The political implications of the episode are clear: bureaucratic self-interest trumped the military’s conviction that US security is being endangered. No matter how strongly the JCS may have felt about the recklessness of administration policy, they were not prepared to sacrifice their access to military bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Turkey to pressure their Middle Eastern allies.Light of the world versus lighting up the world.
Middle East Eye
5 comments:
"By then the administration was already embarked on yet another regime change policy in Syria. Although Clinton led the public advocacy of the policy, then CIA director David Petraeus, who had taken over the agency in early September 2011, was a major ally. He immediately began working on a major covert operation to arm rebel forces in Syria."
Petraeus pitched them on how to "do it on the cheap..." and they bought it BIG LEAGUE as all of these morons think "we're out of money!"...
Here is an interview with Hersh go to 5:00 minute mark and Hersh points out that he too thinks that the whole 20 year experiment with Special Ops has been a failure....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-VHSmCiWw
not that Hersh has an alternative as he is also one of the "we're out of money!" morons... but at least he has half a brain and can observe that Special Operations has a very limited role to play in strategic level national security issues...
"Handing this over to the military" isnt going to help either as those people think "we're out of money!" too....
NOBODY involved in national security policy from the CINC on down is qualified....
So your argument is the US decided on a proxy war due to concerns about money?
Call me a skeptic.
The US got burnt bad sending troops into Vietnam, then again in Afghanistan and Iraq. The public rebelled in these cases as casualties mounted.
So the current doctrine is no boots on the ground unless absolutely necessary and then be quick about it. This is one of the meanings of "don't do stupid stuff."
The current US foreign policy and military doctrine is "Lead From Behind." That means get others to do the ground fighting and provide support without putting US troops at risk other than through special ops with plausible deniability.
The confrontational right, led by McCain and Graham in the Senate, hates this, l and they accuse Obama of being weak for adopting it.
No I'm saying US national security policy is a shambles because "we're out of money!"...
Conventional forces are a "no go" because these morons think "we're out of money!" and all they "can afford" (to them) is small numbers of Special Forces going in and working to destabilize current regimes using whoever else they can locally ....
Now you have conventional forces saying things like "we're not AlQueda's Air Force" while people like Petraeus don't care about that pov as that is how they think it can work AND "save money!" at the same time.... It's obviously not working to anybody with half a brain...
Not very encompassing. Merkel's pipeline from qatar to europe after an arab spring of democracy to thwart Shiia rootin tootin Putin's gas was a dud.
Petreaeus materially withheld nonpartisan leadership from the arab spring so as to sabatage it esp Benghazi.
Merkel played both sides - I still remember her sitting next to Putin at world cup with Dilma Rouesseff with her cell phone acting like Obama was listening with NSA.
The arab spring was based on austerity in EU to drive back home young jobless muslims to their newly found democracies.
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