Should the U.S. send ground troops to fight ISIS?
Would you say yes or no? In Iraq, ISIS is already fighting the Kurds and the Shiite led Iraqi forces and Iran has sent in troops in Iraq to side with the Shiites in Iraq against ISIS, In Syria there is Bashar Assads military forces fighting ISIS. and the Syrian rebels linked to Al Qaeda fighting both Assads military and ISIS. And Russia is already giving weapons to the governments in Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS. Since our enemies are fighting each other in the Middle East, should we send ground troops? or should we just stay out of it and let our enemies kill each other?
Did Obama endanger Israel by rushing to remove troops from Iraq, thus allowing an Iranian takeover of Iraq and Syria?
Obama was mainly concerned with pushing his appeasement agenda and he was extremely unconcerned about the far reaching effects of his policies of disengagement on Israel or the stability of that region of the world and beyond. He used George W Bush’s failures as his “get the US out of their position of being the world’s pre-eminent power” card. Obama did care very much about how his failures might effect his “legacy” in the future even while he undermined Israel’s security at every turn. To mitigate the effects of that, he also increased the amount of military and defensive aid given to Israel—with the caveat of attaching more conditions to said funds than any other US president history ever did. On the other hand, he also raised the handouts given to the Palestinians and other monies made available to other majority Muslim countries openly and actively hostile to Israel’s existence, while attaching few, if any, conditions to the money he was greasing their wheels with. Obama also tried to drop an additional $200 million into the Palestinian’s laps without any Congressional approval as he literally walked out the door. But Congress put a stop-order on that one. Obama’s vision seems to be psychologically based on his desperate desire to please a dead Muslim father who didn’t give much of a darn about him while he was alive.
What have been President Obama's biggest foreign policy mistakes?
I think Obamas’s biggest foreign policy mistake was the failure to intervene in Syria in 2011, by supporting the rebels when the uprising first began against dictator Bashar Assad.In the first year, the Syrian rebels were overwhelmingly moderates, inspired by the “Arab Spring” and driven by secular motives. A run of the mill popular uprising against a brutal dictator, along the same lines as what was seen in Tunisia, Tahrir Square in Cairo, or the Maidan in Kiev.And they were looking to the US and the West for support.The military was deserting Bashar Assad in droves and joining the rebels, and the dictator’s regime was in disarray and on the ropes. That was the window when US support for the rebels could have most readily tipped the balance, toppled Assad, and probably installed a democratically elected government in his place.However, the Obama administration dithered and did next to nothing. Within a year, the Assad regime had regained its footing, military aid from Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah came pouring in, and the situation was stabilized. Then the Syrian regime counterattacked. Brutally, with indiscriminate firepower, even poison gas.And the rebels, who had started off as moderates and secularists, calling for democracy and hoping for and expecting aid from the democratic US and the West, were left to hang.Thing is, people in a desperate fight for their lives will accept help from whoever offers it, and the vacuum left by US failure to aid the Syrian rebels was inevitably going to get filled by somebody.The US and the West didn’t help in the fight against Assad, but folk like these didAt the start of the Syrian uprising there was next to no radical Islamic presence within the anti Syrian regime rebel ranks. Today, radical Islamists are the largest grouping within the rebel ranks.The ISIS mess we’re faced with in Syria and Iraq today wouldn’t have happened, and could have been avoided if the Obama administration had acted early on. America’s failure to support the moderates and secularists in 2011 left a vacuum that was, predictably, filled by the worst possible actors. And so today America is faced with a far bigger mess and problem than would have been the case had we supported the Syrian rebels in 2011.
Is it true that Putin has outsmarted Obama and Clinton as Trump claims?
Willingness to blow things up is not “outsmarting”Putin has been very aggressive. But outsmarted? I don’t think so. What he’s done is bully countries far smaller than him.And bullies tend to do badly when they get out of high school. We’re playing the long game. He’s not.He’s moved into Syria, which looks clever but in the long run will probably become a quagmire the way Afghanistan did. There are far too many groups to consolidate any power behind a single party.The only reason he’s making progress is because we haven’t chosen to directly confront him with military force. We’d win: Russian anti-aircraft and electronic warfare capabilities are intimidating, but we have the better professional army, a 10:1 advantage in aircraft carriers and a superior air force. But it would be idiotic.Putin’s brute-force approach is familiar: The USSR used it during the Cold War. But again, we need to play the long game.The Soviets lost the Cold War because they bankrupted themselves trying to occupy swaths of territory. They can build up their military, but don’t have the economic engine to support it. They can create more dangerous nukes, but the truth is we all have so many warheads that “more effective” warheads are like bigger hair on a dog’s back. It’s irrelevant, because everything’s already covered.Again: The long game.Putin hasn’t attempted action against NATO countries. He’s pursuing an all-or-nothing strategy in his own country where, if he fails to purge every opposition group, he’s eventually going to lose all power. If he doesn’t do that, then he’ll have to find a way to sustain what he’s built after he’s dead. How will he do that? Does he have a protege?What’s he doing to address the Russian economy? We dwarf their GDP by at least 5x.Yup: The long game.FinallyPutin supports Trump because he knows he can’t work with Clinton or Obama. If he really thought he could outsmart Clinton, why not support her?And, before we point fingers at the current administration: What we’re really dealing with, and will for decades, is the aftermath of the Iraq war. We destabilized the entire Middle East, which led to the rise of additional terrorist organizations, which led to civil war in multiple countries and complete fragmentation of political interests. We accelerated the fall of nation states, which left room for smaller groups who practice asymmetric warfare. Huge headache.But Putin? Outsmart Clinton and Obama? No.
Is President Trump's pledge to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria a gift to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran, and Russia?
The announcement of US troop withdrawal is meant to be a delaying tactic to save the Syrian Kurds on the East side of the Euphrates River from imminent surrender or annihilation by the Turkish army.John Bolton was hoping that this "feign withdrawal” will somehow entice Erdogan to cease operations against the YPG Kurdish militia but Erdogan does not seemed to take the bait and replaced Turkish General Temel[1] , who was not in favour of military ops against the Syrian Kurds. Erdogan probably thinks that the US withdrawal was a sham and cancels meeting with Bolton as well.[2]The US continues to contain China's explosive growth in 5G technology via the Five Eyes' political assassination of 5G Champion Huawei, with another Huawei executive arrest via Polish intelligence service, and there was no news of release of the Huawei CFO on 10 Jan 2019 - the date when the US extradition request lapse - meaning the US-China trade war truce has failed to produce any consensus and Russia,Iran, Turkey and Syria will continue to benefit from the US focused attention to contain China's growth. Meanwhile the Syrian government detained a Canadian on 5 Jan 2019[3] , while Russia arrested a US citizen in Moscow on suspicion of espionage[4] , and Iran also arrested a US navy personnel[5] .Russia and Iran's goal was to bring the artificially suppressed oil price back to its market rate of around US$70, and they are gaining some ground as oil price gradually rise to US51.59, as the US's efforts to keep oil price low fails yet again. Erdogan’s 60,000 Turkish troops will now prepare to launch an attack on the 22 Kurdish militia bases and will also confront US troops if they not withdraw.Therefore the withdrawal of US forces from Syria is the greatest gift to Turkey in her bid to be Middle East’s new regional power.Footnotes[1] Why Erdogan's favorite general lost his job[2] Bolton may have just blown up Trump’s Syria withdrawal[3] Canadian tourist held in Syria: official[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/w...[5] Iran confirms it arrested US Navy veteran 'a while ago'