Not sure if i will phrase this right--obviously daash/ISIS is awful, and obviously there is a humanitarian crisis, and obviously it is a result of US policy in Iraq and Syria so we have a responsibility-- but I still think Obama is doing the wrong thing. The problem is not so much what he is doing, but how: belligerently, sefl-rightously, expecting (again) to just barge in and be greeted as a liberator, without any real consideration of the people who the bombs will fall on (who we are supposedly saving). And yet, it would be relatively easy to solicit local opinion and to talk to the people to be affected (not just the unpopular autocratic regimes or the militants)--to hold a series of Al-Jazeera call in shows, or some other town hall type forum, and to craft a policy through listening, rather than just through deciding arbitrarily what we think we should do to/for the Iraqi/Syrian people (Obama is now the decider?) And finally, while bombs might stop Daash in the short term, none of it makes a shred of difference if we dont come up with a long-term (non-military) policy to repair the damage that weve caused in the region, because shockingly all the bombs that weve dropped so far dont seem to have fixed anything. And this again would require working with local people instead of just imposing our will all over them.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 18:52:50 +0000