Mattis & Why We Need to End Our Self-Destructive, Mindless Wars in Middle East

[Algernon Moncrieff]

Democracy Now

ANDREW BACEVICH: I think my answer to your question is: I really don’t know. And I think one of the things that’s important here is the difficulty of knowing whether, when Trump makes these decisions, there really is any—that he has any larger purpose in mind at all. As I said, when he ran for the presidency, he ran as an antiwar candidate. Now, whether or not he ran as an antiwar candidate because of some principled opposition to the wars that he inherited, or whether he did it because he thought it was a way to win votes, is impossible to say.

Where we find ourselves at the present moment—and I do think it’s a huge problem—is that his commitment to Saudi Arabia, combined with the reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to Israel, to my mind, creates the likelihood that the United States is going to continue to contribute to disorder, instability in the region, as we have done ever since the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003. That is to say, despite this withdrawal from Syria, if it actually happens—you know, so many times he announces something and then reverses course. But even assuming that the withdrawal from Syria happens, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have anything like a coherent policy in the region.

So, the people who get excited about Mattis’s resignation and see the possibility there of chaos, of confusion, of disorder, I think their fears are justified. That said, what they seem to not focus on is that the course that Mattis represented—that is to say, the continuation of U.S. wars in the Middle East that have produced nothing positive—that that supposed wisdom was not going to, and has not and would not, produce anything positive, no matter how long we persist.

[RHMerriman]

1. Ending a war and securing a peace, however...

As much as I respect Andrew Bacevich, the reality is the US finds itself in conflicts in three different nations in Southwest Asia, and the only way to get anything close to stability in any of them - Syria being the most obvious - is to keep continued US support for the locals/proxies (the Kurds, for example) in play.

Unilateral withdrawal is a death sentence for the Kurds, and bailing out without some sort of settlement is surrendering any claim the US has to being able to an international guarantee of stability in the region.

When the Syrian Kurds end up facing the reality of massacre at the hands of the Russians/Syrians and/or Turks and CNN goes live to women and children walking across the desert into Iraqi Kurdistan in the middle of winter, the realities of the fecklessness and recklessness of Trump's decisions will be front and center in the eyes of the world.

This is not a recipe for stability in the region, much less progress.

[ansible]

2. What else can we do?

Same thing happened in Vietnam too after the 70s. Millions of boat people fled, thousands died, it sucks but unless you want to keep playing world police indefinitely it's just not a good idea.

[RHMerriman]

3. Except the issue is without a comprehensive settlement in Southwest Asia, the US

Except the issue is without a comprehensive settlement in Southwest Asia, the US will remain tied to the region though the obvious commitments to:

1) Israel
2) Egypt
3) Saudi Arabia
4) Turkey
5) Jordan
etc.

Unless one is willing to advocate forcing Turkey out of NATO and forgoing four decades or more of de facto alliance with Israel and the other three major regional powers listed above, withdrawing in haste from Syria and Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter) doesn't address the root cause of why the US has been so deeply involved in Southwest Asia since the 1960s.

Now, one can argue a US withdrawal from Southwest Asia, Northeast Africa, etc. is wise policy, but that's a) not what DJT is arguing, and b) quite unrealistic given the realities of the importance of the region to the world economy currently.

Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s is not a particularly good parallel because of the undeniable reality that currently, and certainly for the near future, stability in the world energy economy depends on stability in Southwest Asia - and given the current Administration's absolute inability to postulate an energy policy beyond petroleum extraction, any realistic transition date to renewables had been delayed for at least a decade.

[enough]

4. Well worth reading Bacevich's entire interview. Thanks for posting. NT

[Algernon Moncrieff]

5. You are welcome!