Explain to me why I would want a quagmire candidate.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I’ve got nothing.
Even Big O said that HRC might reach a different conclusion after chatting with the joint chiefs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/syria-exposes-split-between-obama-and-clinton.html?_r=0
giggity giggity goo !
Which is why I hope the issue does not play into the 2016 election at all. I hope Putin understands the political window that he is working within.
That was a safe statement by Sanders pushing off of Obama’s policy. We will need much better foreign policy thinking if Sanders actually gets elected. I’m not sure yet where that is going to come from, given the foreign policy hands in both parties and the old thinking in all of the agencies. Sclerotic doesn’t even begin to describe the state of US foreign policy at the moment.
Obama’s winging it on Syria is the closest thing to prudence that we have, be even there he has to say a lot of stupid shit about other countries and other leaders to protect his ability to act.
Of course, a quagmire is in the financial interests of our bloated military. They’ve failed to learn the one key lesson of Vietnam: don’t do anything stupid. Like striking hospitals with Medicins sans Frotieres doctors in them and then persisting for thirty minutes.
Yes, I thought Obama’s posture was a bit of “brier patch” for the domestic consumption of his enemies.
I’m with Bernie on this one.
Bernie again making sense and that will benefit the U.S. We need a candidate with common sense. Obama has had enough sense to stay clear. Sanders has more then enough brains to know this is not our dance. We started the mess by our illegal invasion of Iraq. That was the when jihadists flooded the region. Let Putin wreck his economy and kill innocents.
Future world Putin returning from inspecting the results of his ridiculous macho foreign policy:
Personalizing propaganda is something that repeatedly leads Americans astray in their reactions. To understand where Putin is coming from, look at a map, look at where the US bases are, look at where the chaotic states are.
There are a number of the -stans that are potential powder-kegs because of autocratic rule. If one of those states fail, there is another opening for Islamic insurgent fighters.
There are Islamic republics in the Russian Federation. Chechnya and Dagestan are two that already have trouble and have supplied troops to ISIS. Putin is not going to want that instability within its own borders.
Syria has been an ally of Russia from when it was the Soviet Union; it is a strategic counterweight to Russia’s neighbor Turkey (also a NATO ally). Russia is not about to let Syria collapse as a failed state.
Putin’s actions in the case of the accusation of Syria using chemical weapons, in the threat that the Right Sector Ukrainian government posed to Sebastapol, and in the threat of Syria becoming a failed state have been more prudent that what the GOP demanded of the US.
They also are uncomplicated by entangling alliances with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, and Israel. All Putin has to do to obtain stability is restore the current regime (with or without Bashar) to power and gain a return to normal life in the country after eliminating the foreign fighters or the Nusra front and ISIL/ISIS/Daesh. He doesn’t have to worry about bombing friendly “moderate” rebels.
And as of today, it seems that the US has had its collateral damage problem reappear in Afghanistan–this time killing doctors from Medicins sans Frontiere.
The US national security policy also is macho; it is just not personalized in the person of President Obama. Mainly because the chest-beaters in Congress want him to appear weak.
It is the institutions, not the leaders, who are strong or weak. Obama has the difficulty of working with institutions that riven with cross-cutting agendas. And a political and media class continuing to stir up trouble to keep those contradictions going. More autocratic governments like Putin’s suffer less from that with a skillful leader.
With the ongoing economic issues in the West and the US tied down in the Middle East, Russia and Putin seem more confident in comparisons with other countries and leaders and the US looks more fractious and frenzied outside of the cool and steady style of President Obama. That could be of benefit to US interests going forward.
Yes.
Putin is still headed for quagmire. As an imperialist country we know this well. I did not say we are innocent. I’m saying I see a man that with a nation of 160 million people and an economy that’s suffering. He is not making a wise choice if he backs Assad with his military. He will see captured soldiers burned alive. Then he will get his country sucked into a nightmare they can not afford. He uses the same “bring em on” type of style as our leaders have since the end of WWII. Ending with Bush’s incomprehensible invasion of Iraq. Let us stay clear a no fly zone is stupid. Putin is a paper tiger.
One thing all the rebels have in common is a hatred of Assad. Putin will soon be burdened. He is now allied with Iran and Hezbollah he will be “entangled with alliances” soon enough. Crazy Netanyahu is going to be screaming bloody murder. Oh and Bibi definitely has nukes. Russia has never been kind to the Jewish people.
Oh and its a “personality” issue? Putin is a narcissist and possibly as unhinged as Trump. I’m really sorry Russia lost eastern Europe. He needs to let it go. The Ukrainians hated the Russians before WWII this isn’t something that just happened. They helped the Germans slaughter the Jews to show they felt liberated. We did not have to help them hate the Russians. I don’t see many Eastern European countries pining for the soviet occupation again.
it’s best not to attribute usa motivations to other countries. as noted elsewhere, Syria is less than a day’s drive from Rus border. think, if ISIS based a little south of Mexico City, for example. and note Tarheel dem’s comment
I’m unclear which one you’re calling a quagmire candidate. I guess Clinton because she is advocating greater involvement.
It is ridiculous to be involved in a war and not have a side. The people we theoretically support in Syria are bit players and, at least in part, fronts to get weapons that end up in the hands of ISIS or other bad actors. So we have to be pushing for Assad or his regime with someone else as a figurehead to win. But we are already too committed publicly to his overthrow. So the least we can do is stand aside while Putin takes out ISIS and re-establishes him. Then we have the problem that Russia has a major power base in the Mideast, which is, indeed, a problem. A silver lining there is that we may be able to use Putin to reign in the Saudis. If Putin decided, after stabilizing Syria, that he would like a stranglehold on the world’s oil, no one but us could stop him, and it is questionable whether we would be willing to go as far are it would take. Especially as Putin could argue with a lot of validity that he was just taking the war against jihad to its source. At that point, Saudi Arabia better start kissing our ass pretty hard for a change.
Yes. But remember, Syria has been a major Russian base for the last fifty years and more. That’s probably why sour Scoop Jackson retreads, still following the eternal verities of the 1950s, are so determined take out Assad. The Cold War must never end! And if it does end, it must be revived!
I’ll believe Russua is in a quagmire when I see it.
Yes, Putin and Co might have learned something from the USSR quagmire in Afghanistan. Unlike the US that seems not to have learned a damn thing from the Vietnam War — or more precisely learned the wrong things. ie, “we lost” because because DFHs stabbed the MIC in the back and if they hadn’t done that and we fought on, the gloves taken off, for another decade or two, “we would have won.”
As for active engagement in a theater of war, the US number of years in Afghanistan now exceeds the number we were in Vietnam. After we destabilized Cambodia, we left the fate of that country in the hands of Pol Pot.
How does the newly launched Russian air campaign in Syria reflect that they might have learned lessons from the USSR’s misadventure in Afghanistan? I’m confused by that suggestion.
Afganistan is totally irrelevant. What they’ve learned from is the 2002 theater hostage crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
and the proximity of Syria to the border, not to mention the fact that IS extremists evidently are already active in the regions