For Christ's sake. It is statements like these that get us into situations like these in the first place. Do you really think that McCain, who had his fingernails pulled out by the North Vietnamese, just likes war? You aren't qualified to call him a warmonger. Guess who was called a warmonger prior to World War II? Winston Churchill. Franklin Delano Roosvelt. Anthony Eden. Alarmists all of them. As it turns out McCain and Graham are just two of a few people on the Hill who understand grand strategy.
This situation has been bungled from the start. It started with signals from the administration that we were no longer going to be concerned with what happened in the Middle East. Withdrawing from Iraq and leaving behind no military presence, then unilaterally declaring victory in Afghanistan, leaving the Taliban to their own devices in 2014. We repeatedly let Iran cross red line after red line with its nuclear program, and then let Syria cross its red line with regard to chemical weapons. All bark, no bite. If we had gotten involved with Syria much earlier, we could have declared a no fly zone, and guided the opposition. Now the situation is desperate enough and the rebels are organized enough that we can have no say in who gets what. The Russians have deployed S-300s, so a no fly zone is out. If we had finished Assad while he was down, the likelihood of further Iranian escalation would have been minimal. Now we are on the verge of being dealt a strategic defeat, and barring actual military intervention, which I doubt the President has the balls for, the Middle East will fall firmly into Iranian/Russian sphere of influence. Which means more diplomatic hostility from states that relied on US power, like Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the Gulf oil states, rising oil prices, and a nuclear Iran, which will have achieved full regional hegemony. This of course assumes that this conflict does not turn into a regional war between the Sunni bloc/Israel and the Shia bloc/Russia, which seems to me to be the more likely scenario if the United States does not quickly demonstrate that it will not tolerate an Iranian dominated region. And none of this is even considering the impact all this is having on East Asian relations. China is watching very closely. What do you think all this bluffing suggests to them about our military commitments to Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea?
I'll never understand why the isolationist viewpoint still holds any sway in this country. Do you really believe that if we just sit back and hope everything works out for us it will? The last seven decades of world stability, burgeoning freedom, and expanding global commerce were bought with American, British, and French lives. Retreating within our borders now will make all of that go to waste. You have to work to make the world a better place, especially if you're the world's strongest free democracy. A hundred years of leading by example got us the bloodiest century in human history. And if we turn back to that path now, the 21st century won't be all that different.
