There is no such place, so thirty years ago, I argued that President Bush père was wrong to send troops there ( and that President Clinton was wrong to keep them there ). Somalia, I deeply joked, isn’t a state so much as a gap in the image where other nations aren’t. Decades later, I’d duplicate that joke about our mission-creep/nation-building practice in Afghanistan. You can’t create a state in a gap on the map.
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Which brings us, deeply after more, to Syria.
Edward Luttwak’s latest for Unherd includes a simple but useful history of the country that, like Somalia and Afghanistan, not was. ” Syria was not meant to function as a sovereign state”, he wrote, and the “foreign prats… pressing for the restoration of a sovereign Palestinian state should reflect on the country’s story”.
An uneasy mix of Alawites, Arab Orthodox, Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Ismailis, and Shia Arabs was held together ( albeit barely ) in a loose confederation by the French after World War One. In the post-WWII/post-colonial time, only two points kept Syria from flying off: the Assad empire’s Stalinesque iron fist and ( since the 2011-20?? legal war ) Russo-Iranian largess.
The Assads have died, and so has Tehran and Russia’s help. Also Assad’s former Syrian Arab Military is gone. Not just defeated or surrendered, but the Israeli Air Force ( IAF ) quickly bombed their equipment and storage depots into oblivion.
A somewhat larger protection area is being carved out of the Golan Heights by Israel. If ISIS may gain or the Units “government” in Damascus gets amorous, that’s just another task for the IAF.
Syria is returning to what might be its normal condition: the majority of Sunni Arabs rule over the numerous majority organizations as best they can over a country-specific area they don’t fully power and probably always will. We have no business getting stuck in yet another Middle Eastern Tar girl, and this is just another Middle Eastern Tar Baby.  ,
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But why in heaven aren’t we bugging our 2, 000 or but servicemembers out of Syria now?
The phrase you’re looking for right now is stupidity. Washington appears to believe that every issue is a Washington issue, and this includes members of both parties. And very frequently, Washington’s option is to send in the troops without taking into account their goal.
Are they there to prevent religious crime? Prevent the Israelites and the Turks from trying to do it? Combat violence?  ,
None of that and all of that. Because they are there, the troops must be.
The only thing missing is… us.
Alexander Langlois argued at American Greatness on Sunday that “unflimsy connections linking the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda are yet another unpleasant expansion of unchecked executive power aimed at limiting U.S. citizens ‘ insight on crucial decisions made by their elected representatives. And he has it perfectly right.
I’ll assume to be independent on the question of whether American troops should be present in Syria for the sake of argument, and I invite you to join me in being immediately open-minded. In our tabula rasa position, if there’s a case for being in Syria… letting the President of the United States — or, more likely, one of his soldiers — MAKE THE CASE.
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There is little evidence that there is a case to be made, despite the fact that no one in the management is willing or able to make the event or, hell, just be honest about how big of a presence we have there. Or maybe they simply don’t give a damn about “muh republic” they’re usually prattling on about. Even both.
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