Meanwhile, in the real world, this is what President Trump said yesterday regarding foreign policy:
“Over the last five days you have seen that a ceasefire that we established along Syria’s border has held, and it’s held very well, beyond most expectations,” said Trump. “Early this morning the government of Turkey informed my administration that they would be stopping combat and their offensive in Syria and making the ceasefire permanent, and it will indeed be permanent.”
“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else. No other nation. Very simple,” said Trump. “Turkey, Syria, and all forms of the Kurds have been fighting for centuries. We have done them a great service, and we’ve done a great job for all of them. And now we’re getting out. We were supposed to be there for 30 days. That was almost ten years ago.”
Absolutely right. Yet again.
The purpose of the federal government is to protect rights — the rights of the CITIZENS of the country the government serves.
It is NOT the purpose of the federal government to protect people in other nations.
In the case of the Middle East, we could not do so if we decided it was our obligation. These wars are endless and not solvable. For the most part, the people involved are hopelessly irrational and their governments are nothing more than crude gangs who don’t wish to be civilized, and are deliberately ignorant about the rights of man. Israel is a notable exception, and for that very reason Israel is hated by the uncivilized mentalities who undoubtedly envy them.
If our troops are in the Middle East, it’s for one reason only: Because of oil. Yes, oil. We need oil to survive, despite what advocates of the “Green New Deal” — all of whom depend on fossil fuels for survival — claim. Without oil, 95 percent of us would perish almost instantly. The snowflakes who advocate for environmentalism would be the first to go.
Thanks in part to President Trump’s pro-drilling policies, and thanks in part to innovations in the oil industry like fracking, the U.S. no longer depends on foreign oil nearly as much as it once did. I can remember the 1970s, when any crisis in the Middle East (along with stupid economic policies at home, such as price controls on gas) could trigger gas lines in the blink of an eye. We’re far less vulnerable to that today.
Moral outrage for President Trump’s position on Syria comes from both left and right. The leftists — who as recently as 5 or 10 years ago never met a military action they DID like — now suddenly see it as immoral for the United States not to be the world’s military policeman in the Middle East. The Bush-like conservatives make a similar, more hapless argument. Each makes the same basic error: A faulty assumption the United States government exists to serve the interests of other nations who, as President Trump points out, have been fighting for centuries.
No. Our government does not exist for the sake of the Kurds, the Syrians, nor of anyone else. Let them form governments based on individual rights, and rest assured we will become best of friends, at least if we remain a free nation.
You can argue about whether it rationally serves American interests to be in the Middle East the extent that we are. But your argument has to be based on fact — not rationalization. You can rationalize, “It’s in America’s interest” all you want, but you have to prove it. Otherwise, you end up with an endless series of wars with no defined endpoint. Just nation-building for its own sake. That’s what corroding, declining empires do — not free countries.
For years, neither the Bush nor Obama administrations felt compelled to prove it. They just kept doing it. Often with incredibly stupid rules of military engagement (Obama worse than Bush) where American soldiers were, on the one hand, supposed to be engaged in life-or-death warfare but, on the other hand, not allowed to harm any civilians nor offend any Middle Eastern cultural custom in any way.
Now with those rules of engagement, what’s the justification for war in the first place? The North didn’t do it in the Civil War, and the Allies did not do it when fighting the Nazis and Japanese in World War II. Because defeat, in those wars, was simply not an option.
If defeat IS an option in Syria and elsewhere, then why are we there?
Bravo to President Trump for stating the obvious and, for the first time, showing that America is willing to act on it.
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