It was no accident. He was targeted and I had heard of Suleimani before. Anyone who has been reading about the Middle East for the last 18 years has. Obama allied himself with Suleimani and he's been a top terrorist organizer for awhile. Look at it this way, Jamie, one thing I know you can not dispute is that Iran has been the world's top sponsor of terror for a very long while and that we have been at war with Iran since 1979. We used to just sit back and let Iran wage their terror war through their proxies, which include the Mahdi army in Iraq, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the opposition tribes in Syria and Libya, and on and on. But after a series of provocations, including killing Americans, shooting down a drone (after which Trump told his military chiefs NOT to fire back on Iran), and then culminating in an attack on our embassy, Trump took the gloves off and told Iran you can no longer hide behind your proxies and continue to provoke us with impunity. The killing of Suleimani was about as blunt a warning as these things get. You don't like it. I think it was a brilliant strategic move. Those are both opinions. The bottom line is that Trump was fully within his Executive powers to do what he did.
Now let's talk about other things on which we might agree. First, I applaud your grammar and use of full sentences. Talking to Sylvester is like talking to someone in the first grade. So at least you and I can communicate like adults. :)
Here's what I think I agree with you on. I want us out of the Middle East. The sooner the better. We're trapped in this never ending cycle of violence of blood for blood and it will never end. The US kept saying we can't leave, because it will look like a loss. That's why Obama made no progress to leave. It's why they covered up the failure to win in Afghanistan. The failure to win was only if we define "winning" as nation building. I don't believe nation building in the Middle East will EVER work, because the borders were artificially defined by Europeans from WW2. The tribes there have been at war for thousands of years and they have allegiances to their tribes, not to European borders. So my view has been for a long time, we don't need their oil. Let's leave. Let them go back to fighting each other and let's get out of the middle. We have a victory from which to say we "won", and then Trump can pull out. We can leave Air Force and Navy assets, as well as special forces located there to perform punitive operations, but I think we need to declare a new strategy there to say, we are no longer nation building, but instead, we are leaving and we will only come back if the US is attacked, and if w are attacked, we'll come back, destroy the state sponsoring country, and then immediately leave again. Punitive and defensive. No more nation building. What do you think? |
