Is it time for the U.S. to withdraw from the Middle East?

[JustSkye]

We should have been gone a long time ago.

 

[KRCummings]

We get a big dome like The Simpsons or Stephen King (whichever you prefer) and we put it over the entire region. Then we go have lunch.

 

[LongPenStroke]

What's the other angle?

Share basic technologies. Help develop energy sources, build long lasting roads, build schools, help build water filtration systems.

Which will go further with local populace, bombing a hospital or building one?

Even when we do build a hospital, we have to think about what we are doing. This is a true story. Under the Reagan administration, we built a hospital in Honduras. It was state of the art for its time. It was huge and Honduras had never seen anything like it, but there was one problem, doctors weren't trained to staff it, and we forgot to build a road to get to it.

 

[fuckwaffle]

I assume you're about to school me on how that area has never been prosperous cus if you're not kindly shut the fuck up. I don't want to add you to the iggy list but you don't ever post anything inteligent. You don't even post anything dumb, you post absolute ignorance and filth and nothing but. You simply post infrequently enough that thus far I've just let it slide.

Naw, I would presume to school you on/in anything, you already set in your poor drunken ways, not able learn from your mistakes or anyone else's either.

Hey does looking through the bottom of that glass make the world look any better than Obama is leaving it?

 

[blobfish]

We get a big dome like The Simpsons or Stephen King (whichever you prefer) and we put it over the entire region. Then we go have lunch.

It would be easier to just put a dome over America. Keep all of them out. I'm not xenophobic; I just have an irrational fear of foreigners.

 

[fuckwaffle]

Well, you won't find many of those in Al-Qaeda!

That's not the pond I was talking about.

 

[islandman]

Share basic technologies. Help develop energy sources, build long lasting roads, build schools, help build water filtration systems.

Which will go further with local populace, bombing a hospital or building one?

Even when we do build a hospital, we have to think about what we are doing. This is a true story. Under the Reagan administration, we built a hospital in Honduras. It was state of the art for its time. It was huge and Honduras had never seen anything like it, but there was one problem, doctors weren't trained to staff it, and we forgot to build a road to get to it.

And that's not nation-building, which we've been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan all along?

 

[LongPenStroke]

And that's not nation-building, which we've been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan all along?

No, that is not nation building. Nation building is when you overthrow a reigning regime and attempt to rebuild a government in your own image, or at least one that is tolerable and looks favorable to your government.

To a layman, what I described in my previous post would be nation building, but in reality it is not. When your neighbors house burns down, and you offer to help rebuild it without strings attached, that is just being a good neighbor.

 

[islandman]

No, that is not nation building. Nation building is when you overthrow a reigning regime and attempt to rebuild a government in your own image, or at least one that is tolerable and looks favorable to your government.

To a layman, what I described in my previous post would be nation building, but in reality it is not. When your neighbors house burns down, and you offer to help rebuild it without strings attached, that is just being a good neighbor.

What you're describing is more like the Peace Corps, but when my neighbor doesn't care for my skin colour, politics or religion, that's Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, what's the other angle?

 

[BoyNextDoor]

If peace can never truly exist in the region, then what is the significance of "coming out on top"? What does winning get you?

Isolationism didn't work out all that well when the world's oceans could only be traversed by ships. It's even less feasible now that missiles can cut the trip down to a matter of minutes.

How about we just get out of harm's way?

 

[LongPenStroke]

What you're describing is more like the Peace Corps, but when my neighbor doesn't care for my skin colour, politics or religion, that's Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, what's the other angle?

It isn't that they don't care for our skin color, politics or religion, it's the way we force all three upon them. It, also, doesn't help that we destroy everything in site and tell them how to live after we take away their basic necessities.

And if they really don't care for you, then just leave them the fuck alone. There was no need to invade either country. If we should have invaded anywhere, it should have been Saudi Arabia who trained these terrorists and where 7 of the 9 hailed from.

 

[islandman]

It isn't that they don't care for our skin color, politics or religion, it's the way we force all three upon them. It, also, doesn't help that we destroy everything in site and tell them how to live after we take away their basic necessities.

And if they really don't care for you, then just leave them the fuck alone. There was no need to invade either country. If we should have invaded anywhere, it should have been Saudi Arabia who trained these terrorists and where 7 of the 9 hailed from.

Precisely my point in the OP.

 

[KRCummings]

So basically my dome idea is the best so far. I sorta figured.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

So basically my dome idea is the best so far. I sorta figured.

Set up a fund and I will contribute to the dome. If we pray to the dome it will be tax deductible.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

How about we just get out of harm's way?

And where in the nuclear age do you believe that might be?

 

[hogjack]

Why can't the US colonize the Middle East?

Probably get it done in 6 months. Move out all the current residents. Move them all to Yemen, maybe. Or the UAE.

Then the US moves in making the entire region a US Territory.

Down the road we consider statehood.

 

[BotanyBoy]

If peace can never truly exist in the region, then what is the significance of "coming out on top"? What does winning get you?

Wait. I think I get it. What you really meant is that peace has no enduring chance in the region as long as Israel keeps coming out on top, which they did during their 1948 War of Independence, Egypt's attempt to deny access to the Suez Canal, the Six Day War and on numerous other occasions before and since. Faced with that unsatisfactory repetitive condition, there will always be multi-national, anti-Jewish interests committed to Israel's destruction. Since there isn't a similar alliance of officially declared Jewish states supporting Israel, Israel must rely on whatever alliances she can cobble together based on various regional interests germane to those potentially allied states. Interests presumably more compelling than an intellectual assent to the concept of zionism, which has become its own dirty little word except when everyone is discussing a guaranteed homeland for Palestinians.

Either way.....someone has to go or there will be no peace. It doesn't matter which, I prefer the Israelis win as they don't want to kill us like the Arab/Persians do. But the only way that will happen is if we commit asset's to military action in support of an Israeli aggression, which will never happen b/c the US is not only broke and tired but politically incapable of surviving such a choice.

If the failure to secure such an alliance should ever result in Israel's destruction (almost certainly characterized by both a total military defeat and a second Holocaust destined to eclipse the first by the hundreds of millions of people -- whatever it takes to truly secure the peace, don'tcha see.) then that blood, as well as the blood of victims current and past will be on the hands of the entire international community, not just the United States.

Blood bath of the century that's for sure. And you have got to be kidding me.....you know damn well the blame lands on the US regardless of outcome.

You can't go back in history far enough to find the handful of countries who truly have no dog in this fight, whether it be the conduct of Britain during its rule of Palestine under the British Mandate to the majority of nations in the brand new UN General Assembly that supported the 1947 Resolution 181 calling for a patchwork of non-contiguous lands supposedly resulting in an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state coexisting peaceably side-by-side. Yeah, right.

No, as bad as the situation in the Middle East is, abandoning Israel and the rest of the region and giving tacit approval to all parties to slug it out "one last time" in a winner-take-all-cage-match would only increase the strategic threat to the United States, not reduce it.

Isolationism didn't work out all that well when the world's oceans could only be traversed by ships. It's even less feasible now that missiles can cut the trip down to a matter of minutes.

What do we have to gain from Israel? What exactly do they do for us besides cost the US taxpayer astronomical amounts of money? What dog exactly do we have in this hunt? And if it is so valuable and so necessary to pour billions into it then why the fuck do we not just wipe out/submit all of Arabia/Persia, end the threat and call it a day? Ahhhhhh the weapons industry.....war is a multi billion dollar for profit activity. You know how I know it's the weapons industry? I have met/trained and worked with ISF, and wouldn't you just know they have better M'erikan weapons/gear than we did

My old man worked for General Dynamics/LM as an aeronautical engineer/program director back in the 90's after he retired from the USAF. According to him we sent Israel quite a few F-16's....I'm sure there are a number of other large price tag, high tech, bad fuckin' ass items that have found there way over there.

Follow the money...there are large fortunes depending on the continued fighting in the middle east. I don't think we will see peace in that reigon any time soon as the last time we were really trying to stop the fighting we did so by making a couple cities vanish.

 

[unregistered]

 

[jamie123]

This is what we need to do:

1. Come up with a long term national goal of energy independence.

2. We are currently spending in excess of 1 billion dollars a day to keep our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bring them home and start building 1 billion dollars worth of solar plants and wind farms a day in the USA. Imagine the size of a 1 billion dollar solar plant! After 1 month you would have 30 of them!

Oh...I forgot...

What would the defense contractors do without a war to fight?

Never mind!

 

[KingOrfeo]

This is what we need to do:

1. Come up with a long term national goal of energy independence.

That faces the minor obstacle of being impossible.

 

[koalabear]

It's time to bring all but essential embassy personnel home across the region where the violence is occurring. It isn't time for us to retreat into fortress America.

and cut off all aid.

 

[BotanyBoy]

and cut off all aid.

No shit.....can't pay our own bill's, why the fuck are we still footing everyone elses?

 

[LongPenStroke]

Precisely my point in the OP.

I understand your point, but I still don't see it as the best option. The fact of the matter is that we need the middle-east because we are dependent on oil and one party lacks the political will to go along with the party to end that dependency.

We require their resources, and without helping them build infrastructure to get us that oil, then we are cutting off our nose to spite our face.

How long until Saudi Arabia comes back to bite us in the ass?

 

[Recidiva]

I do believe we should stop manipulating governments. With the aid we give and the scapegoad we provide, we're responsible for all the bad things and get no credit for the good.

I don't think we should nationbuild. MacArthur was partially successful because he was dealing with nations that were motivated and had industry as part of their original culture, it didn't need to be taught and adopted. We were on the same page.

We are not on the same page in the Middle East. They want us out, we should be out. Nations have their own identities and cultures, and it's up to the populace to decide what that should be. The resentment of America is not a culture, but it's the only one we're providing.

We should practice compassion and iron restraint and get the hell out, stop being blamed for every sparrow falling.

 

[Beco]

Racist? how was any of what I said racist? Where did I call them animals? Do you just sit around thinking of bullshit like that along with lame ass insults like "racist pond scum pot head"?

So yea...if saying we either need to get in the fight and win the 2000 year old fighting between all the various sect's of douchery or get the fuck out of it and let them sort it out themselves makes me racist pond scum (wtf? lol) then I guess that's what I am.

yeah, he does that.