IGX

You’ve been at every level of this since the beginning. Thirteen years ago, could you have imagined that we’re at this point? What’s the lesson learned on where we are today?

As I mentioned, since being placed on alert in 1973 as an Army company commander during the Yom Kippur War, all the way up to the present, American presidents and advisors have known that the most volatile part of the world is the Middle East.

Thus, from administration to administration, the United States has tried to do what we would call economy-of-force operations to manage the crisis. Small, large, we’ve done this scores of times.

After 9/11, through two administrations, we decided to go in different directions, diametrically opposed, but both of them different from what we have been doing for 30 years. The first was, we no longer were going to manage the problems of the Middle East; we were going to fix them. We were going to do transcendental operations using the extraordinary capabilities of the American military to do rapid, decisive warfare – as we saw first in Afghanistan, and then even more dramatically in Iraq in 2003 – to overthrow evil, corrupt, violent, dictatorial regimes and allow democracy to flourish.

This was followed, as a reaction to this, not by a return to these economy-of-force operations — firing a few cruise missiles because the Syrians, for example, are using chemical weapons — but rather a dramatic withdrawal from our role as the 911, the regional policemen that would work with the local forces, that would make limited, purposeful commitments to keep the lid on the situation.

President Obama felt that that would lead inexorably to new Iraqs and new Vietnams. Or he felt – and this is my personal view – that in the end it doesn’t produce anything. And if we leave the region alone, it will kind of manage itself. Maybe we’re not a force for good, maybe we’re not a force for peace and stability. Maybe we’re just either having no effect, or we’re having a deleterious effect.

But it certainly is a radical change, not just from President Bush, but a radical change from Bill Clinton in the Balkans the Middle East, a radical change from George Bush, Sr., a radical change from Reagan, and even Carter.

And the result is the Syrian situation and how it is morphed into two huge dangers: A victory by an ascendant Russia, Iran and Assad; and a kind of Chechnyan-type battle for the populated areas of Syria – watch what’s going to happen in the days ahead in Aleppo – and the rise of a radical Islamic, crazed group that’s trying to pull the whole region into a conflagration of Sunni versus Shia; modernists versus traditionalists.

And both of these developments could have been blocked. Both of these developments create huge dangers for the United States, for our position in the world, and for our allies, and ultimately the homeland.

So is it your contention then that history will look at both administrations and find that they failed?

I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. I think the question is the degree of failure. And I think it is dramatic, and it is historic.

dead man walking wrote:does yugoslavia/the balkans provide any parallels or lessons? mine is a question born of ignorance.

what i see in my simple-minded way is that in both yugoslavia and iraq, a powerful overlord was able to manage (suppress) disparate cultural and religions factions and maintain order. when you say goodbye to the overlord, chaos (perhaps predictable) follows.

so to prevent what has happened in iraq and is about to happen in afghanistan, the notion is that we have to play the role of overlord for xxxxxx years?

Hundreds of Yazidi women who were captured by Islamic extremists during their sweep through the town of Sinjar are being incarcerated at scattered locations across northern Iraq in what increasingly looks like a deliberate attempt to co-opt them into service as the wives of fighters.

As the militants with the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State surged into the area from surrounding Arab villages two weeks ago, snaring those who had not managed to flee, they showed a marked interest in detaining women, notably the youngest and prettiest, according to witnesses, relatives and in some instances the women themselves.

Women were separated from men, then younger women were separated from older ones and most were shunted off in buses or trucks.

Once in custody, the women are presented with a bleak choice.

Those who convert to Islam can be promised a good life, with a house of their own and — implicitly — a Muslim husband, because the extreme interpretation of Islam promoted by the Islamic State does not permit women to live alone.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Saddam was nuts, so was Khaddafi, but, shit, they did more to stabilize the region than rabid Islamic militant.