Toxic relationships…we've all been there.

Toxic relationships…we’ve all been there. But most of us have learned from them and start looking for the “red flags” before we commit. Not so with the Great Father. As everyone knows, the Great Father wrecked the car again over in Syria. He got drunk at the Arab Spring block party, met someone he got romantically interested in real fast, and plowed right into Bashir al-Assad’s house. The Great Father never learns—friends don’t let friends drive drunk. That’s why he was warned about trying to drive Syria after shotgunning a twelve pack of Regime Change Ale. What’s more, the Great Father’s party pals and romantic partners are rather seedy characters that don’t belong in the house. Take for example the Great Father’s last love interest over in Syria. Or, rather, his former love interest. That being the entity known as ISIS/ISIL that the Great Father enlisted to topple Assad over in Syria. The Great Father fell in love with them and thought he had a future with them. The Great Father took them to the mall to look at rings and military aid packages. ”Let’s just see where it goes”, said ISIS. Until not long into the relationship, they said they needed space. The Great Father was into too much drama. They just weren’t all that into him and moved on. What?! The Great Father jilted again?! The Great Father doesn’t appear to be too lucky in terms of international relationships.

Well, ISIS talked to their friends who talked to the Great Father’s friends who talked to him. They wanted more out of a relationship than Syria. And the whole thing turned into such drama! Who didn’t see that happening? Now, Assad warned the Great Father not to get mixed up in this thing. “Look, you don’t even know this person and you’re already talking marriage. You’ve been out on one date and you’re already naming the kids. I heard the gossip about that. You’re going to name one Democracy and another you’re naming Regime Change. This isn’t going to work out, trust me. Look, listen to me now, ISIS is a gold-digger.” But the Great Father didn’t listen, nor did he listen to anyone else. ISIS then turned out just like all the rest and kicked the Great Father to the curb. They didn’t even text him to tell him it was over! Dang it, they kept the weapons, too! Everyone thought the Great Father learned his lesson over in Iraq, what with that engagement that morphed into a catastrophic Friends-With-Benefits relationship. That ex of the Great Father still gets money, military advisors, and airstrikes out of him. People told the Great Father, “Didn’t you see ISIS has a violence addiction before you got mixed up with them and started planning the wedding? Were you really so naïve that you thought once Assad was out of the picture, ISIS would see what a great guy you are? Didn’t you learn anything from that fling you had in Libya? You spent all that cash and they ended up seeing other people.”  So it is, we are stuck yet again with another relationship of the Great Father as sordid, tawdry, and tempestuous as those of his Hollywood celebrity friends.

I see in the news that “retired military officers” (aka paid shills for the Great Father) are saying the airstrikes against ISIS won’t be enough. We need troops on the ground. Of course! Who didn’t see that coming? But, it’ll need to wait until after the elections. In the meantime, ISIS is running amok, inspiring lone-wolf terrorist attacks in such places as Canada. But the truth of the matter is, we see once again that the Great Father creates the enemies he says he and everyone else needs to fight later. The Great Father messes up and everyone pays. No one ever asks to see the tracking numbers on all the U.S. arms shipments that went over to that particularly volatile part of the world to find out who signed for them. Maybe it’s time we banned the government from shipping arms and money over there. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of paying for the love gifts the Great Father showers his girlfriends with. It’s bad enough he has this on-again/off-again open relationship with Israel that’s costing us a bundle. Plus, whenever he shows affection for Israel, the Saudis get jealous and he has to then give them a few fighter planes. That region of the world is costing us a fortune, thanks to the Great Father wearing his heart on his sleeve. This is exhausting.

We’re being told there’s a human rights disaster going on, thanks to ISIS. But the finger doesn’t point far enough. The disaster is the direct result of U.S. government meddling in the region. The U.S. seeks to “fix” what it perceives is “broken” when, in fact, nothing is really broken. What is actually happening is the U.S. portrays itself as “THE West” (not just part of, but the ultimate embodiment of the West) and thinks that the solution to perceived Middle Eastern problems is to Westernize them at the point of a gun. This is ridiculous, arrogant, and unworkable. They’re the East, not the West. Obviously, the U.S. government cannot read a compass, among other things. Trying to pound the Eastern square peg into the Western round hole is doomed to failure. People that know the history of the region know that current Western solutions are infantile, at best. But that’s not who we’ve got making U.S. policy decisions over there. Who we’ve got making those decisions bring all of the vast historical knowledge of lawyers to the table. The American people need to end the Great Father’s stalker-like obsession with this region of the world. We need a restraining order that says the Great Father cannot come within aircraft carrier range of the Middle East. What’s more, if “Westernizing” the region through “democracy” solves world peace problems there, then explain how World War One and World War Two happened. Those two wars were started by Western powers with Western governments. And we’re selling this as a solution to the Middle East?

If peace is what you desire, sending weapons to people that are obvious extremists isn’t going to accomplish that. Chances are, what will happen is destabilization, war, and an eventual bloodbath as minority groups such as Syrian Christians are targeted. How do we know they’re extremists? Because they told us what they believe. They told the Great Father, too, but he chose to see them through rose-coloured glasses. Toppling Assad should have never been a mission of the United States in the first place. We now see the disaster of trying to do that. Syrian Christians, Kurds, and Yazidis are paying for the Great Father’s mistake with their lives.

But what about the oil? That’s a market issue, not a military issue. Oil cannot be transformed into money without selling it. So long as people want to buy it, the owners of the oil will sell it. We don’t need to control the actual land it’s on in order to buy it. That’s like saying we need to own the local grocery store before we can purchase milk there. The Saudis are good at extorting military protection from the U.S. by playing the oil card. But the truth is, oil has no value to the seller if it cannot be sold, so whoever happens to sit on the throne of Saudi Arabia is going to sell the oil regardless. Who possesses the oil must sell it in order to realize a benefit from it beyond their own use. It’s the same with any product be it oil, grain, or consumer goods. If we made it clear we have no interest in who runs what over there and stopped interfering in the sovereignty of other nations, the fruits of terrorism might just begin to wither on the vine. We would limit our dealings to commerce and leave the politics at the door. In the end, commerce is what will decide the destiny. If people need access to the market to sell their own oil, it will be they themselves that get rid of terrorists hindering them.

The thinking that we need to control the land the oil sits on is a legacy of the Cold War. We thought that we needed to hold the land to prevent the Soviets from gaining it and cutting the oil off. This is the whole sad truth behind the U.S. backing of Islamic fundamentalists. They were vehemently anti-communist, so we used that in our favour. But the Cold War is over. There isn’t a Soviet Union that can marshal the entire Middle East into a Warsaw Pact and cut the U.S. off from the oil. The relationship with Israel is from the same legacy. We needed them to fight proxy wars with Soviet-backed countries in the Middle East. They were basically a proving ground to test U.S. weapons systems against Soviet weapons systems. Israel was also used to cull the armor and aircraft supplied to Middle Eastern countries by the Soviets. It’s time for us to move on.

Finally, the Great Father needs to be on his own for awhile. He needs some alone time. He needs to find a constructive hobby, like tai chi or something. Attend some seminars on how to build healthy relationships. Right now, the Great Father simply isn’t ready for a healthy relationship and that’s why he needs to admit he’s just not relationship material at the present. He needs to admit his own manipulative tendencies and anger issues in a relationship that attracts people who also don’t know what a healthy relationship is. In a healthy relationship, you don’t give someone surface-to-air missiles just because they ask for them while strolling the mall concourse hand-in-hand, all moon-eyed and in love. What’ll be the next thing asked for? A tactical nuclear weapon? Isn’t that how the Great Father’s old flame Israel basically ended up with some? “Don’t worry, Great Father, it’ll be our little secret. Your kids will never find out. The registration and title are in my name, after all…”, Israel said during a candlelit dinner. No, there need to be healthy boundaries in a relationship. Such as not arming thugs, toppling governments, and then lying about it. But, instead, the Great Father started drunk-dialing the anti-Assad Syrian “moderates” with offers of romantic get-aways at U.S. military training camps. Didn’t the Great Father know they were ISIS’s cousin? They both used to cruise the boulevard together on Saturday nights back in the day. Everyone knows that, except the Great Father it would appear. My word, another romantic tryst doomed from the beginning. But he’s already taken them shopping.

Where does the Great Father meet these people?! At the State Department Lonely Hearts Nightclub, that’s where. He strolls in, clad in his polyester leisure suit, and sees that lonely person at the bar, obviously on the rebound, just like him. He saunters over, puts on his best smile, and says, “Hi beautiful…come here often?”