Terror - maybe we do nothing, and that's okay

[AI Wessex]

Fair enough, Russia is bombing anybody Assad sees as a threat to his rule.  Initially, he ignored ISIS and focused his attentions on the rebel forces, but ISIS slipped in and pulled fighters away from the rebels to become strong enough that he has had to fight them, as well.

[AI Wessex]

And then there's this:

New revelations from leaked Islamic State documents indicate coordinated movement of troops between ISIS, the Assad regime and even the Russian air force.

The revelations come from new letters added to the 22,000 internal ISIS documents Sky News leaked in March. Before the Syrian troops regained control of the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this year, the Syrian government arranged a deal to allow ISIS to “withdraw all heavy artillery and anti-aircraft machine guns from in and around Palmyra to [the] Raqqa province.”

[Fenring]

And then there's this:

New revelations from leaked Islamic State documents indicate coordinated movement of troops between ISIS, the Assad regime and even the Russian air force.

The revelations come from new letters added to the 22,000 internal ISIS documents Sky News leaked in March. Before the Syrian troops regained control of the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this year, the Syrian government arranged a deal to allow ISIS to “withdraw all heavy artillery and anti-aircraft machine guns from in and around Palmyra to [the] Raqqa province.”

What's your point?

[AI Wessex]

Back to my earlier point, that Assad didn't see ISIS as a threat initially, but even as an ally who attacked the same rebels he did.  That may have changed, but I'm not able to tell to what degree.

[Fenring]

Back to my earlier point, that Assad didn't see ISIS as a threat initially, but even as an ally who attacked the same rebels he did.  That may have changed, but I'm not able to tell to what degree.

Let's just say that's not what my assessment would be.

[Pete at Home]

Assad was even buying oil from DAesh.

I think he saw daesh as less of a threat because he reckoned the west hated them more than we hated him. And he's right on that

[Fenring]

Assad was even buying oil from DAesh.

I think many people were, but that only means he was willing to use whatever resources he could to sustain his country. It doesn't imply, as Al idly suggested, any kind of allegiance between the two factions. I am pretty sure there was none.

I think he saw daesh as less of a threat because he reckoned the west hated them more than we hated him. And he's right on that

It depends on who "we" is. Hillary and the war-hawks were clearly more concerned about Assad, and were actively taking more steps against Assad as well despite media rhetoric about how terrible ISIS was.

[TheDrake]

I think a key part of this question, is would San Bernardino have happened, or 9/11, if we hadn't meddled in the region? Does Al Quaeda or ISIS even exist if the US had been isolationist and let Afghanistan go to rot? It's easy to look now and say, my god, how can we just let these guys do these horrible things? We can't let them get away with it!

But an absolutist attitude leads to endless war. What if we returned the POWs captured and held in Afghanistan, withdrew our forces, and declared our neutrality and stopped flying missions, applying diplomatic pressure, and supplying any of the combatants in the area?

I'm obviously not sure what the result would be from the "screw you guys, I'm going home" doctrine, but I know it could save us billions of dollars - some of which could be redirected to domestic law enforcement to guard against attacks on our actual soil. It would also make it a lot harder to recruit fighters, without having the pictures of dead kids from a drone strike.

As for the supply of petroleum, oil prices could rise and then we get more jobs in domestic production - as well as a viability incentive to migrate away from the petroleum economy into other energy sources.

[Fenring]

But an absolutist attitude leads to endless war. What if we returned the POWs captured and held in Afghanistan, withdrew our forces, and declared our neutrality and stopped flying missions, applying diplomatic pressure, and supplying any of the combatants in the area?

Agree with you on this.

I'm obviously not sure what the result would be from the "screw you guys, I'm going home" doctrine, but I know it could save us billions of dollars - some of which could be redirected to domestic law enforcement to guard against attacks on our actual soil.

This is the main problem. Ever since WWII America has been a military-equipment junkie, where they can't allow all of their armaments to 'go to waste.' What's more, all of those wasted billions of budget dollars effectively function like a Keynesian stimulus (although not spread evenly) where that massive amount of money is forced down the economy's throat but in turn creates jobs and keeps the need for new military equipment and materiel constantly on. Most of the commercial economy is already reliant on the principle of planned obsolescence, which you could say is a waste of resources for all and yet without which many companies would not survive. Similarly, the military operates on the same principle but whereas instead of the ordnance being designed to fail after a certain amount of time - which would be a deadly risk - the principle is to use as much of it as possible as often as possible, and when there is apparently no need for it to create the need to use it. Endless war, then, is an economic consideration and is based largely on the need to constantly write orders to the major suppliers.

I won't even bother about with the relationships between policy makers in Washington and those suppliers.

In the short term, if we employed Operation: screw you going home, the economy would likely take a hit, but in the long term I think being forced to grapple with operating under a 'real' economy rather than a fake one would be a good thing. Also there is the minuscule matter of lives saved and chaos averted around the world.

[NobleHunter]

There's also pull factors for US interventionism.  Al Qaeda tried using bombs in the Middle East (mostly Saudi Arabia I think) to destablize regimes and let them take over. It didn't get them very far. Getting the US to do it for them, however, was much more effective.