What should be our Middle East policy going forward?

Simply put, what do you think our Middle East policy should be going forward?

Jredbaron96 said:

Simply put, what do you think our Middle East policy should be going forward?

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Proposed policy: Get and stay the **** out. Period.

Support our allies.

Render any assistance requested by allied/friendly countries to crush ISIS.

We should do whatever is best for the United States of America - regardless.

Pull out and let them sort things out for themselves.

Then deal with the result.

My position is, and has always been, we are NOT the "World's Policeman."

We will honor alliances and defend our allies from foreign aggression, but otherwise let them handle their own internal and external affairs.

Risky Thicket said:

Proposed policy: Get and stay the **** out. Period.

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Yup, everytime we mess with things out there it just makes it all worse. Time to cut our losses and ditch everybody. Let them sort their own problems out.

PoS said:

Yup, everytime we mess with things out there it just makes it all worse. Time to cut our losses and ditch everybody. Let them sort their own problems out.

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History doesn't lie. If profits weren't good for the militarial indusrial complex we wouldn't be there.

We should pull out of Afghanistan. We aren't really helping anyone there as both the Taliban and their challengers are evil and messed up. I understand the position of "we should keep fighting the Taliban because they will come after us if we don't" but frankly I doubt they have the resources to leave Afghanistan and terrorize us. It's not our problem if they want to be oppressive in Afghanistan. That said, Isis is a different story. We should absolutely make our #1 task fighting Isis and keep a major military presence in Syria. I'm also for declaring war against Isis to give the President more power to take military action against Isis.

Jredbaron96 said:

Simply put, what do you think our Middle East policy should be going forward?

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1. Afghanistan is tricky. I like the idea of putting greater pressure on Pakistan to cease their backing of the Taliban, but this is something greater minds than my own have failed to deal with for the past 16 years. I think that counterterrorism against al-Qaeda and counterinsurgency against the Taliban are related but distinct, so if Trump's mission in Afghanistan is geared towards protecting the Kabul government from collapse and destroying terrorist cells instead of waging a Vietnam-esque campaign against the Taliban, I give my halfhearted approval. Ideally, the COIN itself there would be internationalized in order to prevent this, since it is still a worthy and arguably necessary mission to end the Taliban's insurgency, but this may be a pipe dream right now.

also, Afghanistan's not the Middle East reeeeeee

2. End our support for Syrian rebel groups - whatever might be said about the remaining moderates, the opposition itself is dominated by al-Qaeda - but continue to back the Kurds/SDF to maintain influence in order to prevent a total regime/Iranian victory.

3. Obviously, help the Iraqis crush the Islamic State. I have a bad feeling about what the upcoming referendum on Kurdish independence might mean for regional stability, and I feel we should withdraw our support for Barzani if he continues to push for an independent Kurdistan.

Our broader Middle Eastern strategy should be to defeat Salafi terrorist groups and build a detente with Iran. In exchange for the US and Gulf ending support for the Syrian opposition, Iran could cease to support the Houthis in Yemen, which would along with Iraq become a neutral state. It would be great if we can get them to end or reduce their support for Hezbollah as well, but that seems less realistic. I'm personally very worried about what might happen after the inevitable Syrian government victory between Israel and Hezbollah: the latter is gearing up for conflict, and the former has stated they do not plan to distinguish between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government. A total collapse of the Lebanese state as a result of a new conflict with Israel - one where Israel would be much less concerned about civilian casualties than it was in 2006 - would be very, very bad for American interests and for global security, and we should do what we can to defuse this.

None of the above. We've already made such a complete mess of the Middle East, there really are no solutions, especially since we're unwilling to even address what the problem there is. Even with Trump in office, we still can't place the blame where it really is: Islam. Until we can do that, until we can stop worrying if we're going to piss people off, then nothing we do will matter.