Training teams to Iraq, Lebanon?
According to the Stars & Stripes, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey told Central Command to prepare to send mobile training teams to support the military in Lebanon and Iraq as the Syrian revolution spills across that country’s borders;
Dempsey made the recommendation to U.S. Central Command in recent weeks, according to Air Force Col. Ed Thomas, a spokesman for the Army general. There have been no U.S. military trainers in Iraq since troops left at the end of 2011, as the war there ended. But the U.S. has provided military training and assistance to Lebanon for a number of years.
“Militarily, what we’re doing is assisting our partners in the region, the neighbors of Syria, to ensure that they’re prepared to account for the potential spillover effects,” Dempsey said during a Pentagon briefing Wednesday. “As you know, we’ve just taken a decision to leave some Patriot missile batteries and some F-16s in Jordan as part of the defense of Jordan. We’re working with our Iraqi counterparts, the Lebanese Armed Forces and Turkey through NATO.”
Of course, part of the package will be arms sales. This, along with Patriot batteries and fighter wings in Jordan and arms to Syrian rebels. I think I called Syria a tar baby already, didn’t I?
Category: Terror War
GREAT!! Lets get right back to Iraq and Lebanon!! Two of the finer shitholes I had the pleasure of serving in! And a more permissive environment you will not find!!!
General Dempsey is obviously not fulfilling his role as the senior military advisor to the president, because if he told Obama that this was a good idea, he has proved himself to be the senile fuck I have suspected him to be for some time.
The worm turns again…will this country ever learn?
When did Lebanon and Iraq become “partners?” Both are engaged in the Syrian fighting on the side of that government. I’ll still wager a bottle of good Scotch Irag’s WMD are in a bunker in Syria. Okay, let’s cutting four fighting force by ten brigades and continue sending troops into shit-hole countries that hate us. I once again submit the grand prize contest winner is my entry, Barack H. Obama for impersonating the Commander in Chief.
I cannot believe we are sending anything to these two shitholes, much less boots on the ground. Call them advisers or training teams, it makes no difference. We are setting a terrible precedence for the future. I say we stay out of that conflict and let them kill each other off. This POTUS is a disgrace to his office and this nation and Dempsey should be sent to Walter Reed for a sanity check. What a ball-less ass kiss to advise the Central Command and President that this is a good idea. Mark my word, we won’t be in country a month before some poor soldier looses his life over this political nonsense. I am pissed beyond words.
Jesus wept. What’s the definition of insane, again? Somebody fax it to the WH, will ya?
@ 3 I believe you are incorrect. Lebanese Hezbollah has sent fighters to support Assad. Hezbollah is the major opposition party to the current Lebanese ruling coalition. There are reports of Lebanese sunni fighting on behalf of the Syrian opposition. Thus there is a real risk right now of another civil war in Lebasnon.
As much as I sympathize with a lot of the views here I still ponder how our world would have been different if we had paid more attention to the afghan civil war in the 90s. What if the US had coerced Pakistan not to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Would I not have wound up fighting his network in Paktia in 2010? What if the US had given more support to Massod’s coalition, not necessarily boots on the ground – would that coalition have kept the Taliban at bay and al Qaida down? No Sept 11th?
I think it is unhelpful to view policy options as binary – do nothing or send in troops. I think that neglects a whole range of options that can support U.S. interests. trainers may be a good option (It certainly helped the bring Bosnia to a close, even if the trainers were Dyna Corps). I certainly don’t have all the answers here. I can barely make the distinctions between alawites and Persian Shia. ( one is Arab and believes in 7 or 6 imans and the other 12.) All I am willing to predict on Syria is it is going to end badly and the only issue is how to make the ending less bad. I certainly don’t envy anybody trying to develop American policy responses to this event.
Just finished my post and checked Tom Ricks (no big supporter of major intervention in Syria) foreign policy blog and he has a related post http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/
I thought it was interesting reading and reminded me of some intellectual musings I had with some friends after the start of GWOT. I mused if the 30 years war wasn’t a more appropriate model with it’s interplay of religious, economic and power politics drivers instead of world war II or Vietnam which were the models the media tended to use.
The computer that ran “Red Dwarf” used to say, “This is going to end in tears.” I see no good coming from this.
Silly me, I thought the COCOM commanders were supposed to make recommendations to the CJCS and POTUS based on their regional expertise. Not the other way round.
Can you say “VietNam”? I knew you could.
Seriously though — WHY in the name of G-d’s little green apples are we sending ANYTHING to ANYONE over in the ME?? Outside of Israel, the only true democratic country over there, that is.
@ #10- Um, because POTUS & FLOTUS are reading and saying something other than what TOTUS displays for them to say, maybe? *shrugging* But, you are correct, the left loons are still looking for their next Vietnam. Speaking of which, has anybody seen John sKerry floating around lately? I’m beginning to think POTUS had to have sent him on one of those imfamopus Cambodian Christmas missions…I know the Russians have dissed his ass, go figure.
Looks like senile Dempsey got hit by The Good Idea Fairy. And we all know how well that usually ends.
#12 HulkingIdiot
Dear troll, please crawl back under your rock & STFU.
To continue – Sending in trainers; wasn’t that how we got entangled in VietNam? Then mission creep and the Good Idea Fairy took over. And look how THAT turned out – needless deaths, too much money and material spent. And we retreated because it turned into a politician’s war, instead of a military war.
“I have a baaad feeling about this.”
Ok. What just happened here? There was a post from a Hulking something-or-other that just disappeared.