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Please guys, stay on topic. This thread is about the situation in Iraq and Syria. | ||
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Catch]22
Sweden2683 Posts
On May 06 2013 02:49 hzflank wrote: The definition of Islamist is: supporter or advocate of Islamic fundamentalism. According to Thesaurus, you are correct. Then which two concepts am I trying to differ between? The article did sway me that secularism isnt exactly what the rebels want, but to claim that they are all Al-Qaeda is a bit too much, isn't it? Might as well say that Egypt is now under Al-Qaeda rule. | ||
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Holo82
Austria107 Posts
On May 05 2013 21:31 Catch]22 wrote: If I was Israel, I would do whatever it takes to stop Hizbollah from getting chemical weapons. Whether it it "excused" or not matters a whole lot less. Anyway, accusations of ethnical cleansing has started popping up, but it confuses me a lot, I get that Sunnis and Shias and Alawites dislike eachother, but they are still the same ethnicity? Sunni and Alawite syrians still have way more in common with eachother than say... Sunni indonesians and Sunni syrians? The killing isnt excusable by any means, but to call it "ethnic" cleansing sounds strange to me, or are they actually considered different ethnicities? Anyone with more knowledge care to weigh in? If the sunni, who are the main force of rebellion in syria, and are about 60% of the population, the other 40 %, alawite, shias, jews, curds and christs, will be displaced, taken off their properties, houses, those who wont go on their own, will get made going , will loose their jobs, getting their houses burned, women beeing raped, man and boys getting killed. Thats what "ethnical cleansing" means. Its what the germans did in ww2 (well they systematically enslaved and killed them in an industrial organized process.. which goes further and is then called genocide, but the idea behind is basically the same.. to get room for the own people, in most cases led by the majority, which in this case in syria is the sunni arab. In Kosovo it was the same, the ethnic majority revoltet against central state, the central state took action, the Nato intervened, afterwards the Albans displaced / killed off the remaining serbs, like Albans /serbs 70 /30 before, no 95 /5, and the un mission is still there trying to protect the last remaining serbs and turk minoritys, and guarding the little christian churches that havent been burned. Its kind of the same situation like Irak was. Saddam fell after invasion, and sunni vs shia vs curds went on a brutal Civilwar. Its not only a war between ethnics, additional its a war between relegion confession, like protestant vs catholics in the 17th.century. The problem is the increase in religion. In the 70s and 80s nearly no syrian women wore the hajib. Since the late 90s, its pretty much every women. The religion is becoming more and more important, and this is the most true at sunni confession. The more or less secular military based governments /regimes / dictatorships what ever u call them / have all become systematically overthrown by the religous sunnits, this attempts go back to the 70s (murder of egypt president abdel nasser for exampel) Countries in which religious sunni took over power from secular regimes in the last decade are Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Marocco, Algeria, Iraq, yemen. We helped the people there to get rid of dictators, and helped the fundamentalists on the throne. I dont think the people who were protesting for civil rights had this result in their mind. Basically said: Syria and Jordania are the last few non fundamentalist governed arabic countries. Or: We are fucked. | ||
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hzflank
United Kingdom2991 Posts
If Assad is defeated we do not know for sure which of the rebel groups will form a government. I suppose it would be up to the votes of the Syrian people. Hopefully they will not vote as the Egyptians did. Also, the people who are currently fighting for the rebels in Syria are not the same people who initially started to revolt. The students etc who were rioting two years ago are now Assad supporters. They wanted democracy but they did not want an Islamist government. A lot of Syrian people want democracy, but they would prefer the Assad regime to the Islamists. | ||
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DeepElemBlues
United States5079 Posts
On May 06 2013 02:51 hzflank wrote: So then South Korea attacked Iraq? South Korea have a military alliance with the USA, do they not? The Taliban bore responsibility for not arresting the Al Qaeda terrorists and handing them over to American authorities. That does not constitute an attack on the USA. Edit to clarify: I do not think that the Taliban are good people by any stretch. I do not think that the Taliban having power is good for anyone. But to say that Afghanistan started the war is ridiculous. We invaded them. South Korea sent soldiers to Iraq. So yes South Korea attacked Iraq. It'd be nice if you actually knew what you were talking about. The Taliban were in a military alliance with al-Qaeda where both sides helped the other acquire weapons, train their soldiers, receive funds from Pakistan and Arab countries, etc. Afghanistan did not start the war, the illegitimate Taliban "government" and al-Qaeda started the war. By flying planes into our buildings. Taliban gave al-Qaeda safe haven. Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to do whatever it wanted in Afghanistan, training camps, chemical and biological weapons experiments, whatever. Taliban and al-Qaeda trained side by side in training camps. al-Qaeda helped Taliban fight the Northern Alliance. Taliban and al-Qaeda both helped each other get weapons and money. al-Qaeda assassinated one of the main Northern Alliance commanders the day before September 11th. US did not start the war in Afghanistan. There was already a war there. The Taliban were accessories before, during, and after the fact of the September 11th massacres in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Believing that the Taliban had no connection to 9/11 so it was us who started the fight in Afghanistan is ignorant to the point of being offensive. Now hopefully this stupid derail will end, and the ridiculous lie that the US started the war in Afghanistan will as well. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
Democracy is a progress, which in a country that has not experienced it before may take twenty or thirty years too work. Western policy basically consisted of freeing a country or at least supplying it with weapons, putting some ballot papers in their hands and saying "Good luck with your new democracy!" And in Egypt we see what happened. | ||
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Hitch-22
Canada753 Posts
On May 06 2013 02:48 DeepElemBlues wrote: 1998, 1999, 2001... or I guess you could make the dumb argument you're making, that a military alliance between the Taliban and al Qaeda that had been in effect for 6 years means the Taliban bore no responsibility for al Qaeda terrorist attacks. Or the just-as-bad argument that the Taliban had the right to refuse to hand over bin Laden to the US, it not even being a legitimate government and all. There is no argument against the justification for the US invading Afghanistan unless you think September 11th was an inside job. While I agree with the intervention of Afghanistan I do feel you are making a horrible argument... If a certain fundamentalist group (IE Tea Party) bombed a neighboring nation it's not the United States starting a war as to say it's not Afghan's thus it's not equatable to go to war with Afghanistan based off certain fundamentalist groups. NOW HOWEVER the ruling party was the Taliban which supported and harbored terrorists as such it does give coin to invasion in some regard. Luckily the US didn't really invade a nation as much as throw over the taliban government dictating there(yes it is technically invading Afghan but it's more or less a farce government when it's a dictatorship etc) and while we can all agree the Afghan government was planted much more assertively then one would hope for a 'democracy' there is no person, sane that is, who will ever say that Karzai is worse then the Taliban rulers nor the United States forces that have provided billions of dollars in funding roads/infastructure to the nation are worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan–United_States_relations On May 06 2013 03:55 Nyxisto wrote: Well as much as you may find Russian and Chinese domestic policies troublesome, on foreign policies regarding the middle-east they were probably right. As bad as Assad and other dictators may have been, at least some kind of order and control existed. Now one country is going down after another and we'll probably end up with governments who are run by religious fundamentalists, who sit on a ton of weapons. Democracy is a progress, which in a country that has not experienced it before may take twenty or thirty years too work. Western policy basically consisted of freeing a country or at least supplying it with weapons, putting some ballot papers in their hands and saying "Good luck with your new democracy!" And in Egypt we see what happened. do you believe Iraq is a worse place off then it was under Saddam? It now has free press elected government no longer has secret police abducting any dissent no longer forces families to watch public executions and clap no longer commits genocide on the Kurds has cleaner water then it has ever seen power now runs in most of their major cities where beforehand 3 hours a day was a luxury Do people die? Yes. Are civilians hurt and killed? Yes but I fail to see how any argument can be made that either Ghadafi/Saddam and now Assad's regimes are even remotely "bad", they're much worse then bad... I'd need some form of argument for you to make to say that Iraq is worse off now without Saddam as it was with... and by 'order' you mean a police state that had everyone under lock and key with house arrest, ability to kill anyone for even the slightest infraction without questions and the ability to starve the nation under UN sanctions while building what 12 royal palaces? It's an insult to Iraqi's or anyone under a dictatorship to call it 'order'... | ||
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BuddhaMonk
781 Posts
On May 06 2013 03:26 Catch]22 wrote: According to Thesaurus, you are correct. Then which two concepts am I trying to differ between? The article did sway me that secularism isnt exactly what the rebels want, but to claim that they are all Al-Qaeda is a bit too much, isn't it? Might as well say that Egypt is now under Al-Qaeda rule. The largest and most effective fighting force among the rebels is the Al-Nusra front. From the NYTimes article: "Of most concern to the United States is the Nusra Front, whose leader recently confirmed that the group cooperated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and pledged fealty to Al Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s longtime deputy." I'm not sure why you seem to think these guys are moderate muslims, when they're doing the exact same thing as the Taliban. Al-Nusra front is NOT the same thing as the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood. Why are you conflating the two? Why do you seem to think that just because there's one set of muslims in power in Egypt, that those fighting in Syria must be exactly the same? You don't need to look very long and hard to realize that those carrying out the bulk of the actual fighting in Syria right now are radical islamic fundamentalists aligned with al-Qaeda. | ||
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Hitch-22
Canada753 Posts
On May 06 2013 04:50 BuddhaMonk wrote: The largest and most effective fighting force among the rebels is the Al-Nusra front. From the NYTimes article: "Of most concern to the United States is the Nusra Front, whose leader recently confirmed that the group cooperated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and pledged fealty to Al Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s longtime deputy." I'm not sure why you seem to think these guys are moderate muslims, when they're doing the exact same thing as the Taliban. Al-Nusra front is NOT the same thing as the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood. Why are you conflating the two? Why do you seem to think that just because there's one set of muslims in power in Egypt, that those fighting in Syria must be exactly the same? You don't need to look very long and hard to realize that those carrying out the bulk of the actual fighting in Syria right now are radical islamic fundamentalists aligned with al-Qaeda. Haev to make a stance somewhere I suppose, the lesser of two evils? To be frank the US has supported rebel groups in a nation before (Osama) and it didn't work out to well but they're economically and politically fucked to help the people by going into another long term engagement to help the people because for some reason they're looked at as imperialistic. It's a rock in a hard place, let Assad slaughter his people and continue his dynasty or remove him and have the nice Islamic fundamentalists sitting to take over and continue horrendous human rights violations. The best alternative is that the NATO moves in an removes the government and intervenes long enough for the people to elect their own government while rebuilding the nation but it's unlikely to happen. It's a tough spot for sure. | ||
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DeepElemBlues
United States5079 Posts
While I agree with the intervention of Afghanistan I do feel you are making a horrible argument... If a certain fundamentalist group (IE Tea Party) bombed a neighboring nation it's not the United States starting a war as to say it's not Afghan's thus it's not equatable to go to war with Afghanistan based off certain fundamentalist groups. The Tea Party is not a fundamentalist group, religious or political. But let's say that the Tea Party bombed Ottawa and the US government refused to hand its leaders over to the Canadian government. And the US government had been allowing the Tea Party to stockpile weapons and explosives, and the US government and the Tea Party worked together to fund each other, and US soldiers and Tea Party terrorists trained together at the same time, and the Tea Party killed enemies of the US government, and the US government allowed Tea Partiers to enter and leave US territory at will so they could go carry out terrorist attacks against Canada. In that case, which is identical to the relationship of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, would it be fair to say that the US government had no involvement in attacking Canada? Bore no responsibility? Canada would be unjustified in declaring war on the US? I don't know where this ignorant idea came from that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were not military allies and did not cooperate militarily together and the Taliban did absolutely nothing to enable al-Qaeda to attack the US. The Taliban gave al-Qaeda a safe haven and both sides cooperated on training and logistics and al-Qaeda members fought in combat against the Northern Alliance to help the Taliban. On September 9, 2001, General Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance's top commander, was assassinated by al-Qaeda suicide bombers posing as journalists wanting to interview him. The Northern Alliance had been warning the CIA about a terrorist plot by al-Qaeda for months. It had been planned to assassinate Massoud 3 weeks earlier, but he made the "journalists" wait 22 days before he allowed them to see him. The plan was to kill him a month before September 11th so the Northern Alliance would collapse. If that had happened the US would have had no effective internal allies in Afghanistan, making any post-9/11 retaliation much much harder. September 11th, 2001, planes are flown into buildings in the US. This is all disconnected somehow? Please. Taliban started the war with us by allying with al-Qaeda and doing what allies do, help each other, and one of the results of their alliance was September 11th. To be frank the US has supported rebel groups in a nation before (Osama) There has never been one shred of non-hearsay evidence that the US supported Osama bin Laden, or even that the Pakistani ISI did, in the 1980s. | ||
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winadil
74 Posts
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ImperialFist
790 Posts
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Deleted User 183001
2939 Posts
On May 06 2013 04:34 Hitch-22 wrote: While I agree with the intervention of Afghanistan I do feel you are making a horrible argument... If a certain fundamentalist group (IE Tea Party) bombed a neighboring nation it's not the United States starting a war as to say it's not Afghan's thus it's not equatable to go to war with Afghanistan based off certain fundamentalist groups. NOW HOWEVER the ruling party was the Taliban which supported and harbored terrorists as such it does give coin to invasion in some regard. Luckily the US didn't really invade a nation as much as throw over the taliban government dictating there(yes it is technically invading Afghan but it's more or less a farce government when it's a dictatorship etc) and while we can all agree the Afghan government was planted much more assertively then one would hope for a 'democracy' there is no person, sane that is, who will ever say that Karzai is worse then the Taliban rulers nor the United States forces that have provided billions of dollars in funding roads/infastructure to the nation are worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan–United_States_relations do you believe Iraq is a worse place off then it was under Saddam? It now has free press elected government no longer has secret police abducting any dissent no longer forces families to watch public executions and clap no longer commits genocide on the Kurds has cleaner water then it has ever seen power now runs in most of their major cities where beforehand 3 hours a day was a luxury Do people die? Yes. Are civilians hurt and killed? Yes but I fail to see how any argument can be made that either Ghadafi/Saddam and now Assad's regimes are even remotely "bad", they're much worse then bad... I'd need some form of argument for you to make to say that Iraq is worse off now without Saddam as it was with... and by 'order' you mean a police state that had everyone under lock and key with house arrest, ability to kill anyone for even the slightest infraction without questions and the ability to starve the nation under UN sanctions while building what 12 royal palaces? It's an insult to Iraqi's or anyone under a dictatorship to call it 'order'... It's an insult how delusional this post is. Ironically, Iraq is chaotic even under an authoritarian semi-Islamist government, which is what it has. The government has been shutting down any press that says anything bad about the government. Hell, just last week they cut off foreign Mideastern news stations from Iraq, including Al Jazeera. Arrests are extremely common, and the government takes no restraint in arresting and suppressing anyone who dissents. During protests in recent days, they have no problem killing people. The current regime lost the 2010 election (funny considering they most likely rigged it badly as is common in Iraqi politics, with the incumbent claiming it was completely fair, just like pre-2003) and then basically just reasserted power. Oh yeah, during that same election, 500 candidates were banned. Very democratic. No, it's a despotic regime, and during peacetime at that. If your definition of genocide is fighting a war (Iran-Iraq War) against a country with 4x the population while fighting against Kurdish nationalists (eg. Peshmerga) who decided it was a good idea to take advantage of the situation to attack and kill Iraqi people, with 50,000 Kurds dying (most of which were most likely combatants), then you are out of touch with reality. I'm actually surprised the Iraqi government took such restraint against violent revolutionaries considering they were fighting an all-out war at the same time. Also, the Iranians were responsible for many deaths of Iraqi people as well, including in the country's north. To discuss a famous incident, Iranian soldiers were in Halabja with Kurdish insurgents, both using it as a base for attacks against Iraqis. That, combined with the fact that foreign enemies were in Iraq, made it the attack nothing more than Iraq defending itself against enemy foreign and domestic soldiers. Blame the stupid insurgents and the Iranians for using civilians as human shields. Oddly enough, though, before the Iraq War, the blame was generally put on the Iranians for the attack. Ironically, the suppression of Kurdish insurgency was only considered genocide when the US/etc. was beating the war drums against Iraq. If the Iraqis wanted to commit actual genocide, Iraq wouldn't have a Kurdish population. In reality, Christians, once a well-protected and respected religious minority in Iraq, are to this day being killed off like flies. 100,000s have also fled the country. Not as bad as maybe a few years ago and since 2003, but still really bad. There's your ethnic cleansing/genocide whatever you want to call it. And mind you, the Christian population has done nothing at all to provoke this, except for worshiping Jesus Christ instead of Allah. There's a lot less access to clean water than there was before. 3 hours of power a day was during 2000s during the war, not beforehand. This was including the fact that the 12 years of sanctions pretty much collapsed the country, and yet it was still a lot more functional in many regards than it is nowadays. That said, many people still have generators, because power is still really flaky and goes out for good amounts of time, even in Baghdad. | ||
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ImperialFist
790 Posts
On May 06 2013 07:42 JudicatorHammurabi wrote: It's an insult how delusional this post is. Ironically, Iraq is chaotic even under an authoritarian semi-Islamist government, which is what it has. The government has been shutting down any press that says anything bad about the government. Hell, just last week they cut off foreign Mideastern news stations from Iraq, including Al Jazeera. Arrests are extremely common, and the government takes no restraint in arresting and suppressing anyone who dissents. During protests in recent days, they have no problem killing people. The current regime lost the 2010 election (funny considering they most likely rigged it badly as is common in Iraqi politics, with the incumbent claiming it was completely fair, just like pre-2003) and then basically just reasserted power. Oh yeah, during that same election, 500 candidates were banned. Very democratic. No, it's a despotic regime, and during peacetime at that. If your definition of genocide is fighting a war (Iran-Iraq War) against a country with 4x the population while fighting against Kurdish nationalists (eg. Peshmerga) who decided it was a good idea to take advantage of the situation to attack and kill Iraqi people, with 50,000 Kurds dying (most of which were most likely combatants), then you are out of touch with reality. I'm actually surprised the Iraqi government took such restraint against violent revolutionaries considering they were fighting an all-out war at the same time. Also, the Iranians were responsible for many deaths of Iraqi people as well, including in the country's north. To discuss a famous incident, Iranian soldiers were in Halabja with Kurdish insurgents, both using it as a base for attacks against Iraqis. That, combined with the fact that foreign enemies were in Iraq, made it the attack nothing more than Iraq defending itself against enemy foreign and domestic soldiers. Blame the stupid insurgents and the Iranians for using civilians as human shields. Oddly enough, though, before the Iraq War, the blame was generally put on the Iranians for the attack. Ironically, the suppression of Kurdish insurgency was only considered genocide when the US/etc. was beating the war drums against Iraq. If the Iraqis wanted to commit actual genocide, Iraq wouldn't have a Kurdish population. In reality, Christians, once a well-protected and respected religious minority in Iraq, are to this day being killed off like flies. 100,000s have also fled the country. Not as bad as maybe a few years ago and since 2003, but still really bad. There's your ethnic cleansing/genocide whatever you want to call it. There's a lot less access to clean water than there was before. 3 hours of power a day was during 2000s during the war, not beforehand. This was including the fact that the 12 years of sanctions pretty much collapsed the country, and yet it was still a lot more functional in many regards than it is nowadays. That said, many people still have generators, because power is still really flaky and goes out for good amounts of time, even in Baghdad. Here we see someone who actually has a clue about what is going on in the middle-east. I get the feeling that you hail from Iraq, could you be a Catholic Chaldean even? In reality, Christians, once a well-protected and respected religious minority in Iraq, are to this day being killed off like flies. 100,000s have also fled the country. Not as bad as maybe a few years ago and since 2003, but still really bad. There's your ethnic cleansing/genocide whatever you want to call it. Very true, this is happening in Syria right now meanwhile western media takes a massive dump on ethics and morale and supports the terrorist Islamic radicals who wants to dethrone Assad. Don't get me wrong Saddam was a fucking idiot who deserved what happened to him and by no normal standard should Assad or any dictator lead a country but Arab countries are retarded and interventions need to be planned in another way, maybe have the UN gain control, Arab Countries should not have the right to Sovereignty. Give them over to the UN. And yes I am middle-eastern T_T. | ||
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DeepElemBlues
United States5079 Posts
On May 06 2013 08:38 ImperialFist wrote: Here we see someone who actually has a clue about what is going on in the middle-east. I get the feeling that you hail from Iraq, could you be a Catholic Chaldean even? Very true, this is happening in Syria right now meanwhile western media takes a massive dump on ethics and morale and supports the terrorist Islamic radicals who wants to dethrone Assad. Don't get me wrong Saddam was a fucking idiot who deserved what happened to him and by no normal standard should Assad or any dictator lead a country but Arab countries are retarded and interventions need to be planned in another way, maybe have the UN gain control, Arab Countries should not have the right to Sovereignty. Give them over to the UN. And yes I am middle-eastern T_T. Oh my that's a good one. Who's going to be providing soldiers to the UN so the UN can occupy these countries? You think China or Russia's going to do it? India? Europe? Hahaha. Ha. The only country that has the capability to do it is the United States. So what exactly would the difference be between a US occupation and a US occupation with a "United Nations" nametag? Do you really think that the "UN approves" would mean anything to terrorists? Would there have been less violence in Iraq if the UN had been "in charge"? That's a laugh. The UN and the world turned their backs on Iraq because they were angry at the US. They said since we started it we could deal with it ourselves (and Britain and the few other allies brave enough to send soldiers). So what makes you think that the UN or the rest of the world would accomplish anything? They acted like moral superiors while refusing do to a single damn thing to try to stop the violence in Iraq. Why would they be any better in Syria or Egypt or anywhere else, they don't have the morals or the balls. | ||
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ImperialFist
790 Posts
On May 06 2013 08:45 DeepElemBlues wrote: Oh my that's a good one. Who's going to be providing soldiers to the UN so the UN can occupy these countries? You think China or Russia's going to do it? India? Europe? Hahaha. Ha. The only country that has the capability to do it is the United States. So what exactly would the difference be between a US occupation and a US occupation with a "United Nations" nametag? Do you really think that the "UN approves" would mean anything to terrorists? Would there have been less violence in Iraq if the UN had been "in charge"? That's a laugh. The UN and the world turned their backs on Iraq because they were angry at the US. They said since we started it we could deal with it ourselves (and Britain and the few other allies brave enough to send soldiers). So what makes you think that the UN or the rest of the world would accomplish anything? They acted like moral superiors while refusing do to a single damn thing to try to stop the violence in Iraq. Why would they be any better in Syria or Egypt or anywhere else, they don't have the morals or the balls. Was just making a point about Arab states and how bad it is for them to rule themselves. They need help, obviously it wont happen. | ||
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FallDownMarigold
United States3710 Posts
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/contributors.shtml Also the answer to the "what's the difference between the US doing it and the UN doing it with US support". There's a clear difference. One way says "We're going to get it done how we want it done", the other says "This is an international effort". Ahmed Rashid writes about this in one of his books with regard to US and international intervention in Afghanistan: http://www.amazon.com/Descent-into-Chaos-Disaster-Afghanistan/dp/014311557X It being a UN effort vs. a US effort is not supposed to tell the 'terrorists' anything. It is supposed to tell the nation in question and the civilians involved who ultimately are the real victims that the effort is shared by the international community, and that no one country's interest is held above their own. | ||
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DeepElemBlues
United States5079 Posts
On May 06 2013 09:10 FallDownMarigold wrote: Minor thing but just for the record anyway, the US really does not supply any troops to the UN. The US provides its support to the UN in other ways. http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/contributors.shtml Also the answer to the "what's the difference between the US doing it and the UN doing it with US support". There's a clear difference. One way says "We're going to get it done how we want it done", the other says "This is an international effort". Ahmed Rashid writes about this in one of his books with regard to US and international intervention in Afghanistan: http://www.amazon.com/Descent-into-Chaos-Disaster-Afghanistan/dp/014311557X It being a UN effort vs. a US effort is not supposed to tell the 'terrorists' anything. It is supposed to tell the nation in question and the civilians involved who ultimately are the real victims that the effort is shared by the international community, and that no one country's interest is held above their own. Piddling little peacekeeper missions. Who provided the lions share and more of the soldiers for the Korean War. Who provided the lions share and more of the soldiers for the Persian Gulf War. Invading Syria or Jordan or God forbid Egypt is not the same thing as having 5,000 or even 10,000 soldiers in some backwater country. As for link two we're not exactly living in a world where Iraq wasn't invaded, are we  Or a world where the "Arab Spring" didn't happen. The boat has kind of sailed on Arabs not causing a ruckus whether we're there or not, but I don't think that adding 100,000 US soldiers (it would have to be so much more for Egypt) into an Arab country particularly Syria is going to be some quick bloodless mission accomplished dealio. And since we're in this crazy hypothetical world where the United Nations tried to take over and directly rule (somehow) Arab countries, let's just face it that Americans would be the ones doing 93% of the work. The last part is secular babble, you're not dealing with a secular nice little postmodern European society you're dealing with Arab Muslim society. Where nationalism and religion are both very strong and closely intertwined. Where the religion is the political is the personal. Now enough of that crazy derail. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/05/18043900-israel-strikes-syrian-military-research-center-us-official-says?lite Money quote: The White House said there would be no official comment on the latest attack, but diplomatic sources and U.S. officials told NBC News that the administration is fully supportive of the airstrikes. Intervention in Syria is a big deal right now of course. Washington alone probably knew beforehand, but no doubt the Arabs and some in Europe are happy that Israel is giving Syria a taste of intervention. If you watched the video, those were absolutely huge secondary explosions. Mossad and Aman agents are all over Syria with guidance packages for aiming missile strikes. Syria knows that if NATO starts bombing, some of those agents will turn into NATO field spotters and the Assad forces will be decapitated, their best units and positions decimated, their biggest depots splattered all over the map. There's no need for NATO to come in. Syrian rebels will love us until approximately ten minutes after Assad falls when they stop screaming Allahu Akbar and start splintering into factions and the Islamists try to take over the country. Then they'll still want our money and guns but if we could go away now otherwise that'd be great. Open warfare post-civil war whenever it comes will largely end but post-Assad Syria will be much worse than post-Mubarak Egypt for instability and violence. That's inevitable. Why should we get involved in that and spend money and give everybody and his uncle Muhammad guns and probably end up doing about zero good. The only reason to intervene in Syria is to take control of chemical weapons stockpiles - if that is even feasible, and it probably isn't, so that kind of intervention doesn't have a really good reason except, well, chemical weapons - and to prevent Hezbollah from getting shipments of weapons of any kind. Lebanon is next and it isn't part some conspiracy. There's gonna be a whole lot of Sunni terrorists who will want to pay Hezbollah back once Assad is gone. Or Hezbollah could get even more involved in the civil war than it has up to this point. Or Hezbollah could get stupid like they did in 2006 and start another war with Israel. No matter what it's a good idea to not allow Syria to send more dangerous weapons to Hezbollah than Hezbollah already has. | ||
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Deleted User 183001
2939 Posts
On May 06 2013 08:38 ImperialFist wrote: Here we see someone who actually has a clue about what is going on in the middle-east. I get the feeling that you hail from Iraq, could you be a Catholic Chaldean even? Very true, this is happening in Syria right now meanwhile western media takes a massive dump on ethics and morale and supports the terrorist Islamic radicals who wants to dethrone Assad. Don't get me wrong Saddam was a fucking idiot who deserved what happened to him and by no normal standard should Assad or any dictator lead a country but Arab countries are retarded and interventions need to be planned in another way, maybe have the UN gain control, Arab Countries should not have the right to Sovereignty. Give them over to the UN. And yes I am middle-eastern T_T. Chaldeans are another name for the neo-Babylonian Empire. Odd that a Catholic group has the same name as ancient pagans. Funny enough, ancient Chaldea was in south-eastern Iraq. Modern Chaldean Catholics are from northern Iraq. Assad is a lesser of two evils, as sad as it is that it has to come to that. The US is supporting these Islamic radicals in the "Arab spring" in the hopes of getting submissive governments out of these revolts. We've been doing that since Afghanistan in the 1980s. We've also supported coups in general since the 1950s. Probably the most extreme case was overthrowing a democratic republic in Iran to reinstate the Shah, and he was so bad, that the Mideast's most westernized/secular society at the time gladly accepted modern history's greatest Islamic fanatic. The US didn't learn its lesson. Just in Iraq alone, we overthrew a very stable and generous founding republican government in Iraq back in '63, led by politicians that could count as at least half-decent humans (which are rare in the world) to fail for 5 years to put the Baath in power. The intermediary party (Arab socialist union) was independent-minded, which we didn't like. Then finally we got the Baath in power in 68, and they proved to be independent-minded as well. Then we fucked Iraq for 2 decades and put a (former?) Islamic terrorist group in power (Islamic Dawa), and even that group is a lot closer to Iran than they are to the US, which is the opposite of what we want. The fail just in regards to US actions in Iraq is on a scale rarely seen by imperial powers in history. Meanwhile, we support Islamic extremists, as contradictory as it is to our "war on terror", in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, etc. in the hopes that if we put such a regime in power, they will be our bitch. I am sorry, but if past experiences say anything, that's NOT how it works. As we're seeing, the new Libyan government is not our bitch, the new Tunisian government isn't, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is certainly not either. In fact, the Israelis have never been this much on edge since before the Camp David Accords. At least in the past, disagreements between Israel and Egypt were strictly political, with batshit insane people on both sides to be quite frank. Well, Israel is becoming more religiously political and is ruled by a right-wing party, and Egypt is now ruled by a group that straight-up hates non-Muslims. Politics aside, they hate Israel because 75% of them are Jews. This isn't going to end well. Good job Uncle Sam, you just fucked over Israel. I know Obama said he's tired of Netanyahu's bitching, but if my only friend was unknowingly fucking me over, I'd be pretty worried myself. Things are just one big clusterfuck. Sometimes I just wish originally, like back in the 50s-70s, that it was the secular regimes in the Mideast that were Uncle Sam's cocksuckers (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc.), and the Islamist regimes (Saudi Arabia, etc.) were the independent-minded states that Uncle Sam puts back in the Stone Age. That way, we would be supporting secularism in the Mideast instead of fucking it over. | ||
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DeepElemBlues
United States5079 Posts
There's a naive hope that they'll magically turn out alright some way and will turn into some pale imitiation of Europe geopolitically so we won't have to deal with them much anymore. The fail just in regards to US actions in Iraq is on a scale rarely seen by imperial powers in history. What are you talking about, we broke the back of the Arabs in Iraq and drew the Iranians in too. Look at how the Arabs tear themselves apart now, how Iran is pouring money and operatives into a quagmire in Syria just like they did into a quagmire in Iraq. What has the alleged Iranian influence over Iraq gotten them, not much. Now they have their influence with an Iraqi government that cannot keep the peace or be of any real use to them because the Americans left. Irony is awesome. If Syria falls Iran's ability to influence the Middle East will be even more crippled. Take the long view brother it's pretty good. The best solution would have been for us to never invade Iraq but bumbling old George W. Bush set off an explosion of crazy that is now consuming our enemies. It's like the Iran-Iraq War all over again, shame both sides can't lose. Just stay out of it and let them weaken each other to the point of irrelevance. I doubt Israel has much to worry about especially with the devastation of Syria. They possess clear military superiority over the rest of the Middle East even if all the countries there combined against them. The only military that can threaten Israel's is Turkey's and Turkey isn't going to join some jihad against Israel, that'd mean a war with the US Turkey would get whipped in. Everyone knows Israel has the ability to whip the Arabs in a serious war. Even Egypt, they have a hard shell of American weapons but it isn't too thick of a shell and underneath that shell they have nothing. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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