LIbertarian Party says get out of Iraq and Syria.

"Nothing undermines American belief in military force."
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/23...uided-war-to-control-the-greater-middle-east/

 

This is why I am not a libertarian. This odd notion that you can quietly let a large chunk of the world go to hell in a hand basket while you sit home eating and drinking and being merry and expect that because it isn't your fault and you didn't take sides that you will be left alone is historically ludicrous.

Since Muhammad wrote his book the Middle East has become a place in which there are seldom any good choices only less bad ones.

 

Lets see, he tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan, which lead to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th deadliest years of what is the longest war in our history. He got involved in regime change in Libya, and has bombed more countries than any other president since WWII (nearly double the countries that Bush bombed)

Other than that, you are absolutely right

 

Let's take a look at the record:

In 1953 the US and England orchestrated the overthrow of the fledgling government of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the only democratically-elected government in a Muslim country in the Mid-East.

In 2006 George Bush and Condoleezza Rice highly promoted Palestinian elections. When Hamas won a majority in parliament, Bush and Rice ended their Excellent Adventure in Democracy and went home, and Israel disbanded the parliament, and arrested a lot of the parliament winners, some of whom are still in prison.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012600372.html

In 2011 CENTCOM allowed or promoted the overthrow of the fledgling democracy of Dr. Mohammed Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party, continuing to fund military dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who imprisoned a lot of election winners and reporters, and Dr. Morsi remains in prison.

In addition, the US overthrew the Libyan government and Iraqi government, and supports the brutal, elite, Saudi regime.

Do you call that preventing hell in a hand-basket?

 

In December of 2009 he announced our withdrawal from Afghanistan with a pull out date. The predictable happened and it emboldened the Taliban and made the on the ground situation worse. That's why the Afghanistan war is still going on. That's exactly what a Gary Johnson would have done as President. Announce we're leaving and then be surprised that the Taliban don't start entrepreneurial gig economy businesses in response.

 

Mixed bag. Mossadeq is gone in two or three years with or without British assistance. The reforms he championed and which the Shah put through would have had the nobles and the clerics just as mad at him as they were at the shah.and for the same reason. Hamas election? You pays your money and you takes your chances This time it didn't work out. Morsi in Jail is good for the Egyptians and everyone else. Dumbass' bull(*)(*)(*)(*) moves while he was in power damn near destroyed the Egyptian economy and he was replaced shortly before he tried to have himself made dictator for life. Centcom got that one right. As for Libya? Only Obama's feckless foreign policy could have taken a disaster in the making and turned it into a so complete and total a catastrophe. Libya should indeed have been left alone.

Had we left a residual force in Iraq our current problems would have been greatly foreshortened. Every situation is dofferent and the idea that we should never intervene is just as flawed as the idea that we should always do so.

 

Well, I guess you see things through your filters, and I see things through mine.

 

First of all, Americans have a huge distaste for ground troops right now. Secondly, supporting one side over the other solves nothing. Look at history. We supported the Shah until the Iranian Revolution, then we supported Iraq in its war with Iran, then we bombed Iraq. Lmao at the stupidity of it all.

 

War in the Middle East began several millennia before Muhammed, and Syria, being at the crossroads of trade between East and West, has always been a target. Look up the battle of Megiddo, from which the biblical term "Armageddon" derives. Look up Kadesh, or any of the other battles that were fought in the region. At least the Egyptians and Hittites were able to achieve peace through a treaty (probably the first peace treaty in history). It would be nice if the Sunnis and Shia could do the same.

 

That is not at all what happened, this is what happened


(US troops only)
(US and allied troops)


Quite literally, the troop surge was one of Obama's first actions as president.. your notion that he wanted to withdraw troops upon taking office is a complete fabrication on your part (Note, our troops are still in Afghanistan, they're still serving a combat role, and we still do not have a with "withdrawal" date)

 

The Administration initially came out with a policy in March 2009 that emphasized counterterrorism as the primary military strategy, and then panicked when he found out the troop commitment that was required from his handpicked General to make this policy work. This led to a political squabble within the White House that lasted months, with the White House pretending it had never decided on a military strategy in March of that year. It took until December for the President to finally unveil his new and improved Afghanistan Policy during a speech at West Point, which was a political contrivance that traded an increase in troops with a promise to withdraw by a date certain.

I'm curious. Do you not actually remember all this? It wasn't that long ago.

 

Frankly I have become disillusioned with the mainstream parties and will be changing to Libertarian. I do not agree with all of their platform but a heck of a lot more then the two Wall Street parties. True they cannot win yet but how else is a party going to go from fringe to mainstream if people do not choose to switch?

 

Wrong, the troop increase began in January of 2009 along with an announcement in February that a significantly larger surge was to come, more and more troops were added as the year progressed, the peak of the surge was not revealed until December of that year, and these troops weren't fully deployed until mid 2010 (which was also the deadliest year for our troops). Ultimately the surge was a massive failure, the state of Afghanistan was left in worse shape than it was before the surge. Again, the notion the he wanted to pull troops out of Afghanistan upon taking office is a fabrication (the number of troops wasn't reduced until AFTER the surge), one of the first actions he took as president was the beginning stages of his troop surge in Afghanistan, and it wasn't made public what the full extent of the surge would be until December of 2009

The troop surge ultimately lead to 75% of all our casualties in that war, the notion that this was due to supposed acts of pacifism before the surge holds no basis whatsoever.

 

I second this motion. Won't become a registered libertarian, but I do think they provide the best alternative to our entrenched parties.

 

Although I don't recall a troop surge beginning in January of 2009, if there was one it was probably initiated by the President who was actually in office for most of that month; Bush. I'm not arguing that the surge wasn't a failure or it didn't result in massive US casualties, only that it was a stunt to cover a policy of withdrawal, which as I previously mentioned, was announced in December of 2009. The fact that the President has failed to pull off his foreign policy goals doesn't have anything to do with his intentions. And you seem to forget Iraq. Obama at least pretended that Afghanistan was the "good war." But Obama pulled out of Iraq completely, without regard to the American blood spent on stabilizing the country, and it collapsed as predicted. Wouldn't a Gary Johnson or any other Libertarian President have done the same thing? Haven't we withdrawn from the world in just the way the Libertarians wanted?

We only got involved in Libya because Hillary brow beat the President into it, but certainly you don't think our overall policy in the middle east isn't a reflection of libertarian goals? We got out and mostly kept hands off, allowing chaos to follow.

Frankly, I'm not sure what your point was in pulling out a year and a half old comment of mine to follow up on, but you are not even making an argument, just nick picking mine. So are you arguing that Obama is as much of a neo con as Hillary? Or that withdrawal from the world militarily isn't a libertarian foreign policy goal?

 

Yes, that's quite true. The same is true of virtually every other place human beings have ever lived. That, however, doesn't disprove my assertion. And let's not forget there are at least a dozen other Muslim sects of varying degrees of fanaticism.

 

My filter, sir, is Human history. All of it not just the last 60 years...

 

That, then, would include the Inquisitions and the Crusades, unless you filter them out.

 

They are relevant because the GOP and the DNC are both responsible for the $19 trillion national debt. They are both owned by the military industrial contractors that keep making profits off of dead U.S. troops. They are both owned by BIG OIL, BIG PHARMA, and insurance corporations.

It's time for an end to the corruption.

 

Yep both of them the crusades were a largely ineffectual response to over 200 years of nearly continuous assault upon the nominally Christian Byzantine empire. The inquisition was largely though not wholly an assault upon non Roman Catholic Christians by the nominally Christian Roman Catholic Church.

 

Wrong, it was not a cover up for a troop withdrawal.. in fact the number of troops in Afghanistan did not drop below the point where he first took office until 2014.. 6 years after taking office the number of troops dropped to below what it was when he took office. How many US wars can you name that took more than 6 years? (now keep in mind that 6 years was just the troop surge)

More than this, we are STILL in Afghanistan without an end date in site. You do not know what you are talking about, the Iraq war was ended because of the status of forces agreement, which was signed in 2008 by then president Bush. The Obama administration even proposed a new status of forces agreement to keep US troops in that country for longer, but the Iraq government rejected it

http://world.time.com/2011/10/21/iraq-not-obama-called-time-on-the-u-s-troop-presence/

This is common knowledge.. or at least for most people it is common knowledge

Your notion that Obama's foreign policy is non-interventionist holds no correlation to reality, you're creating your own reality according to your own preference because you do not want to admit that the war on terror has been a 15 year old war that has failed to reduce terrorism in any country. Before the war on terror, Britain had a higher rate of terrorist attacks than Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, or Syria

 

OK now I get why you suddenly got interested in a year and a half old comment... this is about some fantasy you hold of what I'm thinking, "you do not want to admit that the war on terror has been a 15 year old war that has failed to reduce terrorism in any country..." Did I ever say anything different? Duh, I agree with that, it's fairly obvious after all. I'm curious why you think that I think that. This whole zombie thread conversation still seems weird but at least I'm a bit closer now to figuring out why it suddenly is fascinating to you.

Oh and your wrong about Iraq. Obama was never going to stay. He ran for President on getting out, and that's just what he did. If we had really wanted to stay, we could have...here's a good treatment of it: What We Left Behind.

 

No that isn't wrong, sure Obama ran on a 16 month deadline for the Iraq war, but on the end he exceeded that deadline by more than a year, and attempted to establish a new status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government that the Iraqi government rejected. That's not an opinion, that is what happened. The first proposal by the Obama administration was to leave 10,000 troops in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, that number was later reduced to 3,000 to 5,000

In the end the Iraq government rejected the new status of forces agreement altogether

In August 2011, after debates between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, the U.S. settled on the 3,000 to 5,000 troop number. An American official said intelligence assessments stated that Iraq was not at great risk of slipping into chaos in the absence of American forces, which was a factor in the decision.

"In October 2011, American officials pressed Iraqi leadership to meet again at President Talabani’s compound to discuss the issue. This time the U.S. asked Iraq to take a stand on the question of immunity for troops, hoping to remove what had always been the biggest challenge. However, they misread Iraqi politics and the Iraqi public. Having watched the Arab Spring sweep across the region and still haunted by the traumas of this and previous wars, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept anything that infringed on their sovereignty"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.–Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement#SOFA_Negotiations

Again, this is common knowledge

You now address that the war on terror hasn't worked.. good, but your notion that Obama has been some sort of non-interventionist president holds correlation to reality. In reality he's been one of the 5 most interventionist presidents in US history

 

Apparently you didn't read the link I posted so I consider your opinions on the negotiations of the status of forces agreement invalid, as well as your opinion that Obama really didn't want to withdraw from Iraq. He spoke quite a lot about it while running for President in 2007 and 2008. If there was one theme of his foreign policy, it was getting out of Iraq.

As for your contention that he's been one of the 5 most interventionist President's in US history, I'm curious about your metrics.

 

What if the bull frog had wings? I see no evidence that anyone is negotiating anything. For one thing ISIS isn't a rational enemy and you really can't negotiate effectively with people whose underlying purpose is to win or die trying.