Yup.

And for that insight, be sure to treat BRC to some high test and park him by a cute, pink Nissan Leaf or some such!

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Basar al-Assad is an Alawite which is a different flavor than your run of the mill Shiite. It is a minority creed in Syria which provides some of the energy to the civil war.

The US needs to think strategically and act tactically in the Middle East.

It is only energy to us and the interests of our only decent ally, Israel. The rest of it is an illusion.

Energy independence makes us safer than sorting out the Middle East.

Right now, Iran is the big player and we made it so.

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

But I suspect that various people, e.g., in Congress, have known all about this for years and have arranged that as bad as it looks and as bad as it is, just for now it’s not much the way it looks and in real effect not nearly as bad as it looks, besides, steps have been taken to keep it from getting a lot worse, and it will all be over in about a year anyway.

Then in 2017 some people will publish some books that make The BIg Short and All the President’s Men look like My Little Pony.

It’s called Democracy where we get the government we deserve except in our case our Founding Fathers saw that we would be dealing with real humans, i.e., imperfect, and set up checks and balances to save us. That setup has worked well through some very sick and/or mixed up people in government and, hopefully, will this time, also. I can guess some of what the books of 2017 will say but will let the books say it. “Wouldn’t do no good to say it” now anyway.

For Syria, it has some Shiites and some Sunnis. Assad is a Shiite. A few years ago, in Syria the 1000 year old war between the Shiites and Sunnis heated up. There were street demonstrations, gunfire, little bombs, bigger bombs, chemical bombs, and the fighting has continued. We should be surprised? And if Assad is run out of power, dead or alive, just what will be the result — holding hands, singing Kumbaya followed by Why Can’t We Be Friends? I don’t think so.

Or, IIRC, and to paraphrase, “We have two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless clearly distinguishable alternatives, one where we’ve got thousands of people killed and one where we’ve got millions of people killed”.

Europe went through some many decades of religious wars. The Mideast, at least 500 years behind, is still having theirs.

Don’t expect the Mideast to be much like Europe with secular government, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, respect for human rights and life, modern legal system, constitutional democracy, etc. any time soon.

About the best we can do is keep the Mideast from hurting us. At some point, we may have to take a big patch of that desert and turn it into red glass, maybe that also glows in the dark.

We could try to run that place, say, as a colonial power; and it would likely be better for both us and them; and if we took the oil we could make it pay, maybe a little, I doubt a lot; but it would be very bloody business. E.g., each Friday, a lot of Mullahs would be grabbing for power and, because all they know and the people they are talking to know is just a 1000 year old Islamic state, that’s what they’d constantly try to go for, They would just keep coming at us, and we’d just have to keep mowing them down like grass.

The only end would be when we finally had wiped out Islam from that area AND done a really good job moving that society 500+ years forward, That would be a lot of blood.

Schwarzkopf taught the 7 million man army a really big lesson — it didn’t take. Saddam and the Shah tried to run secular governments — they failed. There was a relatively modern part of Akrapistan, but the Islamic wackos got rid of it. The US, at enormous blood, treasure, time, and effort set up Iraq with a modern government, and as soon as we left it all fell apart — they went right back to their Shiite-Sunni 1000 year war. Saddam told us we’d have a heck of a time keeping the place together. He actually did keep it together; when we dumped him, it fell apart, and hasn’t been back together since.

As of this week, Shiite Iran wants to fight with Sunni Saudi Arabia. Well, Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia. Gee, I wonder what that Shiite cleric, in Sunni Saudi Arabia, had been trying to do — I can guess.

In Syria, I’d leave Assad there.

Generally we can hope for a balance of power or, in Kissinger’s words, too bad they can’t both lose. Well, sometimes they do!

Net, it’s their oily toilet. Let them have it unless it starts to hurt us and then we should defend ourselves. We can add some fine details, but IMHO that’s about it.

The US legitimizes yet another tyrant and cuts yet another great deal. The hits keep on coming and the deal with Cuba is a real winner.

Congratulations to Ben Rhodes, he of no foreign policy experience and even less negotiating experience. Well played.

http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-care-and-feeding-of-tyrants/

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com