By Ron Paul
May
15, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
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By the end of this month, Defense Secretary
James Mattis and National Security Advisor
HR McMaster will deliver to President Trump
their plans for military escalations in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. President
Trump would be wise to rip the plans up and
send his national security team back to the
drawing board – or replace them. There is no
way another “surge” in Afghanistan and Iraq
(plus a new one in Syria) puts America
first. There is no way doing the same thing
over again will succeed any better than it
did the last time.
Near the tenth anniversary of the US war on
Afghanistan – seven years ago – I went to
the Floor of Congress to point out that the
war makes no sense. The original
authorization had little to do with
eliminating the Taliban. It was a resolution
to retaliate against those who attacked the
United States on September 11, 2001. From
what we know now, the government of Saudi
Arabia had far more to do with the financing
and planning of 9/11 than did the Taliban.
But we’re still pumping money into that lost
cause. We are still killing Afghanis and in
so doing creating the next generation of
terrorists.
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The war against ISIS will not end with its
defeat in Mosul and Raqqa. We will not pack
up and go home. Instead, the Pentagon and
State Department have both said that US
troops would remain in Iraq after ISIS is
defeated. The continued presence of US
troops in Iraq will provide all the
recruiting needed for more ISIS or ISIS-like
resistance groups to arise, which will in
turn lead to a permanent US occupation of
Iraq. The US “experts” have completely
misdiagnosed the problem so it no surprise
that their solutions will not work. They
have claimed that al-Qaeda and ISIS arose in
Iraq because we left, when actually they
arose because we invaded in the first place.
General David Petraeus is said to have a lot
of influence over HR McMaster, and in Syria
he is pushing for the kind of US troop
“surge” that he still believes was
successful in Iraq. The two are said to
favor thousands of US troops to fight ISIS
in eastern Syria instead of relying on the
US-sponsored and Kurdish-led Syrian
Democratic Forces to do the job. This
“surge” into Syria would also lead to a
lengthy US occupation of a large part of
that country, as it is unlikely that the US
would return the territory to the Syrian
government. Would it remain an outpost of
armed rebels that could be unleashed on
Assad at the US President’s will? It’s hard
to know from week to week whether “regime
change” in Syria is a US priority or not.
But we do know that a long-term US
occupation of half of Syria would be
illegal, dangerous, and enormously
expensive.
President Trump’s Generals all seem to be
pushing for a major US military escalation
in the Middle East and south Asia. The
President goes back and forth, one minute
saying “we’re not going into Syria,” while
the next seeming to favor another surge. He
has given the military much decision-making
latitude and may be persuaded by his
Generals that the only solution is to go in
big. If he follows such advice, it is likely
his presidency itself will be buried in that
graveyard of empires.
Copyright © 2017 by RonPaul Institute.