The following article maintains that "As long as the United States and its allies continue to champion the status quo...ISIS will persist or even grow." It goes on to suggest reforms to improve the Mid-East situation. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinion...ls-appeal.html On the other hand, Sean Hannity asked Donald Trump on his radio show, what Trump would do about ISIS if elected, and Trump said "We would crush ISIS." I think that there is a relevant statistic always worth remembering and that is 7 Million Tons. The US dropped over 7 million tons of bombs on Indo-China during the Vietnam War, had over 500,000 troops stationed there in 1964, lost over 50,000 boys dead, and thousands and thousands more maimed, killed millions of Vietnamese civilians, and lost that war.
We didn't have 500,000 troops in RVN in 1964. In fact there were no American combat troops in the RVN in 1964, there weren't even any NVA in the RVN in 1964. FYI: We didn't lose the war in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese lost the war in 1975 over two years after we left the RVN.
My bad. Over 500,000 in 1968; peaked at 549,000 in 1969. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_in_the_Vietnam_War Seven Million Tons
It's a good place to test out new equipment I guess... hopefully one day the nutter dictatorial regimes (Putin, ISIL, Kim Jong-un) will stop giving the world a reason to require such a military posture and activity.
I forget, is the Taliban a US enemy or a US ally now? http://news.antiwar.com/2015/07/26/...n-police-after-seizing-key-northeastern-base/
Your link wouldn't pop up. So I didn't read it. Vietnam is irrelevant to ISIS, completely different situations with nothing to compare them too. But going by your title, I would say the Arab Spring was a total failure. We have the military ruling Egypt, which is better than the Muslim Brotherhood. Libya is now a safe haven to terrorist and a training ground for AQ, ISIS and numerous others, better if we let Khadafy crush the terrorist rebels. We tried to take out Assad and that has brought us ISIS which controls probably close to have of Syria and Iraq. We ignored those who wanted freedom in Iran and now we hope the nuclear deal works out with no guarantees. Afghanistan is far from stable, we imposed a government on the Afghan's they didn't want, they wanted tribal rule with each tribe ruling their old homelands as was done for a thousand years prior to the Taliban trying to take over the country. Jordon has a refugee crisis and can handle the inflow. Turkey is worried about the Kurds, not so much ISIS. The we (*)(*)(*)(*) off our one true ally in the region. Could we have been any more inept if we tried?
If the goal of the US was to re-establish the military dictatorship status quo in Egypt, and to protect the privileged elite Wahhabi royalty of Saudi Arabia, then so far things are working out well for US foreign policy. The jury is still out on the homeboy Coalition of the Unwilling (Those unwilling to accept US Christian drone diplomacy) including the Taliban, ISIS, the Mahdi army, al Qaeda, etc., depending on if they can pull off a French-style revolution and behead General al-Sisi and the Saudi royalty.
