The Middle East Problems

The jury is still out on whether or not Iraq and Afghanistan can be stable nation-states. President Kennedy said that if the President of South Vietnam failed to earn the support of the people, we would lose. The same is true in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East.

 

The Brits created these countries when the Ottoman Empire crashed and set these borders with no regard for religious differences. To avoid conflict between the Shia and Sunni populations the West put in Tyrants to make these groups behave and that didn’t work out so well.

 

Iraq contains 3 separate groups including Kurds, Sunni and Shia and might be better off if it breaks into 3 separate countries. The Shia will side with Iran and the Kurds and Sunni might side with the US. 

 

Afghanistan has traditionally been tribal and the Taliban continues to fight the central government. If we left the Afghans on their own, the Taliban would reestablish their sovereignty by tribe and might abolish the central government. Sunnis represent 80% of Afghans, so you would think that Afghanistan could side with the US. But many Taliban tribes could side with the Shia and Iran, because they have been fighting the US. There is a good plan for economic development by the Afghan government, but they will need to remove the rogue Taliban leaders to implement it.

 

All of this makes US taxpayers wonder why we continue to support the central governments in these two countries. Our excuse is that we are at war with the Islamic Terrorists in these countries and have chosen to attack them over there.

 

But we didn’t go after the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 through Interpol or CIA operatives, we sent armies over to do this and then paid our tax dollars to rebuild what we destroyed. 

 

We have been attempting to “influence” all foreign countries to keep them from joining those countries the Deep State considers our current crop of enemies, like Iran, North Korea and Russia. I can’t see how Iraq and Afghanistan could be of any real help to our current “enemies”, because they have their own problems.

 

Our excuse for spending tax dollars to “influence” other countries is that we feel sorry for the citizens of war-torn and abusive conditions.  This is not sustainable. We need to limit our influence to encouraging foreign governments to serve their own citizens above all others, to identify families as the basic economic unit and to allow them to be self-supporting. All governments should focus on providing clean water, sanitation and self-sufficiency as their first priorities. .

 

If we agree that the citizens of a country are responsible for the peace and prosperity of their country, we would not intervene.  We would let them elect who they like and fail and learn from that failure. The case in point is Venezuela.

 

We simultaneously have refused to secure our own borders and have immigrated Muslims into the US in record numbers and after 9/11, these immigrants have conducted most of the attacks we have suffered on US soil. We actually need to stop this immigration and clean up our mess. Instead, we talk about stopping the Islamic terror promotion we allow on our own internet access. We may need to repeal the Civil Rights Act to avoid breaking our own laws in order to end US terror attacks.

 

I like Trump’s approach to the Middle East and the terrorism it has enabled.  He put them in charge of solving this problem and now the Saudi Crown Prince is implementing reforms to replace Islamic Extremism with economic development.

 

When countries fail to succeed in helping their citizens improve their lives, we can criticize.  When countries invade each other, we can form a coalition of neighbors and stop it. We can start with economic sanctions, but may need to use military force. Before we do that, we need to pre-plan where these refugees will go and who will pay for it. Seizing the guilty tyrant’s bank accounts is a good start. 

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader