Cant stop fucking with Syria

[Smitty-48]

It's really not that complex nor is it particularly nefarious, it's the Zombie Carter Doctrine from 1980, Cold War mission creep, which has simply never been rescinded, due to institutional inertia within institutions for which the Cold War was the greatest gift to ever.

The Cold War went away suddenly; oh noes. . . but wait, nobody says we actually have to stop what we're doing, just keep going until somebody actually calls a halt to it, FTW.

[Smitty-48]

Same thing on the Russian side by the way, Soviet Union goes away suddenly; oh noes. . . but wait, we don't actually need the World Socialist Revolution to invoke the American Eagle as the enemy at the gates, we still have a significant chunk of the Soviet war machine at our disposal, and we're all still at 15 minutes notice to launch on warning hair trigger alert, so just carry on, business as usual, FTW.

[ssu]

Cold war mission creep is an apt way to put it.

Add in a lot of hubris that especially you got with Operation Desert Shield/Storm, where Russia gave the US an OK, the UN gave the OK and a multitude of Muslim states joined the coalition alongside the ordinary allies. That remarkable event created the environment where neocons came into the picture and assumed now they could do what they want. At least during the Cold War the American politicians had to take into account what would be the response of the Soviet Union. When that was gone, there wasn't much thought given to launching some Cruise missiles into some country for some reason. It was just business as usual.

What is important to notice is that when Obama and the democrats came into power, basically they didn't at all question this and took basically the neocon strategy as the way things are done. The similarities of the Bush administration and the Obama administration are obvious, and that they haven't been much talked about is a sign of the hypocrisy of the left-leaning pro-DNC media.

Yet as there is no Soviet Union, then also the countries that are allies to the US are not in line as before and can have their totally independent course of actions. This can be seen from the actions of Turkey and especially the Saudi-Qatari dispute.

[Smitty-48]

The Gulf War was the Carter Doctrine, Central Command had been created to replace the Rapid Deployment Force, and the purpose of RDF/CENTCOM was to block a Soviet move through the Caucasus to seize the oil fields in the Gulf.

What happened was, the Army and the Air Force saw the writing on the wall, in that the Warsaw Pact was collapsing and peace was breaking out on the Trace, and so the NATO CENTAG mission would be going away in the not too distant future.

Thus, the invasion of Kuwait was vastly over hyped, in order to justify the American CENTAG component piling into CENTCOM in the Gulf, in order to replace the mission which was going away fast on the Inner German Border.

The Soviet threat was melting away before their eyes, and the Army in particular had to come up with a replacement, and fast, so they latched on to Middle Eastern Rogue states as their proxy for the Red Menace, and they swapped the Inner German Border with the Arabian Peninsula.

Now of course the American public was sold the myth that they were going there for the oil, but that's nonsense, the oil has to come market whether the Emir of Kuwait brings it or Saddam Hussein brings it, there was no threat to the oil, the threat was; the Peace Dividend, the Cold War was ending and the Pentagon needed to find something to fill that void to stave off major downsizing.

There was no actual threat of the Iraqis invading and occupying Saudi Arabia, that was all ginned up bullshit, but Saudi Arabia provided the best available replacement for West Germany at that moment, the Inner Arab Border was the New Trace.

And of course it was an easy win for the Americans, because they sent the force which was supposed to fight the Soviets, to pummel a third rate opponent like the Iraqis. Then they could have their ticker tape victory parade that they were denied in Vietnam and declare Post Vietnam Syndrome to be over.

Epilogue; The only problem was, they didn't really win much to crow about, contrary to the narrative of a "swift and decisive left hook", the Pentagon was actually overcautious, fearful of body bags coming home and bad news for the media to report, they rather moved very slowly and not that far in the end, Post Vietnam Syndrome had not been licked, they were still spooked by it, so the Republican Guard escaped, Saddam survived, and the Iraqis even started to claim it was a win for them because they had stood up to the Americans and lived to tell the tale, thus, after the party, there was a hangover, didn't feel like much of a victory after all, so the Americans stayed, and kept searching for something which felt more substantial. Enter 2003. . .

[de officiis]

Cold war mission creep is an apt way to put it.

Add in a lot of hubris that especially you got with Operation Desert Shield/Storm, where Russia gave the US an OK, the UN gave the OK and a multitude of Muslim states joined the coalition alongside the ordinary allies. That remarkable event created the environment where neocons came into the picture and assumed now they could do what they want. At least during the Cold War the American politicians had to take into account what would be the response of the Soviet Union. When that was gone, there wasn't much thought given to launching some Cruise missiles into some country for some reason. It was just business as usual.

What is important to notice is that when Obama and the democrats came into power, basically they didn't at all question this and took basically the neocon strategy as the way things are done. The similarities of the Bush administration and the Obama administration are obvious, and that they haven't been much talked about is a sign of the hypocrisy of the left-leaning pro-DNC media.

Yet as there is no Soviet Union, then also the countries that are allies to the US are not in line as before and can have their totally independent course of actions. This can be seen from the actions of Turkey and especially the Saudi-Qatari dispute.

What do you think Turkey's future relationship with NATO will be?