Bombing For #Peace...

...is like fucking for virginity.

Hey Everyone!

I'm sure you've all heard that old saying before, and it seems to be particularly relevant now. Honestly, I'm kind of disgusted with the leadership of my country right now, and I'm not really in the mood to write a long rant. So all I'm going to do here is quickly point out a little bit of recent history.

In the 1980s, Reagan helped fund and supply the Mujahideen in Afghanistan so that they could fight the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden -- you all remember him, right? -- took over that well-armed, well-trained, combat-experienced group of religious warriors and formed the Taliban.  And then in 2001, he used that US-supplied jihadist militia group to carry out the largest foreign-born terrorist attack on US soil since the British burned DC in 1812.

In 2003, the US attacked Iraq and toppled the Hussein government. The excuse for this was that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when that turned out to be false, it was that Hussein was aiding al Qaeda.  Then, when that turned out to be false, it was that Hussein was a bad dude. Well, yeah, Hussein was a bad dude, no question. But when his defeat created a power vacuum, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi rose to fill it. al-Zarqawi organised al Qaeda in Iraq. Later, after al-Zarqawi was killed and a series of other events took place, al Qaeda in Iraq split off and became ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Now, the US under Trump is trying to topple Assad, another bad dude, and is funding and supplying rebel groups in Syria, who are mainly comprised of various jihadist groups including ISIS. At the same time, Trump is bombing ISIS in Afghanistan. The only reason ISIS is in Afghanistan is because they are fighting the Taliban there.

So...given the last forty years, or so, of history concerning US involvement in the Middle East, what would you say the likely result of Trump toppling Syria's bad dude coupled with sticking our nose into the conflict between two Islamic jihadist groups will be? Any guesses?  Personally, I don't think you need a crystal ball to see that it's not likely to be good.

Does that mean I think Assad is good for Syria? No. I don't. I also don't think that it's the US's place to unilaterally decide to remove him from power. If the people of Syria want a different leader, then they certainly have every right to replace him with someone more to their liking. But it's their prerogative to make that decision, not ours.  As for ISIS fighting the Taliban, can anyone tell me why we would want to stop that? They're both enemies of the US, I say let them fight. Maybe they'll get it out of their system and they won't be so eager to send suicide bombers to our shores.  At the very least, it will give them something to think about other than getting revenge on America.

Anyway, that's my two-cents worth.

Peace!