why then does he then trust the Turks and the Saudis?
the Kurd terrorist actions were long time ago and öcalan has denounced terrorism since
the Kurds were clearly challenged and intimidated by Erdogan before last 1st november elections with some bloody attacks on peacefull demonstrators and it is not clear who was responsable
sometimes it looks like Turkey is playing a double game as strategic western allies but they'd rather support ISIS to attack the Kurds
furthermore Erdogan is using more and more a fascist Muslim language and it clearly pleases a lot of Turks
the Saudis send imams all around the world to preach hatred
a large part the Saudi population is basically fundamentalist Muslim, Wahabist, the worst kind
but the Saudis are waisting so much money and the oil price is to low for them
I think within 5 years their regime will tumble, but will it stop Wahabism?
another thing Obama should consider
if he will not declare war to fundamentalist Islam there might come some kind of alliance between Europe and Russia
I'm sure he is considering it because he now started talking to the Russians himself
he should have acted much earlier
Don't be so sure he's thinking in any way strategically. In my opinion he's an ideology driven empty suit who has never been up to the job. My longer and more nuanced answer is that he is the product of a leftist ideology where America is the problem, not the solution. Without us there, the lions are supposed to lie down with the lambs. How's that working out for everybody?
My views on all of this are on the terrorism in France thread. His campaign promises, the promises on which he was elected, were to get us out of Iraq, out of the Mideast, and to, as it has been disparagingly described, "lead from behind." That's what the American people wanted. They were sick of a seemingly unending war, of boys coming back minus limbs, of flag draped caskets. Well, the general public was sick of it. In my experience the men and women of the armed forces, at least a lot of them, want to go back and finish the job.
The goal was to take all that money spent on the military and foreign endeavors and use it for social services for our under classes. Foreign policy has suffered from benign neglect. When they did turn their attention to it, their incompetence made everything worse.
The mistake that all foreigners make about America, in my opinion, is to see it as some monolithic entity with a unified policy stretching over decades, rather than to see it as it is, a democracy that shifts foreign policy and position based on periodic elections that swing from a more "interventionist" stance to a more "isolationist" stance, and sometimes and not always in perfect coherence, from "right" to "left".
As for Saudi Arabia and Turkey, I would be surprised if even the morons at the State Department "trust" them. Recent polls suggest the Turks are half way to being converted to an ISIS ideology. The fact is that the U.S. needs them for certain things on certain occasions, bases for air power and sea power, intelligence, renditions etc. and just generally to maintain a certain balance of power, and so they need to keep them relatively "close".
As for the Kurds, I think that there was no option but to arm them, ungrateful though they may be, because they have indeed gotten American arms, and senators like John McCain and Lindsay Graham have been calling for it for years as has most of the Republican opposition. My point was that he and his administration, looking at who these people are, their ideology, didn't want to wind up responsible for some autocratic regime that they are held to have armed, as was the case in Afghanistan. Their supporters seem like western style parliamentarians to you? You have to understand that he is totally risk averse. He had to be pushed into a corner to ok the raid on Bin Laden. A lot of people who have left his administration highlight how difficult it is for him to make a decision. He just procrastinates, hoping it will get better.
What galls me the most, however, is the lying that's been going on. He and his spokespeople and Hillary Clinton had called ISIS the "JV", which means a junior sports team, and have repeatedly told the American people that their pathetic little raids on ISIS, (raids that were actually doomed to fail because there was nobody on the ground to give actionable intelligence) and their paltry turn over of equipment to the Kurds were "containing" ISIS. When called on it, they said that's what the intelligence showed. Now those intelligence officials, and ex-army people are saying they were told to doctor the reports. When as honorable and competent a man as Leon Panetta, a life long Democratic operative but also a dedicated public servant and patriot has to come forward and say that it was clear that ISIS was not being "contained", you know how much deception was being practiced.
Anyway, that's my rant. Just my opinion, not that of everyone.
