https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl...35738.html


Full control of Syrian border and combat operations have ended.

Would have lasted another 8 years had Hillary and the carryover gang of limp-wristed technocrats had hung around.

I’m still not sure we picked the right side here. This places a large Sunni area under Shia control. I just don’t see this lasting.

(12-09-2017 11:08 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I’m still not sure we picked the right side here. This places a large Sunni area under Shia control. I just don’t see this lasting.

The hope would be that their fellow Sunni lunatics (ISIS) were soo bad that just heavy handed Shia's are viewed as much preferable.

(12-09-2017 11:52 AM)Crebman Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 11:08 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I’m still not sure we picked the right side here. This places a large Sunni area under Shia control. I just don’t see this lasting.

The hope would be that their fellow Sunni lunatics (ISIS) were soo bad that just heavy handed Shia's are viewed as much preferable.

IMO, the problem is that this is the one time in history that Crazy Joe Biden was right, and we didn't listen to him. Once Baghdad fell, we should have split Iraq into three parts--Kurdistan in the north, Shia Mesopotamia in the southeast, and Sunni Iraq in the west--and left the old guard in power in the west. Sort of like Germany after WWII, if we had not so thoroughly punished them, the more moderate voices could have prevailed and we would not have to deal with the wild extremism of ISIS. What I think would have happened next is that Sunni eastern Syria would have found a way to align with Sunni Iraq. We would have seen civil war in Syria, but with a different outcome.

The problem with the split was Turkey's opposition to an independent Kurdish state. But at that time, Turkey's big objective was EU membership (probably not so much today, but back then it was). So give the Halliburton contract for Kurdistan to Schlumberger and tell France to tell Turkey that Kurdistan is the price of EU membership. I think it could have been done. I'd also try to ease the pressure on Turkey by giving Kurdistan enough territory to absorb a repatriation of Kurds from the Turkish and Syrian diasporas.

Would have just lead to different armed conflict.

This was ****** up by outsiders during WWI redrawing maps...no way outsiders can un **** it. It’s going to be reborn via fire.

(12-09-2017 05:50 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Would have just lead to different armed conflict.

This was ****** up by outsiders during WWI redrawing maps...no way outsiders can un **** it. It’s going to be reborn via fire.

But if we weren’t going to fix that, there was no point to having one American lose life or limb fighting there.

And un-****ing it up requires getting the lines back to reasonable and logical ones and that would have been a start. Splitting Syria between Shia and Sunni would be good too.

What is going to happen is Sunnis under Shia rule in two countries. And that means terrorism will be their only outlet.

#reallynotover

I guess they really were the JV after all.

(12-09-2017 06:13 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 05:50 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Would have just lead to different armed conflict.

This was ****** up by outsiders during WWI redrawing maps...no way outsiders can un **** it. It’s going to be reborn via fire.

But if we weren’t going to fix that, there was no point to having one American lose life or limb fighting there.

And un-****ing it up requires getting the lines back to reasonable and logical ones and that would have been a start. Splitting Syria between Shia and Sunni would be good too.

What is going to happen is Sunnis under Shia rule in two countries. And that means terrorism will be their only outlet.

Sunni and Shia been going on since before 700 A.D. Good luck fixing that.

We went to war to protect our national interests. That’s it.

You carve out Kurdistan, watch what happens.

Iraq doesn't have a distinguished history of military declarations.

One big problem We made in Iraq was Not letting any of Saddams Army have a choice in the rebuilding of Iraqs Army. Those Guys went underground as the resistance and fought Us with IEDs and ambushes. They hated Saddam and His Genarals and likely it would have taken far less time stabilizing Iraq and ISIS and Al Qaeda might never have progressed like They did had They been a part of rebuilding Iraq.

(12-11-2017 04:20 PM)CardFan1 Wrote:  One big problem We made in Iraq was Not letting any of Saddams Army have a choice in the rebuilding of Iraqs Army. Those Guys went underground as the resistance and fought Us with IEDs and ambushes. They hated Saddam and His Genarals and likely it would have taken far less time stabilizing Iraq and ISIS and Al Qaeda might never have progressed like They did had They been a part of rebuilding Iraq.

We should have never gone in there. The people were happy when Saddam was toppled, but after a few years of terror attacks, they wished Saddam was back because he would never allow bin Laden and his men, and ISIS to run wild in his country.

(12-11-2017 04:43 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 04:20 PM)CardFan1 Wrote:  One big problem We made in Iraq was Not letting any of Saddams Army have a choice in the rebuilding of Iraqs Army. Those Guys went underground as the resistance and fought Us with IEDs and ambushes. They hated Saddam and His Genarals and likely it would have taken far less time stabilizing Iraq and ISIS and Al Qaeda might never have progressed like They did had They been a part of rebuilding Iraq.

We should have never gone in there. The people were happy when Saddam was toppled, but after a few years of terror attacks, they wished Saddam was back because he would never allow bin Laden and his men, and ISIS to run wild in his country.

Yep, and whose fault was that? Yep again, your favorite president Oblunder. You can't accomplish anything by bringing back your troops and not having anyone to fight Isis, especially a country with a decimated Armed Forces. Hooray OBlunder, you fail there too.

(12-11-2017 04:20 PM)CardFan1 Wrote:  One big problem We made in Iraq was Not letting any of Saddams Army have a choice in the rebuilding of Iraqs Army. Those Guys went underground as the resistance and fought Us with IEDs and ambushes. They hated Saddam and His Genarals and likely it would have taken far less time stabilizing Iraq and ISIS and Al Qaeda might never have progressed like They did had They been a part of rebuilding Iraq.

If we had given them the Sunni west, and formed an independent Kurdistan in the north, and Shia Mesopotamia in the southeast, I think they would not have gone so extreme. What they would probably have done is united with Sunni eastern Syria to oppose Assad, with Saudi backing. They'd have been stronger than ISIS and more reasonable, and possibly that would have worked, at least enough to let us get out of there.

We're not imposing Shia rule over Sunnis and increasing Iran's power as regional hegemon. Those do not look like recipes for success to me.

As far as posible, we need Sunnis governing Sunnis, Shias governing Shias, Arabs governing Arabs, and non-Arabs ruling non-Arabs. That means undoing a lot of San Remo. The sooner, in all likelihood the better.

(12-12-2017 01:29 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 04:43 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 04:20 PM)CardFan1 Wrote:  One big problem We made in Iraq was Not letting any of Saddams Army have a choice in the rebuilding of Iraqs Army. Those Guys went underground as the resistance and fought Us with IEDs and ambushes. They hated Saddam and His Genarals and likely it would have taken far less time stabilizing Iraq and ISIS and Al Qaeda might never have progressed like They did had They been a part of rebuilding Iraq.

We should have never gone in there. The people were happy when Saddam was toppled, but after a few years of terror attacks, they wished Saddam was back because he would never allow bin Laden and his men, and ISIS to run wild in his country.

Yep, and whose fault was that? Yep again, your favorite president Oblunder. You can't accomplish anything by bringing back your troops and not having anyone to fight Isis, especially a country with a decimated Armed Forces. Hooray OBlunder, you fail there too.

Bush removed Saddam. How do you blame that on Obama? And, might I add, Obama and Trump both did just that (Obama brought troops home and Trump didn't send them back), and ISIS was defeated anyway. As I predicted quite a while ago. ISIS was making too many enemies from the very beginning, that much was obvious.

Iraq was created to give old man Saud a Sunni-run buffer between him and Persia, which scared the crap out of him because of their imperial ambitions. Then just to make their ambitions clear, Persia went and changed its name to Iran, which does not have a direct translation from Farsi, but basically means “empire of the Aryan people” (Persians are Aryans, not Semitic like Arabs). Let that sink in for a minute—1935, Aryan people—ring any bells?

The problem with the concept is that Iraq is majority Shi’a, but it has to be ruled by Sunnis to be the required buffer. Saddam was a Sunni who was brutal enough to impose his will on the Shias. In many ways he was the ideal ruler for Iraq. What we should have done after we removed Saddam was what Crazy Joe Biden suggested—hey even a stopped clock is right clots ice a day—and undone the mistakes of San Remo by splitting Iraq into Kurdish North, Shia east, and Sunni west, with Saddam’s lieutenants. We’d probably still have a war in the same area where we do now, but the dynamics would be dramatically different.

One other thing. Sunni Saudi’s oil and gas reserves are predominantly in the one part of the country that is majority Shi’a, and Shia Iran’s oil and gas reserves are predominantly in the one part off the country that is predominantly Sunni. Makes for problems.