We have mutual defense agreements. IMO, each and every one should be reviewed for relevance TODAY. ANY deal with Turkey and/or Pakistan needs to get some serious looking at. All of those little Gulf States are basically paying for our protection in oil. Not going to stop that.
We should just blow Afghanistan up from border to borer. Nothing else is going to change those cavemen.
Then, there's the "War on Terrorism" that makes ISIS a legit enemy.
Is this where I point out we should never have gotten involved in or with the ME to begin with? Those people are beyond the capacity for understanding to the average Western mind. We want to "bring democracy". They can't spell it much less know what it means. We think we can figure them out and what they're about by using the "what would I do?" method. I don't know how many lefties on a different board used to lecture me on being "racist" because I said Arabs don't think like us. Well, they don't. These so-called "God-given" Rights we have were taken by and are protected by the sword, not the mouth.
We've made ourselves the bad guys with our arrogance.
To them? It's who can kick who's ass. They respect power and only authority powerful enough keep it. Like us. You falter and you're weak. That's what's wrong with Erdogan. He hasn't had the shit slapped out of his Turk ass and nothing less is going to phase him. They hate us. They are taught to from birth, You're not going to undo that with an explanation at a level of communication they don't even understand. He's going to throw crap in Trump's face until Trump does or doesn't do something about it.
One thing Erdogan accuses the US of that he is absolutely correct about is we ARE the ones that destabilized the Middle East. We should never have deposed Saddam.
But, we can hardly just pull out. And I'm not sure we should. If Iran isn't stopped, we're going to sit by, throwing words at a problem, while a country full of radical nutjobs that are eager to die for Allah to take the infidels with them get their hands on nukes and a delivery system. I'm not an expert but I suspect you only have to be so accurate with a nuke