Who’s on First

Behind the curtain, the long list of those who support the USA against ISIS has no substance. Why? This is a religious war and therein lies the problem. The Muslin community is throughout Europe and the great fear is their citizens run to join ISIS and then return creating a sort of home-grown terrorists organization. Nobody wants to send troops on the ground and meanwhile the only one with a clear strategic position is Putin who brilliantly realizes he needs to keep his hand in the pot supporting Syria.

The whole place is just confusing. The USA supported Iraq in its fight against Iran, then Cheney Pushed Iraq War For Halliburton Profit  under the pretense we needed to save the people bringing them democracy, which we ourselves do not have in reality. Of course this was a Three-Stooges affair where one slaps the other and he slaps the third one. We claimed we needed to drive out terrorists from Iraq who were not actually there until we invaded to drive them out attracting them from other regions. Cheney has pissed off so many people and the civilian casualties only inspire hatred. Just ask yourself if someone invaded your country and killed your family, wouldn’t you hate them? Many in China and Korea still hate the Japanese. Their defeat does not eradicate that human feeling. Americans do not harbor such widespread dislike of Germans or Japanese because neither invaded the USA. There is a huge difference when there is an invasion. War has tremendous unintended consequences.

The Middle East political landscape is like Abbott and Costello’ classic routine Who’s on First – just confusing. Today, ISIS is extreme Sunni so Iran being Shite supports Iraq against ISIS; but Iran is our enemy? So we now have an enemy supporting our friend who is against another enemy ISIS! OK, we really want Iran to lose, but somehow not against ISIS. Then there is Assad in Syria another enemy who we want to lose so we can help Saudi Arabia get a pipeline through Syria to compete with Putin, another enemy, but Assad is against ISIS, who was originally funded by USA and Saudi Arabia, fighting yet another enemy.

We are just scratching the surface here. Exactly who is our enemy and who is our friend varies so we clearly want our enemies to lose, but not against other enemies we do not fully understand. That is why we mess with Russia trying to get them to overthrow Putin where we have converted Putin into the symbol of the state of Russia and only increased his support domestically. We do not talk to Russia or Putin because the policy makers in Washington are confused still trying to figure out who is an enemy or a friend and what happens when two enemies fight and how we can explain to the American people why we need to kick somebody’s ass as soon as we can figure out who’s on first.

Reprinted from Armstrong Economics.