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The Suicidal Middle East

One foreign policy problem the US faces comes from the concept, “Only we can fix it.”

We messed up Middle East stability by toppling Saddam Hussein, a tyrant of the first order. Yet he understood his turf.  The USA invasion opened the door to Iran. Enter Iran, not exactly a softball team.  Now we’re trying hard to close that door. And failing.

In another failing of the US is it always underestimates just how much pain, suffering, and starvation despots will accept on behalf of their people. Under current sanctions, every day Iranians are in dire straits.  Venezuelan citizens have access to even less without concern by their government. North Koreans endure impoverished lives for the glory of the controlling regime. Russians suffer calmly as only they can.

The latest Middle East attempt from the US is to unleash Turkey, whose boss, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is brimming for big power. Trump has now given him the chance. So, Erdoğan, accustomed to only small-time opposition, goes to school. How many lives will be lost to his learn-on-the-job classes? Happiy, he already completed his first class, Brutality, online. Upcoming are classes in Treachery and Slaughter. A most popular elective is “Starving Your Enemy.”

 We wrestle with the morality of deserting the Kurds, but didn’t we leave the huge country of Iraq to its corrupt understructure? Indeed, corruption is the perma-structure of Iraq. Iran sees Yemen as a supported murderous nuisance to the South.  Hezbollah and Hamas are vassals of Iranian terror further North.  

Others in the US want us to dump Israel totally. More want to dump Saudi Arabia over a single (i.e. just one) death, journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trivial! Tentative, big boom or big bust policies have condemned thousands of oppositional forces and their families to death in Syria.

The Middle East is not unlike an impossible maze from which there may be no exit. Turn this way or that, and there is yet another conflict.  Maybe Trump is aware and just wants out. Full stop! But to the contrary, there is an unlikely and uncommon bi-partisan agreement to disagree (with Trump).

The US always wants to take the moral high ground but stumbles badly in regions it does not understand.  Europe also takes the moral high ground by doing nothing. They argue of course that doing nothing is better than doing something. So we have nothing vs. something in this bizarre philosophical hierarchy.  China forgets morality altogether in the interests of business. Russia, mostly stupid in business, is still pretending it is the Soviet Union of old - just killing and moving in. Go Vlad.

In this part of the world, the overwhelming losers are the people. If only the oil would dry up,  then everybody would go home.

I hate to say it, but maybe there will be no resolution until someone sets off the big one. But who gets it?
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