U.S. military is expanding special forces operations in Africa
The U.S. has lost any strategic thinking.<p>The U.S. is now fighting a active war against &quot;loosely connected groups from north West Africa to Central Asia&quot; most are Sunni Extremists. This is already a insane thing to do, war on loosely connected groups that reach over 10000km even when the waste majority of these groups have never actually attacked the US or have any plans to. There is also almost no evidence that one can actually win such a war in a military sense. The guy who lead ISIS was turned into a terrorist not in the 1980s when the US was supporting Afgans against the Soviets but rather in 2004 during the Battle of Fallujah. Fighting and bombing people everywhere will create more Anti-American opinions then it destroys. Ironically the only place people actually like the US is in Iran where the US have not been able to bomb anybody for 40 years or so.<p>Outside of that they are also actively working against and sometimes fighting with the Iranian block (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and maybe even the Houthis plus a few other groups) who are often equally opposed to the before mentioned &quot;loosely connected groups from north West Africa to Central Asia&quot;. This means the US is at a total strategic impact where there are people already fighting but the US wants to get in there and crush both groups but also make sure the destruction of one does not empower the other.<p>The allies of the US, Israel, Saudis and Pakistan are all highly problematic and in many ways strategically counterproductive. Israel because support for Israel makes everybody else, especially among the population of the region angry prevent the government from embracing any alliance with the US. The Saudis and the Pakistanis are largely responsible for the creation of many of the before mentioned &quot;loosely connected groups&quot; and continue to support them all over the world.<p>The US supports Sunni governments against Shia governments but is fighting a war against both Shia and Sunni non-government actors. At the same time non of the governments they support actually give flying fuck about the US except for the support they can get from the US.<p>Why all of this? The US was only involved in the region because of oil. The US does not actually need the oil anymore, even if they did the resources spent are probably higher then just paying the higher price for oil. Not to mention that even without the US everybody who has oil has a huge intensive to sell it.<p>If you look objectively at any of this you can only shake your head. The danger of all of these groups is minimal. Yet the US spends the same amount of money they did when they were opposing another world supper power.<p>Sadly in Washington there is a foreign policy consensus and a echo chamber and there is almost nobody who moves very far from the &#x27;party line&#x27; on foreign policy. Not to mention the massive vested interest that it supports when the Saudis buy 10 Billions in US weapons.