There Ain't No Good Guys

 --Middle East Countries, 
Arend Van Dam

 So let's leave it alone 'cause we can't see eye to eye.
There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy,
There's only you and me and we just disagree 
--There Ain't No Good Guys, 
Dave Mason 

Isolation is much less dangerous than the dangers
of being dragged into wars that don't concern us
--Lord Salisbury

 --How old are you? 
--Twelve... more or less
 --Let the Right One In (2008)
______________________

The first thing a young military leader learns is that the choices in most situations do not follow a simple algorithm to a good outcome. This is especially true when the problems are multi-layered and entrenched, often in place long before you arrived on station. Like the hostilities in Iraq, for example, which are not "twelve (years old) ... more or less," but more like 600 years old.

The choices are rarely between good and bad, but rather, bad and worse. Leadership instruction omits this critical point.

Witness Iraq, Syria and the muddle that is United States foreign policy in Asia and the Middle East, or what passes for policy. One principle of leadership says great leaders outstrip the power curve and anticipate, so as to mitigate the negatives presented by a scenario.

Looking ahead, the U.S. in June 2014 has two choices:

1) It can bomb, reinforce and support the al Maliki Shia government, or

2) It can abstain from action, letting the situation develop locally.

If we choose #1, we are admitting the failure of nation-building, Counterinsurgency theory (COIN) and the entire Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) Why, even COIN poster boy Gen. David Petraeus is saying, don't go back into that briar patch. “This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight.” No, no.

Our policy is then revealed to be the sham it is in thought, spirit and action.

However, if we choose #2, we are admitting the intellectual deficiency from which the PWOT© emerged. This choice verifies that al Qaeda, et, al -- include the Taliban -- never were a major threat to the U.S. homeland as the nation had been led to believe; if it were, we would have chosen #1 instead.

It is futile to say the unspooling situation is the result of our elective invasions, erroneous assumptions and illogical command choices following the attacks of 9-11-01. Whatever choice the U.S. makes now is "bad" or "worse"; there are no good choices.

Do nothing, and the region is destabilized with ethnic combat the outcome. National entities will breakdown as the nations revert to being tribes with flags. The Iraq the U.S. built was not a nation-state, but merely a pale facsimile. The effort is like suturing a ruptured organ too tattered to hold, and reinforcing it will be another hoax committed upon the American taxpayer.

Iraq is neither a U.S. friend nor an ally, because there IS no Iraq -- just a bunch of radicalized tribes. If we bomb in support of al Maliki's Iraq, then we are killing the same people that we have been supporting in Syria. Despite this obvious fact, we are fed the lie that U.S. policy supports "moderate" fighters there.

Uh, "moderates" don't usually carry out armed activities. In fact, all the fighters in Syria are extremists in thought and action. There are no "good guys" here, and it is a pathetic charade to say otherwise. If neither the Syrian opposition nor the Iraqi's are our friends, why support either?

Another deception being perpetrated by the press is that al Qaeda now has an army in Iraq which poses an existential threat to Europe and the U.S. Strangely, some Americans believe the lie, but the Europeans do not fall for this canard.

The U.S. wants its cake and to eat it, too. It wants to call Saudi's "friends", as well as the Iraqi's which we have created. But it is impossible to befriend two countries that are irreconcilable foes. The U.S. maintains the same fiction with India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  We pretend that these countries are our friends and allies, when in reality they do not share any of our strategic interests.

Ranger believes that the U.S. has been outplayed and out-classed by the Arab leaders like those of Saudi Arabia. We have been flanked, and they are rolling our lines. The man in the Arab street is not pro-American, nor will he be.

As we used to say, will the last man out please bring the flag home and turn out the lights. There is only one good we can see: the World's Largest Embassy, costing over a $ Billion and bigger than The Vatican, will make a great hotel for Iranian tourists visiting the sacred Shia sites in Iraq.