Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: MP-Ryan on August 21, 2013, 04:27:23 pm
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**** Russia. **** Putin. **** their whole goddamn government and the people supporting it.
No, this post is not about the human rights travesty that is the homophobic law receiving the Olympic kerfuffle, though I wholeheartedly support a boycott of the Sochi games on that front too. No, this is about a human rights tragedy with a significant death toll:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23777201
Chemical weapons attacks have killed hundreds on the outskirts of Damascus, Syrian opposition activists say.
Rockets with toxic agents were launched at the suburbs of the Ghouta region early on Wednesday as part of a major bombardment on rebel forces, they say.
The Syrian army says the accusations have been fabricated to cover up rebel losses.
The main opposition alliance said that more than 1,000 people were killed by the attacks.
Activist networks also reported death tolls in the hundreds, but these could not be independently confirmed.
It is also not clear how many died in the bombardment of the sites and how many deaths were due to any exposure to toxic substances.
Last year a senior Syrian defector, Nawaf Fares, told me in Qatar that the Assad government would not hesitate to use chemical weapons if it wanted to. However, today it denies any guilt and instead says this is a media campaign by its enemies.
Video footage showed dozens of bodies with no visible signs of injuries, including small children, laid out on the floor of a clinic.
Ghazwan Bwidany, a doctor treating the injured, told the BBC the main symptom, especially among children, was suffocation, as well as salivating and blurred vision.
The ****ing obstructionist Russians wear this one.
I don't think NATO forces should be fighting foreign domestic wars. I don't think NATO should support Islamist rebels who don't know against the devils we do. I DO think that democracies have an obligation to prevent despotic governments from using CBRNE weapons against their populaces, however.
So, like I said.
**** Russia.
Oh, and someone string Assad up by his neck already.
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This article might explain why MP's so incensed, since the original linked in the OP had the Russian issue barely as a sidenote. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-syria-crisis-chemicals-russia-idUSBRE97K0SB20130821) I had to do some extra checking to really understand whats got him stirred up.
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Hold up. How do we know that they didn't stage it?
I've always thought the media very bias in favour of the rebels in this conflict, it doesn't feel like objective reporting to me at all, like they'll just swallow anything they say.
In a coldly logical way, killing hundreds of innocents to bring in international aid and end the conflict would save lives.
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I hate to say it, but I'm with Lorric on this one. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10039672/UN-accuses-Syrian-rebels-of-chemical-weapons-use.html)
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The Russian issue isn't their support of the Syrian government on the reports about chemical weapons, its the Russian's continual and consistent opposition to intervention in Syria against Assad (not necessarily on the side of the rebels). Russia is the primary reason NATO has not militarily intervened in order to protect civilians.
Again, it's not that I support the rebels, it's that Russia is a big part of why an awful lot of innocent people are currently dead, dying, or at risk of death in Syria at the hands of the government OR the rebel forces.
At this point it really doesn't matter which side in Syria used chemical weapons; what matters is that they WERE used and much of that has to do with the continual obstruction by a single foreign government with economic, military, and political ties to the Syrian government (which has already been documented to have fired on the civilian populace).
So - no matter who pulled the trigger, the Russian government should be the ones wearing this.
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Hold up. How do we know that they didn't stage it?
If the rebels were able to deliver chemical weapons by rocket in large enough numbers to accomplish this, Assad would have died during his visit to Damascus last week, rather than there having been merely a carbomb outside a building he was in. This isn't Israel and they don't have an Iron Dome system to intercept the inbounds.
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Oh look MP just found out how eggregious Putin and his acolytes are. Good on you! :yes:
Of course, this has little to do with how outrageous we in the safe world are. This has everything to do with the geopolitical power that only Assad can provide to the Russians. Never forget the russian naval base in Syria, its largest outside Russia and its door to the Mediterranean. Losing Syria to the Americans and Israelis would mean a free road to them into Iran, and their hegemony in the Middle East.
And it's not as if the westerners want to do anything about it as well. Syria is a mess right now, with multiple oppositions fighting each other, from secularists to islamists, from Sunnis to Shiites, etc. No one wants another visit to the ME hellhole.
So Syria will continue to burn until either Assad gets too tired to fight back and commits a mistake, or the opposition is silenced. This is probably the start of several decades worth of a civil war. Angola is probably the example here. The result will be millions killed and a country shattered to bits. Then, when it will wake up from its nightmare, it will have oil for the Assad family to hoard for themselves.
I'm glad people still get indignated with all this, but I'm really fazed out at it. It's like a cliché movie that I have just seen too many times.
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The Russian issue isn't their support of the Syrian government on the reports about chemical weapons, its the Russian's continual and consistent opposition to intervention in Syria against Assad (not necessarily on the side of the rebels). Russia is the primary reason NATO has not militarily intervened in order to protect civilians.
Again, it's not that I support the rebels, it's that Russia is a big part of why an awful lot of innocent people are currently dead, dying, or at risk of death in Syria at the hands of the government or the rebel forces.
I understand that the Russians have an agenda. But at the same time, I think the point is valid.
If you're going to use this to justify action, you need to get in there and confirm it went down as has been stated before you take that action.
Remember Iraq and the phantom WMDs?
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Oh look MP just found out how eggregious Putin and his acolytes are. Good on you! :yes:
I've been incensed at Russian foreign policy for some time now, I just haven't posted about it much. Chemical weapons are a very big reason to start.
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I understand that the Russians have an agenda. But at the same time, I think the point is valid.
If you're going to use this to justify action, you need to get in there and confirm it went down as has been stated before you take that action.
Remember Iraq and the phantom WMDs?
Lorric, maybe you've missed the whole Syrian conflict, but both the rebels and the government forces have been killing each other - with large numbers of civilians caught in the middle - starting in 2011.
Intervention by NATO and the UN to protect civilians* (not to oust Assad and install a rebel government) has been completely justifiable for almost two years. Chemical weapons use has been documented on at least four occasions - at least one of which points to the Syrian government as the culprit besides this one.
There are virtually no parallels between this conflict and the justifications for Iraq. The Russians are protecting Assad, and in the process ensuring that UN and NATO military intervention is impossible without a major international incident. Hence the title of the thread. This is not a thread extolling the virtues of the Syrian rebels over the government; this is a thread about why the Russian government deserves absolute condemnation for their position.
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Well I just can't sync with all this rant. Yes, a thousand and a few hundreds died, which means that some more thousands died too. A horror story.
But it is far from being the only one, it's just the most mediatic right now. As I said, we are looking at a million plus war casualties here.
It's also a little itchy. Two days ago, arms inspectors from the UN arrived at the country. Now this happens, precisely at the worst time for Assad to do this kind of ****. Something very slimy is happening, and I don't think we will even ever know what really went on there.
To blame the Russians is cool by me, but again never forget the wider picture here. Russia won't drop Assad and China too. The consequences of leaving Assad to burn with either an Al-Quaeda ran country or an "american-friendly" government are at a scale where 1300 people dead do not matter one jolt. These kinds of reasonings are cruel and inhuman, but who watched to what happened in Chechnya should not be surprised here. A man who lets his own people die so he gets what he wants won't suffer a bad night's sleep over other countries' people.
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Intervention by NATO and the UN to protect civilians
There probably wouldn't be a war if NATO just (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/25/19138622-at-crossroads-syrian-rebels-eagerly-await-more-us-support?lite) stopped (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/23/politics/us-syrian-rebels) sending (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9023c0b0-db57-11e2-a237-00144feab7de.html#axzz2ce047mrQ) weapons. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/european-powers-lift-embargo-move-to-arm-syrian-opposition-direct-military-support-to-al-nusra-terrorists/5336673)
This conflict escalated thanks to them and if someone was searching a geopolitical gain it's probably NATO. Look at the arab spring:
Egypt - pro-NATO gouvernment -> non-violent protests
Syria - non pro-NATO gouvernment -> armed revolution
Lybia - non pro-NATO gouvernment -> armed revolution
Am I the only one seeing a patron here?
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Intervention by NATO and the UN to protect civilians* (not to oust Assad and install a rebel government) has been completely justifiable for almost two years. Chemical weapons use has been documented on at least four occasions - at least one of which points to the Syria
n government as the culprit besides this one.
That would be awesome.... in theory.
Who dafuq ever wants to get into that slimepit of gruesome warlords fighting each other every day, Iraq was a ****ing paradise by comparison to what Syria would ever be. No, no one will ever want to step one foot there, so what happens now and for some years from now on is western countries making fist signs against the bad bad russians who don't let the good democratic chaps do what they must do and save the people from Assad's terror. However, they are absolutely relieved for such an incredibly amazing scapegoat to do nothing about it.
Think man. Obama is not exacly popular right now. Would starting a war against another country in ME really help him? Is Europe really ready to anything other than euro-struggling with itself? Who would go there? Canada? Ah.
E: oh and yeah Dagger has a point too. It's not just the Russians who are selling weapons to Assad. We all know where the rebels are getting theirs. And where is HLP's post about the massacre that happened last week in Egypt by the same numbers? Right.
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As of June, we have an official UN death toll around 100,000 people.
The point is not that people died in a chemical weapons attack. The point is that the Russian government has enabled the situation in Syria to devolve to the point where either side feels they can get away with a chemical weapons attack in a war that has already killed far more people than it ever should have, because the forces that would typically intervene to halt the carnage won't with the Russians in the way.
I realize China is parked in the background as well, but Russia needs some serious pressure brought to bear to either get involved, or get the **** out of the way. The death toll is quite high enough and shows no signs of abating - and lets not forget that if chemical weapons are flying in Syria, the Israelis are going to get nervous. That adds a whole new dimension to this mess.
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But it is far from being the only one, it's just the most mediatic right now. As I said, we are looking at a million plus war casualties here.
The argument that simply because we cannot save everyone we may not attempt to save anyone should never have weight.
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I understand that the Russians have an agenda. But at the same time, I think the point is valid.
If you're going to use this to justify action, you need to get in there and confirm it went down as has been stated before you take that action.
Remember Iraq and the phantom WMDs?
Lorric, maybe you've missed the whole Syrian conflict, but both the rebels and the government forces have been killing each other - with large numbers of civilians caught in the middle - starting in 2011.
Intervention by NATO and the UN to protect civilians* (not to oust Assad and install a rebel government) has been completely justifiable for almost two years. Chemical weapons use has been documented on at least four occasions - at least one of which points to the Syrian government as the culprit besides this one.
There are virtually no parallels between this conflict and the justifications for Iraq. The Russians are protecting Assad, and in the process ensuring that UN and NATO military intervention is impossible without a major international incident. Hence the title of the thread. This is not a thread extolling the virtues of the Syrian rebels over the government; this is a thread about why the Russian government deserves absolute condemnation for their position.
Oh I know this. But we don't go jumping into every conflict in the World like this playing peacemaker.
If we do go in, I want the stated reason to be genuine. If it's to protect the civilians, then just forget the alleged chemical weapons attack, and say it's for the civilians (yes I know Russia is in the way). If it's for the chemical weapons attack, make sure it really happened. The Russians can't object if you do what they want and find it really happened.
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Lorric, please re-read the thread. You appear to either have missed or be misinterpreting the context of the rant/argument.
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That was not an argument for inaction, but a call for context here. Where is the outrage for what happened last week in Egypt?
And this idea that the Russkies are being bad for not letting NATO solve this is naive at best. At best. You should be aware that the Russians are mostly the arms dealers of Assad right now, that his military is the most similar thing Russia has to an army inside the ME, that this is basically a proxy war between EUA/Israel and Russia / China right now for power in ME? To be enraged that they denied NATO to "invade" Syria (as if) is silly beyond belief.
No, Russia won't let go. Nor will the States. Both are commiting huge chunks of weapons to the proxy civil war.
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Oh I know this. But we don't go jumping into every conflict in the World like this playing peacemaker.
In this instance, it's not just "jumping into every conflict". The use of chemical weapons and the hundred thousand dead makes it much more than everyconflict.
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Lorric, please re-read the thread. You appear to either have missed or be misinterpreting the context of the rant/argument.
It's all about Russia, right?
I think I've probably said all I need to say, since I'm more concerned with people just swallowing anything the rebels say fuelled by the media and letting a wave of emotion override objective analysis. If the main point is Russia, I am no longer needed here.
Oh I know this. But we don't go jumping into every conflict in the World like this playing peacemaker.
In this instance, it's not just "jumping into every conflict". The use of chemical weapons and the hundred thousand dead makes it much more than everyconflict.
Well yes, the chemical weapons certainly change it if it happened, but wars have raged on and on in other countries for years and you don't even hear about it.
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That was not an argument for inaction, but a call for context here. Where is the outrage for what happened last week in Egypt?
And this idea that the Russkies are being bad for not letting NATO solve this is naive at best. At best. You should be aware that the Russians are mostly the arms dealers of Assad right now, that his military is the most similar thing Russia has to an army inside the ME, that this is basically a proxy war between EUA/Israel and Russia / China right now for power in ME? To be enraged that they denied NATO to "invade" Syria (as if) is silly beyond belief.
No, Russia won't let go. Nor will the States. Both are commiting huge chunks of weapons to the proxy civil war.
It isn't in the slightest bit silly to denigrate a government that is more vested in its own geopolitical interests than a civilian death toll. I think you're confusing my outrage at the games Russia and China in particular are playing for a lack of nuanced perspective and geopolitical naivete.
The fact of the matter is that Russia and China could BOTH end the carnage as well, but neither nation is willing to commit forces as peacekeepers, because that would mean they have to actually attempt to keep the peace instead of supporting the Syrian government.
Ironically, both Russia and NATO have a vested interest in keeping Islamists from taking power in Syria, yet the Russians' actions are forcing NATO to tacitly support some Islamist groups who are all that are standing between Assad and wholesale slaughter of a chunk of the Syrian population. Don't forget that the Assad family is a political and religious minority in Syria; they have no love of the ordinary civilians that oppose their government either, the civilians whose outrage sparked the movement in the first place.
For that matter, the Arab league has actually shown some leadership on the issue of Syria and could probably be trusted to intervene in a peacekeeping role if Russia, China, and NATO would all step out of the way, but Luis is correct that that is unlikely.
So instead I'll continue to rant at the Russians, who are the primary obstructionists and protectors of Assad, and ordinary Syrians will keep dying. Wonderful.
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Ok just so we all get clear here.
No one will step foot in Syria for the simplest of reasons: You don't commit your own troops, money, public trust and support into a slimepit of hell if you can just commit back ended support in the manner of weapons, bullets and war resources to the syrians themselves and let them solve by themselves the ****.
The States won't put their soldiers fighting people that are armed by the Russians. The Russians won't stop arming and supporting the only base of military operations they have in both the Middle East and in the Mediterranean besides Iran.
You all should stop playing the activist outrageous gag for a moment and think like Kissinger here. All the stakes are going up and there's ZERO incentive for any NATO country go there and burn itself (and then run with their hands covering their asses back). This **** goes on because the arms' market needs it; because Russia geopolitics needs it; because Isreal demands it; because Al Quaeda fights it; because Assad is fighting for his life; etc.
And while **** in Lybia was over quickly, that was because that moron had so little support. This has nothing to do with that skirmish.
The fact of the matter is that Russia and China could BOTH end the carnage as well, but neither nation is willing to commit forces as peacekeepers, because that would mean they have to actually attempt to keep the peace instead of supporting the Syrian government.
They could and they would lose all their influence in Syria by doing so. They have zero to lose here (Putin isn't really interested at what the world thinks of him) in this war and everything to lose if Assad loses the war.
So instead I'll continue to rant at the Russians, who are the primary obstructionists and protectors of Assad, and ordinary Syrians will keep dying. Wonderful.
Quite mysanthropic I am feeling tonight. Let's all have a drink and forget all this ****.
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Well yes, the chemical weapons certainly change it if it happened
Chemical weapons use has been documented on at least four occasions - at least one of which points to the Syrian government as the culprit besides this one.
It has.
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They could and they would lose all their influence in Syria by doing so.
Their saving Assad from his continuing loss of power and wrecking his entire country's infrastructure and population for the next thirty years would do this why?
You're assuming peacekeeping means that the government falls. Having seen Russian peacekeeping in action, even in its less-terrible guises in, say, former Yugoslavia, this doesn't remotely follow.
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Both sides are bad, in fact, Assad is almost certainly the lesser of two evils. Besides, why should we get involved in this conflict?
How is it in America/Israel/freedom's best interest to support al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria?
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How is it in America/Israel/freedom's best interest to support al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria?
How is it in their interest to not underline that any use of such weapons has severe consequences?
Who benefits is kind of irrelevant; the Weapons of Mass Destruction line has been crossed. Swift and decisive retribution from the international community is the only reason people don't do so more often, and thus its use here is appropriate.
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How is it in America/Israel/freedom's best interest to support al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria?
How is it in their interest to not underline that any use of such weapons has severe consequences?
Who benefits is kind of irrelevant; the Weapons of Mass Destruction line has been crossed. Swift and decisive retribution from the international community is the only reason people don't do so more often, and thus its use here is appropriate.
So let's get involved in another pointless war, destabilizing the region even further, hurt America's reputation in the developing world and make the situation even worse? How is that going to save lives and restore stability to the region?
Also, why should we help the very terrorists and Islamists that we have spent the last 12 years fighting?
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How is that going to save lives and restore stability to the region?
People won't be gassed.
Also more seriously, because the threat of this sort of weapon is contained by the promise of massive retaliation by even uninvolved parties. Letting any use pass weakens that threat.
Also, why should we help the very terrorists and Islamists that we have spent the last 12 years fighting?
Why do you truly believe that toppling Assad will help them? It'll hurt some, Hezbollah for example, perhaps help others, hurt Iran too; they've poured a lot of money and effort into Assad since this all started.
But there are over 50 rebel groups active in Syria. The war is no longer so simplistic or so easy to end as you want it to be. Or perhaps you don't understand that I'm not advocating the solution you think I am.
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One utilitarian alternative is for NATO to stop supporting the rebels and start supporting the Assad instead. With both Russia and NATO behind him, the war will be over much sooner. In exchange they can even pressure Assad to try to respect some of them human rights. Its far from ideal solution, but better than letting the civil war go on for years.
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One utilitarian alternative is for NATO to stop supporting the rebels and start supporting the Assad instead. With both Russia and NATO behind him, the war will be over much sooner. In exchange they can even pressure Assad to try to respect some of them human rights. Its far from ideal solution, but better than letting the civil war go on for years.
So, you'd send the message that if a despot uses chemical weapons on his own soil, then he'll get help from the international community in removing the things he wants to gas?
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Yeah that wouldn't work too well I guess.
However this idea that NATO would invade just "to make a point" is something I cannot take seriously viz a viz everything that happened in that region in the last 100 years.
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However this idea that NATO would invade
The only people advocating an invasion are the people on the side that things should not be done. Has anyone noticed that yet?
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Ah so you are kind of proposing a war solution without any war effort. That's convenient.
Anyways what you noticed is not anything particularly obscure. Everyone knows that anyone who proposes an invasion as a solution never uses that word and rather substitutes it for some other particular euphemism like "intervention". You OTOH were braver and used "retribution" and more or less advocated punishment. How would that work without getting one's hands dirty in Syria is beyond me. Even if you just use bombers and so on you are practically admitting your own partiality and probably making things a lot worse in the field.
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Ah so you are kind of proposing a war solution without any war effort. That's convenient.
You seem to forget that a successful non-invasion is something we've proved quite good at; early Afghanistan and more recently Libya were successful collapses of governments without an invasion.
Or we could do Clinton-era cruise missile diplomacy.
Or the Tanker War and Preying Mantis mode.
Or Libya back in the '80s mode.
I know you really, really want us to be arguing for an invasion, because that's easy to argue against, but unfortunately that's not the only military option we have or have ever exercised. Destroying the Syrian Air Force and Navy, knocking out every hard-surface airstrip in the country, that's not terribly hard for us. We've considered doing it before during Syrian interventions in Lebanon.
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Ok then. So let us be clear on this one. You are hereby proposing that NATO declares war on Syria. Do you think Russia would not take the bait exactly why? This is the same kind of situation that led to WW 1, although perhaps everyone is way less naive and more aware of the nasty consequences of these things. This is why Russians would probably fail to do their alliance part and declare war on NATO, but it is also why NATO will not declare war on Syria in the first place.
That's one thing. Another is that declaring Afghan war a success in its early stage, precisely when the americans ****ed up their Bin Laden catch is not a good argument. Afghanistan was not in a state of civil war and bombing the palaces and so on was an easy target. Arguably we can say that bombing Assad directly would be feasible, but this direct killing of head of states is something of a taboo in every single military power (it creates a nasty precedent that every leader is afraid of for obvious reasons, and it usually results in absolute chaos in the field).
As I also said earlier, getting Lybia's leader was easy. The guy didn't have Russians on his back. He had no one covering him and everyone wanted to look righteous.
Preying Mantis was not the greatest example of all time...
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So let's get involved in another pointless war, destabilizing the region even further, hurt America's reputation in the developing world and make the situation even worse? How is that going to save lives and restore stability to the region?
Also, why should we help the very terrorists and Islamists that we have spent the last 12 years fighting?
NGTM-1R already addressed this, but it bears repeating and elaboration: the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable (truthfully, the use of any CBRNE weapon is unacceptable). This is why there are international agreements like the Chemical Weapons Convention. (http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/) Notwithstanding the proliferation argument that NGTM-1R already quite pointedly made, I would like you to pull up a map of the Middle East and note which country is 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Damascus, Syria.
Damascus specifically and Syria generally are quite literally the LAST places in the world that we want to see people get away with using any form of CBRNE weapon in uncontrolled conflict. The potential for a powderkeg scenario is quite real.
Furthermore, 'invasion' like Iraq and Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it's a bad tactical position and I think NATO generally has been well-reminded of that fact since 2001. I realize for some of you younger fellows that Afghanistan and Iraq are the most recent conflicts in memory and you default to them as examples of the way NATO will respond to conflict and have the [correct] perception that they have been politically [though not militarily] disastrous, but in point of fact the way those two conflicts were dealt with are significant outliers in NATO countries' policies. Most major nations now a part of NATO learned their lessons about ground-war invasions and hearts-and-minds in the late 50s and early 60s in various southeast Asian countries, and the majority of their 'hot war' responses between 1960 and 2000 were heavily influenced by that reality. The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included) following the Second World War, but they all have developed political and social cultures that do not tolerate anything other than clear victory in a short period of time. It is the political and social reality at home that has made military intervention in both Afghanistan and Iraq a failure, not military capability in the invaded nation. In this new reality, NATO nations would and should not be looking at full-scale invasions and occupation as they are no longer capable (both politically and logistically) of fielding a large enough occupying force.
NATO has several options that are much better than invasion and occupation to deal with the situation in Syria, but they are being blocked by Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. Given a free hand, NATO could successfully establish refugee safe-zones in parts of Syria, keeping both conflicting sides away, and eliminate the majority of the chemical weapons supply in relatively short order. The obstacle to that - and the inspiration for the thread title - is Russia.
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Ok then. So let us be clear on this one. You are hereby proposing that NATO declares war on Syria. Do you think Russia would not take the bait exactly why? This is the same kind of situation that led to WW 1, although perhaps everyone is way less naive and more aware of the nasty consequences of these things. This is why Russians would probably fail to do their alliance part and declare war on NATO, but it is also why NATO will not declare war on Syria in the first place.
Luis, the point of the goddamn thread is that Russia is the obstacle to NATO intervention. Of course these options are not available as long as Russia continues in their current position.
That's one thing. Another is that declaring Afghan war a success in its early stage, precisely when the americans ****ed up their Bin Laden catch is not a good argument. Afghanistan was not in a state of civil war and bombing the palaces and so on was an easy target. Arguably we can say that bombing Assad directly would be feasible, but this direct killing of head of states is something of a taboo in every single military power (it creates a nasty precedent that every leader is afraid of for obvious reasons, and it usually results in absolute chaos in the field).
That may have used to be true, to some extent, but that is no longer the case for major powers. The main reason Hussein never took a bullet or bomb during Desert Storm was two-fold: (1) the UN didn't authorize it (not that that would stop the Israelis most days) and (2) his successors were worse than he was.
The same holds true of Assad. In terms of the Syrian leadership in his family and party, he's a moderate. To eliminate Assad would require eliminating the majority of the Syrian political leadership. And the problem with that is it opens the door to the Islamists.
What is required in Syria - from a humanist perspective - is the elimination of chemical weapons, the elimination of government firepower supremacy that allows them to prey on the civilian population, and the establishment and enforcement of safe zones for refugees well away from the powers fighting each other. Getting any more involved than that is a recipe for a geopolitical disaster at this juncture.
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The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included)
How do you define this? North Vietnam wanted to take South Vietnam. They did. They won.
If you're going to say America would have won in the end if they kept going, yes I think they would, but the fact is they didn't.
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The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included)
How do you define this? North Vietnam wanted to take South Vietnam. They did. They won.
If you're going to say America would have won in the end if they kept going, yes I think they would, but the fact is they didn't.
Never studied military history in the 20th century, have you? The Vietnam conflict was lost in the continental United States, not the country of Vietnam. The departure of American forces was not due to military defeat, but politics in the US. So no, no NATO nation has militarily lost a conflict since 1945.
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The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included)
How do you define this? North Vietnam wanted to take South Vietnam. They did. They won.
If you're going to say America would have won in the end if they kept going, yes I think they would, but the fact is they didn't.
Never studied military history in the 20th century, have you? The Vietnam conflict was lost in the continental United States, not the country of Vietnam. The departure of American forces was not due to military defeat, but politics in the US.
I'm just going to have to disagree on that. Vietnam won on attrition. America lost it's will to fight. Vietnam didn't. North Vietnam achieved their objectives. America failed theirs.
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I'm just going to have to disagree on that. Vietnam won on attrition. America lost it's will to fight. Vietnam didn't. North Vietnam achieved their objectives. America failed theirs.
Or you could try doing some reading. You are correct that the United States collectively lost the will to fight; that does not constitute military defeat. Modern analysis has suggested that indeed the North Vietnamese military was close to defeat-in-the-field had the US continued to escalate troop deployment and not pursued its policy of "Vietnamization."
Military history is not quite so simple as common perception would have you believe. The US withdrawal was because of political pressures at home, not defeats in the field. So again, no NATO country has militarily lost a conflict since 1945; that is not to say they have not been forced into withdrawal politically because of perceptions at home (which has happened several times; also primarily in southeast Asia as I alluded to earlier).
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The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included)
How do you define this? North Vietnam wanted to take South Vietnam. They did. They won.
If you're going to say America would have won in the end if they kept going, yes I think they would, but the fact is they didn't.
Never studied military history in the 20th century, have you? The Vietnam conflict was lost in the continental United States, not the country of Vietnam. The departure of American forces was not due to military defeat, but politics in the US.
I'm just going to have to disagree on that. Vietnam won on attrition. America lost it's will to fight. Vietnam didn't. North Vietnam achieved their objectives. America failed theirs.
You are correct, Vietnam won in every way irrelevant to MP-Ryan's point.
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The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included)
How do you define this? North Vietnam wanted to take South Vietnam. They did. They won.
If you're going to say America would have won in the end if they kept going, yes I think they would, but the fact is they didn't.
Never studied military history in the 20th century, have you? The Vietnam conflict was lost in the continental United States, not the country of Vietnam. The departure of American forces was not due to military defeat, but politics in the US.
I'm just going to have to disagree on that. Vietnam won on attrition. America lost it's will to fight. Vietnam didn't. North Vietnam achieved their objectives. America failed theirs.
You are correct, Vietnam won in every way irrelevant to MP-Ryan's point.
Well I did say I think America would have won if they kept going. I wanted to see what his definition of military defeat was. And now I know. And that's all I wanted.
So thanks Ryan.
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NATO is only being blocked by them wanting an actual mandate from the UN Security Council this time. This is what Russia and China are blocking, them being permanent members in the UNSC, with the ability to veto any proposal on the table.
NATO forces have, in the past, engaged in military operations without UNSC backing. The 1999 bombings of Yugoslavia are a prime example of that, but the legality of said event is unclear at best (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia).
However the Syrian situation is strategically and politically very different.
In Kosovo conflict, strategic air strikes were used to pressure the Yugoslavian leadership (Milosevic) to back off from their operations in Kosovo. In Syria, the conflict is more widespread than that, rather than Syrian forces being deployed in a particular region, they are engaged with rebel/insurgent activity country-wide.
Kosovo war was an ethnically motivated act of war against the nation's own citizens. The Syrian conflict is a case of several rebel factions (with varying motives and goals) fighting the official regime and, to varying extent, each other.
Serbian bombings had, at the very least, tacit approval of Russia at the time, rather than complete blanket disallowance. Russian units were the first UN peacekeepers in the country after Milosevic capitulated (after Finnish-Russian mediation team had convinced him to do so). The peacekeeping operations were under UN mandate, but using NATO units (KFOR) and, grudgingly, Russian peacekeeper units worked under authority of NATO troops.
Similar to both situations is the extreme reluctance to deploy significant ground troops. However in Syrian case, it is unlikely that air power alone could accomplish anything meanignful; ground presence is a must-have to get anything done. At the current political situation no one wants to send their troops there, like Luis has pointed out.
Even if by some miracle, political solution was achieved to send NATO or Russian troops to Syria to pacify the situation on UN mandate, or as peace-keepers afterwards, it would very likely become another insurgent-infested nightmare for everyone involved.
From a humanitarian point of view, I definitely agree with MP-Ryan. The conflict has only been escalating since it started, and it has long since reached a stage where outside intervention became a legitimate choice. By stonewalling ANY intervention, Russia and China share a certain degree of culpability in allowing the conflict to escalate.
However I wouldn't be so quick to unilaterally condemn the Russians on this. The opposition to Assad is fractured and, as events in Syria have shown, questionable in their motives. Parts of opposition-controlled Syria have been put under Sharia law and I doubt anyone in the West wants that to happen for the entire country. Islamic organizations (both political and terrorist kind) are sending weapons and troops to Syria to further their own gains.
It's pretty hard to justify a military intervention - particularly ground forces - when there is no real, viable political presence in the target country that you can genuinely support. When there's no plan for the future coming from within, the only course of action would be a full invasion and establishment of a new order in the country, and THAT would certainly go down well.
In a way, waiting for UNSC mandate is one indication that shows how reluctant NATO countries are to act. They've acted without direct UN approval before. In fact there's probably more of a reason for them to act now than during the Kosovo conflict, considering one of their member countries (Turkey) has come under attack from within Syrian borders several times now.
They just don't really want to get involved, which is understandable from a Machiavellian point of view, but condemnable from a humanitarian point of view.
So, if one were to believe that a military intervention is the only way to solve the conflict AND that it should have been done already, then Russia is not the only one to blame. Even without UNSC mandate, actions could have already been taken; as the old saying goes, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. So, if a military intervention should have been done, then NATO countries should have done it already. Of course, there would be an interesting spectrum of possible responses from the Russian (and Chinese) governments in that case.
Also, with all the semi-recent military actions whose legality has been dubious at best - specifically, US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and indeed the Serbian bombings in the previous decade - I'm not surprised that NATO countries want this one played "by the rules" - especially as it also happens to give them a convenient reason to stay as far away detached from it as possible.
So it seems that, at least for the time being, it makes no sense to me to start blaming any individual country for a military intervention that never took place. No one probably wants to do it, whether it would be right or wrong thing to do. There's no strong faction in Syria that would be sympathetic to the Western governments; more and more it's starting to seem like it's a power struggle between different islamic factions in addition to rebels trying to topple Assad's regime. And while it's pretty sure Russians don't exactly like dealing with Assad either, any option would be worse for them (islamic or secular).
That still leaves a few different options for helping the civilian populace of Syria, those who are not involved in the fighting but would catch the brunt of it (either internal fighting or external intervention). Humanitarian support by sending food, emergency supplies, medication and medical teams is already being done, I think.
Another option would be to simply offer asylum for anyone not interested in fighting, and evacuate the country of anyone willing. But who wants to receive all them potential terrists, right?
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Iraq is actually limiting the number of evacuees from Syria in their borders and I imagine the same is happening in their other borders (let's forget about Israel here).
I agree with the humanitarian perspective, but that kind of **** is just absolutely out of the loop right now. Every humanitarian has to think right now in machiavelic terms, if not only for practical purposes, but mostly because it's the only model that seemingly predicts whatever it is that will happen from now on. Humanitarian perspectives only cloud our eyes here, for the best I can see anyone do is begrudingly utter an oh dear (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok")...
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Don't have time right now for a lengthy or detailed response, as I'm at school, but thought I'd throw a question. For those of you advocating intervention due to alleged chemical weapons abuses, how can you possibly justify such an invasion on the grounds of human rights? How can the Western world accuse Syria of human rights abuses, when we're killing thousands of children a year with drone strikes, indefinitely detaining people without due process, spying on our allies and even our own people, and waging a constant war on the civil liberties of our own people?
How many times has the United States, France, Britain, etc. violated international agreements? If you don't think we violate international treaties, you need look no further than the OAS Charter or the United Nations Convention Against Torture?
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The fact is that NATO nations have not militarily lost a conflict (Vietnam included)
How do you define this? North Vietnam wanted to take South Vietnam. They did. They won.
If you're going to say America would have won in the end if they kept going, yes I think they would, but the fact is they didn't.
Technically we won Vietnam. The Vietnam War ended with the Paris Peace Accords, which upheld the integrity of South Vietnam. The job was done. The war was over and it appeared that a lasting peace had been built. There was a major problem with the treaty, however, as it effectively granted Viet Cong agents in South Vietnam amnesty and allowed them to stay there.
Depending on your narrative, this led to one or two things:
1. These leftover communist agents began waging a guerrilla war against the South Vietnamese government.
2. The South Vietnamese government began a campaign trying to eliminate these communist leftovers.
Depending on your perception of what happened, the United States refused to get back involved in Vietnam after that. Though we did send some basic aid to the South Vietnamese government.
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invasion
*sigh* (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk)
How can the Western world accuse Syria of human rights abuses, when we're killing thousands of children a year with drone strikes, indefinitely detaining people without due process, spying on our allies and even our own people, and waging a constant war on the civil liberties of our own people?
How many times has the United States, France, Britain, etc. violated international agreements? If you don't think we violate international treaties, you need look no further than the OAS Charter or the United Nations Convention Against Torture?
Inability to stop some rights abuses does not preclude action where possible to stop others. Better countries be hypocrites than complicit bystanders. Also, equivocating those items with the documented use of what are defined the world over as "weapons of mass destruction" on a civilian populace is ridiculous. The only item in your list that even approximates the severity of chemical weapons use is the drone strikes, and your estimate of the casualty numbers is beyond hyperbolic, even by the standards set by third parties and the Pakistani government (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/07/01/six-month-update-us-covert-actions-in-pakistan-yemen-and-somalia/)
This is like saying you can't help stop a fist-fight in the street because you had an argument with your family about what TV channel to watch yesterday.
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Indeed. This mess has to stop. At this point, even a regime using that bastardized version of Sharia law common among extremists would be a better choice than a government that drops friggin' WMDs on civilians. Yeah, Russians are guilty of blocking the NATO intervention, but at the same time, I think that NATO should say "Screw you, people are dying out there!" and get involved anyway. Russia can't really afford an attack on NATO, and they know it. That would upset them, yes, but an intervention would be the right thing to do. NATO is less guilty than Russia and China, but they're still guilty. Something must be done, the worst possible thing to do now is to stand back and watch the massacre.
Politics being what they are, though, I think that the end result will be a few millions of innocent Syrians sacrificed on the altar of international bickering.
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One thing I'm surprised hasn't been dealt with in media is this:
Regardless of who it was that used the chemical weapons in Syria, it is immensely troubling that they were used in the first place.
If it was Assad's government who uses them, then that's condemnable by itself.
If, however, it was some rebel faction who used them, it is actually a bit more disturbing because it means Assad's government can no longer control and contain their weapons of mass destruction.
And if one rebel faction can access these weapons (as Assad's government claims), what's stopping the more controversial factions from gaining control over them and, say, smuggling them abroad for their comrades to be used in other countries as means of terrorist attacks?
If I were a Russian I would pretty soon start to worry how much control Assad actually has over his WMD's. It may have been beneficial for Russia to keep Assad in power, but I think the risk of WMD's being distributed to terrorist organizations is becoming unacceptably high.
It may soon be that Russia will approve military intervention just to get SOME order in the country and secure the WMD's. Or they might do it themselves, who knows, we're talking about Russians here.
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The question is up in the air still if chem weapons were actually used - there have been a whole lot of pictures of dead children with fumes around their mouths, in mortuary's and hospitals, but suprisingly few pictures of dead people lying in the street (AFAIK, none?) - There is an obvious propaganda machine working, and the grain of truth behind it all is getting... distorted.
(This does not mean I am against intervention).
It may soon be that Russia will approve military intervention just to get SOME order in the country and secure the WMD's. Or they might do it themselves, who knows, we're talking about Russians here.
I read something in the newspapers about the russians trying diplomatic intervention on their own terms.
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Reports speak of thousands in the hospital due to toxic poisoning.... 300 died so far. I think tbh I would need a fair big counter evidence right now to be skeptical of the chemical attack. I take it to be a given right now.
Because human nature is what it is, I would also not be entirely surprised it would be an attack of a rebel faction to another, but obviously the faction who is much more likely to have these weapons and use them is Assad.
The american navy is moving, but Obama has to make the call. So let's see what happens now.
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It's worth noting that unless you knew about the existence of the Union Carbide plant, or could examine the bodies, few people would be able to tell the difference between Bophal and real chemical gas attack. So even if you see people dead in the streets, there is another possible explanation.
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Wouldn't Assad be able to give that kind of alternative suggestion if some chemical plant was destroyed?
Anyways, the inspectors are in Damascus...
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It's worth noting that unless you knew about the existence of the Union Carbide plant, or could examine the bodies, few people would be able to tell the difference between Bophal and real chemical gas attack. So even if you see people dead in the streets, there is another possible explanation.
p. sure if there was a massive chemical plant in the suburbs of damascus we'd have heard about it by now
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Wouldn't Assad be able to give that kind of alternative suggestion if some chemical plant was destroyed?
I'm sure he would. Just saying that it's easy to see dead people in the streets and assume it's chemical weapons when there are alternative explanations.
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I know what you mean, but if it quacks like a duck...
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I know what you mean, but if it quacks like a duck...
... It's a soldier lying in ambush.
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Regardless of the latest attack, the UN has confirmed previous chemical weapons use in Syria during this conflict.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/26/syria-un-no-impunity-chemical-attack?CMP=twt_gu
Syria: UN inspectors' vehicle hit by sniper fire
UN says team visiting site where alleged chemical weapon attack took place 'deliberately shot at' in Damascus
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That development should not surprise anyone.
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I'm actually pretty torn on Syria. NGTM-1R makes a valid point, if we allow a government to use chemical weapons against their own people and the United States/international community doesn't respond, then it sets a troubling precedent. At the same time, it's clear that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria and that any rebel victory will be infinitely worse for both the United States and the Syrian people, than the current government.
This leaves the United States and the international community stuck between a rock and a hardplace. If we intervene, we'll either be stuck nation-building in Syria for decades or we'll leave a power vacuum that would be filled by extremists. But if we don't intervene, we could be sending a message to other states that there will be little or no response to what is effectively the mass murder of civilians.
We're damned if we intervene, we're damned if we don't. That's just how I see it anyway.
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At the same time, it's clear that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria and that any rebel victory will be infinitely worse for both the United States and the Syrian people, than the current government.
I highly doubt this part in particular is true. Then again, the reason I doubt it's true is because there are significantly more numerous and varied evils in Syria than two at the moment.
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At the same time, it's clear that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria and that any rebel victory will be infinitely worse for both the United States and the Syrian people, than the current government.
I highly doubt this part in particular is true. Then again, the reason I doubt it's true is because there are significantly more numerous and varied evils in Syria than two at the moment.
Ah yes, I forgot to count the United Nations as an evil. :p
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I'm actually pretty torn on Syria. NGTM-1R makes a valid point, if we allow a government to use chemical weapons against their own people and the United States/international community doesn't respond, then it sets a troubling precedent. At the same time, it's clear that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria and that any rebel victory will be infinitely worse for both the United States and the Syrian people, than the current government.
Aside from the fact that there is no single rebel alliance like in Libya, how will a "rebel victory" be worse for the general populace then the current government?
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Have you been paying attention to what happened to Egypt the last year?
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So China is saying the US is just trying to get an excuse to do what China is definitely against of doing.
So Iran is threatening the US of dire consequences if they press some kind of launch button.
The rebel coalition has cancelled a meeting in Genebra with the UN saying that Assad must first be punished, "then" we can have a meeting.
tic toc tic toc
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We're damned if we intervene, we're damned if we don't. That's just how I see it anyway.
This really is right on the money and the only reason I can see a successful political intervention at this point is if it will give the U.S. and western countries brownie points with the rest of the world. There's plenty of terrible war times going on all around the world at any given time, along with campaigns to bring them to light(like Coney 2012) but the sad...sad truth is that it's better for western counties to evacuate the willing and give them asylum more than it is to go in guns blazing and try to fix the problem.
America's greatest strength has always come from people looking to escape their current lives in favor of what she has to offer. It should come as no surprise that this quiet solution is probably the most likely that is already in motion.
If we have learned anything from Iraq and Afganistan, it's that military intervention will bring only limited success. Capturing Assad and holding him accountable might be the worst thing we could do, next to an air strike. The best thing would be to let his enemies take him down. I doubt there would be any impact on economic gains either way.
Not that the economy is more important than our moral values, just that this approach would have the least negative impact on the U.S. and other countries.
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The idea behind holding Assad accountable is not about Assad. "It's about sending a message". It's about saying to all the potentially creep assholes in power "Don't you EVER think of doing this ****". That is the only important reason. Syria is ****ed either way.
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meanwhile Exxon is calling Obama sayin "ah OK buddy keep doin what u been doin k man?"
(http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/521c8e57eab8ea4c0f2ad409-844-387/screen%20shot%202013-08-27%20at%207.29.41%20am.jpg)
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I've been pondering this situation for a while, and I can't shake the feeling that we've been ignoring a perfect ally; the Kurdish people. They're by far the most secular and stable society over there, and they're effectively neutral in the fight, though they're fighting against the Islamists trying to take control of towns under Kurdish control. The Free Syrian Army, although numerically superior to Al Qaeda and the other Islamist militias, are not as powerful or brazen as the Islamists. Meanwhile, any attempt by us to equip the FSA with combat gear(excluding weapons) is a laughable game of catch-up with the Saudis and Qataris who are arming Al-Nusra Front and Guraba Al-Sham with state of the art weaponry.
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The kurds are too much of a political problem to be supported by the West. If you want their help, they will demand an independent nation. Which, in theory is great, but that would piss off the governments of every other nation in the area, as their Kurdish populations would almost certainly try to rebel and join wherever this new Kurdish land ended up. Seriously, any move towards supporting Kurdish independence in Syria would provoke at one more war, probably more - in Iraq, Turkey and/or Iran. It's just not going to happen.
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Have you been paying attention to what happened to Egypt the last year?
Yes, I did. However, the situation that is currently ongoing is quite different from what happened there the last 20 years or so (or... I don't actually know - I wasn't involved). We have to wait and see for another few years - when the dust has settled - to see what the effects really were.
Also, Egypt is not Syria. I just want to hear Nakura's reasoning behind how a rebel victory is worse then a governmental victory.
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We're damned if we intervene, we're damned if we don't. That's just how I see it anyway.
This really is right on the money and the only reason I can see a successful political intervention at this point is if it will give the U.S. and western countries brownie points with the rest of the world. There's plenty of terrible war times going on all around the world at any given time, along with campaigns to bring them to light(like Coney 2012) but the sad...sad truth is that it's better for western counties to evacuate the willing and give them asylum more than it is to go in guns blazing and try to fix the problem.
America's greatest strength has always come from people looking to escape their current lives in favor of what she has to offer. It should come as no surprise that this quiet solution is probably the most likely that is already in motion.
If we have learned anything from Iraq and Afganistan, it's that military intervention will bring only limited success. Capturing Assad and holding him accountable might be the worst thing we could do, next to an air strike. The best thing would be to let his enemies take him down. I doubt there would be any impact on economic gains either way.
Not that the economy is more important than our moral values, just that this approach would have the least negative impact on the U.S. and other countries.
Quoting this because it expands on Nakura's point and you're both wrong. Specifically Nakura's earlier statement that "we'll either be stuck nation-building in Syria for decades or we'll leave a power vacuum that would be filled by extremists."
No. nonononononono.
Look, the recent examples of Afghanistan and Iraq are TERRIBLE examples to base your ideas of intervention on. Both of those interventions were experiments - which didn't work - from which all NATO countries have re-learned some hard lessons from the 1950s and 1960s.
The only moral and strategic obligations Western countries have concerning Syria are the following:
1. Denunciation and prevention of further chemical weapons use in the conflict.
2. Protection of civilian refugees.
Both of these can be accomplished without Afghanistan/Iraq-style invasions. Between combined airpower, the presence of Turkey on one border, and the myriad of tactical units in various countries that can operate within Syria without full-scale divisional deployment, there are ample options for intervention well short of invasion that can accomplish the above two goals.
Your are both demonstrating linear and somewhat historically-myopic thinking by using Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of what NATO intervention will or has to look like, and nothing is further from reality. Wipe those two precedents from your minds when discussing this topic; they are not even within the scope of probability for NATO operations in the forseeable future.
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Would Libya be a good example instead?
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From what I understand, what is being considered is a version of 'Cruise Missile Diplomacy', strategic long-range strikes on military targets within Syria in order to convince them that using Chemical Weapons will have unpleasant repercussions, I don't think any Government would be foolish enough to try putting yet more boots on the ground there.
Personally though, before we start throwing missiles around, I'd like a little more evidence than the say-so of people who have been chomping at the bit for months for a chance to do exactly this. If the Syrian government is involved, then yes, such behaviour needs to be discouraged in the strongest terms, we don't want to go back to that place in History, but we need to be really certain before launching strikes against another country that has not attacked us directly, because whether it is like Iraq or not, you can be certain that other countries will see exactly what they want to see.
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MP, I would suggest that saying that the biggest historical precedents that we have available in these situations should be wiped out from our brains is not exactly the most rational thing. You say that what NATO has in mind is nothing like these precedents, well excuse me if I'm a bit skeptic from such an outlandish claim.
Do keep in mind that the Iraq example did not start in 2003. In 1991 a limited intervention was attempted. Did not work but rather kept a lunatic in power for too long, and it ended up in war anyway. We have myriads of different "precedents" and we do have some knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. The Yuguslavia case is exemplary, but I dare say that the game was an entirely different one.
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MP, I would suggest that saying that the biggest historical precedents that we have available in these situations should be wiped out from our brains is not exactly the most rational thing. You say that what NATO has in mind is nothing like these precedents, well excuse me if I'm a bit skeptic from such an outlandish claim.
Do keep in mind that the Iraq example did not start in 2003. In 1991 a limited intervention was attempted. Did not work but rather kept a lunatic in power for too long, and it ended up in war anyway. We have myriads of different "precedents" and we do have some knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. The Yuguslavia case is exemplary, but I dare say that the game was an entirely different one.
Desert Storm was an intervention to halt Iraqi expansion and secure the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (and their oil). Those objectives were successfully executed, occupation of Iraq was not one of them. Iraqi military power was effectively smashed in 91 and the Coalition could have rode straight into Baghdad if they so chose. George Bush Senior and his staff were smart enough to recognize what a **** storm occupying Iraq would turn out to be, unlike his lack luster progeny.
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MP, I would suggest that saying that the biggest historical precedents that we have available in these situations should be wiped out from our brains is not exactly the most rational thing. You say that what NATO has in mind is nothing like these precedents, well excuse me if I'm a bit skeptic from such an outlandish claim.
Do keep in mind that the Iraq example did not start in 2003. In 1991 a limited intervention was attempted. Did not work but rather kept a lunatic in power for too long, and it ended up in war anyway. We have myriads of different "precedents" and we do have some knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. The Yuguslavia case is exemplary, but I dare say that the game was an entirely different one.
Desert Storm was an intervention to halt Iraqi expansion and secure the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (and their oil). Those objectives were successfully executed, occupation of Iraq was not one of them. Iraqi military power was effectively smashed in 91 and the Coalition could have rode straight into Baghdad if they so chose. George Bush Senior and his staff were smart enough to recognize what a **** storm occupying Iraq would turn out to be, unlike his lack luster progeny.
To elaborate on this further, Luis is [it seems] missing a great deal of the background on Desert Storm. Hussein was seriously emboldened to act against Iran by the provision of American intelligence prior to and during the Iran-Iraq War. He [mistakenly] thought he was the US' go-to guy when it came to Arab states in the Middle East, and he desperately wanted Kuwaiti oil and access to the Gulf. The UN resolution and coalition action quickly dispensed him of that notion. StarSlayer is correct that the coalition could have walked directly into Baghdad, but did not as their goals were accomplished and they were bound by the terms of the UN resolution. There was no need to oust Hussein, and occupation was recognized as an extremely bad idea.
The most recent engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq were experiments. NATO forces went into Afghanistan with the intention of crushing Al-Qaeda's ability to stage attacks from Afghanistan, which meant the destruction of the organized Taliban government, and that goal was accomplished quite rapidly. The problem is that mission creep rapidly took place, where the military presence took the form of boots-on-the-ground beyond rapid deployment forces and air power, and NATO nations quickly got sucked into a nation-building enterprise without the resources required to do it. The deployment to Afghanistan was a mere fraction of the forces deployed into Germany in 1945 as an occupying force, yet were being told to pacify a much larger area and a populace that actively opposed much of their intervention. As for the subsequent invasion of Iraq, there are many contemporary theories on Iraq but the simple version is that evidence of limited CBRNE-type production was blown vastly out of proportion and used to justify invasion and occupation that devolved to civil war. In both cases, these were US-led attempts to re-shape vulnerable countries in a strategically-important part of the Middle East that failed utterly. NATO and other US allies were completely unprepared and unwilling to mount an occupation of the size, scope and duration that would be required to re-shape those nations into something more friendly to Western interests. That lesson has been learned several times over throughout NATO, and no one is prepared to try anything like that again.
Furthermore, the last time that was tried was roughly 50 years prior - the various proxy hot-wars in southeast Asia were a combination of an attempt to retain colonial power and simultaneously prevent Communist forces from reshaping those countries. Those wars failed for much the same reason: no one was prepared to pay the price for a chunk of land most of their citizens couldn't point out on a map. It took 50 years and a series of military (if not political) success stories for anyone to be willing to try again. And it didn't work.
So the parallels of the Iraq/Afghanistan messes are really not applicable to Syria. The situation in Syria is far more comparable to the Balkans or the myriad of mercenary-fought hot wars in Africa over the last 35 years than to the folly of the strategic attempts made in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Military history has shown time and again that the intervention of foreign powers does not remake governance structures without the enthusiastic endorsement of a majority of the population. That is not, nor should it be, the objective of intervention in Syria. Not only are NATO and the Arab League uninterested in occupying Syria, both organizations have sufficient resources to ensure that is not necessary.
Regardless of who fired off chemical weapons, the conflicting forces in Syria need to be made to understand two things:
1. It is never acceptable to use CBRNE weapons in conflict, particularly in areas where civilians will be impacted.
2. The UN, NATO, Arab league, etc will not let you murder your civilian population in the course of internal conflict, but we aren't going to rebuild your damn country after we intervene to protect those civilians either.
TL;DR: Nothing NATO does for the foreseeable future is going to look anything like Afghanistan or Iraq, because no NATO country can afford a repeat: militarily, economically, or politically.
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My words were not good. What I meant to say was not that the Desert Storm op didn't accomplish all its objectives. It did and it did so in record time. What I meant by saying "it didn't work" was that it didn't solve the problem of Iraq and the iraqis, nor did it fundamentally solved the problem of Hussein and his egomaniac attempts to create WMDs, make all sorts of instabilities in the region, etc.
Yes, if we are to judge DS to what was prevented from happening in Kuwait, etc., it was a blast. But I don't think we are talking about Syria in quite the same tone, now are we? The problem does not seem to be whether if Syria is about to invade anyone. It's about whether if the government will massacre and oppress its own people even further, or if this civil war will keep going as it has been for quite some time.
The most recent engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq were experiments.
What in the bloody hell are you talking about? If you were to argue that the management of the situation was absolute garbage, naive and incompetent, etc. I'm with you. But "experiments"? What does that even mean? Now we may go on and list all the mistakes that were made, the absolute lack of predictive power of those in power, the ideological blindness of the people in charge, etc., etc., but the ability of making these lists do not assure me *whatsoever* that any lessons have been learned by the US machine of war. Most probably, many of those same mistakes would happen again and again, despite the fact that we should "know better" (but does the system?). This is why that forgetting past mistakes is the worst possible suggestion. If anything, it tells us that they have probably learnt that they don't know how to deal with these situations.
...and no one is prepared to try anything like that again.
You'd be amazed at the stupidity of humanity.
So the parallels of the Iraq/Afghanistan messes are really not applicable to Syria. The situation in Syria is far more comparable to the Balkans or the myriad of mercenary-fought hot wars in Africa over the last 35 years than to the folly of the strategic attempts made in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not really. Not at all. The balkans are in the middle of F europe. And despite them having Russia support at the time too, it was not the Russia in its best form. There were *no* backers for Milojevic and he went down fast. They had no muslims backing them up either (the crimes were commited against the muslims at the time), no Al Quaeda was involved, etc.,etc. The situation couldn't be more different than from the balkans!
1. It is never acceptable to use CBRNE weapons in conflict, particularly in areas where civilians will be impacted.
2. The UN, NATO, Arab league, etc will not let you murder your civilian population in the course of internal conflict, but we aren't going to rebuild your damn country after we intervene to protect those civilians either.
Nice negatives. I'm still waiting for an actual measure. For I do agree with all the above. But you know, geopolitics is never this easy.
TL;DR: Nothing NATO does for the foreseeable future is going to look anything like Afghanistan or Iraq, because no NATO country can afford a repeat: militarily, economically, or politically.
That's .... bad politicalese. Come on, don't lower yourself to these kinds of naive feel-good twitter-lenght sentences that we can hear on and on and on in every single US election. The situation is a deadlock. I do agree with Nakura, and while you may be right in saying that there are "best moves" that the US should take (and I kinda agree with punishing those who launch CWs and so on), this will not solve the Syrian problem. It will remain a problem.
I said it before. Either Assad is murdered and a kind of a miracle happens (with all the factions actually coming together), or any other scenario is a civil war for more 10 years, if not 20. In Angola, only when the "fremen" leader Savimbi died (the rebel leader) did the nation come forward, with a nasty scumbag tirant family at its helm.
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I'm just wondering.
Would something like strategic air strikes even be sufficient to discourage Assad - or any other factions - from using chemical weapons if they were so inclined?
At this point, destruction of military OR civilian infrastructure may not have much of an effect on anything on the damned country.
It seems unlikely that anyone wants to involve ground troops in this, but I'm not really convinced that air strikes could even do anything to improve the situation.
Unless, of course, they launched massive incendiary bombardment at the known CW stores, but that would mean knowing where exactly they are, and that kind of intel is hard to get without operatives on the ground.
As inefficient as it seems, I'm at this time inclined to agree with the official Finnish view that there is simply too little information to base actions on, especially military intervention. I do expect that the UN inspectors will conclude that chemical weapons have been used. However, as troubling as it is, at this point it's an unsolved whodunnit with very partial field of evidence.
Logistically speaking the most likely culprit is Assad, but there is a chance that it isn't.
If it isn't Assad, then aerial bombardment will solve absolutely nothing, and will divert attention away from a potentially much bigger problem which I already pointed out in my previous post: Unknown quantities of chemical (and other?) weapons of mass destruction at hands of unknown, unpredictable factions.
Both the possibility of Assad having used chemical weapons, and having lost control of his chemical weapons stockpiles, are what we would call really really bad things in global politics, and I fully expect that will become a factor in the political exchange fairly soon. Neither US, Russia, or anyone else is going to want to see mass quantities of chemical weapons leaking into hands of terrorist groups outside Syria, be they islamic or otherwise. I would expect Russians in particular to be much more aware of this eventuality, considering their geopolitical location makes them much more vulnerable to domestic terrorism than the US.
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There is a fundamental communication gap occurring here.
First off, by 'experiments' I mean that Afghanistan and Iraq harkened back to tactics tried to further strategic interests nearly 50 years ago with modern equipment and modern thinking. Both conflicts demonstrated that those tactics still don't work, and for pretty much the same reasons. I don't see a need to rehash every little hot war that pitched Western proxies against Soviet proxies from 1948 through 1960 to hammer home the point because you're probably already familiar with them and just as capable of reading about them on your own if you don't already know the military history in question. Iraq and Afghanistan are significant outliers in the way geopolitics was conducted throughout and after the Cold War. The economic and political cost of both follies has be enormous, and Western citizens have already pretty much demonstrated that they are unwilling to tolerate the same loss of life among their militaries for no discernible advancement overseas, not to mention the loss of life in those countries. I'm fairly confident in predicting that no Western government is going to even contemplate another intervention like Afghanistan or Iraq for multiple decades.
Syria actually is quite comparable to the Balkans. In that case, you had near-civil war and a large massacre of a civilian population that led Western countries to intervene - and note that intervention there did not take the form of military occupation. In essence, Western powers got involved to protect civilians and stop war crimes, and it was ultimately very successful. It differs on a couple counts, though: namely, there wasn't a large stateless network of fighters actively opposed to Western intervention capable of causing severe havoc, nor was Russia capable of causing as much strife as it currently is. China barely got involved. None of those three key factors are complete barriers to intervention in Syria, though; there are merely barriers to occupation.
Nakura, you, and docfu have all made the same assumption that intervention has to target Assad and/or involve occupation, leading to either a power vacuum (allowing Islamists to take over) or a quagmire like Iraq/Afghanistan. What I'm saying is that neither of those are desirable or pragmatic courses of action. Pragmatically, my TL'DR earlier is quite correct - nobody can afford an occupation for all kinds of reasons, let alone the United States. It isn't going to happen. Furthermore, taking out Assad at this juncture accomplishes nothing; his successors are worse. Taking out the whole governance structure gives the Islamists an in.
The far more likely course of action is a series of tactics designed to cripple the Syria military's ability to wage offensive warfare, and target both government and rebel forces abilities to deploy chemical weapons. There are enough quick-response forces throughout NATO that this is quite practical. Furthermore, NATO and Turkey are both quite capable of declaring and enforcing a civilian safe-zone near the Turkish border for refugees, which solves the problem of refugees fleeing into Turkey and yet provides an area well-away from the main fighting to prevent loss of civilian life. With both measure sin place - active hunting and destruction of chemical weapons delivery (and the people responsible for it), active destruction of large-scale offensive capabilities, and establishment of civilian safe zones, Western forces can pretty much sit back and let the rebels and the government sort themselves out. Meanwhile, if Russia and China can be brought on board, the whole conflict can be referred to the ICC and allow it to run a parallel investigation, ensuring that any surviving leadership on both sides can be dragged before the court for war crimes when the dust settles. In fact, merely threatening ICC involvement to both sides may be enough to significantly reduce the likelihood of future chemical weapons deployment.
Western powers do not have to get involved in a ugly, occupying groundwar to address the primary concerns in Syria.
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I'm just wondering.
Would something like strategic air strikes even be sufficient to discourage Assad - or any other factions - from using chemical weapons if they were so inclined?
No. Air power in the Syrian scenario isn't going to be much good other than to take out conventional assets. But both sides are fielding machines of war that can cause significant damage, yet are vulnerable to NATO air power.
What I suspect will happen - if it isn't happening already - is some very highly trained, highly talented NATO forces will begin operations in Syria to identify and set up targets on the stockpiles and launchers that both sides require to use chemical weapons. I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if some of them are not in-country already. Those weapons are the problem, but they become much less of a problem once external forces can identify where they are.
Regardless, at this juncture we know at least one side (and likely both) has used chemical weapons in the conflict. Rather than scurry about trying to assign blame, we should all be more interested in seeing the ability to deploy those weapons eliminated from BOTH sides.
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MP, you said exactly the same things I said about the differences between the Balkans and Syria, I guess where we disagree is with how much do these differences impact the "similarity" of the situation. I say they impact a big deal, whereas you say they probably do not matter that much, especially about the intervention...
Well, I am open minded about that, since I am no expert (understatement of the year?), and I might be really wrong. It's not even my main concern. I do think the US will have to do *something* or else any other psychopath in power will (in the most basic, animalistic, tribalistic fashion), regard them as weak and pityful, and will feel somewhat free to do the same given some circumstances.
Where my thoughts rest is always in what people call "the morning after". It matters little to history if the US can make two, three strikes in some random base of operations or some ammo depot or CWs warehouse or whatever. They will pat themselves in the back "that'll show'em", and Syria in one, two, three years is the same old pit of hell with shots burning the organs of their inhabitants.
No, the whole story will only have any hope to end with the crushing of the rebel factions or with the death of Assad's family. And that's a necessary step, far long from being sufficient. From that point on, a lot of good faith politics will have to be played, and with the myriad of distinct ideologies in place the best they could ever hope in the long term is to become like Egypt (which is like a paradise to them right now).
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I'm fairly confident in predicting that no Western government is going to even contemplate another intervention like Afghanistan or Iraq for multiple decades.
Before 9/11 you probably would have predicted the same about Afghanistan and Iraq though. I'm sure a lot of people would confidently have predicted that neither would happen because the US had learned its lesson in Vietnam.
If in 2000 I'd described both wars to you and not mentioned the reasons why, you'd probably have dismissed them as paranoid fantasy.
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Is it just me, or more and more of those "paranoid fantasies" are turning out true these days. Between Snowden, North Korea, the Middle East and all this mess, maybe it's time to start listening to your local conspiracy nut...
Also, I've found a nice guide to the Middle East these days. I have it in Polish, translation mine:
Iran supports Assad. Gulf countries are against Assad.
Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and the US are against General Sisi.
But... Gulf countries support General Sisi. Which means they're against Muslim Brotherhood.
Iran supports Hamas. Hamas supports Muslim Brotherhood.
The US supports Muslim Brotherhood, but Hamas is against the US.
Gulf countries support the US. But Turkey, along with Gulf countries, are against Assad. Turkey supports Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. Oh, and Gulf countries support General Sisi.
Welcome to Middle East, gentlemen.
So, once you understand the above, you might try explaining it to poor Syrian civilians. That probably won't help them much, but at least they'll know what they're dying for. Or not. The guide has a warranty, but it's void if any of the factions described in it changes it's mind. Which may happen. Now, enjoy your vacation in Egypt.
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Sounds like a typical high school but with access to tanks. :p
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Before 9/11 you probably would have predicted the same about Afghanistan and Iraq though. I'm sure a lot of people would confidently have predicted that neither would happen because the US had learned its lesson in Vietnam.
Actually, no; as discussed with Lorric earlier, the US-Vietnam era is not a great comparator for what occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan (the hot wars of the '50s are much better) - though I do agree that the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations were not really on anyone's radar because they were such an unusual departure from what had been shown to work as recently as a decade earlier. The strategy used in both those conflicts seemingly got made up as it went along.
That said, repeating those mistakes is even more unlikely because of that. If anything, one should be more concerned about interventions of a type for which their is no precedent being tested in Syria, or for which the precedent is very old and the lessons likely forgotten. It took 50 years for the thinking that led to Iraq and Afghanistan to re-surface; I'm not concerned about that thoroughly-discredited strategy being utilized again in the foreseeable future seeing as those lessons were just re-learned.
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You know, this doesn't mean they'll automatically get it right if they do. They could screw up again. Just in a different way.
I have no confidence in them. Forget about the overall plan for Iraq and Afghanistan, you just have to look at them, the poor planning, the amount of stupid decisions that were made, the list goes on and on and on...
If action is taken Ryan, I really, really hope you're right, but I have no confidence in anything approaching a favourable outcome.
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I'm actually pretty torn on Syria. NGTM-1R makes a valid point, if we allow a government to use chemical weapons against their own people and the United States/international community doesn't respond, then it sets a troubling precedent. At the same time, it's clear that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria and that any rebel victory will be infinitely worse for both the United States and the Syrian people, than the current government.
Aside from the fact that there is no single rebel alliance like in Libya, how will a "rebel victory" be worse for the general populace then the current government?
Radical Islamists would quite likely fill the void, persecuting religious minorities (Alawis, Christians, Shi'ites, etc.). Not only that, but what makes you think that this radical Islamist regime would be friendly towards the United States and Israel? Then there's also the problem of what happens to Syria's weapons stockpiles after the government falls? We couldn't prevent the Iraqi military's weapons from falling into the wrong hands after Saddam fell, and we played a much more active role in Iraq than we likely will in Syria. One could also look at how Egypt is doing right now.
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Nakura, you, and docfu have all made the same assumption that intervention has to target Assad and/or involve occupation, leading to either a power vacuum (allowing Islamists to take over) or a quagmire like Iraq/Afghanistan.
*snip*
Western powers do not have to get involved in a ugly, occupying groundwar to address the primary concerns in Syria.
Thank you for grouping me in with Nakara and "you." It feels good to be part of a group for once. I feel special.
I never said that a ground war was coming, what I said was that the U.S. will likely choose whatever option will benefit itself the most while having the least negative impact and I was simply agreeing with Nakara that we are "damned if we do and damned if we don't."
Apparently you failed to understand the meaning of that sentence. It means there really is nothing more to be said on the subject because now is the time for decision making and action. It doesn't mean that we should do nothing, or that we are called to action. It just means that whatever we do, there will be consequences. Hopefully either way the good people that want out of that style of life can escape to a better place.
You have a very good technical knowledge of the history of war and conflict. If you think that any intervention is going to help, realistically you need to watch God of War with Nicolas Cage. Terrible movie and bad acting, but he gets the point across.
This isn't anything special, it's just business as usual.
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Yeah I was about to say. I worry that the decision to go for a full-on occupation or not will depend solely on if it will make more or less money for the powers that be than they are currently making. Though given how pissed everyone is after Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm hoping it would be too costly now and we just stick to dropping bombs.
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I never said that a ground war was coming, what I said was that the U.S. will likely choose whatever option will benefit itself the most while having the least negative impact and I was simply agreeing with Nakara that we are "damned if we do and damned if we don't."
Apparently you failed to understand the meaning of that sentence. It means there really is nothing more to be said on the subject because now is the time for decision making and action. It doesn't mean that we should do nothing, or that we are called to action. It just means that whatever we do, there will be consequences. Hopefully either way the good people that want out of that style of life can escape to a better place.
This I can live with. You got lumped in with nakura and Luis earlier because of this statement...
If we have learned anything from Iraq and Afganistan, it's that military intervention will bring only limited success. Capturing Assad and holding him accountable might be the worst thing we could do, next to an air strike. The best thing would be to let his enemies take him down. I doubt there would be any impact on economic gains either way.
...which read an awful lot like you were using the same binary thought process and keying in on Afghanistan/Iraq as comparators... which they are not. Your recent post makes it clear that that is not what you were trying to say.
You have a very good technical knowledge of the history of war and conflict. If you think that any intervention is going to help, realistically you need to watch God of War with Nicolas Cage. Terrible movie and bad acting, but he gets the point across.
This isn't anything special, it's just business as usual.
That is a terrible movie with a terrible plot and terrible attention to reality and should never be cited in any form of serious argument, ever (also, it's "Lord of War" for anyone who suddenly does want to see it). Yes, war profiteering is a huge and protected industry, but that film gives it much greater prominence than its actual role in nation-on-nation conflict.
And while there may be all kinds of background incentives for NATO countries to consider intervention, that doesn't negate laudable goals of puishment for use of chemical weapons and attacks on civilians.
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realistically you need to watch God of War with Nicolas Cage.
And then you can listen to speeches given post WWI about the Merchants of Death who pushed us into the war!
Tell me you're not serious.
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not sure if pretty sure not legitimate illustrious conspiracy tinfoil nut material but amusing anyway
http://www.eutimes.net/2013/08/putin-orders-massive-strike-against-saudi-arabia-if-west-attacks-syria/
A grim “urgent action memorandum” issued today from the office of President Putin to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is ordering a “massive military strike” against Saudi Arabia in the event that the West attacks Syria.
According to Kremlin sources familiar with this extraordinary “war order,” Putin became “enraged” after his early August meeting with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan who warned that if Russia did not accept the defeat of Syria, Saudi Arabia would unleash Chechen terrorists under their control to cause mass death and chaos during the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held 7-23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
Lebanese newspaper As-Safir confirmed this amazing threat against Russia saying that Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord by stating: “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.”
Prince Bandar went on to say that Chechens operating in Syria were a pressure tool that could be switched on an off. “These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.”
London’s The Telegraph News Service further reported today that Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria, an offer Putin replied to by saying “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters” [Putin said referring to footage showing a Jihadist rebel eating the heart and liver of a Syrian soldier HERE], and which Prince Bandar in turn warned that there can be “no escape from the military option” if Russia declines the olive branch.
...
Well now.
EDIT: The site (EUTimes.net) (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/European_Union_Times) also has gems like these:
http://www.eutimes.net/2009/11/obama-orders-1-million-us-troops-to-prepare-for-civil-war/
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/01/top-us-federal-judge-assassinated-after-threat-to-obama-agenda/
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/01/top-us-official-murdered-after-arkansas-weapons-test-causes-mass-death/
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/03/world-mourns-as-communist-darkness-falls-upon-america/
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/12/three-giant-spaceships-to-attack-earth-in-2012/
ISLAMIC GOMMUNISM
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Holy ****...
EDIT: Dammit Herra, You had me ruining my pants for a moment!
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Oh good lord. I was about to say that sounds like parody... :p
Secret Chechen terrorists indeed.
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http://www.eutimes.net/2010/12/three-giant-spaceships-to-attack-earth-in-2012/
Man, remember last year when giant spaceships attacked?
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Are we sure this isn't The Onion's sister site? :p
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Well, the UK has voted not to get involved this time, which came as a bit of a surprise because it's a coup that is seriously going to hurt David Camerons' career.
Not sure entirely how I feel about it, part of me agrees that 'he probably did it', is not a term that would stand up in any British Court. There was a motion put forward to delay the vote until more evidence was available but it was denied, which was also a pity, that was probably the wisest course to take.
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In the middle of all this, things are quiet with anticipation over here (Israel for you n00bs :p ). We're concentrating on the normal everyday life stuff, like shopping, summer blockbuster movies, and bomb-proof kids backpacks (http://www.hilaraam.com/#!special-project--rhino-skin/c20gj):
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Hey, stay frosty over there, Sandwich. :)
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Meanwhile The Oatmeal (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/syria) pretty much sums up my reactions to this entire thing.
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Meanwhile The Oatmeal (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/syria) pretty much sums up my reactions to this entire thing.
NOTE: The following is very link heavy -not- to be condescending in response to kara, but rather to give a brief lesson to any readers unfamiliar with the historical intricacies of the situation currently unfolding.
Criticism of complacency concerning the death toll of civilians in Syria is bang-on.
Making the allusion that outrage over the use of chemical weapons in Syria is hypocritical in contrast to the reaction to the previous events is not.
It is generally accepted that, although the protection of civilians in conflicts is a laudable goal (http://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions/index.jsp), the justification in international law for armed intervention in a foreign country without a UN resolution accepted by the Security Council is flimsy at best (http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml). Russia and China have made it quite plain (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57600384/syria-resolution-authorizing-military-force-fails-in-u.n-security-council/) that such a resolution was and is not going to materialize. Furthermore, we don't actually have a world police force legally justified in acting without a UN resolution. (http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/index.htm) Of course, that hasn't always stopped (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War) certain coalitions. That generally hasn't worked out well (http://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-toward-the-war-in-iraq-20032008/), though.
Nobody wants to be the world police. Nobody especially wants the Americans to be the world police - except, of course, for all the times when people do want the Americans to be the world police.
Should the UN - and by extension, NATO - have intervened earlier in Syria to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties? IMHO, yes. However, the broken model of the Security Council (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_members_of_the_United_Nations_Security_Council) prevented that (see also: thread title and OP). Did people in Western countries care? For those who followed what was going on, a lot of people did. However, there is a difference between caring what was going on and being able to motivate people to act (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23896034).
People who see irony between the reaction concerning civilian deaths generally, and the reaction concerning chemical weapons use documentation, are missing the point. A very clear line was draw when it became apparent that the Security Council was not going to act. There is international law (http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/) that governs the use of chemical weapons (though Syria is not a signatory). CBRNE threats (the 'c' stands for chemical) are generally considered potential weapons of mass destruction (not in the perjorative sense that took on since Iraq), and one of the reasons the use of these weapons is considered illegal in international law is because of their catalyst potential.
A much larger group of people (e.g. the population of the world) has to care about the use of CBRNE threats, particularly in uncontrolled conflict and especially against civilians. While it is sad that people essentially don't care about the civilian death toll - as The Oatmeal rightly decries - people must care about the unforeseen consequences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria) of actions in conflicts that violate international law and have the potential to become much worse.
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To be honest, I do have an issue with the whole "Use of chemical weapons must result in retaliation to ensure our safety" narrative that is being presented here. Exactly how did the West retaliate against Saddam's use of chemical weapons?
While Assad is a complete and utter ****, I'd rather he had control of his chemical weapons than **** knows who would get them if we intervene and screw things up.
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The West is hoping this won't happen if they do eventually decide to intervene. It's bound to go awry somewhere, though. It usually does.
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To be honest, I do have an issue with the whole "Use of chemical weapons must result in retaliation to ensure our safety" narrative that is being presented here. Exactly how did the West retaliate against Saddam's use of chemical weapons?
Hussein was the subject of numerous Security Council resolutions for years, a no-fly zone was strictly enforced, and the chemical weapons use in Iraq became part of the justification for a subsequently regionally-disastrous invasion - which is kind of the point that punishing forces for using them should occur as soon as possible so it doesn't lead to a bigger mess down the road.
While Assad is a complete and utter ****, I'd rather he had control of his chemical weapons than **** knows who would get them if we intervene and screw things up.
I believe I have been pretty consistent in my assertion throughout the last 6 pages that any measures in Syria need to target chemical weapons use by and in possession of both sides in the conflict.
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Hussein was the subject of numerous Security Council resolutions for years, a no-fly zone was strictly enforced, and the chemical weapons use in Iraq became part of the justification for a subsequently regionally-disastrous invasion - which is kind of the point that punishing forces for using them should occur as soon as possible so it doesn't lead to a bigger mess down the road.
That's a pretty poor argument though. "We need to do something now because if we don't a later American president might use it as the trumped up reason to invade." How's about instead we simply don't do that. Cause no matter how much we bomb Syria we're still going be able to claim they have CBRN weapons that we missed.
Russia and China might be more amenable to a solution that sees Assad punished for his use of chemical weapons after the war is over. i.e something closer to what happened to Saddam. Sanctions until the UN inspectors have thoroughly crawled all over his country and up his arse might have more of an effect than semi-random strikes on places we think have weapons.
I'm not saying that's what we necessarily have to do, but I do question the fact that in 3 pages of debate no one seems to have brought up the possibility. And I do question the validity of the argument that a military option is the only possibility. The UN no-fly zones only existed to prevent further attacks on the Kurds and Shias. They didn't do much about chemical weapons. It was sanctions that had an effect on those, unpleasant as they were.
If we're trying to avoid a bigger mess down the road, I don't think a big operation of the type you're on about has much chance of success either. Perhaps more than an occupation but we've already said that's not on the cards, so I discount the argument that it's less likely to end up in a **** up than the thing we're not going to do anyway.
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Or, MP-Ryan's actual argument is "We need to do something now because it will only get worse for everyone if we don't". That seems much more likely to me, and I heartily agree.
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And the counter-argument I'm giving is that until Bush's madness in 2003 we were doing quite well at containing Iraq's use of chemical weapons against anyone* outside his own country. So again, I question the "We must stop him now for our own good" narrative that everyone is getting so worked up about.
*except Iran, which is why we allowed him to have chemical weapons in the first place.
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And the counter-argument I'm giving is that until Bush's madness in 2003 we were doing quite well at containing Iraq's use of chemical weapons against anyone* outside his own country. So again, I question the "We must stop him now for our own good" narrative that everyone is getting so worked up about.
*except Iran, which is why we allowed him to have chemical weapons in the first place.
Scotty is correct on my position.
Iraq was militarily and philosophically alone, essentially.
Syria is not. Best case scenario, Assad's forces and the current rebels do so much damage that a third player that is much more rational ends up taking power. Other scenarios don't bear much thinking about. The idea of a weakened Syria with a disrupted populace and unpopular government in possession of chemical weapons is a scary one, especially since Syria's government is one that has historically been willing to start foreign wars due to unrest at home - may I remind everyone about a little piece of territory known as the Golan Heights? The idea of a Syria run by the current crop of rebels is even more frightening, and both situations are made worse by the presence of chemical weapon stockpiles.
I would be less enthused about a military strike against Syria if the Russians and Chinese would quit obstructing the business of the Security Council. That isn't likely to happen. Furthermore, now that chemical weapons are already flying, anything less than a forceful means of preventing further use isn't likely to work. Note that in Iraq, the UN sanctions were enforced militarily.
All of this is notwithstanding the fact that governments or wannabe-governments that use banned weapons on civilian populations need to be shown in no uncertain terms that such behaviour is not acceptable to the international community writ large. If the Security Council isn't doing its job, then that's part of the reason NATO exists in the first place (for those unaware, NATO was formed after it became clear that Russian and Chinese vetoes on the SC hampered any effort to stop conflicts which either of those nations tacitly or covertly supported).
Finally, we now have the public version of the report prepared by American intelligence concerning the latest attack: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/government-assessment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21
Note that it does not conclude Assad ordered the attack, merely that government forces were the origin of this most recent attack. Say what you will about American intelligence justifications for military force in the [recent] past, it's difficult to believe that they would try the same sort of exaggeration again (especially as popular opinion seems to think that the whole WMDs in Iraq line was an outright lie, though it is better said to be deliberate exaggeration).
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Feel shame, detractors! Even France has temporarily placed their white flags in storage! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23895823) In other news, David Cameron is fearful he will be forced by the Opposition to change his name to Chamberlain, even though it's not actually his fault (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23862114).
(The above is firmly in jest - this thread needs some levity. Sorry MattTheGeek, couldn't resist :P)
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And this discussion right here is probably and mostly a gift from the Bush administration ****ing up so badly in Iraq.
I think we should still wait for more evidence to be brought about. Even if all of the "narrative" is true, it was so badly timed and so ill-conceived that I really wonder.
For one, these guys should know that going chemical would be basically risking the livehood of the government. Then we should also ask the efficiency of such methods. Did they achieve anything they couldn't achieve by any other means? 100k lives have been lost so far. Why risk everything with an attack that has WMD all over it with so small an apparent pay-off? And why did this attack occur exactly 2 days after the inspectors have finally entered the country, two years since the war started? Think of those odds. Then suddenly you have Kerry warmongering and getting everyone psyched for the action to come.
It is fishy. I make (in my head) a ****ton of speculations, I adhere to none (not my thing). I like this kind of agnostic way of thinking (ararar). For instance, it is possible that Assad called one of his captains and said something like "These UN ****tards just arrived, lets give them a present of our own since I kinda miss watching US missiles flying over the ME!". It is also possible that the captain in question was asked to fire the damned CW before the inspectors arrived and they just kept constantly missing the deadlines and did it anyway. It is also possible that some traitor admiral (or just a maverick crazy one?) decided it was neat to **** with Assad's mind.
All of those are damned possible. But it is also possible that one rebel group decided that another one was getting too ahead of them. It is possible that this group got hold of a CW facility and decided that the best way to use them was against this other group, blame the government while we are at it and get a ****ing amazing bonus of extra US firepower against Assad. And what better timing other than when the inspectors are inside Syria?
Hell, I can go into Alex Jones territory and even imagine that such an attack had american help.
So no, I am not bought into this. The situation is messy and I want to learn more before I condone everything that USA is obviously going to do anyway.
There's also the situation of Israel. I find it interesting that Israel is pretty much absolutely shut up about this. They are quite intelligent (their last strike against two different objectives while only announcing one of them was a master stroke of genius) and I think they are doing a "This one is on you yankees".
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Meanwhile The Oatmeal (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/syria) pretty much sums up my reactions to this entire thing.
NOTE: The following is very link heavy -not- to be condescending in response to kara, but rather to give a brief lesson to any readers unfamiliar with the historical intricacies of the situation currently unfolding.
*SNIP*
It's posts like this one that make me want to implement the karma post rating system around here. Very well written. :yes:
There's also the situation of Israel. I find it interesting that Israel is pretty much absolutely shut up about this. They are quite intelligent (their last strike against two different objectives while only announcing one of them was a master stroke of genius) and I think they are doing a "This one is on you yankees".
Here's what Netanyahu has been saying in Hebrew (turn on English captions). Always check out what message heads of state convey to their citizens if the native language isn't English.
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I would be less enthused about a military strike against Syria if the Russians and Chinese would quit obstructing the business of the Security Council. That isn't likely to happen. Furthermore, now that chemical weapons are already flying, anything less than a forceful means of preventing further use isn't likely to work. Note that in Iraq, the UN sanctions were enforced militarily.
Again, sanctions against Iraq worked well enough that there were no WMD's in Iraq a decade later. If the West were to push a diplomatic solution, you might see less issues from China and Russia. The problem Russia and China have is that the solutions the West have supplied are all either military or could lead to military solutions, which neither country want.
And I am somewhat suspicious about why the UN went straight to Chapter 7 on Syria. That's not usually how things are done.
All of this is notwithstanding the fact that governments or wannabe-governments that use banned weapons on civilian populations need to be shown in no uncertain terms that such behaviour is not acceptable to the international community writ large. If the Security Council isn't doing its job, then that's part of the reason NATO exists in the first place (for those unaware, NATO was formed after it became clear that Russian and Chinese vetoes on the SC hampered any effort to stop conflicts which either of those nations tacitly or covertly supported).
Yeah, cause the US and UK would never ignore a chemical weapon attack on a civilian population if it fit with their geopolitical aims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack#Discovery_and_response
If the West want the UN to work, how about giving up their veto too? It's not like the West hasn't been obstructionist about their use of the veto either.
Since the Security Council's inception, China (ROC/PRC) has used its veto 6 times; France 18 times; Russia/USSR 123 times; the United Kingdom 32 times; and the United States 89 times. The majority of Russian/Soviet vetoes were in the first ten years of the Council's existence. Since 1984, China and France have vetoed three resolutions each; Russia/USSR four; the United Kingdom ten; and the United States 43.
Yeah, the Russians and the Chinese are always the ones gumming up the UN with their veto. :rolleyes:
If giving up the veto won't result in Russian and China giving up theirs, how about simply forming a new organisation where no one has the veto and simply not allowing Russia and China to join unless they agree to have the same power as everyone else. It's not like the most populated nation on Earth having no representation in the UN is entirely unprecedented.
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Again, sanctions against Iraq worked well enough that there were no WMD's in Iraq a decade later.
Not entirely true. There were no new chemical weapons in Iraq by 2003; there were, however, stockpiles of degraded chemical weapons and a couple biological laboratories found that were not properly declared to the UN. But again, sanctions "worked" in Iraq because Iraq was pretty much alone and beaten to a pulp following Desert Storm. It also wasn't in the middle of a high-stakes civil war to determine its future, which provides significant incentive to take every military advantage one can get.
If the West were to push a diplomatic solution, you might see less issues from China and Russia. The problem Russia and China have is that the solutions the West have supplied are all either military or could lead to military solutions, which neither country want.
This is true... that said, Russia has been obstructionist from the very beginning, supporting Assad and arming him. They haven't stopped (and now everyone else is arming the rebels). That's not advocating in good faith for a peaceful solution either.
Yeah, cause the US and UK would never ignore a chemical weapon attack on a civilian population if it fit with their geopolitical aims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack#Discovery_and_response
If the West want the UN to work, how about giving up their veto too? It's not like the West hasn't been obstructionist about their use of the veto either.
Since the Security Council's inception, China (ROC/PRC) has used its veto 6 times; France 18 times; Russia/USSR 123 times; the United Kingdom 32 times; and the United States 89 times. The majority of Russian/Soviet vetoes were in the first ten years of the Council's existence. Since 1984, China and France have vetoed three resolutions each; Russia/USSR four; the United Kingdom ten; and the United States 43.
Yeah, the Russians and the Chinese are always the ones gumming up the UN with their veto. :rolleyes:
If giving up the veto won't result in Russian and China giving up theirs, how about simply forming a new organisation where no one has the veto and simply not allowing Russia and China to join unless they agree to have the same power as everyone else. It's not like the most populated nation on Earth having no representation in the UN is entirely unprecedented.
You're arguing against an argument I never made. I'd say you're setting up a strawman but I think this is likely more a case of careless reading than intentional shenanigans.
I never said that vetoes in any form were good (they are decidedly awful); what I said was that NATO was formed in direct response to the Russian and Chinese vetoes on the Security Council. I know full well every veto-carrying member has abused it at some point; that was not the point I was making. I was pointing out that NATO's existence is largely a result of the broken structure of the Security Council and its five permanent members. I was simultaneously pointing out that precedent exists for NATO to act when the Security Council's uselessness is in full display for all to see, as in the present situation.
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You know, this is where ideology stings the most. The most enthusiastic and vibrant of us will always see things in these tones like these:
This is true... that said, Russia has been obstructionist from the very beginning, supporting Assad and arming him. They haven't stopped (and now everyone else is arming the rebels). That's not advocating in good faith for a peaceful solution either.
This is entirely true but absolutely irrelevant. It's not even morally questionable given the context. And the context is that everyone needs their own market to export their own weapons. The US is by far the greatest exporter of weapons. Now take into consideration that the second biggest importer of US weapons is .... Egypt. This month there was also a massacre perpretated by a government in which more than a thousand people died. Where was the US's outrage? The outcry?
You keep assuming a model of the geopolitical planet that I think it's just absolutely wrong. You assume that all these countries are actually independent and make their own policies and alliances. This is clearly evident when you state that China and Russia are behaving in bad faith just because they disagree into pushing Assad out of his office. But the truth of the matter is that Assad is not just "some guy" that happens to rule some crazy country. The truth of the matter is that Syria is much more important for Russia (and China) than for any other country, not only as a weapons importer but also as the most important geopolitically located country in the ME / Mediterranean.
If you stop regarding these countries as agents in a wider world and start looking to them as pawns in a big chess game with a few players only, you begin to realise that Russia can only be really commited to support Assad until the end, so as not to suffer the big loss in the major board of the ME. And they are not doing so in either "good faith" or "bad faith", but just straightforward global strategy analysis.
You're arguing against an argument I never made. I'd say you're setting up a strawman but I think this is likely more a case of careless reading than intentional shenanigans.
But he's actually more to the point. You keep repeating this general idea that we somehow should just forget about the past and the "mistakes" (wink wink) that the US has made until now, and just decide overall which is the best idea, everyone agrees to it and there! Bam! Everything's solved!
This surprises me a bit for I really don't take you as naive. You are quite intelligent and so something escapes me here. You should understand that every political move on the international board is *NEVER* interpreted in this literal sense by any sensible influential politician "playing the game". What they are measuring is not how many people die, how we should punish this or that, how is this morally wrong or right. They are playing a game of world domination. And Syria is a damned ****ing really important pawn that the Russians have there. The hell with "humanitarian concerns". The US thinks exactly the same, but they are not the same team. Paranoia abounds. Do you really think the world will just let the US do "What Is Right" in Syria and lo and behold now they got Assad out of the power, only Iran rests as an enemy of the US in the ME?!?
I never said that vetoes in any form were good (they are decidedly awful); what I said was that NATO was formed in direct response to the Russian and Chinese vetoes on the Security Council. I know full well every veto-carrying member has abused it at some point; that was not the point I was making. I was pointing out that NATO's existence is largely a result of the broken structure of the Security Council and its five permanent members. I was simultaneously pointing out that precedent exists for NATO to act when the Security Council's uselessness is in full display for all to see, as in the present situation.
It seems to me that vetoes are not "awful". They seem to me to be a quite good deterrent. Yes, prone to failure all the time, but conservative. It fails on the side of non-intervention, which is probably where it should fail into.
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I see that you're with me in agreeing that the entire situation in Syria is actually a lot more manufactured than MP-Ryan's argument seems to point to.
Not entirely true. There were no new chemical weapons in Iraq by 2003; there were, however, stockpiles of degraded chemical weapons and a couple biological laboratories found that were not properly declared to the UN.
10 year old rotten food is not food. Unusable chemical weapons are not chemical weapons. :p
I'm well aware of what they found in Iraq.
But again, sanctions "worked" in Iraq because Iraq was pretty much alone and beaten to a pulp following Desert Storm. It also wasn't in the middle of a high-stakes civil war to determine its future, which provides significant incentive to take every military advantage one can get.
If the West were to push a diplomatic solution, you might see less issues from China and Russia. The problem Russia and China have is that the solutions the West have supplied are all either military or could lead to military solutions, which neither country want.
This is true... that said, Russia has been obstructionist from the very beginning, supporting Assad and arming him. They haven't stopped (and now everyone else is arming the rebels). That's not advocating in good faith for a peaceful solution either.
It's a high-stakes civil war that we in the West made high stakes. If you keep shoving thousand dollar bills in the pocket of a gambler, you can't then complain about how the betting at the table has gotten out of hand. The West started backing the rebels long before the use of chemical weapons in the war. It's not like their use was a completely unforeseeable consequence of doing that.
Again, I get very suspicious of the way certain governments make a conflict worse and then claim the moral authority to step in to resolve it. How about not making things worse in the first place?
You're arguing against an argument I never made. I'd say you're setting up a strawman but I think this is likely more a case of careless reading than intentional shenanigans.
I never said that vetoes in any form were good (they are decidedly awful); what I said was that NATO was formed in direct response to the Russian and Chinese vetoes on the Security Council. I know full well every veto-carrying member has abused it at some point; that was not the point I was making. I was pointing out that NATO's existence is largely a result of the broken structure of the Security Council and its five permanent members. I was simultaneously pointing out that precedent exists for NATO to act when the Security Council's uselessness is in full display for all to see, as in the present situation.
But that is in and of itself a strawman. The broken structure of the Security Council is because of the power of the veto, something which France, the US and UK don't want to give up. Arguing that the UN is useless while simultaneously hamstringing them is rather disingenuous at best, and outright Machiavellian at worst. Especially when, as I pointed out earlier, I'm suspicious about whether the resolution that was vetoed was one deliberately chosen to be unpalatable to the Russians and Chinese.
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The part that concerns me is not what happens this week or next week, but next year and the year after.
The thing is, whilst this may indeed not be about picking sides, if only the Chemical Weapons ability is hit, and Assad still manages to push out the rebels, the West will be left to deal with a country whose leadership has been subject to an attack on their own soil by the Coalition. Such a Government would be almost impossible to establish Diplomatic links with in the future, especially with Russia and Iran backing it up.
If those strikes happen, then a side has been chosen intentionally or not, because the Coalition simply cannot afford to leave Assad in power after attacking his forces.
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That particular thing is way overdue anyway. The rebels have been having support by the West for years now and they still are. Assad will ignore it just as much as it will ignore the incoming missiles in future negotiations: either much, somewhat or not at all.
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There is a point in which we get far too caught up in the potential for games and lose sight of the situation on the ground, which is this:
The Syrian government has used chemicals weapons on civilians.
The Syrian rebels have used chemical weapons on government forces and civilians.
The Syrian government is backed militarily and politically by Russia and China. This has occurred prior to the conflict and from its very beginning.
The Syrian rebels are backed militarily by NATO countries, with limited political support. This began shortly after it became apparent that Russia would not cease arming Assad's forces.
100,000 Syrians have died, including many children and other civilians.
There is no end of the conflict in sight.
Diplomatic solutions were tried and failed. Russia and China, theoretical proponents of a diplomatic solution, haven't crafted any resolutions to that effect so no NATO country has actually even contemplated exercising a veto. In fact, Russia and China have done nothing to end the conflict aside from obstructing the UN and simultaneously continuing to arm Assad to murder Syrian civilians and rebel forces equally.
UN military involvement, backed by NATO countries, has been obstructed at the level of the Security Council.
Syria is located in one of the most unstable geopolitical zones on Earth; any spillage of chemical weapons attacks to neighboring states is quite capable of triggering catastrophic war. This is not likely at the present moment, and remains unlikely so long as the deterrence for the use of chemical weapons remains high.
This is not a proxy war. The US gains nothing of importance from a rebel victory in Syria and in fact such a victory would be more geopolitically destabilizing. Similarly, the US gains nothing by ousting Assad. Russia has a vested interest in seeing the Assad regime preserved, as does China. So what is the incentive for NATO intervention?
Pull out a map. Note the location of Damascus. Look at the casualty figures. Then look at the dates of the four documented chemical weapons attacks that have occurred in Syria. And then look at their locations.
This is a catalytic conflict, unless it is ramped back to the state of limited civil war that it began in. That is why you see NATO countries reluctantly gearing up to act - and for all the bluster from the US and France, it IS reluctant. NATO is not enthusiastic about this response, but they are even less enthusiastic about open war that could spill across the entire Middle East in short order. Nobody wants to find out the consequences of a chemical munition landing in Jerusalem. NATO's sole objective is to put the genie back in the bottle and make sure there is no further use of chemical weapons. That's why no forces aside from missile strikes and air power are being committed; that's why the nations without missile capability are not committing their militaries to action.
But that is in and of itself a strawman. The broken structure of the Security Council is because of the power of the veto, something which France, the US and UK don't want to give up. Arguing that the UN is useless while simultaneously hamstringing them is rather disingenuous at best, and outright Machiavellian at worst. Especially when, as I pointed out earlier, I'm suspicious about whether the resolution that was vetoed was one deliberately chosen to be unpalatable to the Russians and Chinese.
NATO vs the SC veto is a circular argument, as you're demonstrating. NATO would not exist without the SC veto; no country with a veto can afford to give it up unless all the others do; countries which are not a part of NATO can't afford to give up the veto; NATO countries can't give up their vetoes if the non-NATO countries retain theirs; etc
Note that neither the Russians nor the Chinese have proposed any actionable measures - diplomatic or military - to halt the killing of civilians and the use of chemical weapons. All they have done is obstruct. You're talking like both nations are acting in good faith, which clearly they are not. Although the US/Britain/France group may have proposed military solutions which Russia and China did not like, at least they have proposed something. The Russians and Chinese appear complacent to allow the conflict to continue unfettered with their preference being Assad win by any military means available to him. That is not a reasonable or defensible position, though the reasons why both countries are happy to pursue that policy are abundantly clear. I just can't wrap my head around your lack of condemnation of them for it.
It's not that the NATO countries have outright rejected diplomacy led by the UN - it's that no leadership is being shown by the countries who openly oppose any military action on the diplomatic front. If you haven't been paying attention, there have been numerous attempts at non-UN SC-led diplomacy since 2011. They have managed nothing. In fact, the diplomatic line in the sand over chemical weapons use has now been crossed four times. It's time to do something about that. If Russia and China want a diplomatic solution, the ball is in tjheir court (as it has been in the Russians court since 2011; they hold considerable sway over the Syrian government).
It is worth pointing out that a catalytic war in the Middle East doesn't actually hurt the Russians or Chinese; in many ways it can be geopolitically beneficial to both nations. They have no vested interest in seeing this conflict end; whether its the consequences, the chemical weapons use, or the civilian deaths, neither of those governments cares. What they do care about is if Assad loses and by some miracle a non-Islamofascist pro-Western stable government ends up running Syria - that (unlikely though it is) would harm both of them.
If you're not Russia and China right now, the most dangerous course of action at the moment is no action at all - the status quo has a high probability of catastrophic consequences. Even if the conflict does not spread, the loss of civilian life and the use of chemical weapons must be denounced and demonstrated as unacceptable by some means with weight.
The part that concerns me is not what happens this week or next week, but next year and the year after.
The thing is, whilst this may indeed not be about picking sides, if only the Chemical Weapons ability is hit, and Assad still manages to push out the rebels, the West will be left to deal with a country whose leadership has been subject to an attack on their own soil by the Coalition. Such a Government would be almost impossible to establish Diplomatic links with in the future, especially with Russia and Iran backing it up.
If those strikes happen, then a side has been chosen intentionally or not, because the Coalition simply cannot afford to leave Assad in power after attacking his forces.
This is untrue. Many Western governments have poor diplomatic ties to many countries. The West can strike Assad's forces - and the rebels - with no concern as to diplomatic consequences. Post-war Syria is of little consequence to the West. It's importance lies in the current state of war and its geographical position.
There is nothing stopping NATO from hitting Assad's and the rebel forces, yet leaving their leadership intact. This is about consequences for behaviour, not ending the conflict.
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I'm not quite sure what can be 'untrue' about something defined as a "concern", a misplaced concern, perhaps, but I understand what you are saying.
I think, had not the wording of the Bill before Parliament been more or less 'We are determined to punish those who use Chemical Weapons, and once we've found out it's Assad, we will take action', it may have fared better, but it wasn't.
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Pretty much what I said earlier.
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So. Here's what I understand to be fact:
1. Chemical weapons were used in an attack.
2. Nobody appears to know for sure who ordered or carried out the attack.
3. The victims of the attack were civilians and/or rebel forces (?).
So the question is, lacking solid proof who was behind point 2, what happened with point 3? Is it the Syrian govt blatantly attacking their opposition? Or is it a perverted combination of a suicide bombing and a patsy, carried out by the rebels against their own side, so that international forces, blaming the obvious perpetrator Assad, would take up the battle that the rebels just don't seem to be able to bring to the point of victory?
Unfortunately, either of those situations is possible and "logical" considering the players involved here, and therein lies the problem. Obama drew a red line on the use of chemical weapons. It seems like he's willing to take the appropriate action against whoever crossed that red line - he just doesn't know "whodunnit".
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This is not a proxy war.
The US have been backing the rebels from day one. So that's kinda hard to believe.
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And Russian & Iran have been backing the Syrian government.
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So it's a proxy war then. As I was saying.
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So it's a proxy war then. As I was saying.
For it to be a proxy war, the proxy has to be acting in the interest of the side it is supposedly a proxy for. The supporting party must have a definitive benefit from the proxy winning.
While this holds true on the Russia/ Chinese / Iranian front - Assad's regime is favourable to all three, and the rebel faction is not - it is distinctly false on the NATO front. A rebel victory gives NATO a minor narrative win - the people triumph over the dictator - which quickly devolves to an essentially hostile Islamofascist government that is no better than Assad if the current rebel politics continue. Getting in a "nana nana boo boo" at the Russians isn't worth that price, and isn't the motivation.
At this point, NATO countries are only arming the rebels to prevent an absolute curb-stomping by Assad's forces in the hopes that a better option than either Assad or the current rebels is going to come along. Meanwhile, the rebels are keeping Assad sufficiently distracted from the civilian population; without them, the civilian death toll would be much higher.
So, it's not even remotely a proxy war. Korea was a proxy war. Vietnam was a proxy war. Afghanistan (circa the 1970s and 80s) was a proxy war. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria are not. Just because forces in a civil war are being supported by external powers does not make that conflict a proxy war.
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taking away an enemy's support is a definitive benefit.
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Exactly. It's pretty obvious what the goal of America in the Arab Spring was. Just cause it didn't happen the way they wanted it to, doesn't mean that there wasn't a goal.
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taking away an enemy's support is a definitive benefit.
Exactly. It's pretty obvious what the goal of America in the Arab Spring was. Just cause it didn't happen the way they wanted it to, doesn't mean that there wasn't a goal.
And this might be a pretty good approximation of the situation on the ground if we were talking about the situation in 2011. It is September, 2013, however, and there is no benefit to any NATO country if the rebels win today. Egypt and Libya proved that much. This is not a proxy war. It is not a small part of a greater war being fought between NATO and Russia. Russia wants Assad to win because they have an established relationship with him and he opposes Islamic militant organizations that Russia has been fighting for decades. NATO, at this juncture, doesn't want Assad OR the rebels to win at this point in time. Both NATO and Russia have the same self-interests in mind in the Middle East - they don't want yet another friendly training ground for Islamic militants (like pre-2001 Afghanistan was).
Nothing about the Syrian conflict is so simple as a proxy war, manufactured conflict, whatever. The situation today has diverged heavily from anyone's plans, and we are now to the phase where the powers-that-be are making things up as they go along with the hope of salvaging some semblance of their original goals.
-Russia's objective is to delay, obstruct, and support long enough to hand military victory to Assad, or - if that becomes impossible - to see a negotiated settlement where Assad's government remains in power with minimal concessions. China's goal is similar.
-NATO's goals are to (1) prevent further chemical weapons attacks that have the potential to escalate this conflict beyond Syria's borders, (2) ensure civilian casualties are kept to a minimum, and (3) pray for the emergence of a Western-friendly faction that is not Assad and is not friendly to Islamic fundamentalists either and then help them win.
-Iran's goal is to either keep Assad in power, or see him replaced with a brand of Islamic fundamentalism compatible with their own. They do not want to see a pro-Saudi Islamic regime emerge, because that's actually worse for them than a pro-Western regime.
-Assad's goal is to decisively end the conflict with military force and crush any future movement in the process in order to remain in power. He has to do this without giving Western countries an excuse to bomb him into oblivion, which he has strayed very close to after his forces deployed chemical weapons.
-The rebels goals are mixed. In the short term, they are a very loose coalition of people who want Assad out. In the long term, they represent different Middle Eastern factions with very different ideas of what post-Assad Syria should look like. Anyone who thinks they can predict what a rebel victory would look like with any certainty is both lying and likely selling something bridge-like.
In short, it is a cluster****. A cluster**** in which chemical weapons are being used, and which is likely to spread beyond the borders of Syria if they continue to be used - nevermind the human tragedy of the death toll thus far. Priority number one for any country who doesn't want to see catastrophic war in the Middle East is to stop the chemical weapons use as quickly and decisively as possible.
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It's interesting how this situation is really bringing to the public eye how much the rebel factions in these Arab Spring uprisings (often comprised largely of Muslim Brotherhood members) are actually less-desirable from a Western civilization POV than the not-quite-benevolent dictatorships they are ousting / trying to oust. It seems like the world is unprepared for a situation where a war is going on between two "bad guys". "Who do we support?" "Why oh why did I mention that blasted red line?" That sort of thing. :p
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In short, it is a cluster****. A cluster**** in which chemical weapons are being used, and which is likely to spread beyond the borders of Syria if they continue to be used - nevermind the human tragedy of the death toll thus far. Priority number one for any country who doesn't want to see catastrophic war in the Middle East is to stop the chemical weapons use as quickly and decisively as possible.
And given that one of the major reasons why it's such a cluster**** is because of the West's support of the anti-Assad faction, why should we trust them to not make things worse? For instance why are we assuming that bombing and use of cruise missiles won't actually make it easier for the rebels to get hold of Assad's chemical weapons?
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I think our goal/motive is simply to do remove a Russian/Chinese/Iranian ally.
that and we sort feel like we have to do something because we drew a line in the sand and they crossed it.
we drew that line because that was our position in Iraq, and you know, we will not be found to have been wrong about anything involving Iraq.
it very much feels like China/Russia are drawing their own line in the sand, and that we are reacting to that. "oh you aren't going to tell us what to do, were ****ing 'Merca"
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This whole thing is about a line being crossed - that of the unwarranted use of ABC weaponry. Obama, in hindsight, made a mistake in stating that the use of chemical weapons was a red line, because enforcing the "punishment" for crossing that line - once we figure out whodunnit - will have consequences that nobody wants.
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All that MP's reasoning is forgetting about the corridor Israel - Syria - Iraq - Iran - Afghanistan - Pakistan.
For one, if you want to isolate Iran, there's nothing like putting Assad out of his mysery.
For two, we are not entirely aware of Israel's underlying motives here. They fear both outcomes, but they might be calculating the situation with a lot more data than we are and reaching solutions quite different from ours.
Also, if you have a "cluster****" in our hands, then any kind of solution to the problem is almost by definition problematic itself. This is why people are skeptical about it. Do we really know what we are doing? How about be a little bit more certain of what we are doing before doing something at all?
Because if my memory serves me right, this excitment over going after the baddies even despite the fact of having nebulous evidence against them didn't exactly fared much better the last time around.
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Double post because God almight himself posted his own thoughts on the matter.
Oh sorry, didn't mean God, I meant Adam Curtis:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/THE-BABY-AND-THE-BAATH-WATER
Much of the debate about whether to intervene in Syria or not is taking place in a strange ahistorical vacuum. As with so much debate about humanitarian intervention the underlying world view is of a simplified story of bad dictators and good, well intentioned westerners who must somehow intervene to stop him.
But the truth is that America has a very complicated relationship with Syria which stretches back over sixty years.
Go read it NAU.
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I'm all over it.
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Just heard a "ex-CIA" saying he knows (and listened to) a phone call in Syria where some high-level officers were discussing the order from Assad to bomb the rebels with a CW, them being very nervous with the order but still carrying it out.
What a situation. Just ponder on this last paragraph for a second and what it means. This means that we all know *wink wink* that the US spies everyone's phone calls, including Assad. But this topic is just too ****ing hot to anyone high up in the Pentagon chain to ever go public with it. While everyone knows this, it still must remain something unsaid.
So imagine for a second that they did actually got hold of such a phone call. If Obama heard this call (and others), the case is slam dunk to him, but he can never go public at it. However, if the phone call is bogus they also can't invent any of this **** to the public. So what do these guys do? Get a "ex-CIA" guy to "leak" this information to the media. Thus officially no one really spied anyone. However, unofficially now everyone knows that this phone call exists, and the case is slam dunk. Anyone who still tries to present any skepticism in the media is seen as a "naive" guy who isn't "in" on the latest "leak".
Fortunately, US citizens are by far the most paranoid bunch I've ever encountered in the nets, and so I'm pretty sure the acceptance of this latest story is probably low.
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And given that one of the major reasons why it's such a cluster**** is because of the West's support of the anti-Assad faction, why should we trust them to not make things worse?
We shouldn't. There's nothing wrong with asking questions and keeping an eye on the situation. What I've been getting at is that we have now reached the point where the conflicting sides in Syria need to be reminded that there are consequences to violating international law and norms. That doesn't mean we shut off our brains when it comes to the execution of that reminder.
For instance why are we assuming that bombing and use of cruise missiles won't actually make it easier for the rebels to get hold of Assad's chemical weapons?
We're not. Or I'm not. You'll note I'm not advocating for indiscriminate use of cruise missiles and other weapons. I've been very careful to refer to precisely targeted strikes, and not just by missiles fired from off-shore. You can read those comments again if clarification is needed.
In point of fact, I've pointed out multiple times that both the government and rebels in Syria have now been implicated in four documented chemical weapons attacks. As far as I'm concerned, both sides are fair game for the reminder at this juncture. The best way for Western forces to try to minimize this conflict is to punish both sides when the line gets crossed. I don't know that not-arming the rebels is an option at this juncture - it appears abundantly clear from the earliest moments in 2011 that the way Assad is going to deal with any dissent is through murder. If the West were to stop arming the rebels at this point, we can expect the Syrian government to continue slaughter of both rebels and non-combatants until there isn't much of an opposition left.
The best hope for a diplomatic solution that ensures protection of civilians from government and rebels lies i neither side gaining a military victory in the field. If that happens, Syria is ****ed. A government field victory means a lot of dead civilians; a rebel field victory means another Islamofascist government (or more civil war) in yet another country in the Middle East. Nobody wants that.
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See, in other words you're basically saying we should arm people who use chemical weapons.
Basically this was a conflict we shouldn't have gotten into in the first place, went about getting into it in a completely ****ed up way when we did, ended up supporting a side who completely hates us and now you're suggesting we bomb both sides as if that won't some how result in an even bigger cluster**** than we've already got.
Every move the west has done in this Syrian conflict has been wrong so far. There comes a time when you've got to learn to stop sticking your dick in the wasps nest.
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War is hell.
Any questions?
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yes, one. is hell profitable?
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If you sell air conditioners, Hell yes!
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oh, and apparently we are after regime change now
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579054973488682120.html
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See, in other words you're basically saying we should arm people who use chemical weapons.
Basically this was a conflict we shouldn't have gotten into in the first place, went about getting into it in a completely ****ed up way when we did, ended up supporting a side who completely hates us and now you're suggesting we bomb both sides as if that won't some how result in an even bigger cluster**** than we've already got.
Every move the west has done in this Syrian conflict has been wrong so far. There comes a time when you've got to learn to stop sticking your dick in the wasps nest.
The whole reason the West got involved in the Syria conflict to begin with is because Assad started turning government troops on civilian protestors. So unless you favour the Rwandan approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide) to wholesale slaughter of civilians by government-backed forces, I'm not sure how you think this thing could have gone better without putting a UN-backed force in-country which Russia and China were not about to let happen.
To recap:
-Assad's regime turned military-grade weapons on civilian protestors and rebels alike.
-The rebels, who militarily protected civilian protestors from Assad, were losing badly because Russia continued to arm Assad.
-The UN Security Council was rendered useless.
-The West (NATO), despite being mindful of the consequences, proceeded to arm the rebels.
-Conflict continued; refugees fled away from Damascus and near or into neighboring countries.
-Four chemical weapons attacks over an 8 month period; intel shows use by both rebels and government forces.
-Most recent chemical attack hits Damascus, a mere stone's throw from the border of a neighboring country that just happens to be the one Syria and Iran's governments most hate in the entire region, a sentiment in which they are also joined by the extremist factions among the rebel forces.
-Despite numerous diplomatic overtures and threats, no change in policy or mission of Assad's forces.
So, options:
1. Do nothing. Allow wholesale civilian slaughter like Rwanda. Make it abundantly clear the UN Security Council has failed its mandate, and allow Assad to commit mass murder with impunity.
2. Invade. This option dismissed out of hand.
3. Back rebels so long as Russia backs Assad, despite knowing these are not people we want forming a replacement government.
4. Keep trying at already-failed diplomacy. See also option 1.
5* If chemical weapons attacks occur:
a. Do nothing. Hope for the best. No consequences for either side.
b. Military strikes to deter future attacks.
Appeasement-style diplomacy with an aggressive, determined opponent has never worked. The "Do nothing" options look very appealing, right up until you expand the consequences. Granted, doing nothing could lead to nothing more than wholesale slaughter of civilians. The citizens of most Western democracies have ignored such trivialities in the past, naturally. The trouble is that the probability of conflict expansion in the short term as the rebel forces get increasingly desperate and it is demonstrated that there are no consequences to chemical weapons use is much higher than with intervention.
I feel like we're going in circles. It is possible - and utterly pragmatic - to acknowledge the screwups in Western policy historically and still recognize that short-term strikes against the conflicting forces in Syria are the best of the available options we have if we care about civilian death toll and chemical weapons detterrence. If you can ignore both of those issues as minor matters, then I suppose the best course of action is to do nothing, but I have a great, big, gigantic problem with any democracy that purports to protect human rights and can allow civilian murder and CBRNE weapons use on civilians to go unchecked, which is precisely what doing nothing or further 'diplomacy' does so long as the Russians and Chinese aren't engaged. And they show no signs of engaging.
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oh, and apparently we are after regime change now
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579054973488682120.html
That certainly wasn't inspiring reading, I'll grant you that. This is the somewhat-troubling part:
he Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution Wednesday saying a goal of U.S. policy will be to "change the momentum on the battlefield'' in Syria's civil war and speed a negotiated removal of Mr. Assad.
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The whole reason the West got involved in the Syria conflict to begin with is because Assad started turning government troops on civilian protestors.
The whole reason the West got involved in Syria is because we were arrogant enough to think we could carry on the whole Arab Spring thing there. The West has never given enough of a stuff about brown people dying to bother with anything beyond a token protest unless there is something else going on.
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The whole reason the West got involved in the Syria conflict to begin with is because Assad started turning government troops on civilian protestors.
The whole reason the West got involved in Syria is because we were arrogant enough to think we could carry on the whole Arab Spring thing there. The West has never given enough of a stuff about brown people dying to bother with anything beyond a token protest unless there is something else going on.
No, the Arab Spring is what led to the civilian murders. Without that crucial factor, Western intervention would not have occurred in Syria, just like it didn't occur in Tunisia or [for the most part] Egypt. Western military intervention to support the Arab Spring movement has only occurred in places where governments have turned their military firepower on the civilian population, as in Libya and Syria.
That was also a great way of avoiding the broader point, which was the contingencies and options available and their likely consequences. You've done an admirable job of maintaining that no intervention in Syria right now is the correct course without acknowledging the consequences of that position or the reason that staying out was not the original course of action in the first place. In this last post, you picked out the first line to avoid addressing the rest.
So I am going to pose the question: are you willing to accept the known price of civilian deaths (documented in 2011 prior to rebel arming) and high probability further chemical weapon use (attacks have ramped up in the last 8 months as stakes have increased and become increasingly likely with added desperation in the rebel faction) that will occur if the West ceases arming the rebels and does not strike into Syria as the price that must be paid by staying out?
I am not. Hence why I support limited action in Syria. The Western governments of the world - and the paralyzed UN Security Council - have been complicit in too many mass murders for too long because they basically didn't give a ****, and their populations were too wrapped up in the latest celebrity gossip to pay attention to death tolls in countries they couldn't find on a labelled map. You're right that the West generally has not historically given a **** about 'brown people dying.' It's high time that changed, and in a place where the conspiracy-minded can't point to oil politics as the primary motivation.
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Are you suggesting Egypt didn't turn its military against its people?
Come on. The only reason Egypt is somehow in a blind spot of western media regarding "interventions" ever since Arab Spring started is because the Egypt military is one of the greatest custumers of USA's weapons industry.
So I am going to pose the question: are you willing to accept the known price of civilian deaths (documented in 2011 prior to rebel arming) and high probability further chemical weapon use (attacks have ramped up in the last 8 months as stakes have increased and become increasingly likely with added desperation in the rebel faction) that will occur if the West ceases arming the rebels and does not strike into Syria as the price that must be paid by staying out?
This is begging the question. You have no evidence that the intervention will achieve any of those objectives better than doing nothing. Yes, I can see rebels being slaughtered, but at least if the war is ended the civilian casualties end right there. A lot more oppression will probably start, but at least mass killings will end. To say that intervention "will save lives" is probably the most naive argument to intervene I've been exposed to, as it is also a complete unfalsifiable argument.
If anything, the best way to end casualties right now would be to end any support to the rebels, CIA calling the sheiks on Saudi Arabia ordering them to stop the ****, tell any allied rebel to back the **** off and leave the country if they care about their own lives. The US could do this tomorrow and the war would end in a week. This is the most "humanitarian" solution.
But of course the problem is *not* humanitarian. This term, "humanitarian" is just an excuse to wage a proxy war between the US and Saudi Arabia against Assad, Tehran and Russia over the control of the ME.
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Are you suggesting Egypt didn't turn its military against its people?
Come on. The only reason Egypt is somehow in a blind spot of western media regarding "interventions" ever since Arab Spring started is because the Egypt military is one of the greatest custumers of USA's weapons industry.
The Egyptian military did not turn on civilian protestors during the ousting of Mubarak. In point of fact, it regularly intervened to protect civilian protestors.
The Egyptian military has recently fired on protestors which it claims attacked military forces protecting the areas when Morsi was held. That claim is shaky.
Regardless, the Egyptian military did not mount a coordinated campaign of attacks on civilian demonstrators like those which occurred in both Libya and Syria.
This is begging the question. You have no evidence that the intervention will achieve any of those objectives better than doing nothing. Yes, I can see rebels being slaughtered, but at least if the war is ended the civilian casualties end right there. A lot more oppression will probably start, but at least mass killings will end. To say that intervention "will save lives" is probably the most naive argument to intervene I've been exposed to, as it is also a complete unfalsifiable argument.
If anything, the best way to end casualties right now would be to end any support to the rebels, CIA calling the sheiks on Saudi Arabia ordering them to stop the ****, tell any allied rebel to back the **** off and leave the country if they care about their own lives. The US could do this tomorrow and the war would end in a week. This is the most "humanitarian" solution.
But of course the problem is *not* humanitarian. This term, "humanitarian" is just an excuse to wage a proxy war between the US and Saudi Arabia against Assad, Tehran and Russia over the control of the ME.
The known consequence of ceasing support, not intervening, and not punishing chemical weapons use is the destruction of the rebel forces by Assad, and the killing of any civilian protestors still seeking regime change. That's what started in 2011, and Assad's policy has not shifted and has if anything hardened. Stop support today and there will be thousands of addition casualties, the majority of them civilians.
The precise consequences of intervention are unknown. Intervention should be - and is being - designed to minimize loss of life and maximize the effect on both sides willingness to use chemical weapons and attack civilians.
Given the choice between known mass slaughter and intervention designed to mitigate it without precisely-known consequences, I will pick intervention every. single. time. I refuse to believe - based on military and geopolitical history in the twentieth century - that sitting back and allowing the mass murder of civilians and rebel forces alike, with the added bonus of increasing liklihood of further chemical weapons attacks, is the best or most desirable option we have at our disposal. Too many lessons from the last hundred years are available to us to consider doing nothing as a viable option. I'm not that surprised that the cynicism level among the general populace who aren't deeply interested in history and instead use Iraq/Afghanistan as their broken barometer supports doing nothing, but I'm a little surprised that you and kara, educated as you are, fall in among them.
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Military intervention scares me. It feels like a gamble. It could make the situation better or a lot worse.
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Military intervention scares me. It feels like a gamble. It could make the situation better or a lot worse.
There is nothing quite like posting a series of fairly sophisticated summaries that analyze a complex situation and getting a one-line opinion supported by absolutely nothing in response. This is not helpful in the discussion.
The gamble here is between a known severe consequence, and an unknown consequence that may or may not be severe. To put this in very simple terms:
You see a bus driving straight for you, unable to swerve. If you continue to do what you're currently doing, you will be hit and severely injured by the bus. If you jump out of the way, you might get hit by another car going much faster and killed. You might just bump into another person. You might fall off the road, down a bank, and break most of the bones in your body. Or you might just get out of the way of the bus. You don't know. What you do know is that the consequences of changing the situation are probably going to be much less dire than just standing there and getting run over by the bus.
Syria is the bus. The West is you. Russia and China are taking turns giving the bus driver directions. The car is the law of unintended consequences. (and yes, this is not a perfect analogy).
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The known consequence of ceasing support, not intervening, and not punishing chemical weapons use is the destruction of the rebel forces by Assad, and the killing of any civilian protestors still seeking regime change. That's what started in 2011, and Assad's policy has not shifted and has if anything hardened. Stop support today and there will be thousands of addition casualties, the majority of them civilians.
Yes, but there won't be further 100.000 casualties.
I am increasingly of the opinion that this war should end as fast as possible. And the fastest way we can achieve this is to stop arming the rebels and take all the anti-Assad mercenaries out of there. The second fastest way is to burn Assad to the ground. But this will only achieve the end of a war to start another one, between the muslim brothers and the rest of the nations (as if it's this simple! It's obviously not, since there are too many heterogeneous groups), pushing this country to an even worse mud than it is now.
The third one is the one which is being prepared now. A slow burn of Assad. It's the solution that will bring more and more suffering to everyone.
The precise consequences of intervention are unknown. Intervention should be - and is being - designed to minimize loss of life and maximize the effect on both sides willingness to use chemical weapons and attack civilians.
Doesn't matter. One child dead, that's the one who will be shown to the TV cameras as proof that the US is the devil incarnate. As if either side of the conflict didn't hate the US already. They do. They always did. Syria's past history is not without US interference. And somehow there are still people who really believe that this intervention will be regarded by some Syrians as "humanitarian intervention"?
Pure bollocks. Anyone who is in hell for that long has left those kinds of ideological naivetés a long long time ago. They know it's about oil. They know it's about the control of the ME.
The *ONLY* acceptable argument in my eyes about any kind of intervention in Syria is the maintenance of the Chemical Weapons Taboo. And for this, every side should be "punished". By this I mean the US or NATO or whatever should drop the humanitarian bull**** speech and just with the utmost cruel pragmatism ever just state "We will not allow this taboo to be so easily broken, we will destroy this production of CW for the sake of our defense. We cannot allow crazy dictators thinking this is a good idea, we cannot allow random mercenaries having access to this technology", Then bomb the hell out of every single military building suspect of creating or harboring these weapons, bomb every single rebel cell that is suspect of carrying these bombs. Did we kill some cell that hadn't? Tough luck, we have to be sure.
I rather have this kind of cruel pragmatism, the same kind of pragmatism that launched the bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima than all the disgusting blablablas about "humanitarian" reasons for Syria that the US is now propagandizing.
I refuse to believe - based on military and geopolitical history in the twentieth century - that sitting back and allowing the mass murder of civilians and rebel forces alike, with the added bonus of increasing liklihood of further chemical weapons attacks, is the best or most desirable option we have at our disposal.
The real problem is that we haven't done "nothing". Had we done so, Syria would have been what Iran was some years ago. A sad sad situation but nowhere ****ing near the ****stain that it is now. Instead, the CIA backed Saudi Arabia to get weapons into Syria's rebel factions, Al Quaeda, etc., prolonging the suffering and escalating the madness. And you know, I am not against that kind of backstabbing and cover ops by fiat, but if you are willing to start the bloodshed that we now see there at least they should have taken ****ing responsibility before it was too damn late, as it now appears.
Too many lessons from the last hundred years are available to us to consider doing nothing as a viable option. I'm not that surprised that the cynicism level among the general populace who aren't deeply interested in history and instead use Iraq/Afghanistan as their broken barometer supports doing nothing, but I'm a little surprised that you and kara, educated as you are, fall in among them.
Well, count me among whomever group you feel inclined to. However, if you think I'll accept gladly a situation where a party (the US) fuels the conflict and the bloodshed till its boiling point and then proclaim "there's nothing we can do but intervene, just look at them going! We have to go, it's the only human thing to do!", then think again. I'm not buying that ****, nor should you either.
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Ryan, I am not informed enough to jump into this discussion with you and the rest, but I am interested and have been watching from the sidelines.
I can't give you what you want. I just wanted to post how it makes me feel. Think of me as somewhere inbetween the man on the street who either doesn't care or doesn't have the time or understanding to look at the situation and you who both cares and has a good understanding of all the things at play. You've seen before that I don't understand international politics very well.
I guess I kind of hoped you'd make me feel better about the whole thing since you're pushing for military intervention, and military intervention looks to be around the corner, and I know that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the best of comparisons, but to me, they show a high level of incompetance, and I see nothing to give me any hope that incompetance won't be repeated and we won't end up with another nation with the blood of tens of thousands on the West's hands that hates our guts and another breeding ground for terrorists. And that's before we consider what these other big players in the game might do.
Heh. Yes, I was going to have things to say about the analogy. :)
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Yes, but there won't be further 100.000 casualties.
How many further civilian deaths is too many? 100,000? 10,000? 1,000? 100? 10? Just 1?
The known number of civilian deaths from non-intervention (and worse, cessation of support) is always higher than the possible number of civilian casualties by maintaining rebel support and intervening.
I am increasingly of the opinion that this war should end as fast as possible. And the fastest way we can achieve this is to stop arming the rebels and take all the anti-Assad mercenaries out of there. The second fastest way is to burn Assad to the ground. But this will only achieve the end of a war to start another one, between the muslim brothers and the rest of the nations (as if it's this simple! It's obviously not, since there are too many heterogeneous groups), pushing this country to an even worse mud than it is now.
The third one is the one which is being prepared now. A slow burn of Assad. It's the solution that will bring more and more suffering to everyone.
OK, so to stop the war we let the Syrian government commit mass murder. Sounds reasonable. Except Rwanda and Sbrenica established precedent that it isn't actually reasonable at all. Nevermind those pesky Geneva Conventions. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the UN could actually take measures to address its core mission?
Doesn't matter. One child dead, that's the one who will be shown to the TV cameras as proof that the US is the devil incarnate. As if either side of the conflict didn't hate the US already. They do. They always did. Syria's past history is not without US interference. And somehow there are still people who really believe that this intervention will be regarded by some Syrians as "humanitarian intervention"?
Pure bollocks. Anyone who is in hell for that long has left those kinds of ideological naivetés a long long time ago. They know it's about oil. They know it's about the control of the ME.
Doesn't matter. The objective is not to be liked, the objective is to prevent mass civilian deaths and prevent further chemical weapons use.
The *ONLY* acceptable argument in my eyes about any kind of intervention in Syria is the maintenance of the Chemical Weapons Taboo. And for this, every side should be "punished". By this I mean the US or NATO or whatever should drop the humanitarian bull**** speech and just with the utmost cruel pragmatism ever just state "We will not allow this taboo to be so easily broken, we will destroy this production of CW for the sake of our defense. We cannot allow crazy dictators thinking this is a good idea, we cannot allow random mercenaries having access to this technology", Then bomb the hell out of every single military building suspect of creating or harboring these weapons, bomb every single rebel cell that is suspect of carrying these bombs. Did we kill some cell that hadn't? Tough luck, we have to be sure.
I rather have this kind of cruel pragmatism, the same kind of pragmatism that launched the bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima than all the disgusting blablablas about "humanitarian" reasons for Syria that the US is now propagandizing.
Finally we agree. I've been saying exactly this for a number of pages now.
The real problem is that we haven't done "nothing". Had we done so, Syria would have been what Iran was some years ago. A sad sad situation but nowhere ****ing near the ****stain that it is now. Instead, the CIA backed Saudi Arabia to get weapons into Syria's rebel factions, Al Quaeda, etc., prolonging the suffering and escalating the madness. And you know, I am not against that kind of backstabbing and cover ops by fiat, but if you are willing to start the bloodshed that we now see there at least they should have taken ****ing responsibility before it was too damn late, as it now appears.
Well, count me among whomever group you feel inclined to. However, if you think I'll accept gladly a situation where a party (the US) fuels the conflict and the bloodshed till its boiling point and then proclaim "there's nothing we can do but intervene, just look at them going! We have to go, it's the only human thing to do!", then think again. I'm not buying that ****, nor should you either.
Principles about "who started it" are great until CBRNE weapons start flying and civilians start dying much more rapidly. At that point pragmatism has to win out. I don't absolve the historical mess in Syria - I'm saying that what's happening now is not something that can be safely ignored due to what happened in the past.
I guess I kind of hoped you'd make me feel better about the whole thing since you're pushing for military intervention, and military intervention looks to be around the corner, and I know that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the best of comparisons, but to me, they show a high level of incompetance, and I see nothing to give me any hope that incompetance won't be repeated and we won't end up with another nation with the blood of tens of thousands on the West's hands that hates our guts and another breeding ground for terrorists. And that's before we consider what these other big players in the game might do.
Accept right now that whatever the West does in Syria, at the end of the conflict Syria will NOT have a government friendly to Western interests and Syrians in power will likely continue to hate Western countries. The West doesn't win anything by intervening. Nobody knows this better than every political leader in NATO, Obama being chief among them. Western democracies will never be publicly perceived as doing the "right thing" in Syria as far as international opinion goes, nevermind the opinions of a majority of their citizens.
That is not an excuse to sit back and watch mass murder and chemical weapons deployment.
The intelligence and security establishments in NATO countries are being paid to make it abundantly clear to their political masters how potentially bad the situation in Syria is right now. That is why Obama wants to act. That is why the French want to act. That is why David Cameron wanted to act. That is why the Canadian PM is pledging support of the American effort (as Canada doesn't have the correct type of military assets for this type of action). That is also why the Senate FRC in the US has authorized action. Furthermore, it's why the political bodies - who do not receive these briefings - do not support action. If every British MP received the same information Cameron does, Britain would be right behind the Americans, French, and Canadians on this issue. They don't. Most of them know very, very little about what is going on in Syria today. (On a related note, holy **** am I tired of countries selecting uneducated common-elected morons to set their foreign policy. It's not much better than foreign-policy by referendum).
Chemical weapons use cannot be allowed to go unpunished, chemical weapons use on civilians doubly-so. The consequences of allowing it to go on unchecked do not bear thinking about.
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Yes, but there won't be further 100.000 casualties.
How many further civilian deaths is too many? 100,000? 10,000? 1,000? 100? 10? Just 1?
The known number of civilian deaths from non-intervention (and worse, cessation of support) is always higher than the possible number of civilian casualties by maintaining rebel support and intervening.
You don't know this, and I can ask the same rethorical question back and we are in the same spot. With an unanswerable question. Unless of course what is on the table is a full scale war to the end. I don't think this was on the table.
OK, so to stop the war we let the Syrian government commit mass murder. Sounds reasonable. Except Rwanda and Sbrenica established precedent that it isn't actually reasonable at all. Nevermind those pesky Geneva Conventions. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the UN could actually take measures to address its core mission?
Hmpf. I don't think this solution is possible anymore. What I *do* think is that if Assad wasn't fought by US armed rebels and thus the escalation wouldn't happen, then such mass murders wouldn't have happened as well. All comparisons with the Sbrenica and Rwanda massacres are also *yet* unjustified. From the legal standpoint, it is clear that the rebels engaged in a war against its government, they should not expect from it flowers and roses.
Finally we agree. I've been saying exactly this for a number of pages now.
Ok, I want to jump at this so we at least divide what unites us from what separates us. I think the taboo on the CWs requires a response of some kind, a strong response. Here we agree. Where we probably disagree is in what response it should be, since it is not so clear that Assad is the one to blame here.
Now where we really disagree is with the notion that we should do this from the "humanitarian" standpoint. I think that cat's long out of the bag now. To still pretend we have any remnant of humanitarian interest in that hellhole would be an exercise of hypocrisy from the western powers that I couldn't suffer too much without vomiting. Even if the call is pragmatic and not ideological (OK, they might not love us, but we will still do what's best for them, even if they don't).
The intelligence and security establishments in NATO countries are being paid to make it abundantly clear to their political masters how potentially bad the situation in Syria is right now. That is why Obama wants to act. That is why the French want to act. That is why David Cameron wanted to act. That is why the Canadian PM is pledging support of the American effort (as Canada doesn't have the correct type of military assets for this type of action). That is also why the Senate FRC in the US has authorized action. Furthermore, it's why the political bodies - who do not receive these briefings - do not support action. If every British MP received the same information Cameron does, Britain would be right behind the Americans, French, and Canadians on this issue. They don't. Most of them know very, very little about what is going on in Syria today. (On a related note, holy **** am I tired of countries selecting uneducated common-elected morons to set their foreign policy. It's not much better than foreign-policy by referendum).
You speak as if embebbed with an omniscient outlook on why anyone here is doing what they are doing or not doing. I am not so sure of many things here, including the trust I should have about the intelligence these people have regarding what is the dangers on the ME. These are the same assholes that didn't bat an eye before requesting Saudi Arabia to help the rebels in Syria, knowing damn well that much of that help involved bringing in Al-Quaeda into the fold.
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The known number of civilian deaths from non-intervention (and worse, cessation of support) is always higher than the possible number of civilian casualties by maintaining rebel support and intervening.
I think this line highlights the difference in our opinions. There is no way you can know this. In fact I'll go so far as to say you're flat out wrong about it. Had the West not intervened in 2011 this situation would be over already and the casualty figures would have been lower.
But let's say that the West does intervene? How is that going to make the situation in Syria any better?
1) Let's say we do a limited number of target strikes on sites we know have chemical weapons. This is what I suspect the UK wanted to do (and maybe the US too). Assad's military would be largely undamaged, the rebels military would be largely undamaged, the war would go on exactly as it did before the use of chemical weapons. So basically very little difference in the civilian casualties. This is why I posted that Oatmeal cartoon. People get upset about the use of chemical weapons but once they are only using conventional weapons, no one gives a ****.
2) We do what Luis posted. We take out every site that might have chemical weapons. Now either we get the same as scenario 1), we damage Assad sufficiently that he slowly loses power (meaning a prolonged war with lots of civilian casualties but one he is certain to ultimately lose) or we go too far and cripple Assad (he has a larger military and therefore more to bomb) and we hand the rebels and easy victory. The last one is the only one that immediately stops the killing of civilians by Assad's forces. But as we all know, that's not going to be the end of it. Either we end up with very hardline Muslims in charge, determined to turn Syria into another Taliban era Afghanistan, or we end up with a civil war.
So let me ask a question. You're backing military intervention, but what is your endgame? Paint me a scenario where this doesn't end up with the Syrian people in a worse situation than they currently are in.
What the West should have done was leave the **** alone. But if you want to talk about pragmatism, here's the pragmatic solution. You say "Assad has used chemical weapons, the rebels have used chemical weapons, that's a wash." And you make a clear threat that the next side to use them is the one that gets wiped out. It's not humanitarian, but nothing the West has been doing has been humanitarian. It's exactly the same effect as taking out a limited number of CW sites, but without the chance of ****ing it up.
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Ryan, thanks for the answer.
So I guess when this is over no matter what happens, a whole lot more people are going to think we're scum than did before. I imagine it will also be harder to get support for another war, whatever the reason behind it.
So what response are you advocating? Go in, smash both sides and get out? Peacekeeper operations? Or both? And any of these still don't end the conflict, though I suppose they might reduce it's intensity, is that what you want? I've never been able to tell what you want the end result to be, we can't have a favourable regime, so what do you want? Assad? rebels? Third party X?
I am puzzled by your faith in the people in charge to handle this with any competancy. With the spectacular failure of Iraq (yeah we're going there again, but it's the same people in charge) the intelligence agancies who made the colossal phantom WMD blunder, and the mess that was made of the invasion. And this will be another make-it-up-as-you-go-along campaign. Where does your faith come from?
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The entire situation with Syria has absolutely nothing to do with humanitarian means, the USA and UN don't give a **** about Syrians or anyone else for that matter nor lose sleep over the destabilization and destruction of another sovereign nation and I'm honestly surprised any supporter of intervention can still play pretend to have the moral high ground in such a matter. The USA has no legal basis for intervention nor even any shred of presentable evidence regarding this sham of a 'red line' being crossed by CW use by the Syrians, not that it matters in the least in regards to wanting boots on the ground.
Intervention will mean many more deaths, many more civilians displaced, many more homes destroyed, many more communities fractured, many more ancient churches, synagogues and mosques destroyed, many more artifacts of history destroyed or lost (Remember Baghdad? As a fan of history that's something that annoys me greatly) and all of this potentially leads to greater social and religious conflict across the world in the future as fallout from the war in Syria, not to mention huge damages to the entire world economy, not to mention the bigger elephant in the room: world war 3.
That's as simple as I can put it without going into rant/essay mode, I've already spent way too much time trying to be completely politically correct and self-censoring myself regarding this topic. Take it or leave it, I've said my words on the topic.
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This post was in response to Lorric's.
What?
As humanitarians, we absolutely have to intervene. As cosmopolitans we have to intervene. Just because Russia is holding the UN hostage does not mean that the rest of the world does not support the cause. Even Iran condemns chemical weapons (with known reason). If we do a limited strike and if we do it right, we can actually remove the tainted image of what we did in 2003.
It would be ideal if we could have multilateral support, with UN and the British. Right now, we may have the French, the Finns, and Israel. But this isn't a popularity contest, and we are going in full well that it is not a profitable endeavor. We know full well that, despite what the senate hearing says, regime change is a bad idea.
Ryan is right. If we let the Holocaust and Rwanda and Serbia/Bosnia repeat, "never again" means jack ****. The UN means jack ****. And we are giving every other country free reigns to start gassing its own people. As a cosmopolitan, I cannot stand for that. The liberal in me accepts that this is a case in which I have to be a hawk about. Hopefully, we can stay focused on only doing a very limited engagement.
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The US and the UN may indeed not care, but I as a person do. Many Syrian Americans also want the US to do something, though the degree varies from a limited strike to a regime change. Iran condemns chemical weapons. The prime minister of the UK was expecting support for a possible engagement until it was denied by Parliament. It might not be a popular support, but it is a humanitarian one.
As for a legal basis for intervention: the world has a responsibility to protect. It doesn't matter if it is Auschwitz, Darfur, or any of the times we failed to help civilians from genocide. The responsibility and the legality is there. We can choose to ignore it or accept it. We have a right to intervene.
I can see intervention being problematic if it is stretched in a long period, but not intervening against the use of chemical weapons on civilians is giving Syria the go ahead to do it again. And again. And again. We can stop it now, or we can let it continue until an unspecified future, like Darfur. Or we can ignore it altogether and keep a clean conscience.
In this lose-lose situation, there is a moral high ground: uphold the purpose of the UN. Even if the intention is different, allowing the UN to fail is, dare I say, a sin.
Edit: I can see several differences between this and Iraq.
First, aside from McCain and those like him, many in Congress from both spectrum are cautious of putting boots in the ground. Many are also cautious about allowing military use too, so there is expected limits. The military advisors seem to be wary of full scale invasion as well. And since nobody wants to repeat the blunder of Bush and his intelligence team, those who have seen the photos have not simply taken Obama's word for granted. There are pictures of civilians affected. So unlike the WMD, we have actual proof.
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(Remember Baghdad? As a fan of history that's something that annoys me greatly)
You're talking about what the Mongols did, not something we did, right?
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The response to a limited strike may not be so limited. Iran and Syria have already stated they'd be aiming their weapons on Israel, for instance, nor do I expect the cruise-missile armed ships to survive against the modern weaponry installed by the Russians. The escalation will in best cases be a hot proxy war which at the current state is very likely to result in initial defeat on the side of the USA (and allies), at worst conventional WW3.
In regards to Bagdad, I mean this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Iraq).
In response to SyphedMar:
I understand what you're saying, as a person I would like there to be some solution, immediately in fact, to be applied with as minimal damage as possible and one that settles both sides. This is however not something that can be achieved, especially not from the outside. As a human I want all the fighting in the world to stop, the Libyan and Syrian civil war to end and I want every human to succeed at life and happiness. I see the beauty of life and want to see it preserved. This is however not the opinion of those that actually call the shots, who don't give a damn about the environment, about other humans but only care about their own careers, their own bottom lines, their own clients, their own desire for wealth, power and control. That's why my initial response may seem so cold and uncaring for the people I mentioned don't think like a caring person would.
I would also like the U.N. to uphold their publicly published purpose, the rights of all human beings to life, liberty and happiness. These are important declarations. The solution has to be political, though and contain, among other things the denunciation, identification and dissolution of the foreign fighters active in Syria attacking ancient Christian and Jewish communities alike (as well as other Arab communities not of the same sect as theirs). I don't care much for Assad but attacking the entire country is not the solution at all.
In short, what I, and you, want morally has sadly no say in the matter as it's not about pure humanitarianism but it's a war of conquest like any other that imperialism has brought throughout the ages - there's absolutely nothing new under the sun and it's important to identify the Syria crisis as another chapter rather than what we as caring people want or demand of the U.N.
I hope that clarifies my stance now I could finally voice my opinion on the topic.
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So BF3 indeed came true, except it is in Syria rather than Iran.
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In regards to Bagdad, I mean this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Iraq).
Oh. I didn't know about that.
One more tragedy to add to the list...
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As humanitarians, we absolutely have to intervene.
And do what exactly? What are we going to do as humanitarians that is going to make the situation any better?
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To start, do something about the use of chemical weapons. The option currently being discussed is better than the alternative of doing nothing.
JCDN: I acknowledged that politicking plays a part in this (McCain as an obvious example), but I'd like to think we learned a bit since 2003: that Wilsonian nation building does not work and is largely unprofitable.
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Meantime, Israel is "a coffee shop in a slaughterhouse": http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-coffee-shop-in-a-slaughterhouse/
The most interesting thing about that article is the account of all the various sides that are arising against each other in the Middle-East. I hate to say it but I found myself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all as I read it.
We've all been thinking about large-scale interventions and their effectiveness (or lack thereof). Why has no-one considered the perhaps cliche but still feasible "007" solution? Have a surgical team eliminate Assad, and (somehow - don't ask me how) replace him with someone who can and will put the Syrian army on-hold. Hopefully - and it's a long shot - the rebels would agree to stop fighting if they are assured of internationally-monitored national reforms implemented by the government.
This solution sounds insane, I know, but it seems to be the only one that doesn't come with the horrendous "side effects" that the larger-scale military options do.
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If anyone is doing it, nobody will talk about it. Like 007.
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"...The Mossad sends their regards"? :nervous: *runs*
:p
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The United States "officially" proscribed political assassination as of Executive Order 12333.
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To start, do something about the use of chemical weapons. The option currently being discussed is better than the alternative of doing nothing.
I stated a viable third alternative. Which is to make a threat about what will happen if they are used again.
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I have to apologize for gleaming over your post. It does sound very pragmatic and unemotional. It's unfortunate that this isn't on the table, at least not for the politicians.
My only issue is that it forces a heavier commitment in the future than now. And if it doesn't, then we just allowed one side to use chemical weapons again when it would've been stopped earlier had option 1 been applied.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/06/us-syria-crisis-usa-iran-idUSBRE98504120130906
the word powder keg comes to mind...
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also
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-syria-crisis-usa-rebels-idUSBRE98405L20130905
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To start, do something about the use of chemical weapons. The option currently being discussed is better than the alternative of doing nothing.
I stated a viable third alternative. Which is to make a threat about what will happen if they are used again.
And then what happens when the bluff is called, or worse the other side simply doesn't care? Time is wasted, lives are lost unnecessarily, and initiative is willingly surrendered. None of those are good things. And in the meantime we're supposed to hope that a maniacal dictator and the various groups of murdering rebels that only hate him marginally more than they hate each other just sort of play nice when it comes to tossing gas?
I hope you'll excuse me when I say that I don't think your third alternative is truly viable.
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To start, do something about the use of chemical weapons. The option currently being discussed is better than the alternative of doing nothing.
I stated a viable third alternative. Which is to make a threat about what will happen if they are used again.
That's out of the table as viable though. If Obama were to make that speech even I would laugh at him, Tehran would be crying their pants off, heart attacks left and right just for the comedic shockwave.
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Yes, unfortunately it's probably too late for it now. But, if it had been made before the "Let's bomb Syria" rhetoric had started, it might have worked.
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Ross Douthat makes a good article in the NYT.
I suggest anyone interested to read it:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/syria-and-the-pax-americana/?ref=rossdouthat
I would go this far with my imaginary address: The justification that I have the president cite — that we should sometimes be willing to use military force “to limit the ambitions of bad actors and keep them successfully boxed in” — seems like the best justification by far for U.S. military action in situations where there isn’t a direct threat to America’s homeland or to our close allies. The best, and maybe the only one. As I wrote recently in the context of Egypt and Libya, I do not believe that the United States should have a policy of taking sides in internal conflicts where neither side obviously deserves our support, because history suggests that great powers generally have much more to lose than to gain from entangling themselves militarily with local factions in complicated conflicts. Nor do I think much of the so-called “responsibility to protect” as a justification for humanitarian intervention, not least because the evidence that such interventions actually save lives in the aggregate is relatively weak: They’re just as likely to embolden outgunned rebellions and accelerate attacks on civilians by the government being targeted. Nor, finally, do I support military intervention as a kind of map-rearranging tool of statesmanship: The costs in blood and treasure are too high, and American power too limited, to treat regime change and nation building as tasks to be undertaken outside of truly extraordinary, aftermath-of-World-War-II-type circumstances.
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Rather than going back to page 8 and responding to kara and luis in detail, I'm going to pick up where the discussion has gone (so my apologies if I miss responding to one of the details you two started talking about).
In my opinion, Sandwich has hit the nail if not precisely then at least closer than some other speculation. Several pages ago I alluded to some specialized units that are funded by various NATO countries. I haven't forgotten about that.
Some of you seem to think that past screwups mean that present action is a poor idea. In hindsight, perhaps arming the rebels wasn't a great idea. Personally, I thought Syria should have received the Libya treatment - a government that fires on civilian protestors quickly learns that it will no longer have modern military equipment to fire on the protestors with because they just got flattened by NATO / Arab league airpower. That was two years ago.
Now, we have the situation today. I'll recap it again for anyone in the audience not paying attention:
1. Chemical weapons attacks have occurred FOUR TIMES in the last 12 months.
2. Both the Syrian government and the rebels have been implicated in said strikes.
3. Assad's forces have targeted civilian populations directly in military strikes, before the rebels were established and after.
4. Arguably, the more desperation faced by any one side, the more likely they are to use chemical weapon stockpiles (historical precedent for this). Ergo, ceasing logistical support to the rebels will increase the odds of greater chemical weapons attacks. Similarly, decimating government forces without eliminating chemical weapon stockpiles will also increase the odds of attacks.
5. The Syrian government hates everyone but Russia, China, and Iran.
6. The Syrian rebels are highly divisive, but the dominant factions likely to win out if the rebels took power hate everyone but Iran and Al-Qaeda.
7. Everyone in authority positions in Syria pretty much despises the West, and will continue to do so.
8. Damascus is a mere stones' throw from the Israeli border, and much as the Syrian rebels and government despise each other AND the West, if there's anyone they hate more it's actually the Israelis. Who happen to also be much hated by Iran.
If we stop arming the rebels, government forces will destroy them and continue the campaign against civilians (religion has only tangentially entered the discussion via linked sources so far, but let me remind everyone that Assad's government is Baath and a minority in Syria; he has no love of the protesting civilians, which are primarily from different Islamic sects and will happily use military force on said civilians to secure his power base. This we do know; this is why I assert that more civilians die without intervention because an Assad victory WILL specifically target civilians).
Now that chemical weapons have been openly used by both sides, we face the problem of escalation. With swift, severe denouncement of the chemical weapons use with actual consequences - which diplomacy has failed to muster for two years - there is no incentive to not use them further. In fact, now that the line was drawn, backing down emboldens both sides. After all, if we promised consequences and failed to deliver them this time, chances are we won't do it next time. This is called appeasement diplomacy and it doesn't work. It never has worked. Britain has tried it numerous times and it has ALWAYS, without fail, backfired and made things worse.
So - strikes into Syria.
It seems that a number of people around here - and public opinion generally - is that strikes are going to be cruise missiles targeting Assad and this is a bad thing. I happen to agree. I also note that this is not what NATO forces appear to be gearing up for, though Assad's forces are being listed as the primary target.
What I suspect will happen - and hope will happen - is a series of missile strikes covering up the deployment of special forces units specifically targeting all known and possible sites of chemical weapons storage in Syria to specifically destroy those stockpiles maintained by both sides. Much like Afghanistan and Iraq (and countless operations before), it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that elements from SAS / JTF2 / SEAL / Ranger / Delta Force / Mossad / Force Recon or a variety of other units with names the general public won't recognize in the slightest have been parked in Syria for months before now. The probability that they have not been is quite low, considering the precedents set from the early 1980s to the present. Furthermore, I expect we will see specific targeting of Assad's more advanced military hardware capable of delivering chemical weapons strikes (as the majority of the stockpiles appear to remain in the hands of the Syrian government). Expect to see helicopter staging areas and artillery / launchers specifically targeted. This is the form that I think intervention should take and probably will take. Also, the proposition that NATO forces (specifically naval assets) would be lost or heavily damaged in such an intervention is ludicrous.
A few of you keep talking about how the humanitarian justification is bull****. It's hypocrisy, but it isn't bull****. There are very good reasons why the West should be intervening to protect civilians (and luis, much as you say this isn't Rwanda or Sbrenica yet, just watch what would happen if we quit arming the rebels; while murder on religious grounds and affiliation isn't technically genocide, it's close enough).
Regardless, my desire to see a strike in Syria is not motivated primarily by civilian deaths. I think it's an important issue, and it justifies action, but the primary justification in my mind is that chemical weapons attacks need to be denounced and stopped right now before they spread any further, which is an eminently pragmatic position. If these attacks go any further, there is a very real risk of the Syrian civil war expanding across the Middle East. While Iran is already egging on terrorist groups to strike American assets in the Middle East if a strike in Syria occurs, no one will risk actual national military confrontation (least of all the Iranians) over NATO intervention in Syria. If, on the other hand, a chemical weapon strikes hits in or close to Israel, or even targets Israel, all bets on Middle Eastern stability are off. If Israeli forces deploy openly beyond their national borders right now, the Middle East will explode.
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Oh, and this:
The response to a limited strike may not be so limited. Iran and Syria have already stated they'd be aiming their weapons on Israel, for instance, nor do I expect the cruise-missile armed ships to survive against the modern weaponry installed by the Russians. The escalation will in best cases be a hot proxy war which at the current state is very likely to result in initial defeat on the side of the USA (and allies), at worst conventional WW3.
You've been reading too much fiction. Most of the support provided by the Russians has barely the range to hit Tomahawk-equipped naval assets, and there are reports that at least one Aegis-equipped missile destroyer has already been selected for deployment. The notion that the Syrian government could even moderately damage any US or NATO-deployed naval assets is absolutely laughable.
And as mentioned earlier, this is not (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85354.msg1708622#msg1708622), nor will it be (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85354.msg1708764#msg1708764) a proxy war. If anything, lack of intervention now increases the chances of a hot war in the Middle East in general, but it's still unlikely that it would be a proxy war.
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We should drop food and medical aid on Syria with leaflets letting those responsible know if we can do so with impunity the next time they decide to use CBRNEs we drop the hammer just as easily :P We can call it Sauce and Awe.
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Of course, this is all be even more laughable if the US congress actually vetoes the President's suggestion. Obama's management of this crisis has been ridiculous.
MP, just a small correction... the "rebels" do not "hate everyone but Iran and Al Quaeda". This is not even remotely representative nor true in its most simple form. The rebels are amazingly heterogeneous, and you will actually find secular cells that have been targeted by Al Quaeda cells for the past months (a big leader of one such secular cell was killed in the north recently by AQ). You will find mercenaries and all sorts of agendas in these cells. Do understand that these cells are mostly being fed by the US and Saudi Arabia, and from the latter you get the Al Quaeda connection. Al Quaeda is not a "friend" of Iran. These cells are doing another proxy war for Saudi Arabia against Iran / Syria.
It's a ****ing hellhole.
Oh and there's this of course:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10291879/Syria-Russia-will-stand-by-Assad-over-any-US-strikes-warns-Putin.html
Syria: Russia will stand by Assad over any US strikes, warns Putin
Russia would help Syria respond to any military intervention by the US over chemical weapons attacks, Vladimir Putin has warned.
Anyways the G20 is probably the most interesting reunion made so far. I just hope all these morons are sensible enough and that these guns of september do not recapitulate the guns of another august.
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MP, just a small correction... the "rebels" do not "hate everyone but Iran and Al Quaeda". This is not even remotely representative nor true in its most simple form. The rebels are amazingly heterogeneous, and you will actually find secular cells that have been targeted by Al Quaeda cells for the past months (a big leader of one such secular cell was killed in the north recently by AQ). You will find mercenaries and all sorts of agendas in these cells. Do understand that these cells are mostly being fed by the US and Saudi Arabia, and from the latter you get the Al Quaeda connection. Al Quaeda is not a "friend" of Iran. These cells are doing another proxy war for Saudi Arabia against Iran / Syria.
I did say the dominant factions likely to win out, you'll note :P
Syria: Russia will stand by Assad over any US strikes, warns Putin
Russia would help Syria respond to any military intervention by the US over chemical weapons attacks, Vladimir Putin has warned.
Anyways the G20 is probably the most interesting reunion made so far. I just hope all these morons are sensible enough and that these guns of september do not recapitulate the guns of another august.
Can I point back to the thread title and OP yet again?
Russia (and to a much lesser extent) China are the biggest problems in this whole mess. Had we gotten a UN SC resolution two years ago and Russia hadn't been continually arming Assad, we wouldn't be dealing with the present predicament. Like I said before, the blame for the chemical weapons attacks should be squarely worn by the Russians, because its their bull**** that allowed it to go this way.
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I like StarSlayer's solution the best. :p
Also, I suspect that if Syria attacks Israel with chemical weapons, the debate whether Israel has nukes or not will go up in a rather large fireball over Damascus.
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MP, yes I know you think that, I don't do blame the way you do. If you are going to say that Russia is to blame because they have been backing the one ruler they have on their hands in the ME... come on. It's like saying the Russkies were bad coz they didn't throw a red carpet to the US-backed rebels two years ago. I think both Russia and the US are to blame for the scale of the escalation and perhaps the escalation itself.
The situation was probably really similar to what happened in Iran some four years ago. But at that time the opposition didn't have any international backing and they were easily crushed. Had they been backed by Saudis and americans, etc., we would now be discussing what to do about the blood in Tehran, not in Damascus.
It's not a reality that I *like*, obviously. What I am saying implies the terrible notion that sometimes it is better for a people to be oppressed under a tyrant than go all "humanitarian" on them and shatter an entire nation just so some citizens in Canada, Portugal, Japan or whatever might feel good about what's happening on their tv sets.
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I like StarSlayer's solution the best. :p
Also, I suspect that if Syria attacks Israel with chemical weapons, the debate whether Israel has nukes or not will go up in a rather large fireball over Damascus.
1. I thought the public reveal of Dimona put that issue to bed for anyone with an ounce of sense sometime ago.
2. Let's all sincerely hope not.
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MP, yes I know you think that, I don't do blame the way you do. If you are going to say that Russia is to blame because they have been backing the one ruler they have on their hands in the ME... come on. It's like saying the Russkies were bad coz they didn't throw a red carpet to the US-backed rebels two years ago. I think both Russia and the US are to blame for the scale of the escalation and perhaps the escalation itself.
Russia blocked the Security Council in 2011, well before the Syrian rebels were armed by Western interests. Everything that follows is a result of that; ergo, the Russians bear (no pun intended) primary responsibility for the way the situation has unfolded.
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It's not a reality that I *like*, obviously. What I am saying implies the terrible notion that sometimes it is better for a people to be oppressed under a tyrant than go all "humanitarian" on them and shatter an entire nation just so some citizens in Canada, Portugal, Japan or whatever might feel good about what's happening on their tv sets.
I'm pretty sure not even Obama wants to shatter Syria. Every time he talks, he keeps mentioning "limited strike". Given his history and the stakes he's in, he probably hates his situation right now. The more I think about it, the less favorable the situation is for the President and the Democrats.
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I've unlocked Gary Brecher's (of the Exile fame) article on NSFW News for you guys for the next 48 hours:
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/little-kerry/8026d3f966025ada10aed7e1ac839b55d44db7d2/
tl;dr version: Attacking Syria would be bad for the US, however the administration has already committed itself with its heavy handed rhetoric. Is there a moral thing to do? No... in the end, intervention would only lead to Alawites getting massacred the old fashioned way, house to house, rape by rape. The West's insane attachment to calling some forms of killing "just" others "evil" never stops to astound Brecher.
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All Obama has to do is say the U.S. will abide by any U.N. resolutions. Then it becomes the U.N.'s problem. Sure there is a moral high ground here to take, but the U.S. isn't above anyone else on this matter and as it sits, involvement will only make things worse...for the U.S. Put the blame on the U.N. for it's inability to actually prevent a humanitarian disaster.
If there is one hard lesson to be learned by the U.S., it's that in a diplomatic world the only way to win is to outlive your enemies. When they all die off first, then you can write the history books and wash your hands of it, or in this case, just leave it out altogether. This may be the greatest counter to the fantasy-factory that is Hollywood.
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We should drop food and medical aid on Syria with leaflets letting those responsible know if we can do so with impunity the next time they decide to use CBRNEs we drop the hammer just as easily :P We can call it Sauce and Awe.
And then can we start dropping the inert training smart bombs like we (someone? France?) did in Libya?
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All Obama has to do is say the U.S. will abide by any U.N. resolutions. Then it becomes the U.N.'s problem. Sure there is a moral high ground here to take, but the U.S. isn't above anyone else on this matter and as it sits, involvement will only make things worse...for the U.S. Put the blame on the U.N. for it's inability to actually prevent a humanitarian disaster.
If there is one hard lesson to be learned by the U.S., it's that in a diplomatic world the only way to win is to outlive your enemies. When they all die off first, then you can write the history books and wash your hands of it, or in this case, just leave it out altogether. This may be the greatest counter to the fantasy-factory that is Hollywood.
Moral high ground? Really? Are you ****ing serious?
On one side, we have a traditionally oppressed Shiite minority who through colonial shenanigans ended up running a country after the Europeans left, and did so with fire & steel... and now that their power is slipping they're *literally* fighting for survival. On the other hand, we have Sunni rebels who're fed up with being bombed and oppressed for so long and having the Alawites kill their brethren using modern military tools (artilery, air power, etc).
Right now both sides are busy killing the *whole* population of their opponent, no doubt about it. I fail to see how the use of chemical weapons by *some* Alawite forces somehow makes it OK for the Sunni to massacre the Alawite population with Western help.
There is no moral high ground, everyone involved is covered in pretty black stuff. Your notion that there *is* such a simplistic, black & white reading of the situation only shows how clueless you are.
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I think Docfu's point is that there is a moral high ground to take here ("We're going in for humanitarian reasons to make sure everyone in Syria is safe") but that America is pretty damn sure to fail to take it.
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There is no moral high ground, everyone involved is covered in pretty black stuff. Your notion that there *is* such a simplistic, black & white reading of the situation only shows how clueless you are.
I might suggest that you retract that statement.
I said that the U.S. isn't above anyone else and that if Obama wants out of his rhetoric, all he has to do is abide by the United Nations Security Council's resolutions instead of pushing America to "go it alone." People are trying to make it look like that since he set a red line for chemical weapons, our bluff has been called and now we have to get involved.
If he wants to take a "moral high ground," which, in this case is really just an excuse to ignore the systems set up after the League of Nations, all he has to do is act independently of the U.N. and strike anyway.
The point is, you will never see a president say "We know what we are about to do is wrong and the U.N. isn't happy with us, but we are going to do it anyway." They will always give some great speech about the positive benefits and the reasons why it has to be done.
That is why even though the dictionary only has one definition of "moral high ground," in reality there are two, and the second one should most definitely read "making up any excuse to do what you want to do anyway..."
Clueless, indeed.
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People are trying to make it look like that since he set a red line for chemical weapons, our bluff has been called and now we have to get involved.
If the US gets involved and enforces consequences for crossing the red line, then it wasn't a bluff. :p
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People are trying to make it look like that since he set a red line for chemical weapons, our bluff has been called and now we have to get involved.
If the US gets involved and enforces consequences for crossing the red line, then it wasn't a bluff. :p
And if it doesn't, then both sides in Syria just learned they can continue to use chemical weapons however they damn well please, because Russia effectively has negated the UNSC, and will also prevent an ICC referral, meaning the only bodies left to respond are NATO and/or the Arab League. Since the Arab League is dysfunctional more days than it isn't, that leaves NATO. NATO isn't going to go without US involvement, and if the Americans effectively get a bluff called, then Syria's conflicting parties really aren't going to think those consequences will manifest next time either.
What happens next involves the Israelis defending themselves and the next thing we know the Middle East is literally on fire.
As I keep saying - nobody wants that!
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we could use a mandate from the Arab league, that would give us possibly enough legitimacy that lack of UNSC denies us..
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Perhaps this could generate enough impetus to permanently disband the utterly dysfunctional UNSC veto crap.
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I agree the veto thing needs to go. though you do realize that it has been used mostly by the US to block all sorts of resolutions against Israel right?
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True dat. Pickle. Hey, here's an idea - perhaps only allow member states to have veto power if they have a proven track record at not backing terrorism or states that sponsor terrorism?
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That would essentially invalidate like half the countries on the planet. :P
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True dat. Pickle. Hey, here's an idea - perhaps only allow member states to have veto power if they have a proven track record at not backing terrorism or states that sponsor terrorism?
Well, in that case either everyone or no-one gets it.
The reality is that the VETO is designed to prevent intervention and escalation.
So, if you want to go the terrorism route, even the U.S. has a rather large track record of violating Pakistani airspace to launch drone strikes. That can be viewed as terrorism simply on the basis that every report that comes out of Pakistan seems to include "women and children" in the death toll.
Or, the U.S. proves everyone else has terrorist ties by opening up all of it's NSA surveillance and shows the world who is in bed with whom, but that would also make the U.S. a terrorist simply for the magnitude of information it's collecting on foreign entities, with intent to use that information to destroy those who oppose U.S. interests.
Either way, the VETO has done an amazing job of keeping superpowers from ripping each other to shreds over the last half-century. I see no reason to change it now.
(Yummy, dell pickles!)
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True dat. Pickle. Hey, here's an idea - perhaps only allow member states to have veto power if they have a proven track record at not backing terrorism or states that sponsor terrorism?
So, that helps the Israe/US situation. how, exactly? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahadeen)
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True dat. Pickle. Hey, here's an idea - perhaps only allow member states to have veto power if they have a proven track record at not backing terrorism or states that sponsor terrorism?
So not the US then. Given that they funded Bin Laden and did **** all about a whole bunch of Cuban terrorists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n_Flight_455).
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Yeah, it's not an easy situation to figure out. Let's see... the UNSC exists for what reason? To maintain peace? Enforce peace? Not according to the name... it's the Security Council. So what is the purpose then?
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That would essentially invalidate like half the countries on the planet. :P
It would probably invalidate just about every country except Bhutan.
...
That actually works for me!
Yeah, it's not an easy situation to figure out. Let's see... the UNSC exists for what reason? To maintain peace? Enforce peace? Not according to the name... it's the Security Council. So what is the purpose then?
The same purpose of the UN itself: Prevent World War 2-like situations from happening ever again.
Preferably other war situations too.
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Eliminating the veto entirely creates problems with the current UNSC composition rules, since it would theoretically be possible to end up with a security council with progressive democracies outnumbered which could be ugly. See: continuing existence of Israel.
The best way to reform the veto would be to allow vetoes by 1/3 of the Security Council, which must include at least 2 of the permanent member states. Essentially, make it 2/3 majority vote requiring 3/5 of the permanent members in favour in order to pass any resolution. (The UNSC has 15 members; right now it only take 9 votes to pass a resolution, but the vote can be vetoed by any one of the permanent members.)
It would simultaneously give more power to the elected members of the Security Council and eliminate the ability of one nation to block the collective will of the entire Council, but preserve the ability of member states advancing certain interests to block resolutions detrimental to a specific portion of the world.
Of course, that would actually ensure the UNSC can do its job, and we wouldn't want that now would we?
Oh, right, forgot about something - tangent, but still important:
Or, the U.S. proves everyone else has terrorist ties by opening up all of it's NSA surveillance and shows the world who is in bed with whom, but that would also make the U.S. a terrorist simply for the magnitude of information it's collecting on foreign entities, with intent to use that information to destroy those who oppose U.S. interests.
You need to revisit the definition of terrorism. I know it gets bandied about way too much these days and American politicians are just as guilty as anyone for using the term improperly, so you're not entirely to blame, but espionage is not terrorism. Drone strikes, sure, you can slot them into the terrorism umbrella generally, but that's more of a political position than a factual one. Espionage, no - regardless of intent.
Stalin said it best: "the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize." Terrorism is the intentional targeted violence (or threat of violence) toward civilian populations with the intent to create fear and create a coercive effect, typically (but not necessarily) coupled with a political objective.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/war-comes-to-syrias-quiet-christian-hinterland-8803394.html
So the war came to this unique place and it's citizens. A pity that SAA did not stop terrorists from taking the entire city. I hope that they will take it back and kill these "rebels".
And again Syrian Christians are in great danger.
I may not be a specialist but one thing is sure to me. If Assad falls, Christians will be expelled and exterminated, behaviour of the jihadists leaves no doubts here.
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Ah! So now Kerry made the blunder of throwing the suggestion that perhaps Assad could give up his CWs.
Putin immediately grabbed the occasion in order to begin a really amazing piece of time trolling (I stand in AWE to the ability of this thug to play the game so ****ing well), and accept the offer! Of course that this would mean a bunch of time lost in order for nothing to anything in particular being resolved. So the White House said that Kerry didn't really mean it.
But now Cameron naively thinks it's such a great idea! He adds and I quote "This shouldn't be used as a distraction tactic".
How ****ing ADORABLE these pathetic people are! It's like they are begging to be trolled and played like the idiots that they are.
Hey, perhaps they are.
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<snip>
How ****ing ADORABLE these pathetic people are! It's like they are begging to be trolled and played like the idiots that they are.
Hey, perhaps they are.
Well, at least they're getting rather rich off of it with their salaries, bribes, gifts and a cozy spot as CEO of corporations they supported by use of legislation. :P
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How nice of the Americans, Russians and Syrians to come together and think up a solution that allows everyone on this thread to say they were in the right (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24026619). :p
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I....... huh. I was not expecting this.
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There's also recently been a few journalists released who were previously kidnapped, they state that they know Assad's government didn't use the chemical weapons (according to a conversation between rebels they interrupted?)
http://globalnews.ca/news/829612/italian-reporter-and-belgian-writer-kidnapped-in-syria-released/ (http://globalnews.ca/news/829612/italian-reporter-and-belgian-writer-kidnapped-in-syria-released/)
though given that they were kidnapped, who knows.
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As one of the people who would be boots-on-the-ground within a month or two after any hypothetical strikes happen, this pleases me greatly, and I wholeheartedly wish this plan succeeds.
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Amazing what happens when the Russians see the writing on the wall and decide that obstruction no longer protects their interests.
I see France is drafting the UN SC resolution (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/syria-agrees-to-chemical-weapons-plan/article14213265/), threatening extremely serious consequences for non-compliance, so this seems quite likely to succeed. Especially since Syria says they're on board and the plan was Russian in origin. Let's all hope.
Now the only question is how to get the rebels to give up any chemical weapons in their possession. Seems to me the West has some leverage there.
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I see I am the only cynic in here regarding this solution. Damn I hope you are all right and that I am terribly wrong on this one. Also, I wish you luck Scotty.
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And now of course Russia is refusing to back any sort of resolution with severe consequences for non-compliance. Why the **** do they even bother being part of the UN in the first place?
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Well, we know that Assad is at least worried about the US, so I think they will give away their chemical weapons regardless of Russia's veto. The threat of hard power brought about something good so that it's not a lose-lose situation for the US.
I don't think Russia will troll us because it will piss off the rest of the international community. Even they would feel embarrassed.
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And now of course Russia is refusing to back any sort of resolution with severe consequences for non-compliance. Why the **** do they even bother being part of the UN in the first place?
Well,
It could be that it's because the United States invaded Iraq on the pretense that they had WMDs, weapons that were never found.
And that this new resolution is essentially legitimizing such an action in future.
How hard would it to be for a country to say "they're not co-operating, we have the right to use force and invade"?
And does anyone remember the days when the UN was known for it's PEACEKEEPERS? Not drafting laws which potentially make legal military action against a sovereign nation?
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Brilliant move on Russia's part, and probably what they'd planned to do from the start. It puts the US and Europe in a bind (EDIT: unless they can somehow negotiate their way out of it). They can either accept a toothless resolution and look weak or alternatively refuse to back it and look like barbaric warmongers who were never seriously interested in non-military solutions.
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*points at thread title*
Yeah. That.
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I agree. I really, really do not want to go to Syria this year.
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Figures. Come on people, grow that cynic cell inside of each one of your brains tenfold unless you don't want to understand world politics. COME ONNNNNN
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Figures. Come on people, grow that cynic cell inside of each one of your brains tenfold unless you don't want to understand world politics. COME ONNNNNN
The only cynic inside me is saying that it's very suspect that the government would use chemical weapons on the very day the UN inspectors were apparently arriving. The US is saying "common sense says the government did it" but to me, common sense says "no one is that stupid". OR at least, no one who has held onto power for that long is that stupid. Furthermore from what I understand the attacks happened in an area where government troops were already winning. Why would any force resort to chemical weapons when the situation is anything but dire?
And also that the US casualty estimates far exceed everyone else's, which is the complete opposite from the norm.
It also notices that the French are in part spearheading some of the efforts, and that Syria was formerly under French rule. When other countries are in trouble, the French weren't at the forefront, put Syria out there and they are.
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Why the **** do they even bother being part of the UN in the first place?
Same reason as everyone else: To protect their national interests. Why else would a state be part of the UN?
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The french were spearheading the opposition to the United States in their Iraq invasion, but at the time what wasn't so widely known was that Saddam was making deals with the French in order to start selling their oil in euros rather than dollars.
But of course that the real reason the french were opposed to the war was because humanitarianism and so on!
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Hey, the French spearheaded Libya you cynics. :wtf:
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Ahahahah now Putin is going all wiseman in the NYT and all the dip****s there are just drooling up his wise words of wisdom!
You have to rely on Garry Kasparov tweets for some sanity:
Pathetic of the New York Times to provide Putin with a platform for condescending propaganda. Putin lecturing on peace & international law!
I hope Putin has taken adequate protections. Now that he is a Russian journalist his life may be in grave danger!
Putin's troops still occupy annexed Georgian territory after he invaded in 2008. My memory may be bad; was there a Security Council vote?
A pity we will have to rely on the NY Times archives to find op-eds by Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Hugo Chavez on human rights.
If Putin really wants to help retrieve al-Assad's weapons he can provide the mailing list he used to send them to Syria in the first place.
Ahahahah, I just love Garry (https://twitter.com/Kasparov63).
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being a hypocrite means you will always be half right.
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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4429297,00.html
Syrians in Israeli hospital urge US strike
Some 14 Syrian wounded hospitalized in Nahariya hospital, say they want US strike to oust Assad. Altogether, 86 Syrians treated in Israel
Against the backdrop of recent talks of diplomatic solutions to the Syrian crisis, the bloodshed persists, prompting many injured Syrians to cross the border and arrive at Israeli hospitals.
On Thursday, some 14 Syrians were still admitted to various wings in the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. Some of them told Ynet they were still hoping US President Obama would launch a military strike on Syria and topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.
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BREAKING
A bunch of wounded and angry people want payback!
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Yeah. I'm fairly certain that the fact that many, many Syrians are pissed off at Assad was only news about two years ago.
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Putin and Russia's motives notwithstanding I find myself still agreeing with their position - in the sense that it seems preferable over a strike of no actual effect to "prove a point".
Obviously, though, this happens to be Putin's opinion because it's more beneficial to Russia. No one should be under any illusions that Russia and Putin have no scruples with using military power with or without UNSC authorization when it suits them. Or, at "best" case, they might feel bad about it but they still do it.
Even so, the ethical basis for his argument being almost certainly bogus - the part where he appeals to legal authority and upholding legislation even if one doesn't like it - I can't really see any obvious flaws in the arguments themselves.
In short: Even though I have deep doubts about whether he actually thinks like this, I still think what he's saying is, at least, less wrong than thinking that any problem at this point would be solved by NATO strike in Syria.
It's mostly a case of Carpe Diem for Russia, in my view, rather than any political brilliance on their part.
It's a pretty tragicomic thing to have to agree with the leader of one of the most opportunistic, unethical, politically repressed, economically distorted, thuggish, and corrupt nations* on the planet on a matter like this, but I think it's more the fact that the US and rest of the Western world has completely screwed up the political and media handling of the Syrian crisis. It has led to this ridiculous situation with the "red line" of chemical weapons having crossed but without clear proof of whodunnit, and are now scrambling to either do some kind of strike because they said they would do that, or to find some way to back off with at least some dignity intact.
Since Russia had aligned themselves with Assad's regime since the beginning, they just took advantage of these political blunders made by others - the only thing Russia and Putin needed to do to "seize the day", so to speak, was to present themselves as the ones who are against increased violence on the area. It's just a case of good political analysis; I doubt they planned for it...
Or maybe, just maybe, I'm unfairly biased against Russia due to geopolitical and historical reasons. :p
Regardless of what I think of Russia, however, I'm inclined to think that any solution that leads to secure disarmament of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal is a good thing regardless of what motivates it. 'Cause right now I see those stockpiles as a huge risk of destabilizing agent not only in the Middle-East but elsewhere in the world, if the really radical elements present in Syria happen to get a hold on them and smuggle them out of the country. Worst case scenario is that this has already happened.
*The US is also on this list on my books, for what it's worth. Also includes China, Iran, Israel, Venezuela, North Korea, Saudi-Arabia, most other Middle-Eastern countries, many African nations, and Vatican. For varying reasons.