Wow, how did everything get cut off. All these posts are directed at Emac:
Emac: You're also changing the subject. But you're still wrong. The United States is all over the Middle East, and Syria is the least of it. (The U. S. is a huge arms exporter around the world and only a part of the Syrian rebels' arms come from the United States.) The United States maintains large military bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Afghanistan and several other countries in the region and Central Asia. Bahrain is also the base of the 5th Fleet of the U. S. Navy. (Bahrain is extremely authoritarian and has distinguished itself from its neighbors in the past few years on how to massacre its own citizenry.) You can see a look at official reports of the Department of Defense here:
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/miltop.htm
See the section "Active Duty Military Personnel by Service by Region/Country". You have go to the end of the reports to see a snapshot of 'deployments', which are not counted where you would expect in the reports. Also keep in mind that mercenaries and civilian contractors are not included, although sometimes they're included separately.
Extremist Islam is a reaction to atrocities and unjust interventions. It may not be a logical reaction, but there it is. Hamas gained popularity over Fatah a decade ago because of how brutal the Israeli military can be. Al-Qaeda itself claimed from the beginning that its attacks on the United States were a direct reaction to U. S. military presence in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia. Now, military domineering does not equal atrocities, but Al-Qaeda only exists because of U. S. support for extremist rebels against the communist Afghan government. Extremist Islam in Iraq was a direct reaction to the atrocities committed by the U. S. occupation, and to a lesser extent by memories of Saddam Hussein's government before it. The group which changed its name to "Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" in 2007 is a direct successor of far less radical parties which won the 1991 Algerian elections and fought to assert their rights in the Algerian Civil War.
Have you ever heard of the story of why Al-Shabaab exists? That's probably the clearest example I can give you. The Islamic Courts Union was formed in 2006 and almost immediately captured Mogadishu. The ICU rapidly expanded and occupied almost the entirety of South-Western Somalia save for the remains of the Transitional Federal Government* in a town called Baidoa and a region behind this town to the Ethiopian border. A stable state was about to be created in the region (which, with Puntland and Somaliland controlling the rest of the country could have meant an end to 15 years of anarchy and civil war). The ICU had even crushed the pirates along their coastline, giving international shipping a brief respite. What happened? Ethiopia invaded as the final Battle of Baidoa raged and quickly crushed the fledgling ICU administration with U. S. assistance, bringing back famine, the pirates and the warlords. With Ethiopia not prepared for a military occupation, the collapse of the ICU only led to the creation of radical extremist groups which have since consolidated as Al-Shabaab, occupying much the same territory that the ICU had captured, except now willing to do things like blow up a bar in Kenya because people a watching a football game. It would have been much better to work with the ICU rather than intervene, a lesson no one seems to have learned.
* the TFG was just a bunch of warlords that were recognized as the representative of Somalia in international relations early in the Millennium
On Syria, er, Chicago...Uh...
ante -- two days remain until "kickoff," and we only need four more players!
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