syria

the option that would lead to fewest civilian casualties and displacements = covertly providing assistance to assad from the beginning

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://i.imgur.com/jSUEikT.jpg

caucasian privilege in the mujahideen

this hews pretty close to my opinion on syria http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/girl-you-wish-you-hadnt-started-a-conversation-with-at-a-partys-summer-plans/n36354/

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/08/26/article-2401925-1B75DFF5000005DC-134_636x410.jpg

Louis, I have made terrible sexing decisions in the past indeed. But I can make better decisions in the future - you will always be a terrible person who gives leftists a bad name.

― boots get knocked from here to czechoslovakier (milo z), Sunday, 20 March 2011 20:39 (2 years ago)

^^^wonder how this guy voted

"There are rules to international law" is always a pisser in any US president's act, but this one delivers it with extra balls.

Three people voted for intervention. I think it would be interesting to hear their perspective.

what do u think treesh?

It doesn't seem like any sort of intervention would be able to accomplish much, and might further inflame the conflict (though i'm not sure it can get much worse than it already is.) Also there is no clear line of "when to intervene", which makes every "intervention" on humanitarian grounds suspect and complicated. So I guess I am for non-intervention, but I think it sucks that International Law exists but it can't do anything to stop a dictator's mass slaughter of civilians.

Really, what 'needs' to be done is establishing a no-fly zone, nobody is talking about invervention as in putting troops on the ground to take down assad. It's the planes and helicopters that needs to be stopped. I think this would have happened a long time ago if russia wasn't involved.

btw i didn't vote. I don't know what to do, but i think you guys are way too pessimistic.

do you think there should be international investigating magistrates in the civil law fashion, who can determine if violations have occurred and then authorize force under the imprimatur of the UN, thereby bypassing the vagaries of the security council or the intervionist whims of individual nations? xp

Maybe, but that seems like it would be a very long process and might not make sense if your goal is to stop an ongoing crisis.

so, kerry declares war, pretty much

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/2013/08/26/kerry-make-statement-syria/Z7ND7UdEp1OQSs9ZQH2v9H/story.html

i'm in favor of non-intervention but for the wrong reasons

which are?

so, kerry declares war, pretty much

airstrikes/drone strikes I guess

state interest in forcing commitment of iranian resources, bleeding of al-q, hezbollah, good distraction to keep radical fundamentalist attention away from the west, etc.

a nice lil quagmire without us in it, for once!

fairly grotesque but i can't disagree

treesh to employ the inane binary of robert kagan u seem to be a hobbesian realist distrustful of the kantian idealism of the UN

mordy is correct though

the distraction hypothesis is probably a bit of a zero sum fallacy because there seems to be an enduring supply of jihad bros, if 10000 of them die in syria then they are probably the same 10000 who were 'radicalized' by syria in the first place

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2013/08/BSm0bOBCYAAAph6.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/26/the-middle-east-explained-in-one-sort-of-terrifying-chart/

this ought to be a splendid one.

state interest in forcing commitment of iranian resources, bleeding of al-q, hezbollah, good distraction to keep radical fundamentalist attention away from the west, etc.

― Mordy , Monday, August 26, 2013 4:35 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a nice lil quagmire without us in it, for once!

fairly grotesque but i can't disagree

― R'LIAH (goole), Monday, August 26, 2013 4:36 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol the "daniel pipes theory"

well you can subtract any glee at watching arabs gas and shell each other, for my part.

the point is, i think we have no hope of improving this situation at this point. the best thing about it at the moment, for syrians and americans, is that we aren't there doing anything.

i guess i'd be curious to hear what any intervention plan would be.

whatever the plan is, FSA just reported the russians are pulling out of the port in tartus

A few ideas of what it might be from Fred Kaplan.

FSA just reported the russians are pulling out of the port in tartus I thought they were mostly in Cyprus these days, anyway.

couldn't say, i frankly don't have the relevant context.

meeemories....of the wayyy we werrrrre

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BSnnm19CcAAYvCW.jpg

kaplan article fails to mention the air war in Kosovo was do-able because the russians and chinese weren't selling the bad guys sophisticated air defense tech like they have in syria.. this whole situation is bad news

Farm service agency?

"free syrian army"

"the world's most heinous weapons" ... an international poll of children finds they prefer to be blown apart with drones.

http://images.canberratimes.com.au/2012/03/19/3144987/asma-al-assad-729-2-420x0.jpg

feel like the odds of another unbelievably fucked up post-colonial exercise in making bad shit exponentially worse are shortening by the hour

Cameron's caught the Blair bug that's for sure

Simon Schama uncharacteristally hawkish on the radio just now

the list of names here more than anything else convinces me that not intervening is the right decision

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/experts-obama-here-what-do-syria_751267.html

ok "Dr. William Kristol" made me lol

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/in-syria-america-loses-if-either-side-wins.html

BHL signed!

Charles Pierce:

If Kerry is to be believed, the "situation on the ground" is that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its own people, a monstrous crime. If we aren't trying to "fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict on the ground," then why in the hell are we making war in in Syria in the first place? If we aren't trying to "topple" the Syrian president so he won't use chemical weapons on his own people again, why are we going to be firing high explosives into the country that are going to kill some of those people anyway? This is the difference between making war in a place and going to war in a place. If you're simply making war in a place, logic doesn't necessarily apply. Even a lot of the people proposing that we make war in Syria -- even a lot of the liberals proposing it -- admit freely that they don't know what will come next, or even on whose side we will be making war in Syria. This strikes me as an important thing to determine before you commit the nation to a course of action like the one proposed, but then, making war in a place enables you to do it from an antiseptic distance, to believe in the fairy-tale McNamara concept of "sending a message" by blowing stuff up, to believe that the most important thing for the World's Last Superpower to do is anything. The New York Times thinks making war in Syria will make the president a more believable president. And that, if the president decides to make war in Syria, the Iranians will wonder if they should still want a nuclear bomb.

I don't think we should intervene, but the international community can deter future use of chemical weapons from Assad without necessarily toppling him. He just needs to know that the cost for using them is higher than their value.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/the-debate-over-intervention-in-syria.html

He just needs to know that the cost for using them is higher than their value.

i don't think this is possible to demonstrate without intervention

Yes, I agree.

I have this suspicion that they'll target the 4th Armored Division's base near Al Horjelah.

Yup. "One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place." Uh..."Give me a cruise missile long enough and a pivot and I shall move the world." "The World and Life are one. ... Ethics and Aesthetics are one." There must be an answer somewhere...

But really, in this case, the thread of violence had some pretty good consequences, right?

Depends on whether we end up at the same point in five years, except with roughly half the number of people left alive to save.

xp: It wasn't an advanced rocket. Both government and rebels have tons of 132mm launchers and rockets, a technology dating back to 1942, and they work just fine for delivering chemical agents where accuracy isn't all that important.

They may even be superior to artillery shells, as the launcher and round can use cheaper, developing world materials, rather than high strength forgings, and still hold more explosive or chemical agent than a similarly sized shell.

I don't know how the Syrian military marked their chemical rounds, the U.S. Army used distinctive green bands around their shells. If chemical munitions were being distributed to lower level units, many manned by militias, it was probably only a matter of time before a few found their way into a launcher by command or accident.

Yeah, according to what I've read, it wasn't 'a few' and it's pretty unlikely that 'lower lever units' would be entrusted with chemical weapons to begin with, as the chance of the shell being handled wrongly, leaking and killing many of your own soldiers is too high.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/international/tunisia-to-fight-sex-jihad-trips-to-syria

Sy Hersh thinks Obama had some lies of omission about Syria non-shocker

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.

But in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence.

The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’

Related: Sy Hersh doesn't have a better outlet than the London Review of Books?

oh, well here's why:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/seymour-hersh-syria-report_n_4409674.html

hersh prob OTM as per usual.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/opinion/use-force-to-save-starving-syrians.html

There's never been a shortage of armchair pundits advocating killing to avert famine. For those with short memories.

good article https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/a-special-relationship/

A US air strike killed more than 85 civilians, including children, in Syria on Tuesday after the coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters.

Some eight families were hit as they tried to flee fighting in their area, in one of the single deadliest strikes on civilians by the alliance since the start of its operations in the war-torn country.

Pictures of the aftermath of the dawn strikes on the Isil-controlled village of Tokhar near Manbij in northern Syria showed the bodies of children as young as three under piles of rubble.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes appeared to have been carried out in error, with the civilians mistaken for Islamist militants.

It is thought Tuesday’s bombing was among the first by jets taking off from Incirlik air base in Turkey since it reopened after the failed coup.

The area has seen intense fighting between extremists and members of the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) that have been advancing towards the Isil stronghold of Manbij under the cover of intense airstrikes by the US-led coalition.

The coalition has carried out more than 450 air strikes around the city since the operation to take the town began in May.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/us-air-strike-in-syria-kills-up-to-85-civilians-mistaken-for-isi/

is there another thread where we all freak out at the assassination of the russian ambassador to turkey.

closest: Q: are we not MENA? A: we are the rolling middle east, north africa and other geopolitical hot spots thread 2016!

no shit. https://t.co/kyq7746lwK

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 17, 2017

"the West" still stands for blowing shit up......thank you pic.twitter.com/lAYXODksUP

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 15, 2018

This language is directly from the Dick Cheney & Karl Rove playbook and script when they would attack Democrats in the Bush years who wanted to "cut and run" and leave the various Middle East wars. There's zero difference in rhetoric or mentality: "our enemies will not fear us." https://t.co/HJ7Lr7WRsW

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 20, 2018

Assad is bad imo

Yeah, but Iraqi Shia and Afghan crime lords were despicable allies. The YPG are cool.

Assad purposely bombed clinics run by Doctors Without Borders because they treated anyone who came to them, some of whom may have been combatants. Of course, all of the medical staff and most of the patients were non-combatants. So, yes, he is bad.

he sure is, and doesn't appear to be going anywhere, as Nobel winner Obama himself said

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/03/world/us-raid-syria-isis

Syria? ISIS? What the fuck?