are in poor shape, on the retreat from the radical al-Qaida breakaway group that has swept over large parts of Iraq and Syria, with some rebels giving up the fight. It is not clear whether the new U.S. promise to arm them will make a difference.

Some, more hard-line Syrian fighters are bending to the winds and joining the radicals.

The Obama administration is seeking $500 million to train and arm what it calls "moderate" factions among the rebels, a far larger project than a quiet CIA-led effort in Jordan that has been training a few hundreds fighters a month. But U.S. officials say it will take a year to get the new program fully underway. The U.S. also faces the difficult task of what constitutes a "moderate" rebel in a movement dominated by Islamist ideologies...

Why does The President and the Secretary of State want to arm people who could not succeed in Syria neither against Al Assad nor against their own jihadist allies?

As my grandfather used to say, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
Yet here we are giving it a try.

If the administration wanted to succeed, to actually win something in foreign policy, they should give up their poorly rationalized animus against Al Assad, back him, let the Syrian army push the rebels out of Syria, and then attack ISIS from the north at the same time that Iraq pushes from the south.
The pincers would grind ISIS into dust.
Then allow Iraq to reconstitute itself as a Shia, Sunni, and a Kurdish Federation, or even as separate states, if that's what it takes to keep the peace.

Since we, as Americans, find the taste of success alien from our diet on foreign policy, we might then consider outsourcing our foreign affairs.
I think Russia might be able to do us a good job. They do not seem to shrink from strategies designed to achieve their goals.

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