{"id":14701,"date":"2015-11-24T06:59:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T11:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14701"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:00:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T12:00:44","slug":"14701","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14701","title":{"rendered":"Is David Brooks Pushing For Another Vietnam?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Is David Brooks Pushing For Another Vietnam?<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"Picture\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
A few years ago,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist\u00a0David Brooks<\/a><\/span>\u00a0wanted the U.S. government to wave its magic wand and turn the Syrian civil war into a Vietnam for Iran:<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

We should be trying to turn the Syrian civil war into Iran\u2019s Vietnam. We should make them waste money and effort trying to back their client…I\u2019m thinking that maybe it\u2019s time for a more active U.S. role. I have no clue how to do that.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Brooks was apparently modest enough to admit that he had “no clue” as to how the U.S. should mold Syria to achieve such a nefarious goal.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Well, a few years have now gone by, and Brooks has experienced his\u00a0<\/span>eureka moment<\/a>! He apparently tuned into a warmongering speech from Hillary Clinton and now (at long last) has a clue:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Clinton…gestured to the reality that you can\u2019t really deal with ISIS unless you are also willing to deal with Assad. Assad is not some secondary threat who we can deal with after we\u2019ve tamed the ISIS monster. Assad created the failed state and the power vacuum that ISIS was able to fill.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some of Clinton\u2019s specific prescriptions were a little too limited and Obamaesque for my taste (she didn\u2019t even call for more American Special Operations forces to improve the bombing campaigns, though she said she would be open to it).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Aha! Brooks, who wanted to turn Syria into Iran’s Vietnam, has changed to turning it into\u00a0America’s Second Vietnam!<\/em>\u00a0Brooks wants\u00a0American troops<\/em>\u00a0in there fighting both ISIS and Assad. He’s come to the conclusion that it is America that should “waste money and effort”!<\/span><\/p>\n

But wait! There’s more:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The grand strategy of American policy in the Middle East, therefore, should be to do what we can to revive and reform Arab nations, to help them become functioning governing units.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

The “grand strategy”?<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is David Brooks Pushing For Another Vietnam? A few years ago,\u00a0New York Times\u00a0columnist\u00a0David Brooks\u00a0wanted the U.S. government to wave its magic wand and turn the Syrian civil war into a Vietnam for Iran: We should be trying to turn the Syrian civil war into Iran\u2019s Vietnam. We should make them waste money and effort trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[35,10720,1239,446,447,522,10719,776,1440,862],"class_list":["post-14701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-assad","tag-david-brooks","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-middle-east","tag-ron-paul-liberty-report","tag-syria","tag-vietnam","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14704,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14701\/revisions\/14704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}