If the us pulled back their troops everything would not be fine, it would just be america not making things worse as that whole region has been fighting each other long before islam or even christianity appeared, and they would do so long after america or any other foreign powers left the region. The only powers to keep control there were either brutal dictators or empires who divided people to ensure minimal conflicts like the ottoman empire did.
Exactly.
In most areas of the world, those conflicts have existed for thousands of years. But then ironically in others it never existed until relatively modern times.
Prime example, the entire fabricated notion that "Arabs-Muslims must hate Jews". That is almost entirely fictitious, created in the last 60 years by those that wanted to exploit fake hatred for their own purposes. Prior to 1948, the Arabs got along perfectly fine with their Jewish neighbors, and even fought alongside them, sold them their land, and worked together on a great many projects. And this goes back well over a thousand years.
Simply look in the history book at the history of the Spanish Inquisition. It was primarily remove the vestiges of Moorish Rule, and after the Muslims were all ejected, converted or killed it went after the Jews. Why? Because they were primarily the "middle men" between the Muslim overlords and the Catholic majority. They could do things that both Christians and Muslims were prohibited, so they were a bridge that both sides exploited. But in the last half century without the Ottoman overlords they became a scapegoat for all the ills in the region.
Anybody that thinks the US simply leaving would solve these problems is an idiot. And ironically, the last 30 years have been probably the most peaceful in the region in the last 100+ years. Look at how many times Israel was attacked over 30 years. But since 1990 that has pretty much stopped, and the former enemies are actually growing quite close. Other than a few religious conflicts and one nation that kept trying to conquer and annex their neighbors the last 30 years have actually been remarkably stable as a region.
I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Qatar-Saudi border in 2009. A 5 mile wide "no man's land" that separated the nations, willed with artillery posts, mine fields, and tank obstacles. That for decades had been manned by soldiers on both sides. After 1991 it was largely dismantled, with only the abandoned watchposts still standing. The Colonel who showed me around told me it was where he was posted for 2 years when he was a Lieutenant, and it was like a mini "Cold War" for 40 years prior to that.
But the lesson to most of the Gulf Nations after the Gulf War was that if they allied with the US, we left them alone unless they needed our help. We did not demand military bases, they were still free to get their equipment from wherever they wanted, at most we asked for rights to ports and airport. And interestingly enough, most of them actually built ports and air bases and then pretty much begged the US to come in and occupy them.
I spent a year at Al Udeid Air Base, in Qatar. We jokingly called it the "Field of Dreams" base, from a line in the movie. "If you build it, they will come".
After 1991, Qatar realized that like Kuwait they could never stop an invasion on their own. So even though their entire Air Force consists of only around 100 aircraft, they built a massive air base in the middle of the desert. The base is truly massive, and it was built for the very purpose of luring in the US to bolster their own defenses. Since then they have completely demilitarized their border with Saudi Arabia, and have fallen away from Iran increasingly in recent years, because they know if Iran was foolish enough to attack them, by default they would also be attacking the US.
And no, they are still free to purchase whatever equipment they want. In fact, their 2 most recent aircraft acquisitions are Typhoon jets from the UK, and Rafale jets from France. All of their air tankers are made by Airbus, and other than a single model of helicopter and fighter all of their other attack and trainer aircraft are of European design and manufacture. And the US also made quite an impression when they left both Iraq and Kuwait without fuss. The governments asked us to leave, we left. No coup or pressure to allow us to stay, we just packed up and left without issue. Something they did not experience to often in the past when they were working with the USSR. Then the biggest way they kept their military presence was the threat of cutting off arms shipments. "Oh, you don't want our 'advisors'? Then fine, you can't have any more of our weapons. Or our engineers, or use our schools, or our commercial aircraft."
opcorn2:
