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1) Arabs countries, starting with the oil under the sand has enough money for generations to come. So Arabs should not need to bag for anything as long as the money is not held in Reserve with Uncle Sam. KSA alone has at least 1T in reserve in US Federal notes.
2) You should not occupy a country and keep it, that is colonization. After WW2, it is only invade/support puppet regimes, secure foreign investments for "your country" AND/OR sell them arms. This happened in Egypt, KSA, all gulf countries except Yemen, and Iraq and it was the plan for Libya. However, it was so stupid to ignore Moammar Kaddafy's warning of Brotherhood and Qaeda that would rise after the fall of his regime. Same issue with Syria, this is why US is half step forward, 2 steps to the back.
3) As far as Syria, No one is asking help from US. However, the retreat of Obama Foreign policy was an upset and free pass to Iran, Hizubllah and Russia to play as they wish. This is my idea. The opposition to Assad in Syria had an oath to fight till death. No retreat. The regime had no other choice but fight till death too.
4) By US supporting Iraqi Kurds, and by extension, Syria Kurds PKK (Marxist and socialists) are also having a place to play too. That is upsetting Turkey, a regional superpower.

The problem is only getting worse, the whole middle east is destabilized. If KSA and Turkey and possibly Egypt enter the war in Syria we are looking at a new WW3.
As I said, ME needs a great civil war to come up as a strong unified nation. A nation would have its place among the other great nations. To live in peace and prosperity.

Good thing, I am a US Citizen. Living Free with Liberty.
TAM and other, politics is emotional discussion. Please no hard feelings for any.

Beiruty wrote:As I said, ME needs a great civil war to come up as a strong unified nation. A nation would have it is place among the other great nation. Live in peace and prosperity.

Good thing, I am a US Citizen. Living Free with Liberty.
TAM and other, politics is emotional discussion. Please no hard feelings for any.

Beiruty, no hard feelings, and I agree that the ME needs a giant revolution. Unfortunately, like all big revolutions, and given the heated passions of the region, it will be very bloody. I think it would be a HUGE mistake to be involved in it.

I also agree that our foreign policy has often been misguided. But we haven't colonized any country. We didn't steal their resources.....we paid for them. Take our presence in KSA....the minute they tell us to leave, we'll be gone. We left Iraq. We left Afghanistan. We left Panama. We left the Philippines. Etc., etc., etc. You can argue that we shouldn't have been in those places in the first place, and you might have a good argument......but in the end, we did not STAY, which means that we are not colonizing those countries. Yes, politics is a sensitive subject, but there are certain facts that are inarguable. And one of them is that, as a United States taxpayer, other nations have taken my money, and failed to deliver any value on that money.

So my final conclusion is that we have wasted an ENORMOUS amount of money over the decades since WW2, trying to buy the friendship of other nations. It was money badly spent, because in the end, they hate us. We should let them determine their own outcomes, and then deal with (or not deal with, as the case may be) whatever that outcome happens to be. It's not our job to cajole other countries into changing if they want our dollars. We either trade with them, or we don't. It's not our job to feed the world. It's not our job to heal the world. It's not our job to protect the world. It's not our job to punish any country which hasn't first attacked us. It is our job to feed, heal, and protect ourselves. Until our leaders recognize this, our economy will continue to weaken as it bleeds out under the effort of trying to fix the rest of the world's geopolitical psychoses. And "psychoses" is the word which exactly describes the situation.

The ONLY exception I can think of to this would be military responses to events like 9/11. SOMEbody had to pay for that attack. Attacks like that cannot go unanswered, otherwise, a nation admits that it no longer exists. It doesn't matter if UBL had a long list of imagined grievances. It doesn't matter that the average Afghan Talib wasn't involved. Collectively, the Taliban created an environment which nurtured that psychopath UBL and his plans. How many people were officially members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan on 9/11/01? A few hundred.....maybe a couple of thousand? The Taliban could have easily said, "not in OUR backyard" and killed all of them. But they didn't. Instead, they sheltered AQ, and they refused to give up UBL when the US quite legitimately demanded he be remanded over for trial. If they had just given him up, thousands of American and Afghan people would still be alive today. Because they did not govern responsibly and boot AQ out of Afghanistan, 3000 people died on 9/11. And because they wouldn't surrender UBL to a lawful request for extradition, 91,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants were killed between 2001 and our withdrawal, as well as 2,238 Americans (as of 2014). The deaths of well over 96,000 people are on the heads of the Taliban, and that doesn't include the maimed and injured..... so frankly, I couldn't care less if they were carpet bombed.