I'm not sure if this had been posted before. What this shows though is given the complexity of the Middle East it is almost impossible to address conflicts on multiple fronts especially when it appears you have no strategy but just react haphazardly. Yet more reason that I can fully agree that Iran is an adversary and General Soleimani was one of our most critical opponents but still say this was a very bad idea. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/us/politics/us-isis-iran.html U.S.-Led Coalition Halts ISIS Fight as It Steels for Iranian Attacks American forces in Iraq and Syria will now focus on protecting themselves. WASHINGTON — The American-led coalition in Iraq and Syria halted its yearslong campaign against the Islamic State on Sunday as United States forces braced for retaliation from Iran over a strike that killed a powerful Iranian commander, military officials said. In a statement, the American command said that after repeated attacks on Iraqi and American bases in recent weeks, one of which killed an American contractor on Dec. 27, “we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review.” “We remain resolute as partners of the government of Iraq and the Iraqi people that have welcomed us into their country to help defeat ISIS,” the statement said. Using the Arabic name for the Islamic State, it added, “We remain ready to return our full attention and efforts back to our shared goal of ensuring the lasting defeat of Daesh.” The move comes after the deaths last week of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, an Iranian security and intelligence commander responsible for the deaths of hundreds of troops over the years, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a powerful Iraqi militia commander and government official, in an American drone strike outside the Baghdad airport. About 5,200 troops in Iraq and several hundred in Syria are now focused on fortifying their outposts instead of pursuing remnants of the Islamic State and training local forces. What remains to be seen is what, exactly, Iran will do in retribution for the strike. In recent days, tens of thousands of pro-Iranian fighters took to the streets in Baghdad, chanting that “revenge is coming” to the United States. In both Syria and Iraq, the United States has maintained an archipelago of outposts, bases and airfields, all connected by ground and air transport routes, where small contingents of American troops are either training local forces or working alongside them to carry out counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State. The cessation of those missions, to instead focus on security, is likely to allow what remains of the terrorist group to reconstitute itself in the ungoverned spaces where it flourishes, much as it did when Turkey invaded northern Syria in October. Worsening the situation, Iran-backed militias that were also fighting the Islamic State have turned their attention toward the United States. “The fight against ISIS has been significantly degraded by the tensions between the U.S. and Iran,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He cited the fact that American forces have recently been excluded from ground operations and have had airspace closed to them in the battle against the terrorist group, as a result of pressure on the Iraqi government from Iran-backed militias operating in the country. One way that the American-led effort stands to be further degraded is if Special Operations forces limit their missions, he said. United States troops are deployed in several joint American and Iraqi bases spread across the country where they have been keeping pressure on resurgent ISIS cells. The administration’s decision to suspend counterterrorism operations after the strike on General Suleimani drew sharp criticism from many former intelligence and counterterrorism specialists. “The Trump administration that promised to ‘annihilate’ ISIS has now stopped operations against ISIS to protect US troops from Iranian retaliation,” Joshua A. Geltzer, who was the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said on Twitter on Sunday. “So Trump stops addressing an existing threat to deal with one of his making.” Other security analysts said the administration now faces an escalating multifront fight against an array of Sunni and Shia violent extremists. “The entire U.S. mission in the Middle East is being repositioned from a specific and focused goal of defeating ISIS to an amorphous and open-ended campaign to counter Iran,” Colin P. Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a research organization for global security issues, said in an email. “This will provide ISIS with the operational space needed to reconstitute its networks across Iraq and Syria. U.S. forces will be overstretched while also becoming more attractive targets for a broad array of adversaries.” The American military has long had plans to contend with an Iranian military incursion in the region, according to a former senior defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Those plans include moving important American assets stationed in the Middle East, such as warships and aircraft, away from possible attack points and shutting down smaller, more exposed bases, or at least withdrawing American troops from them, the official said. At the American Embassy in Baghdad, roughly 100 Marines who have been deployed there in recent days, along with around 3,500 paratroopers and a Special Operations unit sent to the region, are preparing for a possible attack from Iranian-backed forces. One military officer deployed to the region said an attack could include mortar and rocket fire, along with snipers. For now, though, the atmosphere at the embassy remained relatively calm, and the Marines used only nonlethal weapons, such as tear gas, during demonstrations last week, the officer added. Further complicating the situation, the Iraqi Parliament voted on Sunday to expel American and other foreign troops from the nation. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi is expected to sign the bill, though it includes no timetable for a withdrawal. Although the Iraqi government declared the Islamic State defeated in December 2017 and the American-led coalition and Syrian fighters seized the group’s last swath of territory in Syria last March, ISIS fighters have continued attacks, albeit on a much smaller scale, in both countries. In 2014, at the Islamic State’s height, it held territory roughly the size of Britain. Brett H. McGurk, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State until a year ago, warned that the departure of American troops from Iraq — on the heels of suspending counterterrorism missions — could leave the country vulnerable to a resurgent terrorist wave, as happened after United States troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011. “If we leave Iraq, that will just increase further the running room for Iran and Shia militia groups and also the vacuum that we’ll see groups like ISIS fill, and we’ll be right back to where we were,” Mr. McGurk said on MSNBC. “That would be a disaster.”
As usual, we find out about meetings our president has through the other country he is meeting with...
btw, if you are unfamiliar with victoria coates (from her wikipedia page)... Victoria C. Gardner Coates is an American art historian, blogger and political consultant. She currently serves on the United States National Security Council, originally as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Assessments before getting promoted to Deputy National Security Advisor upon the nomination of Robert C. O'Brien. After earning an undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Connecticut she obtained a master's degree in art history from Williams College and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she wrote a thesis on Camillo Massimo. She later taught at the University as an occasional adjunct instructor. In the 2000s, she blogged mainly about foreign policy under the pen name "AcademicElephant" at the Conservative blog RedState. Her blog posts were read by aides of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who later recruited Coates to work as an advisor for his book, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, published in 2011. Coates served as an advisor to former Texas governor Rick Perry during his 2012 presidential bid before she became an advisor to Ted Cruz in 2013 and his leading national security advisor during his 2016 presidential campaign. Her book David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art was published early in 2016. The book covers ten European artists and their major works, including Michelangelo (David), Jacques-Louis David (The Death of Marat), and Picasso (Guernica).
it was reported a few days ago that they were sent there to tell the POTUS we don’t want another war in the region. Cool it.
Actually jiggy summed it up correctly.. The Crusades were in the Middle East and the Corrupt Catholic church basically invaded the Middle East to take over the land (Hmm sounds familiar.. England invading The Americas to take over the Indian land). So a sultan a rose who fought against the outsiders, his army started growing and he started taking back their land. The Pope.. I believe it was Pope II, he basically sent an army (the crusaders) to stop the Sultan and take back the Land that was not his in the first place... That is basically the sum of things.. Jiggy was correct.. The Middle East was invaded... But you see English historians will write it up as this.. "Their primary objectives were to stop the expansion of Muslim states, to reclaim for Christianity the Holy Land in the Middle East, and to recapture territories that had formerly been Christian." The problem is the land was Muslim before it was Christian... They just word it to make sound as if they were doing the right thing. T_Man
Eh...it is certainly more complex than simply "Europeans invaded the Middle East." European Christians were moving into Spain and islands in the Mediterranean and having conflict with Muslims there, lands that used to belong to Europeans. And there was absolutely Muslim expansion that was being combated as would be demonstrated years after the Crusades ended when Muslim armies continued to advance and took Constantinople. The Catholic Church was definitely at times very corrupt so this isn't a defense of them nor of the Crusades.
Thanks for posting that. Not that his supporters here will pay attention. Ms Coates is a perfect example of the disfunction, the astounding mess that is national security and foreign policy under Mr trump’s “rule.” An art history graduate of Trinity College (not Trinity College, Dublin, but Trinity College, Connecticut, tied at 46th on US News and World Report’s rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges) with multiple degrees in Art, who helped Donald Rumsfeld write a memoir, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (the title of which should have been changed to, “My Rise as the Perfect Example of the Peter Principle,”) and who also wrote for an obscure conservative blog, is given enormous power to influence the foreign policy of the United States and to influence the Chump in Chief. Image below.
I would say if that is the opinion you hold, it would be more productive to actually post why you find it "amateur hour".
That could involve an amount of effort and push back which is something I'd rather not be involved with. I'd rather just express the opinion that, after reading many amateur historical analysis on Clutchfans, they generally qualify as "yikes."
Well I guess you are just going to have to accept that your message is pretty much for yourself because no one gives a **** unless you present an argument other than "you wrong".
Why bother posting if all you want to say is "This place is full of stupid people but I'm too smart to be bothered with expressing my own views beyond calling you all stupid." Especially in THIS forum when discussing history when most of us actually like to engage in those discussions and learn new things?
I am still not pass the fact that . . unless I am mistaken . . . Iraqis attacked the Embassy Rocket River
Recomended: https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/ And if you really want to dive deep History of Byzantium is a continuation of: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id261654474 Byzantium is a modernish designation. Byzantium was the Eastern Roman Empire and they called themselves "The Roman Empire".
Because it actually takes an incredible amount of effort to refute all the terrible historical analysis put forward by people and it's much easier to type one sentence expressing the idea that you think the overwhelming amount of historical analysis here is crap.
