[venomsnake]

I am not advocating for that devil, but the events from the recent years - active encouragement of replacement of secular government with Islamist ones. Deal with Iran that cements the Islamic revolution, support for Erdogan while he makes Turkey a theocracy, giant arms sales to Saudi Arabia, drone strikes that are effective Taliban and ISIS recruitment tools, arming Iraq army which only strategic move is to drop their gear for ISIS to use and flee. Either there is strong support for islamisation of the middle east or the recent administrations have no idea and clue what are they doing.

[discardorama]

> Deal with Iran that cements the Islamic revolution,

Knowing what I know about the MiddleEast, I can assure you that Iran is a much better option than the Saudis. The Saudis basically owned the USG over the last couple of decades. Case in point: after 9/11, when all flights were grounded, a couple of special flights were allowed to fly zig-zag across the country, picking up Saudis so they could get out of the US before the FBI came knocking. And Saudis are the biggest exporters and funders of extremist Wahhabi version of Islam.

Iran, on the other hand, has a much more moderate version of Islam. There are still Jews in Iran who practice freely, for instance. I challenge you to find one Jew in Saudi Arabia who practices freely.

[venomsnake]

Iran population is a lot more progressive and secular than the ruling elite. Which is unusual.

[hueving]

Are you implying that a non-elected form of government failing to represent the people is unusual?

[douche]

So our choices in November are between a blowhard and the architect of much of this foreign policy clusterfuck. What interesting times we live in.

[bhauer]

I enjoy criticism of our current administration as much as anyone, but I'm going to go with Hanlon's Razor and guess the latter: they have no clue what effective foreign policy looks like. I suspect that simply doing nothing at all (leaving all pre-existing policies and agreements in place) would have been more effective than what we have done. At least it would have appeared consistent and predictable.

[rbanffy]

> they have no clue what effective foreign policy looks like.

We've a new rulebook. Does anyone, anywhere, know that?

[krapp]

>Either there is strong support for islamisation of the middle east or the recent administrations have no idea and clue what are they doing.

They probably have no idea and clue what they're doing.

I still remember being promised we would be welcomed into Baghdad as liberators, like Christ being led into Jerusalem.