MENA, MENA, Tekel, Parsin (Middle East, North Africa & other Geopolitical Hotspots) 2018

Is Fred reliably right on and politically correct? Or does he just make more of a song and dance about it than pretty much anyone else in the world?

If that can help Mordy, my experience is that a good chunk of my french media really wanted an intervention when Obama declared his red line back in 2013 (or was it 2012? 2014? I don't remember), Hollande was ready to go. I felt there was a gap between countries that participated in the Irak fiasco and the rest (except for Canada).

Especially the UK.

I can't say why exactly, and to some extent people just disagree about stuff, but the Yugoslav civil war is a much more important influence in Continental Europe in general, and probably Denmark in particular. We did participate in Iraq, though. And everyone I know was on the street protesting.

Also you didn't have Tony Blair. Only we had Tony Blair.

(also, how am I reliably politically correct? I supported Hilary, and still really, really dislike Bernie. Not that it matters, but still)

Blair also helps explain Corbyn's insistence on some level of proof of culpability in the wake of the poisoning of the Skripals, which caused Fred to barge into the UK Politics thread shouting the odds. We're a bit hung up on following due process in the UK these days.

Genuine question for the people supporting an intervention: doesn't it change something that it is Donald Trump who's in charge of the american military?

not taking a hardline anti-interventionist approach tbh and i wonder what i should make of it.

I think that 75 years of the USA global military presence and dozens of wars, invasions and military interventions, plus creating a web of mutual defense treaties that obligate the USA to defend about half the nations of the world, and our spending more on our military than the next nine nations combined, has deeply affected global consciousness. We project ourselves as the first among equals, the undoubted political, economic and military leader, the final arbiter, and the country whose will drives the world.

Consequently, when we interfere we are responsible for the outcome, but when we don't interfere we are also responsible. Like it or not, the history of the world since WWII ended makes us responsible for Assad, and our plea of not knowing what to do to fix Syria rings hollow no matter how true it is. We are the ones who did this to ourselves.

But I still say Syria is no place to wade deeper into militarily. We haven't enough money, enough troops, enough will, or enough reason to treat this war as an all-in fight. If we did, the number of deaths we're seeing today would rapidly expand to levels none of the interventionists seem to grasp even slightly. Or even try to address.

I don't support this intervention that seems to be planned, and yeah, Trump being in charge is kinda the final dealbreaker even if I thought an intervention at this point would do any good. And I don't think anyone on here supports the intervention? But it's also partly the fact that an intervention will now happen lead by Trump that makes me say Obama should have been more assertive in trying to handle the crisis while he had the chance. Isolationism and passivism is morally bunk precisely because it just leads to worse actors taking over once power changes hands.

Genuine question for the people supporting an intervention: doesn't it change something that it is Donald Trump who's in charge of the american military?

100% i said as much above i no longer have any optimism about a positive US intervention in the region. i'm also influenced by the lessons of the iraq war but i'm probably a tad more reliably pro-intervention than most ilxors i'd think. in general atm i don't see any reliable route outside of assad uneasily maintaining rule for many years to come (tho we'll see maybe you can shock a population into submission by visiting enough horrors on them - i think prob chechnya is a test case for this sort of idea). it seems like in general saudi strategy has been really poor and if they wanted to challenge iran in syria they kinda half-assed it and yemen has been totally ill-advised. and the US is not going to intervene bc it's too soon after iraq. and no one else will bc no one else will challenge russia in the region (except like turkey and israel; these local regional actors who have been getting tacit latitude to operate in syria). israel's self-interest is probably in ongoing civil war or sunni rule to disrupt iranian supplies to hezbollah (which is why you see them treating soldiers), and keep iranians off their border, but they will not directly open up a hot front to sufficiently support the war effort (and arguably such a level of cooperation is literally impossible no matter how much self-interest in this area lines up). turkey mostly wants to keep the kurds from having their own country. meanwhile climate change suggests volatility in the region to increase. where is there room for optimism?

obama didn't intervene because he was trying to get a deal done w/ iran

jim's response to a humanitarian crisis (a humanitarian crisis with one overwhelming root cause which, surprise, isn't islamofascism) itt so far:

1 worry that terrorists would kill his family
2 suggest that the recent chemical weapons attack was possibly a false flag?
3 call the civil defense al nusra
4 conflate all opposition forces as islamofascists bc [copy-pasted shit]
5 invoke islamism a dozen times

what is the x factor here? why are y'all so squeamish about what I call him? what conclusions, jim, did you expect readers to draw from these statements, whatever equivocations you've made trying to dilute them?

this kind of rhetoric is not what I'd call solidarity and it's not even particularly factual in spite of the c+p spam that we're apparently taking for reasoned analysis or... some gesture of throwing your hands up because surely any and every option on the table would lead to an islamofascist takeover and even more civilian deaths and, of course, the decimation of jim's family in a terrorist attack.

less interventionist policies for the US or England or the UN or really anyone that would be better than slaughter:
1 diplomacy! with Russia! & Syria! & various opposition forces!
2 negotiating an honest to god cease fire or two or three
3 continuing to attempt to factually record war crimes on all sides of the conflict
4 support for refugees & displaced peoples
5 food & medical support for those still under siege
6 food & medical support for those not under siege
7 economic & financial pressure/sanctions
8 stop bombing syria alongside SADF & Russian forces
9 having clear objectives for what an end to the war would look like
10 listening to Syrians on all sides of the conflict
11 coordinating with as many nations & groups & international organizations as possible in the direction of an end to the war

more interventionist policies that would not necessarily be terrible (& would not have been terrible) considering we know who has been killing the lion's share of civilians and how:
1 no fly zones, esp if negotiated with Russia
2 striking specific SAA/SADF targets

things that probably don't work (u sac)
invoking conspiracy theories that you don't really believe but maybe kinda sorta do but, y'know, you're just asking questions, fatalism, realpolitik rationalism, wringing your hands over islamists when it's the SAA & SADF & Russia killing literally hundreds of thousands more people than anyone else

i'll reply to you sometime when you write anything substantive and not just a lot of wailing bullshit

one thing i would note: i do support western countries taking in an unlimited number of Syrian refugees, which basically none of the pro-intervention politicians in the US and UK are in favour, because they're mainly total arseholes

also you do realize that the uk and us governments both have sanctions against syria?

Jim, I can only applaud you for taking the time to reply to the, quite frankly, insane accusations hurled at you here. Bamcquern idgafa but Fred (I care about him a little, I suppose) incessant "islamophobe!" Nelson-finger-pointing is fucking nagl.

it's interesting to me that lbi + fred - two normally reliable right-on politically correct dudes - are not taking a hardline anti-interventionist approach tbh and i wonder what i should make of it. is it bc of different country context (anglo vs other maybe? US + UK most deeply implicated recently in Iraq) or just that the left is not as unison on fp as maybe it sometimes seems from range of left-wing opinion on fp which seems to me to be regularly reflexively anti-US intervention in anything anywhere?

― Mordy, Friday, April 13, 2018 12:36 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't know why you lumped me in with Fred while I had no part in the recent discussion, but to answer your question for me personally: of course it's because of a different context. I protested the west's intervention in Iraq in 2003 (for all the obvious reasons). And boy did the west mess up. Some years down the line I got a Kurdish gf. I knew *nothing* about the Kurds until that time. They celebrated the intervention, which lead to an autonomous region for them. It didn't make me turn around 180 degrees but context? Def.
I don't know why you'd pigeonhole me as "reliable right-on politically correct dude": it's different per situation. I think both the west *cannot* let Assad's crimes go unpunished *and* at the same time, it will only end in more misery. The ME more than ever - or rather, once again - is a battlefield the west and Russia are playing a chess game over.

I don't know which of the two wrongs to choose. Though I will say, Mordy, I haven't agreed with you as much as I have on this thread probably since I started posting here.

Meanwhile another depressing crisis with plenty of blame to go around continues nearby:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/1000s-of-palestinians-demonstrate-at-gaza-border-for-a-3rd-week-hundreds-injured/2018/04/13/04bfa6d8-3db3-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.7b900d9ef220

???
http://time.com/5237922/mike-pompeo-russia-confirmation/

The upper estimates at the time were around 200 iirc but it’s not clear. Most estimates were around 80-120.

They were working for Wagner, Russia’s answer to Blackwater.

Huge news in Libya. Haftar has apparently died. Significantly weakens Russia’s position there.

Though the Libyan National Army has denied it and says he’s fine.

Coalition striking Damascus, no statement from the U.S. gov yet but May says targeted strikes that won't escalate things.

Cruise missiles again, no doubt. When a president wants to make a demonstration of power that changes nothing of importance, they order up a few dozen cruise missiles and let fly, because they blow things up real good. It will be reported as an awesome piece of pinpoint accuracy and the mission as a complete success. But unless they blow up Assad, by next week it will be forgotten.

Yeah, what are they even aiming for?

Probably government buildings of some sort. I'd hate to be the janitor or security guard.

i don't know if our military or commander in chief are capable of using retaliatory strikes effectively but there are military targets that would be legit [but not existentially] painful for assad to bear. if you can change the calculus so that if he knows that if he uses chemical weapons he won't be able to escape some kind of targeted strike (like what you'd imagine if the israelis launched - actual weapon depots, factories, nuclear sites, compounds packed w/ iranian military advisors), and he knows that we'll basically tolerate anything else, it could get him to hold back on using chemical weapons or at least think twice.

Seems to just be chemical weapons facilities, a "one time shot" according to Mattis, strikes are over. Rumblings that Bolton was pushing for more but Mattis won the day. Only retaliation was some Syrian anti aircraft fire. Seems to have gone as well as it could've, not that I'd imagine it'll have much positive effect, but who knows?

Lebanese #Hezbollah HQ has been hit by several cruise missiles in the town of Qusayr in northern #Homs. -Local sources
ضرب مقر حزب الله اللبناني عدة صواريخ كروز في بلدة القصير في شمال #حمص. مصادر محلية #سورية

— Hadi Albahra (@hadialbahra) April 14, 2018

Sanpaku’s RT makes the point. Now we get to hear about all the collateral, intended or not, real or not, from “sources” - any action becomes another tool for info psyops grayspace bla bla current-term-of-art bullshit

Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford said the Syrian targets struck were selected, in part, to minimize risks that any Russians would be killed in the attacks. -NY Post

The French missile frigate Aquitaine was also believed to have fired cruise missiles at Syria from off the coast of Lebanon. -- tweet

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/13/politics/trump-us-syria/index.html

The targets included a scientific research center located in the greater Damascus area.
Mattis said, "This military facility was a Syrian center for the research, development, production, and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology."

The second target was a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs, which Mattis said "was the primary location of Syrian Sarin and precursor production equipment."
Mattis said the third target "was in the vicinity of the second target" and "contained both a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and an important command post."

US has admitted only 11 refugees this year. US spent approximately 225 million on the Tomahawk Cruise missles used in the attacks on chemical weapons related facilities in Syria last night

i've seen a lot of those kinds of comparisons and it's prob worth mentioning that the taboo against chemical weapons is unrelated to empathy for civilian victims

Is that because the taboo is there to protect each taboo-following country's military from chemical weapons in case of war against each other?

yes i think so

Based on the past few decades, using chemical weapons against your own citizens is the only relatively safe choice of opponent to use them against.

This was posted in the British politics thread, but belong here as well: https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-anti-imperialism-of-idiots/

Yet in opposing foreign intervention, one needs to come up with an alternative to protect Syrians from slaughter. It’s morally objectionable to say the least to expect Syrians to just shut up and die to protect the higher principle of ‘anti-imperialism’. Many alternatives to foreign military intervention have been proposed by Syrians time and again and have been ignored. And so the question remains, when diplomatic options have failed, when a genocidal regime is protected from censure by powerful international backers, when no progress is made in stopping daily bombing, ending starvation sieges or releasing prisoners who are being tortured on an industrial scale, what can be done.

I no longer have an answer.

So it continues..

There are reports from Douma of a number of doctors (ie fewer than 10) who are being held by Russian troops demanding they publically deny that the chemical attack took place.

i see this 400k deaths in syria number around a lot but without important context that the NYT devoted an article to this weekend:

Even the United Nations, which released regular reports on the death toll during the first years of the war, gave its last estimate in 2016 — when it relied on 2014 data, in part — and said that it was virtually impossible to verify how many had died.

At that time, a United Nations official said 400,000 people had been killed.

So it's probably a lot more?

i don't have any special insider information but the number has been the same for two years so unless you think no one has died over the last two years

Despite war losses and emigration, the already unsustainable Syrian population has increased since 2011.

Stalin was right about "tragedies" and "statistics". Only a few who aren't there particularly care about the statistics. Still unknown actors make chemical attacks, but the numbers of victims don't matter, only pictures of victims do.

The most recent cruise missile attack benefited all political parties. Trump can claim humanitarian and anti-Russian motives. Assad and Putin can claim victimhood. It accomplished nothing on the ground.

This calls attention to the weakness in U.S. approaches to the ex-Israel Mideast. The sacrifice of Americans to support an outsized military gives them the ability to destroy grid coordinates throughout the world, but no ability to change minds.

I think the proper approach post-2011 should have been a consistent Wilsonian one, towards self-determination of all peoples. Colonial Europe made huge mistakes in the early 20th century, in creating nations with no consideration of nationality. There's no reason why Euphrates valley Kurds should owe allegiance to Damascus. As Americans, we should advocate that the dominant nationalities of regions throughout the world have their own polities, whether they be Kurds or Tibetans. This argument hasn't been made, for the obvious reason that it offends nominal U.S. allies like Turkey. So long as Israel, and its associations with the Holocaust; and Turkey, with its role in NATO, dominate U.S. thinking on the Mideast, the U.S. will choose to perpetuate historical injustices.

Personally, I'd love to see a plebecite throughout the region as to what polity (either existing or proposed) the Levant and old "Fertile Crecent" wants for themselves. Some may be tiny, but given that there are 14 UN members with less than 30k, that's okay. Let the Alawites and their allies have a nation where they don't have existential fears. Let desert Sunnis have a nation where they can do whatever desert Sunnis do. So much blood could have been saved in Iraq had the occupying powers been willing to draw new borders.

So much blood could have been saved in Iraq had the occupying powers been willing to draw new borders.

Possibly. But post-Versailles-Treaty in 1919, international treaties tend to emphasize the inviolability of national borders. The occupying powers are signatories of these treaties. These treaties also form the basis for UN resolutions condemning Israel for de facto expanding its own territory after the 1967 War.

Aside from these legalistic reasons, there are several practical reasons not to endorse the ability of whoever has the largest military from redrawing borders to suit itself.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-official-confirms-attack-in-syria-first-strike-on-live-iranian-targets/

new (possible Israeli) missile strikes on Homs and Damascus

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/947044/Syria-airstrike-Damascus-Homs-attack-anti-aircraft-Israel-Assad-Putin-USA-UK-France

uh oh

ynetnews.com: Israeli intelligence: Objectives of Western strike in Syria not achieved

The fact there were no reports of chemicals leaking following the strikes only serves to bolster assessments that the major stockpiles haven't been hit.

Israeli officials believe the United States has been intentionally underplaying its ability to operate against Syria, so it doesn't have to do so. On several occasions, Israeli officials have pointed to their American counterparts that the United States has the ability to do more for the Syrian people and were met with shrugs and bizarre assertions that this was not possible operationally.

They blame operational deficiency because it is more diplomatic than blaming Trump and his political appointees.

Obama did the same, though. Right?