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[Playergamer]

lolburdenoftruth

#provemewrong#spaceteapot

[Drakale]

Okay, meme harder
Seriously, the idea that the US, or any country, goes out there out of humanitarian or selfless interests is laughable.

[Frumple]

It does not follow that the US is the cause (or even a cause) of the mess every single time.

Of course it doesn't! It does, however, follow that the results of US intervention beyond the most passive of involvement (and sometimes even with that little) in the area has been pretty unilaterally screwups that lead to more screwups just about every time we've been there since the bloody cold war. US poking our nose or putting feet on the ground in that region has nearly without fail made things worse for something like the last half century or more. Given the sheer consistency of that, it's incredibly likely that another attempt would have the same bloody effect.

Also, no, I don't assume there's some master plan, I assume (based on heaping mountains of evidence and even more heaping mountains of corpses) that going over there leads to the situation getting worse for the area either immediately or fairly soon thereafter, and that going over there with the intent of trying to fix things isn't, just like it pretty unilaterally hasn't even incrementally fixed things in the past. Our track record in the middle east is poor to the point you can just about assume malicious intent (or incompetence indiscernible from malice) if we're trying anything substantial.

[Zangi]

You seem to assume that there is some master plan, and that this plan failed leading the the actual clusterfuck. But there are no plans, only fleeting interest pursued by governments and individuals for short term gains. Sometimes it's for projecting power, sometimes it's to feed the military industrial complex, sometimes it's for economic reasons. The aim was never to help anyone, and if it does help it would be because it aligned with some ulterior motives that are beneficial for someone.

U so edgy

Humans like their short term benefits and golden parachutes though.

You have to admit, there are many different interests screwing around in the middle east. 
Turks and Kurds, Jews and everyone -egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran(heck, they've got another proxy war brewing up in Yemen), US interest in removing governments they don't like/non-cooperative gov'ts(oh right, expanding US influence), Russian interest in giving a middle finger to the US and expanding their influence/keeping allies/deflecting attention from Crimea, and the classical Shia v Sunni.

There is the good reason and there is the real reason for foreign governments to act.  Sure individuals within said governments may have good intentions, but there are others within said government who have even 'better' intentions for their own 'side'.

[Egan_BW]

Anyway, to address your original point, it sounded to me that you were saying that all governmental bodies are rational actors and incapable of compassion. (Sorry if I'm wrong. )

While it's true that we are in pursuit of profit it would also be wrong to say there's no one trying to help.

[Drakale]

I would argue that no one in actual power is actually trying to help. They may do thing that help tangentially, but it isn't the goal.

[penguinofhonor]

I get that ISIS sweeping across Iraq while we were gone happened because we messed around in Iraq, but that's the situation in the Middle East now. There are aftereffects of Western intervention and there will be for decades at least. It would be great to sweep all that away and leave them alone, but right now we can only leave them to deal with the problems we caused.

Non-American intervention sounds great in the abstract, but who would lead it? I don't think the UN can, and honestly I have no faith that the EU could handle it better than us. Unless there's some country with a great history of Middle Eastern intervention I don't know about, I think this would end just as poorly as America's attempts have. Though it would probably get fucked up in different ways.

[mainiac]

We've been screwing things up in the middle east since literally before I was born, actively and consistently since I was capable of paying attention to geopolitics, and our apparent collective incapability of realizing that maybe we're not good at this is just a wee titch old at this point.

There's this concept called "risk".  Sometimes strategies turn out to be successful, like arming the Pershmerga in Syria.  Sometimes strategies turn out to be poorly thought out, like the 30th division in Syria.  Sometimes strategies turn out to be completely horrible but it ends up not mattering, like how Vietnam eventually sorted itself out after the American intervention failed.

Pointing out that the middle east has more then it's share of failures compared to Latin America or East Asia or South Asia is just being ignorant about how random distributions work.  A blanket denouncement of all activity in that region because it's the one with the worst outcomes is not a helpful understanding of the risks of foreign intervention.

And it's also a pretty massive example of the marksman fallacy.  The middle east is the catchphrase for the states that fail.  Well once up a time, the Middle East included Turkey and Georgia and Egypt, countries that have been relatively stable.

[Flying Dice]

The real problem that led to the debacle in Afghanistan and Iraq is that we let a neocon politician and his lackeys get into the White House. Nobody who has the faintest inkling of how they think about geopolitics would call that a good idea--enforcing democratic peace through coercion and war is the meat and potatoes of their foreign policy! So no, those wars weren't directly motivated by greed any more than humanitarianism (though that didn't stop anyone from cashing in after the fact, capitalism HO!), but rather by an intrinsically flawed interpretation of a theoretical model.

I get that ISIS sweeping across Iraq while we were gone happened because we messed around in Iraq, but that's the situation in the Middle East now. There are aftereffects of Western intervention and there will be for decades at least. It would be great to sweep all that away and leave them alone, but right now we can only leave them to deal with the problems we caused.

Non-American intervention sounds great in the abstract, but who would lead it? I don't think the UN can, and honestly I have no faith that the EU could handle it better than us. Unless there's some country with a great history of Middle Eastern intervention I don't know about, I think this would end just as poorly as America's attempts have. Though it would probably get fucked up in different ways.

Let's let Britain and France lead it, they've got such a great history with the region!

[smjjames]

The real problem that led to the debacle in Afghanistan and Iraq is that we let a neocon politician and his lackeys get into the White House. Nobody who has the faintest inkling of how they think about geopolitics would call that a good idea--enforcing democratic peace through coercion and war is the meat and potatoes of their foreign policy! So no, those wars weren't directly motivated by greed any more than humanitarianism (though that didn't stop anyone from cashing in after the fact, capitalism HO!), but rather by an intrinsically flawed interpretation of a theoretical model.

I get that ISIS sweeping across Iraq while we were gone happened because we messed around in Iraq, but that's the situation in the Middle East now. There are aftereffects of Western intervention and there will be for decades at least. It would be great to sweep all that away and leave them alone, but right now we can only leave them to deal with the problems we caused.

Non-American intervention sounds great in the abstract, but who would lead it? I don't think the UN can, and honestly I have no faith that the EU could handle it better than us. Unless there's some country with a great history of Middle Eastern intervention I don't know about, I think this would end just as poorly as America's attempts have. Though it would probably get fucked up in different ways.

Let's let Britain and France lead it, they've got such a great history with the region!

We are currently trying to have the people in the region handle the problems, but it's an uneasy coalition, so to speak, since they'd rather play geopolitical chess against each other than cooperate. And theres of course the sunni/shiite split.

[PTTG??]

Let China lead it! They have a great track record when it comes to human rights! OOH! And the head of the UN Council on human rights can join them! How about it, Saudia Arabia?

[Baffler]

Yeah, really. If you accept that it has to be done, who else is going to do it, besides the USA? Because I'm drawing a blank here. China doesn't give two fucks. I guess if the Euros want to go for round two I can go make some popcorn.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Yeah, really. If you accept that it has to be done, who else is going to do it, besides the USA? Because I'm drawing a blank here. China doesn't give two fucks. I guess if the Euros want to go for round two I can go make some popcorn.

Europe is even more isolationist than the US. Russian nationalism, Middle Eastern Refugees, and Reality itself knocks at the door of the EU and they blithely go about their business like death isn't across a thin, imaginary line. At least the US tried.

[Zangi]

Does America actually have the political will to go fuck ya Murricah all over Syria and ISIS? 
Or does it just amount to the status quo... proxy war via rebels and killing people via drones and jets?  That sort of shit is just gonna drag the instability out... for who knows how long.

Compare that to the Russian boots on the ground.  (Albeit, as far as I know, they are still only there for defense?  Though, I'm assuming that they can just as easily switch to the offensive, once Russia gets the international backing they want on the Syria issue.)

[mainiac]

Does America actually have the political will to go fuck ya Murricah all over Syria and ISIS?

What do you mean?  Cuz it sounds like Iraq War III: Electric Boogaloo.