- Sep 4, 2005
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Ultimately, I'd like to see us stop meddling altogether. Our track record isn't great in that regard.Are you proposing the US should have taken a different attitude toward the Syrian situation over the last decade. Or suggestions for the incoming Trump admin?
We've either helped install people who end up giving us heartburn later, or created destabilization and then bailed leaving massive power vacuums for the worst characters to fill.
Sadam Hussein was certainly "a bad guy", but we didn't do the people of that country any favors with our interventionism. We (and the region) would've been better off leaving him in power, and perhaps trying to persuade him change certain things in other ways.
As far as my recommendations for the incoming administration? You can work with a secularist economically, the same isn't true for a religious zealot. It's a lot easier to negotiate and make deals with someone who wants more in "life", than it is to negotiate with a person who thinks their "afterlife and all eternity" is riding on something.
In a nutshell, I do think it would've been easier to make deals with Assad than it would this rebel leader.
From a negotiation standpoint. "You're going to burn for all eternity if you don't do XYZ to a T" isn't a starting point one can work with and doesn't really allow for any middle ground. However, if a person isn't fixated on that, things like "hey, you relax these policies, and we'll see what we can do to lower export costs on XYZ" is something that could work.
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