"For our Freedom?"

So, the headline says, “DOD orders troops to Saudi Arabia.” An accompanying inset than relates that, “Trump urges restraint.”

What the f**k? It isn’t the DOD which initiates such an order to deploy, but the President, who as commander in chief has the authority (but apparently not the good judgement) to do so or not.

       Does this sound familiar?

“Here we are, like the dummies of the world, because we had bad politicians running our country for a long time,” Trump said. He went on to mock fellow Republican Bush(43), sarcastically calling him a “real genius” over his decision to invade Iraq. Apparently, just like his criticism of Barack Obama for playing less golf in 8 years than Trump has in his first 2 ½, it depends on the audience and which lie he considers worth telling on any given day.

        The best way to demonstrate “restraint” would be to do nothing. The Houthi rebels in Yemen, principle motivation stems from the corruption of the previous regime (in Yemen) which, they accused of massive financial abuse and personal enrichment (you know, like the Saudi royals?). The Saudi support of that regime stems from a desire to have a co-religionist (Sunni) in power South of them and, as a result, a buffer state. This having been said, neither the former Yemeni President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, or the current one former Field Marshall Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, now living in Riyadh, as he is under a death sentence back home, could build consensus! 

       Houthis are predominately Shiites, which ties them more closely to Iran that to the Sunni Kingdom of the Saudis and naturally has served as a source for Iran to nip indirectly, at the Saudis through a third party, too. There is little doubt that the Iranian missile which was fired at Saudi oil production facilities was fired from Yemen, by Yemeni Houthis, but supplied to them by Iran.  

       Yemen has six regional “states” (for want of a better usage). Much of its population lies in the more mountainous westerly regions. The capital, Sana’a with a population of more than 3 million, is in a mountainous region at more than 7,000 feet elevation. As I write, the temperature in Sana’a is a comfortable 76 degrees at 5 pm! Houthi rebels took Sana’a in 2015. During the uprising Saudis bombed Houthi forces in Yemen. Then president Hadi, now exiled to the east and south, backed by the Saudis and the US, proposed a plan to form a federal republic with six semi-independent states. Sounds good, right?

        Unfortunately, most of South Yemen's oil reserves is located in Shabwah Province and is being developed by the Soviet Union. The East Shabwah Basin probably has the best long-term oil potential in South Yemen, with more than 3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. It was obvious to the Houthis, who see Yemen’s oil as a source of national, vice regional, revenue, that two of the six “states,” both oil rich but lightly populated compared to the Western highland regions, would control a hugely disproportionate share of the fragmented nation’s wealth. The fact that both the US and Saudis supported the concept also became a source of enmity beyond the religious sectarian hostility.

        So, there you have it. Another Sunni-Shi’ite based regional conflict lubricated by oil with the pot being stirred by a third nation (Iran). I’m trying to think of any good reason for the US military to get anywhere remotely near to being involved in this, but I simply can’t.

        It isn’t anything close to an Iraq situation, where we blamed the wrong country (Iraq) for 9/11 attacks, financed and carried out by Saudis and Saudi money. Nonetheless, we destabilized Iraq, primarily because we could, creating the vacuum filled by ISIS in the process.

         It’s also not like Afghanistan where the people with whom we are fighting initially shot at us with weapons we gave them in the 1980s, including billions of dollars in cash and weapons including two thousand Stinger surface-to-air missiles. If history has taught mankind anything it should be that, if in doubt, stay the hell out of Afghanistan.

        The question then becomes what should or will our esteemed leader do? I have no clue, because he doesn’t, but his words contain some interesting explanations of his “thought?” process. What follows is a September, 2019  press conference summary with quotes:

“President Trump said Friday that the United States could end the nearly 19-year war in Afghanistan “very quickly” if he chose to do so but that it would involve killing “tens of millions” of people.

Trump’s comments came at a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as he relayed that Afghanistan — a country of about 37 million people — was among the issues that the two men discussed in their meeting at the White House.

“We’ve been very effective in Afghanistan, and if we wanted to do a certain method of war, we would win that very quickly, but many, many, really, tens of millions of people would be killed, and we think it’s unnecessary,” Trump said. “But Australia’s been a great help to us in Afghanistan.”

He made similar comments in July during an Oval Office meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. At that point, Trump claimed he could win the war “in a week” but said he did not want to go that route, because “I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”  

        Note the several references to “killing tens of millions of people.”  Am I the only person who reads “tens of millions” as “…. with nuclear weapons?”   Ten million persons is a third of the population of Afghanistan. Weapons such as this moron refers to are universally non-selective regarding who they immolate. Realizing that the Taliban are bad guys, I feel it worthy of note that they are far less genocidal than nuclear weapons. We seem unable to learn or grasp the idea that while we as US citizens are responsible for the government we have, and, at least in theory, have protections in place and a constitution which, if followed, maintains that security, there are other nations in the world which are different.

        In Korea, probably the last conflict which we can rightfully call a “just” war, we  came to the aid of a sovereign state being invaded by another sovereign state with UN sanction and participation.

        In the first Gulf war, we and others came to the aid of Kuwait, another sovereign state invaded by Iraq. Noteworthy of that is the advice given Bush 41 by SecDef Dick Cheney, namely, “Don’t invade Iraq or you’ll own it.” Oddly enough it was the same “Dick” who encouraged Bush 43 to do exactly the opposite. We’re still paying the price.

        We must maintain a strong military, as there are truly folks in the world who wish us ill. Typically, because at some level even Trump has no desire to engage in open conflict with either the Russians or Chinese, we engage in diplomacy, even when it involves Oligarchies or Monoparty dictatorships. We also continue maintaining protective forces (Submarine missiles, SAC bombers, Land based Missiles) which, while sometimes given the doomsday sobriquet of Mutually Assured Destruction, might better be called Mutually Assured Deterrence, Reflection, and Restraint. Both Russia and China are a far more real-world threat in the long term to a democratic America, but neither is driven by religious extremism. Yet… “Tens of millions” of Afghanis are even a consideration?

        The Hippocratic oath mandates, “First do no harm.”  In cases like the current Saudi-Iranian brouhaha that sounds to me like good advice. We have become so jaded regarding the use and misuses of our military that we fling around a phrase these days which, if examined, is almost nonsensical, while being parroted by millions daily.  “Fighting for our freedom” has a strident ring to it which generally belies the real reasons most of our soldiers, Sailors and airmen die. If we learned nothing from the war I haven’t mentioned – Vietnam – it should be that, sadly, almost 60 thousand Americans died there. None of them died for “Our” freedom.  

        If, Heaven forbid, any US service person should die in Saudi Arabia, it will be for someone else’s freedom and economic interest. It will also be on Donald Trump's head.