Thursday, October 19, 2017

Maybe "give them arms" shouldn't be a solution to every foreign policy problem?

John McCain apparently can't grasp the fact that once you give weapons to other people, they are going to use those weapons how they want to, not necessarily how you want them to.
The Iraqi operation also forced a military confrontation between two American-backed allies. Both the pesh merga and the Iraqi military have received American training, intelligence and supporting airstrikes and artillery in several joint operations against the militants.

Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was incensed. “The United States provided equipment and training to the government of Iraq to fight ISIS and secure itself from external threats — not to attack elements of one of its own regional governments, which is a longstanding and valuable partner of the United States,” he said in a statement.

Mr. McCain warned of “severe consequences” if American-supplied military equipment was destroyed in the operation. The Kurdish government said Monday that its fighters had destroyed five American-supplied Humvees used by the Iraqis.

(Yes, I realize this comes from the same article I was reacting to in my prior posts. How many posts can I milk out of a single article?)