Mess - the situation we call the Middle East

Beaver is taking a day off this week so that we may bring you the following:

The mess we call the middle east.
We see that Iran is now assisting in taking on ISIS in Iraq. That somewhat complicates matters as we have been no friend of Iran for the last 35 plus years. But digging deeper into all this we find that it's more a matter of Iran against Saudi Arabia. Iran is Shia while the Saudis are Sunnis. So it's a safe bet the Iranians were delighted when Bush invaded Iraq and threw out the Sunni government.  But wait didn't we label Iran a terrorist country? We did right after they threw out the dictator the Shah whom we installed after overthrowing their democratically elected president . And it was the same thing with the Muhajadeen (sic) who we backed against Russia in Afghanistan until they morphed into Al Qaeda. And we helped install the Taliban. I'm going to take an educated guess and say that we created or helped to create ISIS in an attempt to combat Al Qaeda (divide and conquer) but in the process created a worse monster. An educated guess would be that both the U.S. and the Saudis backed ISIS at least in the beginning but for different reasons. And it seems funny how in spite of all the drone strikes and areal bombings ISIS keeps moving forward and taking cities. Remember ISIS was at the beginning a force of just 30,000.

Then there's the Russian aspect in all this. We know that prior to the Shah era in Iran their president was about to start oil deals with Russia. Russia is also friends with Assad in Syria and (when he was alive) Gadaffy in Libya. We also know that Hussein in Iraq was about to do large oil deals with Russia before the first Gulf war. And we know what happened to Russia in Afghanistan. Suspect they're staying out of Yemen for the moment unless it's to sell arms. Putin's overall plan is a bit of a puzzle to me. Most of the countries he's tried to take over are very poor. Ukraine was understandable because there's been close ties both economically and culturally. Is he really trying to put the old Soviet Union back together? What exactly are his plans for the middle east? We know he'd like nothing better than to lay in some pipelines through Syria and Iran but the wars and hostility are preventing that.

None of this will be resolved until all factions sit down and negotiate a peace agreement. Whether that would happen any time soon is anyone's guess, doubtful at this point. Where does that leave our military? We actually accomplished the mission when we got Bin Ladin. Even Bush admitted he wasn't there to nation build and yet here we are over a decade later trying to rebuild nations and stuck in the quagmire we call the middle east. There is the cost not just in the 2 to 3 trillion dollars but of the lives lost both of our military and their civilians. For us it was about the oil and protecting our interests in it. For them it I believe it was more about respect and survival. If they want to live in some 12th century dream of utopia that never existed, I say let them.

Our military this fine remembrance day is paid lip service for their part in all this. They get used as a backdrop for every politician going but when it comes time to actually supporting the troops the legislation gets voted down time and time again. Twenty five percent of the homeless in the U.S. are veterans and a yellow ribbon and a couple of days to remember them isn't going to change that. Did they fight and die for freedom and democracy? I'd say not. More like for oil and corporate interests. And if you look back through history the story is the same, all about conquering lands and gaining more wealth all at the expense of the underclass too poor to do otherwise. So ask yourself as you may be driving this weekend what price was that gallon of gas? How many died for it? And who actually benefitted from it? A dollar or two less sure doesn't raise anybody out of poverty, but it sure made a small group at the top wealthy.

No bank fails this week