Ken Berwitz
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”: A statement supposedly made during the Vietnam war by a U.S. military officer, to explain the shelling of Ben Tre City.“We had to lose Iraq and Syria in order to save them”: A statement not made by anyone, but effectively what President Barack Obama\’s policy has been for years.
Here are the first three paragraphs from Missy Ryan and Greg Jaffe\’s article in today\’s Washington Post:
President Obama\’s mostsenior national security advisers have recommended measures that would moveU.S. troops closer to the front lines in Iraq and Syria, officials said, a signof mounting White House dissatisfaction with progress against the Islamic Stateand a renewed Pentagon push to expand military involvement in long-runningconflicts overseas.
The debate over theproposed steps, which would for the first time position a limited number ofSpecial Operations forces on the ground in Syria and put U.S. advisers closerto the firefights in Iraq, comes as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter pressesthe military to deliver new options for greater military involvement in Iraq,Syria and Afghanistan.
The changes wouldrepresent a significant escalation of the American role in Iraq and Syria. Theystill require formal approval from Obama, who could make a decision as soon asthis week and could decide not to alter the current course, said U.S. officialswho spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are stillongoing. It\’s unclear how many additional troops would be required to implementthe changes being considered by the president, but the number for now is likelyto be relatively small, these officials said.
We pulled virtually all our troops outof Iraq without any significant residual force to keep it\’s fragile, tenuous”democracy” intact. Now the country is a lawless hellhole withISIS terrorists controlling at least one-third of the land area – worse thanwhen saddam hussein was in power.
We made promises, threats, and drew redlines to stop al-assad in Syria and, when they were ignored, did exactly nothingabout it. Now Russia has stepped in to fill the void we left, al-assad isstronger than ever, and – as with Iraq – a large part of the country iscontrolled by ISIS terrorists and who knows who else.
So now that the damage is done; now thatIraq and Syria are in the loss column? Now we\’re going to considersending a few troops over that way.
To do what? Observe the carnage weleft in place, and report back to President Obama…so he can blame it all onGeorge Bush?
Still over a year left to the Obamaadministration. How I wish time moved faster.
