Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Trump Orders US Withdrawal From Syria In 30 Days" video.

@oscarsantana9983 : I'm not sure I see the connection between our pull-out in Syria and the threats made by the Turkish PM against Kurds in Northern Syria. Maybe this just makes it harder for Erdogan to operate i Northern Syria. And the U.S. just sold him some missiles and maybe cooling their jets on the Khurds is part of the deal.
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Turkey sits on some prime real estate that the Russians have coveted for centuries. They also have incompetent neighbors who are just competent enough to launch a nasty - really nasty - missile or two. I think it's OK to sell the Turks some Patriots. I don't like us meddling, but I also think that a major force for good in the world is helping weaker people arm themselves. I think the expectation that the citizen you encounter is capable of deadly force is an enormous pacifier, and it removes any "I'm bigger, so you do as I say" nonsense from the conversation.
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To digress, back in the '70s there was a series called "The Weapon Shops of Isher," where anyone could walk into a store and arm themselves to take on an army, rendering armies obsolete. Wherever tyranny arose, so would these Weapon Shops, so the guy who got threatened by a gang down the block could walk into the store and come out able to defend himself. Of course, the weapons had some sort of control feature that made them unusable in aggression, but full functioning in defense. The result was a highly courteous and peaceful society. No reward for using force on ANYbody.
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I don't know if Assad did or didn't use chem weapons on his own people at SOME point (or his daddy at some point in the more distant past), but I agree with Jimmy that Assad had the upper hand in the situation in question, and the only thing that COULD stop him was some sort of false flag chemical attack that would bring in outside forces to a situation Assad had well under control. The LAST thing Assad would've wanted to do, at that point, was snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, with a very stupid act. More likely, Assad's enemies sold that story in order to get and keep outsiders involved. I don't think Trump was able to overcome the momentum of neocons' and neolibs' delight in meddling abroad, with a never ending list of bad people to go after. His missile-attack reprisal in the port city of Tartus (?sp?) was announced ahead of time and loss of life and property were minimized. The Russians got plenty of heads-up and pulled out their people and ships. And, eventually, Trump disengaged us from Syria's internal goings-on. It's now starting to look like Trump actually gets it, and the delays in getting to the right place on our foreign policy appear to be more about getting his OWN people on board. We'll see if the Deep State puts up with this, and/or how far Trump's tentacles reach into the innards of the Ship of State. He's been hiring and firing people for over 2 years, now, and I'm sure HIS culture is beginning to impose itself. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd like to see a Declaration of War BEFORE we put our troops in harm's way on foreign soil. Liberals tend to sneer, but it's a Big Deal to send a 20-year-old to a foreign country to shoot and be shot at. Our leaders do NOT think it's a big deal. Just a natural extension of policy, to be employed wherever and whenever the elites see fit.
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I love the way you guys recognize the life-of-its-own the military-industrial economy takes on. I wish you saw the same cancer on the domestic side, where 10s of thousands of jobs DEPEND on the welfare state being big and fat, with plenty of people on the receiving end, to keep all the clerks and administrators going. Once you create these instruments of State, it instantly becomes a self-interested voting bloc, often with unions spearheading political campaigns that oppose ANY obstruction to the continued growth of the bureaucracy that pays its bills. Government doesn't want to SOLVE poverty. It wants to FEED on poverty.
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