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We should do next to nothing about IS and most Middle Eastern guerilla wars or terrorism

Posted by John T. Reed on

General Jack Keane and others say leaving Syria is a disaster, vacuum, Russians, Iranians, and Chinese jubilant, American leadership, IS reconstituting, yadda yadda.
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I see no net gain for America from our involvement in the Middle East which began when the Americans went to the shores of Tripoli in 1801.
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IS never hurt America. They just did ugly publicity stunts in the Middle East. The nations in that region can take care of the old IS or the new one, and if they can’t, they deserve living with IS. IS was never a threat to us. Neither was Saddam Hussein. He needed to be thrown out of Kuwait, but we did not need to remove him from office for the US to be happy today. I am glad we killed bin Laden, but not that we put troops in Afghanistan. We have spent trillions in Afghanistan and Iraq and have little to show for it. 
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We should destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons making capability and reduce their economy to a fraction of its current size by preventing them from extracting oil or gas and destroying their secondary and tertiary sources of economic activity if it can be done without boots on the ground. Until they knock off the “death to America” weekly pep rallies and fomenting violence beyond their borders and against Americans, they should have their capability to do such things reduces by more than half.

The Unelected President novel
Oil and natural gas production depends on a fragile, ultra vulnerable spider web of pipes, offshore drilling rigs, and refineries. If Iran can sell oil and natural gas and poke a stick in America’s eye at the same time it is solely because of wimpiness on America’s part. The fragility of oil and gas production and refinery operation makes Iran almost literally a glass house, yet we allow them to throw stones from that glass house.
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I am not talking about strategic bombing like we did against Germany and Japan in WW II where we killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in cities. Rather, surgical destruction of pipes located in the desert and on sea beds far from civilian population centers. 
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That is well within our military capabilities. We have little or no capability to decisively win infantry battles with shadowy Arab or Persian or Taliban guerilla fighters. 
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We must lose the notion that only in-country infantry bases are effective ways to deal with enemies in the Middle East. 
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Our Middle Eastern enemies have very few strengths. Two are guerilla tactics and IEDs. It is idiotic for the U.S. to fight on the only terms that favor those enemies. We can drone them out of the oil and gas business. Are they going to put IEDs in the sky?


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