{"id":182284,"date":"2015-10-30T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T01:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/10\/30\/not-this-sh-again-3\/"},"modified":"2015-10-30T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T01:56:00","slug":"not-this-sh-again-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/10\/30\/not-this-sh-again-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Not this Sh%$ Again!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Obama has decided <a href=\"http:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2015\/10\/30\/boots-on-the-ground-u-s-special-ops-heading-to-syria\/\">to put boots on the ground in Syria<\/a>, and as near as I can figure, it&#8217;s because we cannot admit that our policy has failed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In a dramatic shift in policy, the United States is preparing to send about 50 special operations forces to Syria within days to begin training and assisting \u201cmoderate\u201d rebels fighting the Islamic State.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The U.S. military has sent elite forces into Syria before to conduct short in-and-out raids, but the move will for the first time keep American service members on the ground \u2014 and in harm\u2019s way \u2014 in a four-plus year conflict that has killed over 200,000 people. It marks a significant departure in strategy for a White House that has repeatedly ruled out any U.S. \u201cboots on the ground\u201d in either Iraq or Syria and bristled at any suggestion that the American forces would take part in combat.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The U.S special operations forces being deployed to Syria will not play a direct combat role, at least initially, a senior defense official said Friday. Instead, the small number of commandos will focus more on advising local Arab and Kurdish rebels who are fighting the Islamic State in northern Syria. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Defense Department is not ruling out direct action raids in the future, but for now, \u201cthey will remain singularly at the headquarters\u201d of the rebel groups, to \u201dhelp with operational planning.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Still, the American forces could come under fire in their new mission, which could last weeks or months, officials said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is nucking futs.<\/p>\n<p>The problem here is that we have mindlessly supported the policy goals of&nbsp; the House of Saud.<\/p>\n<p>As Pepe Escobar aptly notes, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/atimes.com\/2015\/10\/the-caliph-at-the-gates-of-vienna\/\">But the problem was never Iran. The problem is the ideological matrix of goons who metastasize into Caliphs: Saudi Arabia<\/a>,&#8221; and now that it has proven to be an abject failure, we have do double down, because our state security apparatus is unwilling to the failure of this policy.<\/p>\n<p>So, now the White House and the Pentagon are so afraid that someone, anyone, else might approach something resembling a resolution in Syria that we are now supporting al Qaeda affiliated groups that we are calling &#8220;Moderates&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>This is insanity.&nbsp; This is stupidity.<\/p>\n<p>This is&nbsp; \u2026\u2026\u2026 There are no words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama has decided to put boots on the ground in Syria, and as near as I can figure, it&#8217;s because we cannot admit that our policy has failed: In a dramatic shift in policy, the United States is preparing to send about 50 special operations forces to Syria within days to begin training and assisting &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,981,969,964,1006,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-civil-war","category-evil","category-foreign-relations","category-military","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}