There is so much happening in the Middle East and all we Americans get as far as news goes is the slap and tickle crap by a bunch of perverts.

There is a lot of information here but well worth the time it will take to digest it.

On November 3, professor John Mearsheimer made a short and stunning presentation at “U.S. Foreign Policy in the Trump Era: Can Realism and Restraint Prevail?” conference held at George Washington University in Washington, DC. In the unipolar world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he claimed, realists urged nonintervention and staying out of conflicts and countries that “really don’t matter much.” Unfortunately, American “crusaders” prevailed and pushed the US into a series of unnecessary quagmires across the greater Middle East.

Americans appear to agree. When presented with a list of expenditure categories, and polled about which should be the single top priority for budgetary cuts by Congress, “US military actions in the Middle East” was far and away their top choice. But most Americans probably have little idea how enormous those costs truly are.

AS a wonk for international relations and conflict management I need to cover something about our involvement in the region……that is besides fighting wars without end…..for 15 years the US has been involve in the Middle East as an invader….when it should be a mediator for a peaceful conclusion for all the craziness.

In the past the US has been a force for good but all that ended with the destruction of the Twin Towers….and this lack of diplomacy has made the US little more than a bystander to the events unfolding……

Without a diplomatic component to our policies then we are basically giving Russia the upper hand….

The U.S. is abdicating its role as a diplomatic powerbroker to Russia in Syria. The U.S. is ultimately empowering a political process driven by Russia that will not secure America’s strategic objectives in Syria. Those objectives include the Trump Administration’s focus on “neutralizing” Iran’s influence and “constraining its aggression” as well the lasting defeat of Salafi-Jihadists such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held an informal meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vietnam on November 11. The two leaders later released a joint statement that ostensibly reiterated their commitment to previous agreements on the Syrian Civil War, including bilateral military de-confliction, de-escalation zones, and a negotiated settlement through the UN Geneva Process. The statement nonetheless reinforces a number of persistent fallacies regarding the interests of Russia in Syria.

A large, bipartisan delegation of lawmakers warned the Trump administration on Tuesday that its regional policies are laying the groundwork for Iran to takeover Syria, according to a letter sent to the State Department that urged the administration to present Congress with a plan for combating the Islamic Republic’s foothold in the war torn country.

Nearly 50 members of Congress who recently returned from a trip to the Middle East warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Syria is falling into Iran’s hands, a situation that has caused anxiety among Israeli leaders, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the WashingtonFree Beacon.

Kurdish aspirations for independence in Iraq faced the obstinate resistance of both regional and international actors which favoured the territorial integrity of Iraq. The rationale for their stance was that the independence of Kurdistan would undermine the stability of Iraq. 

Regardless of whether such predictions were right or wrong, Iraq’s one and only stable region has now been dragged into the persistent and endemic instability of the rest of the country. The political impasse that arose from both the intra-Kurdish conflict and Baghdad’s aggressive policy of controlling borders drove Iraqi Kurdistan swiftly into turbulence. The conditions in the Kurdish region are exacerbated by the newly imposed sanctions and negotiations over the 2018 Iraqi budget, which deepen the ongoing economic crisis.

Many critiques of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy concern his open brinksmanship with enemies like North Korea or jarring antagonism of rivals like China and Iran. But much of the administration’s worst behavior concerns how it treats America’s friends.

The United States has long tried to aid and reassure its allies, helping them defend themselves and achieve their goals. America also brought its friends together, helping turn historic enemies like Germany and France or Japan and Korea into allies in their own right. The American track record is hardly perfect—as the Kurds, South Vietnamese, and others can attest. Yet such abandonment is the exception, not the rule, and the United States emerged as the leader of the free world in large part because its allies trusted it to do the right thing (if only, in a remark often attributed to Winston Churchill, after exhausting all the other alternatives). Whether it was to keep the Russians out of Europe during the Cold War, liberate Kuwait from Iraqi aggression, or build a robust global trading order, it was America that assembled coalitions, provided military muscle, and was there in the dark hours when our friends needed us most.

Russia’s multifaceted involvement in the Syrian war has now tipped the advantage decisively in favor of the government led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Its well-considered system of local ceasefires and “reconciliations”—little more than glorified surrenders—between the regime and all manner of defeated members of the opposition has been fortified by a “de-escalation” regime, joined by Turkish, Iranian, and American junior partners in expanding perimeters throughout the country.

This effort is capped by a Russian-led diplomatic juggernaut in the Kazakh capital of Astana that is out-performing the moribund U.S.-led Geneva process. Russian President Vladimir Putin has defined Russian objectives clearly and resolutely, and marshaled inferior resources with skill and determination—much to the consternation of Washington.