What’s going on? ‘Syriasly.’ I understand where Iran and Hezbollah are in this: they’re Assad allies and want their interests preserved. But:
- Do Assad’s troops really use chemical weapons?
- Are the rebels worth supporting? Aren’t they basically al Qaeda?
- Is this Obama’s Iraq War: where he must build a coalition (both domestic and international) in favor of a “regime change” on the word of intelligence agencies, thus becoming Bush?
- Is this a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia/Iran? Does it lead to a serious confrontation?
- What is the U.S. security interest in this, really? Has Assad become a worse international citizen than he was five years ago – say, a greater threat to Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq?
- Or is this Obama’s Wag the Dog moment, where he tries to distract from his many scandals? Should I trust a war that Lindsey Graham believes in?
The Left seems to be all over the map on this.
If you read Dinesh deSusa’s book or saw his movie about Obama he makes clear what is going on.
Obama hated the white ”colonialists.”
He wishes to erase all those drawn-on lines in the Middle East and Africa that were put there by white colonialists.
The fact that his actions are often ”too much, too late,” and lead to the Islamification of these places is just another point in favor of doing it.
Obama got his ideas about Islam from pre-9-11-01 moderate, fairly secular Indonesia.
He doesn’t seem very interested in the nuanced distinctions between the various factions in Islam, or that some of them are waging quite a war on women.
Or maybe Obama iust hates Israel and w ants to see them pincered in between Islamist regimes in Syria and Egypt.
Don’t you get it. It is all the fault of the European powers who broke up the Ottoman Empire after WWI and drew the lines in the wrong places. It is not like these people hate each other now and have hated each other since time began. I vote we stay the hell out. Except recognize that any group that aligns itself with Al Qaeda is our enemy. If I were God, which I am glad that I am not, I would send fire and brimstone down on the entire country.
Iran backs Assad. Russia backs Assad. McCain and his clone Grahamnesty are looking for opposition rebels to arm out of reactionary impulse. Obama is happy to take their lead just to be able to shift the blame. It is Libya all over again
Syria has no oil and is a backward economy that is overwhelmed with rural poverty, illiteracy and discontent. The Assad family has run the place and kept the “peace” while draining it of its ability to rise financially. Like all dictators, the Assad class of enforcers and toadies has prospered with the Assad family.
Under the Assad family, Syria was a sinking economic basket case. The Assad family had no reason to raise Syria up. They were doing just fine without the stress and pressure of opposition.
Iran is in the game for Sunni vs. Shiite reasons. Russia has its cold war reasons for favoring instability as the open door for the expansion of their self interest. Russia would be quite happy with a Mediterranean sea port and control of the Suez Canal. Shaking off the Bosphorus “choke point” to the Black Sea would be icing on the cake.
We have no business getting involved in Syria. The geopolitics have changed. We can be free of our oil dependence on the Middle East. We have already ceded our naval superiority in the Mediterranean and are turning the Pacific over to the Chinese. We have switched to cyber spying and droning the bad guys. If we wanted Assad gone, we could drone him into a spider hole.
Obama is not doing “Wag the Dog.” He has no plan. He has John F’n Kerry and Chuck Hagel to count on for screwing things up and he has yet to release Joe Biden on the problem. Mainly, he is dedicated to talking big and being inconsequential. All hat and no horse.
There is no clear reason why Obama knocked Libya over. But, possibly, he has learned something in hindsight and he is not so hot to go after Syria as a result.
The Mid-East is a basket case of nations. Lebanon is lost. Yemen was never stable. Syria is a middle ages fiefdom. Turkey is dismantling Ataturk’s legacy and heading Islamic, Jordon is hanging on. Iraq is doing remarkably better than one could have hoped. Egypt can not feed itself and it is destroying itself from within. Other countries are held together by strong dictatorships.
This whole Syria mess is truly not our concern. It is like Bosnia where ancient animosities have been held down by an iron fist. Lift that iron fist and all manner of chaos and retribution and primitive hatreds will fly.
Here is Iowahawk: “Bathists, Hezbollah, Assad loyalists & Al Qaeda killing each other in Syria; how exactly is this a problem?”
Here is Palin: “Let Allah sort it out.”
Here is Reuters: “Syria’s Islamists seize control as moderates dither.”
Really? Moderates dither? I always thought the moderates were the go-to people when it was time for a revolution!!!
Have you noticed a peculiar silence from the United Nations?
The Obama administration has chosen the worst possible course of action: do nothing until you absolutely cannot justify doing nothing any longer, then get involved when interested parties (none of whom can be trusted) are firmly in their trenches, make misleading, contradictory statements that send the wrong messages to those who are more than willing to seize whatever control of the area they can (diplomatic, ethnic/racial, religious/nationalist, oil, attempts at international relevance, etc.), draw some phony line in the sand (WMD) and insist it hasn’t been crossed as a justification for dithering, then when it appears it has been crossed, read in the morning paper that a pro-war senator from the opposing party is meeting with radical rebel forces with promises of support, commit to arming rebel forces but only after the crucial town of Qusayr was lost to Assad — essentially, that so much territory is now in control of the Assad regime that the task of supporting, let alone re-taking, let alone negotiating has been made exponentially more difficult, and now Russia is threatening to send more arms to Assad in response to the recent US commitment.
In other words, if we do get involved, we’ve waited until it’s almost impossible to achieve any objective that might be (mis)construed as beneficial to US interests. Nice work, Barry; being a dove is tough.
I don’t see much that’s to America’s advantage here…just a much larger and murderous Lebanon, and we know how much of a success THAT turned out to be.
No major oil. No major threat to other’s oil. An ineffectual-threat to Israel and Jordan.
Let the Arab fight Alawite, Sunni fight Shi’ite, Al’Qaeda fight Hezbullah until they achieve an epiphany—then partition or a weak Federal State.
(Iraq should have been partitioned into Federal States with a weak central government, too.)
‘Syriasly.’
Jeff… Nice one.
Though I’ve been a critic of her on more than a few occasions (also defended her on some too) Palin is spot on here. The others in this region are simply going to have to deal with this. it’s their fight, not ours.
The region is finally casting off some of the shackles placed on it when the western powers divided it into nation after WW1. This is the centuries long tribal conflict and strife coming to the fore. It will become a blood mess for 5, 10, maybe even 15 years. Then, after they’ve killed enough of their own, enough will realize, hey, this is our own fault, not that of the west or America.
Off Topic……..yesterday Alan Chambers announced the closing of Exodus International. He said/admitted that 99% plus of those who went through their program of conversion therapy had no change in their sexual orientation.
Folks this not only about Syria, it is about the entire Middle East. It is a power keg ready to explode. Egypt’s tourism industry is about to collapse under Morsi. How are they going to feed themselves if it does? Libya is in disarray, and the arms that the Russians sold them are pouring out all over the Middle East and even the world. Iran is probably going to have a civil war. Afghanistan is an utter failure. The government in Afghanistan is utterly corrupt and has been since day one. Then of course we have the problem of Iran and their building of an atomic device. When I went to school I was taught that the middle east was the cradle of civilization. You’d think that after 5,000 years people living there would have figured out how to live in peace. But they haven’t. Not with themselves nor with the outside world.
Edit #9 – Iraq not Iran is probably going to have a civil war. I need a proof reader.
Time again for Barry McQuire’s 1965 song “Eve of Destruction”. Some things just don’t change. The song did go to number one on the charts, way back when I was 14 year old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo
I first heard the cover of that on Greatest American Hero, Swampfox.
Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia are pre-modern countries. Check their literary rates, their unemployment rate, their bazaar economies and how big the peasant class is and how it feeds itself. Don’t let Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Algiers, Oran, Tunis, Sfax, Allepo, Damascus, Homs, Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon fool you. They are “modern” cities where the poor are separated and warehoused as the small “modern” class lives in various levels of luxury.
The rural poor are kept illiterate and dependent on handouts. That is how pre-modern dictators always work. They rule and rape the economy and hold the serfs in poverty.
When the upper-level peasants grab power, they operate by mob rule. Until another dictator arises, various gangs roam about exerting rising and falling power while destroying any semblance of the rule of law.
Frankly, the whole idea that the Middle East is under some sort of handicap because of the Western division of the region after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is a bit naive. The Middle East was colonized at the close of WWI. Naturally, the colonial powers made their impact. The history of the Middle East changed dramatically as local, indigenous powers arose to be the local powers cooperating with the colonial system. It is an ancient process used by the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and especially the English.
What will happen in Syria is that another modern power will take over or it will revert to the level of Algeria or even Central Africa.
Most Americans do not understand that Mexico has survived by “shipping” 1/5th of its population to the US and in doing so, has both rid itself of having to feed and maintain its poor, but actually enriched itself by the money that population sends back to Mexico to help sustain the families of those who have come to the US.
Where will Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Lebanon ship its poor?
If you have that answer, then you also know how to “solve” the Palestinian “problem.” What, pray tell, would happen to the Palestinians if they set out en masse for Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc?
That’s the $60,000 question. As to the curent mess in the Middle East has to do with European’s drawing the lines after WWI, that is a bunch of hooey. The Turks who aren’t Arab but are Muslim ruled much of the area for a long time. Or, should I say misruled it.
SC.Swampfox and heliotrope, you are right. The problem with the argument about the colonial powers drawing the boundary lines is that at some point the people in the countries themselves need to take initiative to solve their own problems. Blaming the former colonial powers for something that happened nearly a century ago fails to recognize that the people within the former colonized areas can breathe and think.
I think the best thing the US can do is keep ’em fighting amongst themselves.
I have no problem if Obama arms the rebels because right now Assad is being armed by Russia and Iran. Keep the fighting and jihad going inside their own borders. Furthermore, a weakened Syria keeps Israel’s North clear. The worst thing that could happen is Assad wins this thing and then uses all of his new military toys to go after Israel in order to legitimize himself.
But I don’t want US troops involved in a meaningful way. – This includes our Air Force. So arm the rebels, maybe even train a bit butt that’s it.
Pat Buchanan on the Palin Doctrine quoted above by hello:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/the-palin-doctrine/
We have no dog in this fight. Arming the “rebels” is dangerous as we (should have) learned – those weapons can be used on anyone.
Could it be that maintaining order in a county comprised of religious factions with a murderous hatred of each other (Sunni v Shia in Iraq, for example) takes a monster like Assad or Saddam Hussein? If this is the case, it’s a no-win situation.
The “Ottoman Empire” was just a caliphate, sultanate, dictatorship over a bunch of repressed people who were taxed and treated like trash. When it “fell” intelligent, cultured people tried to organize the pieces into productive states and kick start them into moving out of the dark ages.
If you travel Eastern Europe and look closely, you will discover that no art, no literature, no architecture, no universities, no nothing came out of the people from under the Ottoman rule. The Renaissance passed them by. The Reformation passed them by. The Industrial Revolution passed them by. The Age of Reason passed them by. They composted. They had their Roman and Greek glories, but the Ottoman Empire left nothing by smog, dust and defeat. The same is true in the Near East. The Levant that was so vibrant in Roman history was reduced to peddlers and mendicants.
The Ottomans were Turks. Big deal. The Iranians are Persians. Whether the Arabs would have been any better at civilization is a moot point. The fact is that that they are all feudal war lords and they see things in terms of conquerer and the conquered. Think Assad, Hussein, Qaddafi, the Shah, the House of Saud, the “Kings” of Tunisia, Algeria, etc.
Egypt was the only pre-modern society moving into the 20th century besides Turkey. Turkey would have been nothing burger had it not been for Constantinople/Istanbul and the vastly forward vision of Ataturk.
Syria has Damascus. Beyond that it is tribal Afghanistan without the tall mountains. Libya without oil is Algeria. Morocco would be nowhere without the French rule, training and enforced civilization. Lebanon is a good example of “the’ vacation place in the Levant gone to seed.
We Americans do not quite grasp the concept of “failed states.” Here are some “failed states” to help clarify the concept: Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Angola, North Korea. Failing states: Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Burma, Lebanon, and many more.
Failed states have rampant poverty, miserable systems of rights and justice, dead economies, and all the ghetto problems we abhor. Yet, there is always a group of Mercedes driving manipulators who can squeeze a palace or two out of the misery of the people.
Syria is just waiting at the doorstep of the Mullahs in Iran who will come in and theocratically whip the people into submission. They can not think beyond the feudal level.
Tell me one Islamic radical who does not dream of forcing civilization back to the dark ages. The Bothers Tsnaraev were perfect examples of how the Ottoman Empire thought and worked. You have the free wheeling petty satraps who drink and whore and beat the snot out of the rest who sin by drinking and whoring.
The post Ottoman Empire western powers tried to raise the Levant out of its misery. You want an example of of how the native powers of the Levant work? Think Arafat and the PLO. Would you rather be a Palestinian in Israel or in Gaza? In Gaza, you have the Ottoman philosophy to keep you cozy.