How Obama Created a Mideast Vacuum

He has overlearned the lessons of Iraq, the president’s former senior Iran adviser argues.

Few issues have confronted President Barack Obama with tougher dilemmas than Syria. Over the course of the nearly five years of the war within Syria, Obama has faced choices on how the United States should respond and he consistently decided to do the minimum. From the outset, when Bashar Assad’s response to calls for reform was draconian and turned peaceful demonstrations into an uprising, the president’s first instinct was avoidance. He looked at Syria and he saw entanglement in another ongoing Middle East conflict where our involvement would be costly, lead to nothing, and potentially make things worse. In nearly every meeting on Syria when presented possible options to affect the Syrian civil war, the president would ask “tell me where this ends.” He was surely right to ask this question. But he failed to ask the corollary question: Tell me what happens if we don’t act? Had he known that not acting would produce a vacuum in which a humanitarian catastrophe, a terrible refugee crisis, a deepening proxy war and the rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria would occur, his responses might have been different. However, it was hard for him to ask that question because when he looked at Syria, he saw Iraq.

Given the painful legacy of the Iraq War, it was not surprising that he did so. In his eyes, Iraq was a colossal mistake. He had run against it. He had been elected to get us out of Middle East wars not into them. But was Syria really Iraq? As someone who believed (wrongly) that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, I made the mistake of supporting the Iraq War. Surely, other proponents of the war should be willing to acknowledge now that it was wrong to seek regime change and not understand the vacuum that we would create in doing so; it was wrong to go to war without a serious, well-thought out plan for what it would take to create a credible transition, including the forces on the ground—military and police—needed to ensure security and the means to establish governance; it was wrong for us to become the administrator of Iraq, becoming the symbol of occupation, instead of having a United Nations interim administration; it was wrong to go to war without thinking through the consequences of unleashing a Shia-Sunni conflict that might not be limited to Iraq.

But Syria has always been a different issue. This was not an American invasion of a country but an internal uprising against an authoritarian leader. Assad consciously made it a sectarian conflict, believing he could survive only if the Alawites, and other minorities, saw their survival depending on his. Soon, thereafter, it was transformed into a proxy war largely pitting Saudi Arabia and Turkey against Iran. A vacuum was created not by our replacing the Assad regime but by our hesitancy to do more than offer pronouncements—by overlearning the lessons of Iraq, in effect. And, that vacuum was filled by others: Iran, Hezbollah and Iran’s other Shia militia proxies; Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar; Russia; and ISIL. Unless the U.S. does more now to fill this vacuum, the situation will spin further out of control.
***
In many ways, the vacuum in Syria has been compounded by the sense that the U.S. is retrenching in the region, creating a larger void that has helped to produce the increasing competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Iranians saw they ran little risk with the United States as they ramped up their regional activism and made the Qods force—the action arm of the Revolutionary Guard outside of Iran—more prominent in both the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts. Indeed, Qassem Suleiman, the head of the Qods forces, who was previously a shadowy figure, has become a very public presence appearing at times on the ground during the battles over Tikrit in Iraq, al Qusayr in Syria, and other places in both countries. For the Saudis, the nuclear deal and the greater Iranian regional involvement fed their perception that the Obama administration was not prepared to set any real limits on Iran—or act on its red lines. As a result, it has decided to draw its own lines. It has done so in Yemen and will probably find it difficult to extract itself. Its execution of Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, may have been done as much for domestic reasons, particularly given the number of Sunni Al Qaeda operatives that were being executed at the same time, but the Saudis knew the Iranians would react. They had, after all, threatened the Saudis with retribution if they put him to death.




The Saudi-Iranian competition probably won’t escalate into direct conflict but will make them see the existing proxy wars in strictly zero-sum terms. It will surely make it harder for either to be willing to back down in Syria, and is bound to complicate the administration’s hopes to use the Vienna diplomatic process to, in its words, “bring peace and security to Syria.” Even without the deepening Saudi-Iranian divide, the prospects for Vienna were not great and, in any case, depend far more on Vladimir Putin: he has the ability to force the Assad regime to respect a ceasefire, stop the barrel bombs, and permit the creation of humanitarian corridors for the delivery of food and medicine to the areas that the non-ISIL opposition controls. Only in such circumstances will there be any possibility of getting the Saudis, Turks and others who are supporting the opposition to persuade rebel forces to implement a ceasefire—the key to the Vienna process going anywhere and an essential element of the Obama strategy for defeating ISIL. Indeed, so long as there is no meaningful ceasefire between the Assad regime and the non-ISIL opposition in Syria, the Sunni states and tribes will not truly join the fight against ISIL. (If nothing else, they need to be able to show that the onslaught against Sunnis in Syria has stopped and they have succeeded in protecting them.)
While President Obama sees Syria as a quagmire, Putin, for now, does not. He continues to believe that achieving his ends in the war is more important than ensuring that the Vienna process works at this stage. Moreover, whereas the president believes Putin will not want to repeat the mistakes of Afghanistan and will see the need to extricate Russia from Syria at some point, Putin shows little sign of being inhibited by his reading of Russian involvement in Afghanistan—perhaps, knowing that he does not intend a similarly large ground presence and perhaps also believing that we will simply not raise the costs to him. Putin may well be driven by history, but it is his need to make up for the period of Russian weakness and U.S. primacy; he wants to demonstrate that Russian is a superpower and arbiter of events. He sees U.S. retrenchment, and the vacuum it has created, as an opportunity to reassert Russia’s prerogatives in the Middle East.

For President Obama, the Iraq experience continues to loom heavy in his calculus. Like presidents before him, he is being guided by his reading of an analogy. There is nothing wrong with that—provided the analogy is apt.
***
Presidents and their advisers use analogies to shape judgments, particularly when facing hard choices that involve interventions. For Lyndon Johnson, “Munich” was the analogy that disastrously guided him on Vietnam: if we did not stop the communists there—if we “appeased” them there—we would face a much greater and more dangerous threat later on. In the bipolar world of the Cold War, the Munich analogy was powerful and blinded Johnson and those around him to the realities that communism was not monolithic, that the Soviets and Chinese were rivals, and that the war in Vietnam was nationalistic. George H. W. Bush was also guided by this historical reference point when responding to Saddam Hussein in 1990. Indeed, in Oval office meetings, I heard him use the Munich analogy as we mobilized the world against the Iraqi leader after he seized Kuwait; for Bush 41, we could not let this aggression stand lest the law of the jungle replace his hopes for a new world order in the aftermath of the Cold War. President Bush may have used the analogy, but he also clearly defined a limited objective which was to reverse the aggression in Kuwait and not produce regime change in Iraq. The means employed matched the stated objective.

Analogies are going to be used, but they need to reflect real lessons. We have never had a serious discussion in this country about the lessons of the Iraq War. The critics of the war never acknowledged there was anything to discuss; indeed, they saw those who supported the war as fundamentally misguided. For their part, the proponents of the war have been so put on the defensive that they have been reluctant to acknowledge what they got wrong and how things might have been done differently.We should be tempered by the Iraqi debacle, but we should not overlearn the lessons of the war and misapply them. Not every conflict in the Middle East is a replay of Iraq—and our choices for responding to them should not be reduced to doing nothing or putting massive numbers of troops on the ground.
It may not be easy to find the Goldilocks solution where we don’t do too much as in Iraq or too little as in Syria, but until we have a serious debate about Iraq (and for that matter Syria) and consider what needs to be learned from these conflicts, we will thrash around using false analogies and making bad judgments. Having some guidelines for what we might be prepared to do militarily would help—e.g., being prepared to put some troops on the ground, including deploying spotters for directing air attacks, embedding forces with local partners perhaps to the battalion level, and using special operations elements for hit-and-run raids might allow us to manage our involvement while avoiding the slippery slope that the president has feared.

For sure, even these guidelines should be informed by our first asking hard questions in each case about our stakes and whether we should or need to act, and, if so, in what ways. It is obviously not just better but also necessary for local partners to assume a major responsibility in Middle East conflicts. President Obama is right about that. But we also need to know what will produce them—who might actually fight and where, what will motivate them, what would they need from us, do they believe we will stand by them, and do we or others have leverage on them. In each case, we should assess the range of military options we have. We should be mindful of what the Pentagon calls mission creep. We are more likely to avoid that if like George H. W. Bush, we define our objectives clearly from the start and make sure the means we are prepared to apply match them.

At a time when there is a general consensus on the need to fight ISIL but no consensus on how to do it, the Iraqi legacy and its lessons is the elephant in the room. Confronting it and having an open discussion about it—especially in an election year—may be a necessary part of producing a strategy that can work. It may also be essential for signaling those in the region and outside it that we will no longer be inhibited by its legacy.

how is it Obama's problem?

the USA can just wash it hands of the whole thing.

Why is it so called Liberals want to allow people to suffer, when we can actually do something about it? Sorry but are we humans or racist humans that only want to look out for those within an imaginary border that classifies many nations?

Right back later

Didge wrote:Why is it so called Liberals want to allow people to suffer, when we can actually do something about it? Sorry but are we humans or racist humans that only want to look out for those within an imaginary border that classifies many nations?

we are but beasts

Didge wrote:Why is it so called Liberals want to allow people to suffer, when we can actually do something about it?

What?  Go in with cabbage-patch dolls?  Give everybody a warm puppy?

No, what you have in mind is guns, innit Didge?  What is the basic purpose of a gun?  Blow shit up, right?  Where there's "injustice" you want to play hero, never mind that you kill more babies than do any good...it'll do your ego good!  You want to go in and add to the problem, don't you?  You're like my nephew; when there's mayhem in the streets, he wants to go out and join the fun.    

veya_victaous wrote:

Didge wrote:Why is it so called Liberals want to allow people to suffer, when we can actually do something about it? Sorry but are we humans or racist humans that only want to look out for those within an imaginary border that classifies many nations?

we are but beasts

lol some certainly are that is for sure, but again to me you are not a true liberal if you do not stand up for injustices and where we can do something we should do something about it

Didge wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:

Didge wrote:Why is it so called Liberals want to allow people to suffer, when we can actually do something about it? Sorry but are we humans or racist humans that only want to look out for those within an imaginary border that classifies many nations?

we are but beasts

lol some certainly are that is for sure, but again to me you are not a true liberal if you do not stand up for injustices and where we can do something we should do something about it

If we are talking Idealistically Yes I agree
but practically
it is too much of a shit fight over there for any real strategic victory to be achieved with an acceptable cost in human lives and resources.
To achieve anything would be a too great a cost. we need to step back and regroup.
and part of that would be dealing with and converting fundamentally religious people in our own society to the secular ideals.
for the time being we should practice at home, so when we do get an opportunity to spread secularism we can do it effectively.

Sorry I disagree veya,are forbears had no problem standing up to injustices and they were fundementally more a prejudice society, which really is putting our societies to shame. It is the advent of communication that has made societies lazy and armchair politicians, when we should be doing more to hepp and aid countries that we can help

Didge wrote:Sorry I disagree veya,are forbears had no problem standing up to injustices and they were fundementally more a prejudice society, which really is putting our societies to shame. It is the advent of communication that has made societies lazy and armchair politicians, when we should be doing more to hepp and aid countries that we can help

then you don't appreciate they did as much harm as good.
you don't fix things with bombs and guns

Our Forebears Fucked up many a people for no better reason then their own greed and ignorance. To suggest that we should emulate them is Exactly the reason i say we are not ready too. they spread it but at what cost, genocides of entire peoples, destruction of on scale the world have never seen previously. Cultures and histories lost , destroyed before we even had time to get to know them and understand them.

we must address our own failing first

veya_victaous wrote:

Didge wrote:Sorry I disagree veya,are forbears had no problem standing up to injustices and they were fundementally more a prejudice society, which really is putting our societies to shame. It is the advent of communication that has made societies lazy and armchair politicians, when we should be doing more to hepp and aid countries that we can help

then you don't appreciate they did as much harm as good.
you don't fix things with bombs and guns

Our Forebears Fucked up many a people for no better reason then their own greed and ignorance. To suggest that we should emulate them is Exactly the reason i say we are not ready too. they spread it but at what cost, genocides of entire peoples, destruction of on scale the world have never seen previously. Cultures and histories lost , destroyed before we even had time to get to know them and understand them.

we must address our own failing first

Actually we have fixed things with guns and bombs, how do you think the nazis were defeated.
If we had not used guns and bombs millions more would have died and I mean tens of millions. It was not just the concentration camps, the Nazi's had plans to starve millions in the east, so again you are very much in error as doing nothing would have meant near whole populations gone in this world, to the tune near a hundred million people would not be alive today. So I do not agree our forebreas always fucked up, as when it mattered they fundementally did the right thing and stopped two of the most evil nations we have had in history. Our failing is living in the past and not the present. We should amend things done wrong in the past but look to live for the fuiture

and whole populations DID die when British were perusing an empire the same thing the Nazi wanted to do !!!!

If you have to accept that when the UK says it thinks "people should..." everyone stops listening because of the UK's epic evil in the past... no one is going to listen to hypocrites.

AND No the Past has not been righted in the eyes of the world.
The UK just has to accept that other nations DO NOT view it as good they are not going to say ohh we should copy England. Or do what England tells them to do.

What England did to others in the Past has ensured that any peoples will be very circumspect of any suggestions by Britain today. 
Same with the USA in the Middle east, it is simply so mistrusted that it will never convert people and any failing will have people saying they have done it on purpose because they are really enemies.

We are not talking about the Empire which is you now changing tact Veya. You made the claim on guns and bombs and fundementally at times they are needed no matter what you say or defkect to. As I have ofetn berated how the British Empire was fundementally a thing of basic enslavement of many nations. So again you have gone off tangent to the points I made

ok please explain why you think
a people with No love or respect of the west will respond Positively to demands they Change to a less violent and more tolerant loving society while Our Supposed Loving and tolerant society drops bombs on them?

they are not Separate
the Syrian etc is not going to separate these things, they are going to call you a hypocrite and ignore you at best, at worst You have made them an Enemy for life that will never listen to reason and will have every right to be opposed to you.

when you say things like "we are not talking about....' and try and exclude the Bit that make you look bad everyone just ignores you and the UK does this constantly which is why is has no respect internationally.

So your point has no where to go as you cannot address the fact THEY DO NOT RESPECT YOUR OPINION quite the opposite they will be inclined to the polar opposite of your opinion because of your nations history.
SO that leave you making peace in the middle east through Annihilation.
Which then re-enforces the negatively toward the west and proves them right, that we are beasts no better than them and there is no good reason to listen to us because when it got difficult we resorted to the same level of barbarism as they do.

You can defeat a devil by becoming a devil, but to do so you will always be known as a devil too

This is not about a whole people Veya, but about first ISIS

For things to change in the Muslim world will need reformers and this will take time, of which i am not talking about, what is needed is touse military action to help 8 million people under oppression who are within the bounds of isis control. Again you are going off tangent

by now it is pretty apparent we made ISIS or at least have no intention of removing them.
we knocked over the regions leading secular power to give them territory.

and it is about a people as a whole. treating it like we can isolate and just deal with one group and that will not have repercussions among the others is part of what got us into this mess. and ISIS fighter don't come out of eggs they are from the People the fact ISIS is recruiting from the people shows how badly the west is perceived. indeed if the choice is ISIS or the West many in the middle east will be unsure which is the lesser evil.

the Wests Actions are being Judged by the people as a whole, we have failed the region too often we have interfered and expressed good intention only to go in steal what we can and give the rest to our puppet to hold for later use. we have backed too many terrible puppets for our opinions to be trusted by the people. 

we can arm some group like we have done  in the past but we will just end up with another Taliban or Saddam.

Like I said a complete Strategic victory is pretty much impossible in the current situation. engaging will not achieve our goals unless our goal is simply to kill them, but if we do that the region will remember for another generation that when the west has a problem with a group of Muslim it just comes in and kills them. So our kids will face the same battle again.

we need to step back, let the local forces duke it out. maybe offer some support to our favored groups. and be observant an opportunity will come but not in the current maddness

veya wrote:...but if we do that the region will remember for another generation that when the west has a problem with a group of Muslim it just comes in and kills them. So our kids will face the same battle again.

And we call that, The Crusades. Has anyone in the West ever caught on that we have been doing this for millennia? We go into their land, rape and kill their daughters and babies, and then call it the Lord's work.

The man, Jesus Christ, would be mortified.

to be fair they generally beat us until the west stole all that gold from South America to fund the European War machines they passed for 'cultures' back then

veya_victaous wrote:to be fair they generally beat us until the west stole all that gold from South America to fund the European War machines they passed for 'cultures' back then

Isn't it awesome that the only thing that made the Awesome Old European Empires awesome was that they were great at killing?

Not in Asia, of course. They had no diseased blankets to cull the herd ...

they tried that but Europe is part of the Asian Continent so it had the same diseases
next best thing..... Opium

veya_victaous wrote:by now it is pretty apparent we made ISIS or at least have no intention of removing them.
we knocked over the regions leading secular power to give them territory.

and it is about a people as a whole. treating it like we can isolate and just deal with one group and that will not have repercussions among the others is part of what got us into this mess. and ISIS fighter don't come out of eggs they are from the People the fact ISIS is recruiting from the people shows how badly the west is perceived. indeed if the choice is ISIS or the West many in the middle east will be unsure which is the lesser evil.

the Wests Actions are being Judged by the people as a whole, we have failed the region too often we have interfered and expressed good intention only to go in steal what we can and give the rest to our puppet to hold for later use. we have backed too many terrible puppets for our opinions to be trusted by the people. 

we can arm some group like we have done  in the past but we will just end up with another Taliban or Saddam.

Like I said a complete Strategic victory is pretty much impossible in the current situation. engaging will not achieve our goals unless our goal is simply to kill them, but if we do that the region will remember for another generation that when the west has a problem with a group of Muslim it just comes in and kills them. So our kids will face the same battle again.

we need to step back, let the local forces duke it out. maybe offer some support to our favored groups. and be observant an opportunity will come but not in the current maddness

Sorry this is again the worst argument possible where you say there will be represcussions, over us removing an evil that is butchering Muslims as well and I went into detail with Victor about this the other day. To say if we attack an evil group that is committing some of the most barbaric acts since the Nazis is going to make even more people join ISIS or create another extremist group is showing there is something intrinsically wrong with Islam. Why on earth would any Muslim if they are peace loving, then take up arms and cut off peoples heads rape girls etc due to the West helping to defeat ISIS. If the view is on civillian casulties, then this is a falsehood, because so far the civil war has caused 200,000 casultuies and we have not seen Muslims in the millions turn to armed ressistance or suicide bombings against ISIS or the assad regeme itself. This is why when people say it will be reprecussions is completel nonsense as why has these reprecussions not happened to either ISIS or Assad in any significant numbers?

The reason again because of Islam itself, where it plays off a narantive of a brotherhood and sisterhood. It is an appalling and systematic problem if the then Muslims believe they then have to cut off the heads of journalists, burn people alive and enslave and rape girls if once before they were peaceful Muslims. The telling part of this is you see nothing of the same with the pesecution to the Christians, the Druze, the Yazidi, and even with the Kurds, it is restricted to centuries old roblems trying to obtain independence. Hence we need to be talking about why some Muslims are continuing to be lured to commit some of the most horrific acts just if some western nations aid in destroying a group that has butchered thousands. Clearly naratives around Islam itself is problematic and this is what people are failimng to grasp. A religious person in so many faiths does not day in day out see countless Muslims, Christian, Druze, Yazidi, Kurdish civillians die and do nothing but only if there is some sadly collaterol damage by western powers, then decide to forgo any reason and join thoe who commit barbaric acts. Clearly it is they then falling for a narantive of hate around the west where a wrongful view is played out claiming the west is trying to destroy Islam. Think about this for one second, where a group is classing western intervention of far worse and a greater evil  than ISIS itself, to again drive them to forgo any sanity and think it ok to butcher and rape people.

Its time Muslims started to talk about this problem because it is a problem the Muslim world is failing to address, but again the view that guns and bombs do not solve anything is far removed from reality in a world we live in that still has desposts and genocidal maniacs. At present the greatest problem is that within Islam itself and it is many people within Islam fueling this problem whether knowingly or inadvertantly and wht we do not need is appeasement to this but waking up and actually understanding there is a problem in the Muslim world today

Ben_Reilly wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:to be fair they generally beat us until the west stole all that gold from South America to fund the European War machines they passed for 'cultures' back then

Isn't it awesome that the only thing that made the Awesome Old European Empires awesome was that they were great at killing?

Not in Asia, of course. They had no diseased blankets to cull the herd ...

Dear me and it is this kind of regressive talk so unbalanced that is why again you fail to see why people get so fed up with such inanae drivel/ All Empires are built on war and killing, but to go off just European ignoring the fact your own country was built on killing or the fact the Ottoman Empire was buillt on killing and spreading by the sword is why people get so utterly fed up with the regressive narative of the left. I mean have you never heard of Ghengis Khan, who in his life time made the genocide of people next to the British Empire look small fry in comparrison? You see throughout history many Empires have been built on killing and destruction and there is little good that did come from the European Empires but that of helping those nations themselves, but it is poor immature unblanced comments like above that only seek to look at and blame Europeans. I seriously dispair at the views some of you lefties have, you never look at the world as a whole but anything you can promote your regressives views of blame onto. You never offer up any real solutiions other than a selfish shut up shop and I am only going to help myself jack attuitide.

and who drew the lines?
the WEST
we are part of the problem and it is such a tangled mess now that it cannot be untangled.

And we can help the good ones of any peoples by allowing them to resettle in the west and give them the same rights and protection we posses.

And which Muslim are talking about it? primarily those resettled successfully into western nations. so taking into account a longer time scale (since this has been going for a millennia) we can win the 'war' for secularism (and logic and reason) through persistent conversion by the fact that secularism does offer a better life.


I do think backing the kurd's is a good idea and we should be doing that rather than direct involvement, plus the iraq gov't we support, even Assad if necessary.

I was all for boots on the grounds 6-12 months ago, but the time when a strategic deployment could have nipped it in the bud has past, it is already in full bloom. now the best option is to support others in what has become a dual nation civil war.
as ISIS is the enemy of all the other players if we don't recruit for them by giving them material to use for propaganda they are very unlikely to win, really if we give primary backing to the kurds they will end up with a far territory and they seem keen for a secular nation that we could give our support to (of course that raises the Turkey issue) of course if we leave Assad and he is backed by the Russian he will probably be the other left standing in the region.
so we could up with a slight improvement depending on if the kurds are better than Saddam

Eh, I seriously have no idea what you are even talking about?
What lines drawn by the west Veya?

We are talking about a fundemental problem that sees little Muslims do anything about hundreds of thousands die in a civil war and butchered uder Assad and ISIS and yet the thought of the West bombing ISIS the symbol of pure evil, then makes a Muslim think they should join this group, rape girls, behead journalists, enslave women, throw gays off roof tops and burn people. Did you seriously not grasp this point in how why is it one mass appalling attrociitiy in a war has no mass calling or narative to tackle this henious crimes but bombings that has minimal collateral civillian casulties is enough to make some believe the west is at war with Islam. Which is only fueled by many nartaives in the Muslim world. Can you not see how fundementally wrong that is?

Seriously?

What needs to happen is a massive shake up in the Middle east by Muslims themselves because fundementally they are failing to tackle the narative of hate, which as seen sees the west far more evil than a group like ISIS. This is what all people and all Muslims need to be talking about that peace loving Muslims can then thinks its acceptable to butcher and rape peoploe based not off hundreds of thousands dying at the hands of Muslim dictators or Muslim extremists but buy the needed intervenetion of the Western powers.

So to say we are part of the problem is a massive falsehood and it is this kind of narative that feeds into the already problematic Muslim naratives of claiming the west is out to destroy Islam. The west made errors with Iraq, not Afghanistan, but it shows again how Muslims are failig to stand up to Muslim extremist itself. All we get is the usual, not in the namke of Islam, but no massive drive of Muslims themselves collectively arming and fighting against this extremism and again the problem lies within Islam itself. As they do not seperate the extremism from Islam but fundementally view extremist Muslims as still Muslims. Hence no matter what people claim as you are doing it is fundementally false. People need to wake up to this problem and stat being openly honest that there is a major issue

after ww1 when the ottoman empire fell
we drew Turkey Iran Iraq and Syria's modern borders and we left out the Kurds ( i believe because then territory would split evenly between UK and France)
been problems ever since because the kurds are still fighting for independence and the have the west recognize their lines.
thus the only leaders that can hold the nations the west drew are violent strongmen

and we are out to destroy fundamentalist Islam
that is sort of the end goal of secularism to end all fundamentalist religion
I stand up for those ideals all the time and indeed some of the best promoters are our western secular Muslim

veya_victaous wrote:after ww1 when the ottoman empire fell
we drew Turkey Iran Iraq and Syria's modern borders and we left out the Kurds ( i believe because then territory would split evenly between UK and France)
been problems ever since because the kurds are still fighting for independence and the have the west recognize their lines.
thus the only leaders that can hold the nations the west drew are violent strongmen

and we are out to destroy fundamentalist Islam  
that is sort of the end goal of secularism to end all fundamentalist religion
I stand up for those ideals all the time and indeed some of the best promoters are our western secular Muslim

Oh behave Veya, the Ottoman Empire lost a conflict, to then go off an event 100 years ago, shows even more of an issue with Muslims, when they never had an issue with kingdoms being created for them and some Arabs benefitting with this. Yes Eurppean powers carved up for themselves more land, but that was then, this is now.all wrong but I do not see any narative being played off this as to blame. Extremist islam is fundementally linked to Islam, and this is what the real issue is and needs to be dealt with but at every turn you have Muslims trying to silence this as if it islamophobia, which its not and this is one of the major problems here and even more when some on the left aid in this. Islam needs to be serparated from islamism and until it does this problem is going to only grow not diminish

none did except the kurd's and it is not a Muslim narrative it is my opinion of the the actual root cause of the issues in the region.

the Kurds are a strong proud people and they have not accepted the event from 100 years ago and thus they want their nation.
which is why those nations that have kurds end up with despots because they have rebels in the kurds.

as it turns out we probably prefer the kurds to many others so... sort of fucked up there didn't we
this ISIS stuff will let them gain a territory and we wont have to take it off someone else, they will get it themselves from ISIS and iraq gov't (they are out puppets anyway).
turkey being our ally is a bit of an issue... but we might not mind them being a thorn in Iran's side.

So long term this could solve an 100 year old issue... if we are lucky