What To Do About Syria

[Dino Velvet]

Ron Paul on Obama's Syria WMD Claim - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CgAP_gBEPQ)

[Ben]

Ron Paul on Obama's Syria WMD Claim - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CgAP_gBEPQ)

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul's 9/11 Theories: "What He Said Is Completely Uncontroversial"

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul's 9/11 Theories: "What He Said Is Completely Uncontroversial" - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01e8-zSLkg0&feature=player_embedded)

[Stavros]

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul's 9/11 Theories: "What He Said Is Completely Uncontroversial"


Ben, this is a thread on the crisis in Syria today, not Noam Chomsky's reactions to the televised debate of Republican candidates that is a few years old.

[Prospero]

Ben, this is a thread on the crisis in Syria today, not Noam Chomsky's reactions to the televised debate of Republican candidates that is a few years old.

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

Ben contain your passion for Ron Paul's philosophy to the right part of the forum old buddy

[Dino Velvet]

http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-putin-basks-isolation-over-syria-obamas-charm-151615653.html


Analysis: Putin basks in isolation over Syria as Obama's charm falls flat

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/FZN6924R0WZ__x92.x6.GA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/logo/reuters/d0c3eb8ca18907492a4b337b5cec5193.jpeg (http://www.reuters.com/)By Guy Faulconbridge and Timothy Heritage | Reuters – 1 hr 35 mins ago


By Guy Faulconbridge and Timothy Heritage
ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland/MOSCOW (Reuters) - At the end of a tense two-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama - slumped over and serious - tried to lighten the mood with a joke about their favorite sports.
"And finally, we compared notes on President Putin's expertise in judo and my declining skills in basketball," the U.S. president told reporters at the G8 summit, after the two men gave formal statements emphasizing their common ground rather than their sharp differences on how to end the Syrian crisis.
"And we both agreed that as you get older it takes more time to recover," Obama said.
Putin - who folded his hands and glowered through most of the exchange - was having none of it. He waited for the audience to finish laughing, smiled icily and stuck in his spear.
"The president wants to relax me with his statement of age," retorted Putin.
Few expected any diplomatic breakthroughs from the meeting in Northern Ireland, less than a week after Obama's administration announced it would provide military support to rebels fighting Moscow's ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But Putin - who scowled, lectured and fidgeted while resisting the forced bonhomie of the two-day summit with the leaders of world's richest nations - seemed positively to relish his isolation.
It was a vintage display of Putin's world view forged since the Soviet Union's fall in 1991: the United States will inevitably overreach, and Moscow must always step forward to demonstrate the limits of U.S. power.
His position won the former KGB spy plaudits at home, where he is trying to reassert his authority after protests and in the face of a stuttering economy.
"I think he got all the bonuses domestically. He held his head high, stood tall and did what he pledged to do - to be very firm but not confrontational," said Dmitry Trenin, a political analysts at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.
Putin clearly calculated that he had nothing to gain by making concessions over Syria, and little to lose if Russia was further alienated in a rich nations' club where it has looked the odd-one out since it became a fully fledged member 15 years ago.
"RESET"
U.S. officials played down the rebuff, describing the Putin-Obama meeting as "businesslike" and emphasizing the common ground over a sectarian civil war in which the two presidents are now both committed to arming the opposing sides.
"We both want to see an end to the conflict. We both want to see stability. We don't want to see extremists gain a foothold," said Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser.
"I think both leaders went out of their way to underscore that they can work together on this issue," Rhodes said. "If they can project a message that they have a convergence of views as it relates to a political negotiation, that keeps the possibility, the prospect of that political track alive."
But even their one joint initiative faced a setback. One source at the summit confirmed that Syrian peace talks called last month by Moscow and Washington, initially meant to be held in June, then July - were now postponed until August at least.
The tense exchange between Putin and Obama marks full circle since the administration of the newly-elected Obama called for a "reset" in ties with Russia in 2009 after a row between the Cold War foes over Russia's 2008 war against U.S.-ally Georgia.
Obama has touted the Russia reset - in which his then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart with a big red "reset" button - as one of his signature foreign achievements. (Clinton's aides notoriously mistranslated the button and labeled it "overload" in Russian.)
WE ARE GOING TO DELIVER
Putin arrived the night before the summit and made his unrelenting position clear at a press conference with his host, Britain's David Cameron.
Putin hammered home his point that arming Syrian rebels was reckless by zeroing in on an incident from last month in which a rebel fighter was filmed biting on the entrails of an enemy.
"One does not really need to support people who not only kill their enemies but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the camera," he said as Cameron stood by.
From the outset, Putin was isolated at the summit.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper accused Putin of supporting "thugs" and said Syria would be discussed by the other seven powers, with Russia as a "plus one". Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov fired back, saying the Canadian's remarks came "from the position of an outside observer".
After the bilateral meeting with Obama, Putin went to a dinner in a lodge on the shore of Lough Erne where the leaders discussed Syria over a dinner of crab, fillet of beef, and whisky-laced custard.
Putin refused to accept any public declaration that could imply Assad would go. He won: the final communique on Syria did not even mention Assad's name.
He also defended Russia's arms shipments to Syria and suggested that more might be coming: "We are supplying weapons under legal contracts to the legal government. That is the government of President Assad. And if we are going to sign such contracts, we are going to deliver," he said.
Western officials still suggest that Moscow's alliance with Assad is not as strong as Putin's remarks imply. "Clearly Putin doesn't hold back with his views," said one Western official who tried to play down the disagreements.
"Don't expect Vladimir Putin to pick up the phone to Damascus and say 'the game's over'," he said. "The Russians have deliberately and utterly not tied themselves to him (Assad) as an individual and have always given themselves some wriggle room."
Western officials have suggested for months that Moscow might soon drop Assad, only to find Putin as staunch as ever, even when the war was going the rebels' way. Now, with Assad's forces having seized battlefield momentum in recent months, there seems less reason than ever for Moscow to ditch him.
Putin has another reason to want to look tough abroad, to consolidate support at home at a time when the faltering economy is hurting his standing.
"Despite the emotions, the summit was in many respects a success for Russian diplomacy," the business daily Vedomosti wrote, suggesting Russia had made no concessions and the West had shown it was not ready to act if Moscow was not on board.
Moskovsky Komsomolets, a popular daily with a reputation for catching the public mood, was more uneasy: "Putin is alone again," it wrote. "But do we need to be sorry about it?"
(Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn, Jeff Mason, Roberta Rampton and Alexei Anishchuk in Enniskillen; Editing by Peter Graff)
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/MQjYfZSOhHIh0m88wmz5gA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0yNTI7cT03OTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2013-06-19T151615Z_1_CBRE95I16FZ00_RTROPTP_2_G8.JPG
Russia's President Vladimir Putin gestures during a media conference
after a G8 summit at the Lough Erne golf resort in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland June 18, 2013.
REUTERS/Matt Dunham/Pool

[Dino Velvet]

And we try to involve ourselves in this? How do you manage this chaos? What does Syria have to do with our national security in America?

http://news.yahoo.com/iraqi-shiites-flock-assads-side-sectarian-split-widens-160318017.html


Iraqi Shi'ites flock to Assad's side as sectarian split widens

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/FZN6924R0WZ__x92.x6.GA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/logo/reuters/d0c3eb8ca18907492a4b337b5cec5193.jpeg (http://www.reuters.com/)By Suadad al-Salhy | Reuters – 58 mins ago

By Suadad al-Salhy
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Among the Iranian pilgrims, foreign executives and tourists in the departure lounge at Baghdad airport, a group of young Iraqis prepare to wage religious war in Syria - not for the rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad but against them.
Dressed in jeans, their hair cropped short, the 12 men awaiting their flight are Iraqi Shi'ites, among hundreds heading for what they see as a struggle to defend fellow Syrian Shi'ites and their holy sites from the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels.
Syria is splintering the Middle East along a divide between the two main denominations of Islam, becoming a battlefield in a proxy war between Assad's main regional ally, Shi'ite Iran, and his Sunni enemies in Turkey and the Gulf Arab states.
The conflict has already drawn in streams of Sunni Islamist fighters on the rebel side, while Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah is openly fighting for Assad.
Now the flow of Iraqi militiamen across the border is also casting doubt on the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government's official position of neutrality in the Syrian civil war that has killed 90,000 people in more than two years.
For Ali, 20, fighting for the Abu al-Fadhl al-Abbas militia brigade meant joining his father in Syria to protect a Shi'ite shrine near Damascus from the Sunni rebels.
"It is my legitimate duty to go there and fight to defend Sayyida Zeinab Shrine," Ali told Reuters just before he left Baghdad last week. "Should we accept seeing Zeinab, the grand daughter of Prophet Mohammad, being captured again?"
As the Syrian war grinds into its third year, sectarian killings are increasing, while hardline Sunni clerics are declaring Jihad or holy war on the Shi'ites of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. All this is inciting Shi'ite militants to fight back.
Reports abound that Sunni rebels have desecrated some of Syria's many Shi'ite shrines, including the Hojr Ibn Oday sanctuary, although these are often difficult to verify due to media restrictions in Syria and the general fog of war.
In the last few months, Iraqi Shi'ite militias have begun openly recognizing their formerly clandestine role in Syria, which has helped to double their recruitment, according to militia commanders.
However, this has also exposed schisms and infighting over the leadership of the Syrian and Iraqi militants who fight alongside Assad's troops.
Many Shi'ite fighters are young volunteers like Ali, but others are Iranian-trained militiamen who honed their skills against the U.S.-led forces which occupied Iraq until 2011.
Ali and other militants from around Iraq gathered recently at the Baghdad home of Abu Zeinab, a former senior leader from the Mehdi army militia, where they spent a few nights before travelling through the Baghdad airport to Syria.
Abu Zeinab said militant leaders took care of recruitment, equipment, flight booking and expenses, securing permits from the Syrian government and sometimes coordinating the different Shi'ite militant groups.
Militants say around 50 Iraqi Shi'ites fly to Damascus every week to fight, often alongside Assad's troops or to protect the Sayyida Zeinab shrine on the outskirts of Damascus, a particularly holy place for Shi'ites.
"The numbers of volunteers have significantly increased after Sunni rebel attacks which basically were targeting Shi'ites and the Shi'ite shrines in Syria," said Abu Zeinab. "We ask clerics whom we trust to register young men who they want to fight in Syria."
GOVERNMENT ROLE?
Iraq was dominated by its Sunni minority until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but now has a government led by members of the Shi'ite majority under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. For them, Syria's upheaval is a nightmare; they believe a collapse of Assad's government will bring to power a hostile Sunni regime that will inflame Iraq's own Sunni-Shi'ite tensions.
Already sectarian attacks are resurging as al Qaeda's local wing and other Islamist Sunni insurgents regain ground in the western desert bordering Syria. Nearly 2,000 people have died in violence since April, with bombings targeting Shi'ite and Sunni mosques and neighborhoods as well as the security forces.
Iraq says it has a policy of non-interference in Syria, and keeps channels open with Assad's government and the opposition. But Western countries accuse Baghdad of turning a blind eye to support for Assad, such as allowing Iranian aircraft to use its airspace for flying military equipment to Syria.
Baghdad dismisses those charges and denies it is allowing Shi'ite militants to travel freely to Syria or giving them any logistical support.
"There has been an exaggeration of Iraqi brigades or units fighting in Syria. Really there has been a limited number of volunteers," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters in an interview. "These volunteers have gone there without any sanction or approval or support from the government or the Iraqi regime or the political leaders."
But Iraq's domestic politics are complex and some Shi'ite parties rely heavily on Iranian support, making them more sympathetic to Tehran's position on Syria.
Privately, Shi'ite politicians, officials and militant leaders acknowledge support is provided to Assad, and that means allowing Shi'ite fighters to flow into Syria.
"Shi'ite politicians believe the best way to keep Sunni extremist fighters out of Iraq is by keeping them busy in Syria," said a Maliki adviser, who talked in condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "All the Iraqi government has done so far, is to look the other way to the militant movements from Iraq to Syria," he said.
INFIGHTING
Militants usually fly in small groups of 10-15 from Baghdad and the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, sometimes disguised as pilgrims. Their small bags may include uniforms, military equipment and sometimes pistols, militia fighters say.
Militia commanders say they have used their influence and the sympathy of Shi'ite officials in escorting fighters with their equipment through security checkpoints in Baghdad.
Most of those fighting in Syria are former members of the Mehdi army of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, or from the Badr Organization - the armed wing of ISCI political party - and the Asaib al-Haq and Kata'ib Hezbollah militias. Most are loyal to the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a religious authority, fighters and Iraqi politicians say.
Some Mehdi army fighters took refuge in Syria when Iraqi and U.S. forces crushed their group in 2007. There they formed the Abu al-Fadhl al-Abbas brigade in coordination with the Syrian government and Khamenei's office in Damascus to defend the Sayyida Zeinab Shrine, militant commanders say.
Even experienced Iraqi militants had to join that brigade and fight under the command of Syrian Shabiha loyalists, who are mostly from Assad's own Alawite clan, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. This was a condition for being permitted and equipped by the Syrian Government, Iraqi militant leaders said.
Now the rules of engagement have changed, and splits have emerged among Syrian and Iraqi Shi'ite fighters. The Iraqi Mehdi army, Asaib al-Haq and Kata'ib Hezbollah have begun fighting under the command of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which helped Assad troops to recapture the strategic town of Qusair this month.
Military discipline imposed by leaders of Asaib al-Haq and Kata'ib Hezbollah on the Iraqis has irritated the Shabiha, some Iraqi fighters say, because the Syrians had tried to take advantage of the chaos to profit financially from the fighting.
Those disagreements erupted into a gunbattle near the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab few weeks ago between Asaib, Kata'ib and some Iraqi Mehdi Army fighters on one side and Abu Ajil, the Syrian commander of the Abu al-Fadhl al-Abbas brigade, and his local followers on the other. Two Iraqi fighters and three Syrian Shabiha died in the clash, militants in Baghdad said.
A reconciliation meeting was held under orders of Khamenei's office, but divisions fester and Iraqi combatants have formed a new brigade, refusing to fight under Syrian command.
"I am not taking a salary from the Syrian government, no one has a right to treat me as a mercenary Shabiha," said Abu Sajad, a former Mehdi Armi fighter, and one of the Shi'ite leaders who established the Abu al-Fadhl al-Abbas brigade. "I won't ever fight again by the side of those who killed my brothers."
(Editing by Patrick Markey and David Stamp)



http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Dr57X6uhHI5WNsG7tRVReQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zMTQ7cT03OTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2013-06-19T160318Z_1_CBRE95I18M400_RTROPTP_2_CNEWS-US-IRAQ-SYRIA-MILITANTS.JPG
Iraqi mourners carry the coffin of Dhia Mutasharm, a Shi'ite militia fighter
killed in clashes with the Free Syrian Army, during a funeral in Basra, 420 km
(261 miles) southeast of Baghdad in this May 6, 2013 file photo.
REUTERS/Atef Hassan/Files

[Prospero]

A powerful piece arguing against Western intervention... from a British monthly magazine called Prospect

The Syria trap


Is Britain’s plan to arm the rebels a dangerous miscalculation?



By James Harkin

Bedding down at a Syrian rebel barracks just behind the frontline in Aleppo city was never going to be easy, but it is the screaming which keeps me awake. Long choruses of anguished howls come from the other end of a narrow corridor, where the rebels I’ve eaten dinner with are setting on four unfortunates they had just detained in the street outside. Unable to sleep, I join some of the other men on the balcony outside, drinking endless pots of Arabic coffee and watching the hypnotic glow of mortar shells rising and then gently falling in the night sky.

The commander supervising the interrogation of the four men, accused of a scheme of looting and perhaps murder, tells me they’re being punched, but from the rhythm of the wailing it sounds as if they’re being pinned down and flayed. “Thieves, killers,” says one rebel. “They were pretending to be with our revolution,” sniffs another.

This is a battalion of the Free Syrian Army—the loose lattice of hundreds of tiny battalions and a few larger militias, which include the forces that Britain has decided to back in a bid to drive out the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. They are constantly changing names and personnel and, in the main, answer to no one but themselves. That this group routinely resorts to such brutal treatment of others is not surprising; almost everyone with access to a weapon in the city seems to do so, often in response to popular demand, if those people are accused of looting or working for the other side.

But western governments should think hard about whether they really understand their chosen allies before they send arms to opposition fighters, as they may do this summer. Many European countries and the United States have recognised the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the fractious and ineffectual body which claims to act as the political arm of the opposition in exile, as the “sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people.” But only Britain and France have argued that arming the rebels on the ground might now be a good idea. Britain, with France, successfully pushed for the European Union to lift its embargo on providing arms to the rebels from 31st May, in a bid to bring an end to the two-year conflict, which has claimed more than 80,000 lives, according to a UN estimate in May.

Their calculation is that arming these rebels—or even just threatening to do so—will pile pressure on the Assad regime. They also hope that it will freeze out other opposition fighters—above all, the Islamist militants of Jabhat al-Nusra, who recently pledged their allegiance to al Qaeda. Foreign Secretary William Hague has said: “Our priority is to get the regime in Damascus and the opposition to the negotiating table… a decision to deliver lethal weapons will depend on the course of these [talks].” Less cautiously, Laurent Fabius, his French counterpart, has talked of “a weapons imbalance because Mr Bashar al-Assad has planes, etcetera, and the resistance fighters don’t have the same means.” He added: “As much as we are working for a political solution, on the ground things have to be rebalanced.”

Adding urgency to this pitch, in the past few weeks France has said that it has evidence of the use of sarin nerve gas by the regime. To rebut one of the fiercest objections to arming the rebels from other European governments, Fabius has claimed that anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, if supplied, might be rendered useless by remote control if they fell into the “wrong hands.”

Yet any extensive encounter with rebel brigades themselves suggests these calculations are dangerously wrong. For a start, there is often little to divide the rebels Britain has chosen to back from their Islamic counterparts—and none of them have any fondness for the west. British ministers and officials have clearly spent much time in Istanbul talking to the National Coalition. The British and French notion is that they might give arms to this body, which would hand them out to the Free Syrian Army. But it is not clear they have answers to the elementary questions about whether they can control the outcome if they do indeed funnel more weapons into the Syrian warzone.

The armed rebellion—in northern and eastern Syria, particularly—is bound up with family and tribe. In July last year, in a town near the Turkish border, on the same day that the armed rebels moved their rebellion from the surrounding towns and villages into Aleppo city, a 52-year-old electrical engineer called Abdul Kareem brought me his two oldest sons to talk to. Both had started out by demonstrating against the regime, but had tired of the brutal response and thrown in their lot with a battalion of the Free Syrian Army.

They were just back from fighting to eject regime forces from Zitan, the family village just south of Aleppo. Ayham, the capable-looking battalion commander, was 25 years old; Molham was a reflective 24 year old who’d left behind an architecture degree at Aleppo University and couldn’t wait to put down his Kalashnikov and get back to his studies. Three weeks later, however, Ayham was shot dead in a regime counter-offensive in the heavily contested southern district of Salaheddine. Since the fighting broke out in Aleppo last year—(Syria’s largest city had previously seemed immune to the uprising convulsing many others)—eight members of Abdul Kareem’s extended family have been killed. All were fighting with the rebels except one—a five-year-old cousin called Khalil who’d gone missing and been found, a week later, with his throat cut.

Nearly a year later, Aleppo is caught in the same stalemate as the strategic city of Homs before it. The poor districts of the south and east are controlled by various rebel factions while regime forces are in charge of the rest; Salaheddine remains a battleground. Molham, I discovered when I met him again this year, has replaced his older brother as battalion commander. His 100 or so men occupy five different frontline positions; in between shifts they repair to impromptu barracks. One is a former school, which they have been using since September, although it is only several hundred metres away from regime forces. Shortly after I arrive, I emerge from a trip to the outside toilet to find that a sniper, seeing signs of movement, has just taken a lump out of the front door. The culprit, says Adbul Kareem, pointing in the direction from which the bullet came, is probably a fighter from Iran or the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias, which have played a big role in supporting regime forces.

For two years, the violence in Syria has advanced through these cycles of attack followed by revenge massacres and creeping foreign involvement. In a way that threatens to ignite the tensions in Iraq and the region more widely, much of the killing is justified with sectarian rhetoric: Sunni against Shia. Syria has a Sunni majority, but has been ruled by the Shia Alawite sect. The rebels I talk to are Sunni—most are from the same Al-Akidi clan as Abdul Kareem, from Zitan. All, with the exception of one 50 year old who acts as a spiritual guide, and his teenage son who runs errands, are between 20 and 24 years old. Quite a few, like Molham, were university students when the conflict broke out; others, like the men who originally gave rise to the idea of a Free Syrian Army, are defectors from the regular army.

They have been taking terrible losses. A few days before I arrive, another cousin from this barracks, a 22-year-old former student at Aleppo University, was ambushed by regime forces in Al-Izaa. Molham looks weary and haunted, still trying to come to terms with everything that he’s seen. He’s forgotten all about architecture, he says: it now seems like a different world. With his men I rib him about a Swedish female journalist we met last summer and whom he obviously liked. He enjoys the joke, but has no time for women: shortly after, he apologises and leaves to go and pray. Last year, when I’d asked Abdul Kareem about the threat from Islamic extremism and al Qaeda, he’d taken offence. “My sons don’t even pray,” he’d barked, both proud and mortified. But with death a daily event, everyone prays now.

In the evening we lie around on cushions in the large schoolroom where everyone sleeps. The generator keeps failing; as we talk, we are plunged for long spells into perfect darkness. The chatter ripples with mentions of the Islamic group Jabhat al-Nusra, with whom the men have a friendly although uneasy relationship—but not the antagonistic one that you might conclude from the British and French decision to back the Free Syrian Army and oppose the supposed “extremists” of Nusra.

I’d seen many Nusra fighters on the drive into Aleppo, sometimes manning joint checkpoints with battalions working within the Free Syrian Army. At one point Abdul Kareem, who’d driven me in, asked me to stop taking pictures; Nusra, he said, might not appreciate it. The hundreds of ramshackle battalions affiliated with the Free Syrian Army still vastly outnumber Nusra, but numbers are not the issue. Stepping into the vacuum of rebel expertise and organisation, Nusra has set itself up as the special forces of the Syrian rebellion, every bit as ruthless as the pro-regime, paramilitary Shabiha (Assad supporters) on the other side.

“Everyone wants to fight, and they don’t much care who they fight with as long as they’re good,” shrugs Molham. He does offer that “if the world gave us weapons we wouldn’t need any help from these people”—the argument that seems to underpin the British and French conclusion. But as it is, he talks to Nusra regularly. Like all the other rebels I meet, he respects their religiosity and their fighting prowess and has no wish to do battle with them. Most are Syrian and good people, he says, even if many of their leaders are fanatical and Iraqi; they’ve discussed working together on operations, but nothing has come of it yet. “Our battalion,” he says with some pride, “is the only one in this city that Nusra say they respect.”

But while the Free Syrian Army rebels might want western arms, that doesn’t mean they like the west. He blames the west for everything. If they’d helped with weaponry and communication devices as they kept promising, his forces wouldn’t have needed help from Nusra or anyone else. He’s come to the conclusion that the west is playing a double game. “They hate Bashar and they hate Nusra, and they just want both their enemies to fight each other.”

Syria’s rebels are now in a dangerous bind. Having stirred the full force of a brutal regime, they badly need the battlefield skills and valour of Jabhat al-Nusra to keep their insurgency moving and protect the many civilians who supported them in the first place. But the blind fury of the Islamists of Nusra, who regard the Syrian army as infidels and Shia (and Alawite) Muslims as apostates, is pushing many Syrians back towards a discredited regime. On the walls of the school there’s little iconography associated with the revolution or the Free Syrian Army, but a great deal of Islamist imagery. “There is no God but Allah,” read several black flags on two of the classroom walls.

During the night a helicopter buzzes overhead, setting off a rebel siren and leading to a moment of panic. After regular attacks from the air, the roof of the school has been cracked open and its upper floors are glass-spattered mess; everyone sleeps in the same room on the ground floor. The sky still belongs to the regime, and the weapons at the disposal of the rebels—Kalashnikovs, a few Browning pistols and grenades—look puny in comparison. During one of the blackouts Abdul Kareem wanders out of the darkness to show me a box-like, homemade pipe bomb the men have just assembled. He does his best to chip in and tap friends and extended family abroad but the money, he says, is fast running out. “Now, zero,” he complains. “It’s all gone.”

The following day Molham takes Abdul Kareem and me to the frontline in Salaheddine. While another group of rebels drive off in the direction of the government lines, Molham inspects a homemade grenade freshly prepared for his unit from a pharmacy which has been turned into an impromptu soldering works. “What do you think of Syrian grenades?” he smiles, staring at it for over a minute, turning it around in his hands and practising throwing it.

That the rebels badly need more and better weapons is obvious. Yet given the forces ranged against them, it is not clear that it would make much difference to their campaign. He shows me where the regime launched its first air strike on rebel positions in the city: once an Islamic school, now it is concrete and twisted metal. Much of the rest of the neighbourhood is the same; like many of the most visible symbols of Syria’s armed rebellion, from Baba Amr in Homs to the towns surrounding Damascus, Salaheddine has been reduced to rubble. As the regime has retrenched in the last six months it has resorted to hurling heavy surface-to-surface missiles at areas of the north it has little hope of winning back. The previous day I’d looked around some of the places the regime forces had hit. The effect was more like an earthquake than an explosion: whole streets reduced to tiny white bricks.

The regime has healthy stocks of ballistic missiles, both Russian and Iranian, and these ones appear to have been fired from nearly 300 kilometres away in bases close to Damascus. Some rebel activists have taken to reporting their departure when they see them launched.

For all the debate among governments internationally about whether there is firm evidence that the regime has used chemical weapons, it has more than enough conventional weaponry to kill its citizens many times over. Should it ever run out, it has access to more, through the support of Russia and Iran. By unfreezing the EU embargo on supplying the rebels Britain and France have reckoned that they can call Assad’s bluff. But they have to contend with the open unease of many EU governments—and in Britain, members of parliament, where David Cameron has offered a free vote after more than 80 Conservative backbenchers demanded an opportunity to block the supply of weapons.

And Syria’s shadowy security state works best when it’s in a corner. Dark rumours of foreign plots to destabilise the country brought its ruling clique to power half a century ago, and have done much to keep it there since. That is still the regime’s best card.

For their part, the vast majority of the rebels I have met in Syria are openly contemptuous of their putative political representation abroad, with its shifting coalitions, accusing it of being in thrall to shady foreign interests and too far removed from the real fighting on the ground. It is tolerated by the rebels because they think it might win them weapons and recognition from the international community. It is highly unlikely that equipping the latter with better weapons would bring them to the bargaining table. Instead, they would redouble their efforts to finish the job—and Molham admits that his rebellion no longer defines that task as the pursuit of freedom and democracy, but of honour and revenge. “Five or 10 years,” he says. “I won’t leave. I must stand.” When I suggest a political solution he scolds me for my naivety. “All the clever people have left Syria. And for us this is not a game of chess.”

I’d heard much the same last summer, when I asked the ostensible leader of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo (and another cousin of Abdul Kareem and Molham) about his international backers in the Gulf states and the west. “They don’t give us any support, and what support they do give us is corrupt or not worth having,” he’d growled. “And in return for this they want us to make a deal with this regime. It’s not going to happen.”

It is not surprising that the Syrian rebels don’t much like the west. From the beginning many of them saw al Qaeda and Nato as more or less indistinguishable; foreign interlopers who were not to be trusted but whose protection might prove handy. The first Free Syrian Army rebels I met, in a Damascus safe house in February last year, were ordinary soldiers from farming communities who had broken from the regular army as a result of the brutal military response to civilian demonstrations in their areas. Their mission was plainly defensive; they had no real strategy about how to oust the Assad regime and had come to the meeting only to ask for more weapons. Now, they feel betrayed. European countries and the US, by continually hinting that they are about get tough on the Assad regime, flirting with different opposition alliances and implying that the regime was on the point of collapse, may have given these young men false hope—encouraged them to go out and fight, even die, in the hope that governments would come to the rescue. Whatever the west does now will, in their eyes, seem too little and too late.

Meanwhile, the west is in danger of misreading the threat from Jabhat al-Nusra. That threat is certainly real and growing, but it is to Syrians and not the west. Even if many of its leaders are foreign, the bulk of its fighters seem to be Syrian and have no appetite for international terror. While there have been flashes of tension between Nusra and Sunni tribes over resources and their puritanical edicts, the Free Syrian Army rebels are not going to turn on them because the west wants them to; Nusra, after all, has done much more to help them.

And even if we did persuade one powerful brigade of rebels to clamp down on Nusra in return for weapons, the last thing Syria needs, in a powder keg of grudges and uneasy alliances, is yet another proxy militia pitting Syrian against Syrian. The likely effect would be to blow the armed rebellion apart, and it is far from clear that “our side” would win (or that they would stay on our side if they did). And what do we do if we give our chosen rebels everything they are asking for, including a no-fly zone, and the Syrian army, with one press of its ballistic button, blows them and our weapons to smithereens? There is no appetite at all in the EU or US for committing forces; rather, the opposite.

Hague and Fabius have spoken as if their own governments are convening the talks, but they are just two small players around a very big table. Unless they can win the support of America—unlikely, given President Barack Obama’s focus on getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and beyond that, on Iran’s nuclear programme—their rhetoric is not going to be matched by meaningful action on the ground. The real effect of any supply of arms from an EU country would be to trigger a kind of arms race, in which countries vie to pour weapons into the crucible. Turkey, Qatar and the other Gulf states might step up their own arms deliveries to their choice of opposition rebels as they jockey for regional championship of Sunni Islam. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah would very likely respond, with greater force and conviction, the Iranians determined to protect their fellow Shia. That would aggravate sectarian fault lines, pitting militant Islamist against militant Islamist in a way that, even now, few ordinary Syrians say they want.

On our way back from Aleppo to the Turkish border, Abdul Kareem and I are forced to take a different route because of heavy fighting around one of the last remaining regime holdouts, an air base called Menagh. I find out later that some rebels were ambushed by irregular fighters who came from a nearby Shia village; several were killed, including a young friend of Abdul Kareem and his sons. The situation is becoming increasingly bleak for the rebels. Not a single division of the Syrian army, not even those largely Sunni brigades the regime is allegedly keeping in reserve because of concerns about their loyalty, have left en masse to join the rebels. The minorities and many moderate Sunnis are scared of this anarchic rebellion, but are also painfully aware that this tired, brutal regime can’t protect them forever. Some have tried hard to disentangle their communities from the battles that are being fought in their name.

After Iraq, it was predictable that the implosion of the Assad regime, authoritarian and secular, like that of Saddam Hussein, would see many Syrians retreating to their religious and ethnic identities and a rogue’s gallery of opportunists arriving to set out their stalls. Those in think tanks like to float the break-up of the Syrian state as a potential solution, but I have yet to meet a Syrian who is enthusiastic about it, or who even thinks that it will happen. The borders of the Syrian state may have been drawn up in 1916 by the British-French Sykes-Picot agreement to suit the national interests of those two countries, but they have acquired a reality over the passing decades.

If Britain and other EU countries really want to help Syrians, they would be better advised to step up humanitarian aid to the millions of displaced Syrians who urgently need it. They might also grant visas to many, like the rest of Abdul Kareem’s young family, who are living in shocking conditions in refugee camps around the country’s borders and who cannot get a visa to go anywhere else.

But what Syria needs more than anything else are honest brokers inside the country who can reach out across military lines and encourage Syrians to talk to each other—as has been done recently by Syrian Kurds trying to broker peace between Shia and Sunni communities. It is much easier said than done, of course, but it remains the only way to separate the regime from its people. It is also the only course that can now bring Syria and the whole region back from the sectarian catastrophe towards which it is thundering, and squeeze out the extremists and proxies on both sides.

After so many tens of thousands of deaths, it would be even more cruel if a popular movement for self-determination should end with the country slipping beyond anyone’s control.


James Harkin's reportage, "War Against All: The Struggle for Northern Syria," is published as an e-book. He will take up a visiting fellowship at the Reuters Institute, Oxford University, in the autumn

[Prospero]

And an equally powerful argument from an American magazine, the New York Review of Books
Stay Out of Syria!
JUNE 20, 2013
David Bromwich
After the troubling revelations of the May 8 Senate hearing on Benghazi, much remains unclear about the attack that killed four Americans last September. Were the killers aiming to prove the incompetence of American power? Or was the assault directed more specifically against CIA operations? How did the White House, the State Department, and the CIA all agree to say so early and wrongly that the attack could have been the spontaneous action of a crowd infuriated by an anti-Muslim video? Why did the administration delete from its talking points the mention of five similar attacks in Libya, and the fact that al-Qaeda-linked forces were known to be active in the vicinity?

One thing is clear. The Benghazi killings were an indirect but predictable consequence of the NATO intervention that overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. Disorder was a necessary condition of the attack. The “light footprint” of NATO was never going to be sufficient to contain the forces the war released. With the death of Qaddafi and the instability of NATO’s interim arrangements, his troops and weapons moved southward in Africa; and the evacuation of US State Department workers in Mali in January and the attack on international workers in Algeria are now widely understood to have been another fruit of the NATO action in Libya. For Americans, of course, Libya is almost forgotten, but for North Africa and the watching Arab world, it remains a vivid and disturbing memory: seven months of air attacks, with thousands of sorties, 7,700 bombs dropped or missiles launched, and uncounted civilian casualties.

The deepening violence of the Syrian civil war is also in some measure a consequence of Libya: Qaddafi’s disbanded army and unguarded weapons moved southward in Africa, but they also moved eastward to Asia. The state terror of the most “surgical” air war leaves in its wake many thousands of stateless terrorists. As Nancy Youssef pointed out in a penetrating survey on March 14 in the McClatchy newspapers (“Middle East in Turmoil 10 Years After Iraq Invasion”): “The most effective anti-Assad rebel military faction [in Syria], the Nusra Front,” is itself “a branch of al Qaida in Iraq, the same radical Islamist group that the US fought in that country and that the current Iraqi government also is battling.”



The recent past is still with us, if we take the time to look. This is the background against which one must assess the judgment of those persons—well placed in the media and the foreign policy elite—who have lately urged another violent intervention by the US in Arab lands. Three days before the Benghazi hearings, on May 5, Bill Keller published a double-length Op-Ed in The New York Times. His column was entitled “Syria Is Not Iraq,” and its moral was adequately conveyed in Keller’s final words: “Getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.”

Let us pause to remember Iraq before we follow Keller’s invitation to get over it. Almost 4,500 Americans died in Iraq, and 32,000 came home wounded. Of the numbers of Iraqi dead that would be living had the Americans not bombed, invaded, and occupied their country, reliable estimates are harder to come by, but in 2008 The New England Journal of Medicine estimated a total of 151,000 violent deaths by June 2006; and the seven years that followed have added many thousands more.

At the time of the Iraq invasion, Keller was an Op-Ed columnist and senior writer at the Times. In 2002–2003, when his newspaper’s slanted coverage of Iraq played a significant part in leading the country into war, Keller believed the Times stories based on forged or dubious evidence circulated by the Bush administration, and threw his considerable journalistic energy into support of the war. Looking back, in his May 5 Op-Ed, he speaks euphemistically of “our ill-fated adventure in Iraq”; his own part in it he calls “a humbling error of judgment” that for a time “left me gun-shy.”

But Syria is not Iraq, he says, and he now recommends the deployment of American military might against Syria. Keller’s pressing fear is that by inaction, the US may surrender its role as international leader: “Prudence has become fatalism, and our caution has been the father of missed opportunities, diminished credibility and enlarged tragedy.” By means of violent intervention, he believes, the tragedy can be made smaller; and he deplores the reticence of President Obama as the evasion of “a president looking for excuses to stand pat.”

There follow, in Keller’s piece, a series of elaborate distinctions intended to show that Syria presents a more soluble problem than Iraq. “In Iraq our invasion unleashed a sectarian war” whereas “in Syria, [sectarian war] is already well under way.” We ought to intervene, then, because things are already bad. The underlying assumption is that American action could not make things worse. “This time,” Keller continues, “we have allies waiting for us to step up and lead.” We did have allies, and much the same allies, in Libya, but in the thirteen hundred words of this column the word “Libya” does not occur.

The evident self-assurance of Keller’s advice on Syria was dismaying in itself; but it also confirmed a tendency that emerged in a series of recent Times articles. These news articles by several hands all bore headlines of a consistent tendency, implying that American military intervention had now become the natural upshot of events in Syria.

On April 26, for example, a story by Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt was entitled “White House Says Syria Has Used Chemical Arms.” The factual substance of the article was ambiguous, and its headline might more accurately have read: “Chemical Weapons Used in Syria. US Uncertain of Source.” Again, on May 7 the headline delivered a judgment: “White House Sticks to Cautious Path on Syria.” This would not, in most papers at most times, have qualified as a front-page story at all. That there has been no change of policy is hardly news unless a great many sensible persons are expecting a change. The headline implied that the common sense of the well-informed now favors armed intervention; yet the paper had carried the day before, in a corner of page 9, a Reuters dispatch of some significance. This was a report of a statement by a qualified investigator, Carla Del Ponte of the UN commission of inquiry on Syria, who flatly contradicted the rumors of the use of sarin by the Assad government: “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.” UN officials commented that there was “no conclusive proof” about the use of chemical weapons. Astonishingly the Reuters story was neither analyzed nor incorporated in the lead Times story of the day’s events.

In April and May, it must be said, the Times has been an extreme case. On May 7, when the Times played down the public contradiction of its own reports, a Wall Street Journal story by Naftali Bendavid confirmed the skeptical judgment about Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons by testimony from a second non-American source. The secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was said to acknowledge indications that chemical weapons may have been used but without any “confirmed, consolidated information as to who might have used [them].” On May 6, The Guardian reported that the UK defense secretary Philip Hammond “admitted that Western intelligence services would probably have to wait for a further chemical attack before gathering enough information to trace it back to the government.” A week later, on May 12, Robert Gates on Face the Nation offered a judgment of the wisdom of American intervention in Arab lands: “I thought it was a mistake in Libya,” said Gates. “And I think it is a mistake in Syria.” That verdict came with a certain authority from the person who, as defense secretary under Bush and Obama, spent much of 2007 keeping America out of war with Iran and much of Obama’s first term withdrawing American soldiers from Iraq.

Meanwhile, within Congress, the voices that led the march to war in 2003 have been clamoring against any hesitation by Obama to take military action. About John McCain, it is no satire but simple truth to say that he cannot have enough wars. On May 8, McCain published in Time a characteristic editorial, “Syria: Intervention Is in Our Interest,” which contained a list of practical suggestions. Since the column supplies answers without having asked questions, it may serve economy to list in brackets the questions that naturally occur to a mind less confident and rash:

We could train and arm well-vetted Syrian opposition forces, as recommended last year by President Obama’s national-security team. [“Vetted” by whom and with what expertise?] We could strike Assad’s aircraft and Scud-missile launchers. [Inside Russian-built air defenses stronger than those in Libya?] We could destroy artillery and drive Assad’s forces from their posts. [All without ground forces?]
Yet much of the recent pressure for another American intervention is coming from liberals. Senator Carl Levin, for one, cosigned with McCain a letter to the president on March 21 which urged—among other “limited military options”—the launching of “precision airstrikes” against the Syrian air force, as well as “more robust assistance” to opposition fighters believed to be unconnected with al-Qaeda. One of the tricks of persuasion of the liberal section of the war party, from Iraq through Libya to Syria, has been to aestheticize war. The Iraqi advisers of the Bush administration—Ahmed Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, and others—frequently said that American forces occupying Iraq would be “greeted with sweets and flowers.” The optimism of Bill Keller departs from that pattern to some degree, and offers elevating comparisons to dance and music: “All of this [program of military intervention] must be carefully choreographed and accompanied by a symphony of diplomacy.”

A less sanguine prognosis was suggested by Dexter Filkins in the May 13 New Yorker. Looking for reasons to intervene—though, by the end of the article, he does not seem to have found them—Filkins interviewed Fouad Ajami, but quotes him without remarking that Ajami was, as indeed he remains, an enthusiastic endorser of the war in Iraq. The same article quotes Anne-Marie Slaughter without mentioning her close association with Hillary Clinton and the strong position she took in pressing Obama to execute “regime change” in Libya. Slaughter treated Filkins to the inverted aestheticism typical of much war propaganda when she imagined a result of a Syrian chemical attack: “Syrian civilians rolling on the ground, foaming at the mouth, dying by the thousands while the United States stands by.” That fantasy of the future was challenged within days by the assessments from Del Ponte, Rasmussen, and Hammond.

The Obama administration has been strangely tentative in justifying its choice not to arm Syrian rebels: a policy that would need little defense if the president could bring himself to speak it plainly. On the use of sarin, the White House statement told of an ambiguous “chain of custody” of the prohibited chemicals: a phrase that clarifies nothing for most readers. It would have been straighter and wiser to say: “Things are in such chaos in Syria that we can’t be sure whether the government or the rebels used sarin.” Filkins himself reflects the same tentativeness: he is drawn to the idea (dimly in the background) that there should be a military solution, and if so the US should be equipped to supply it. His article—and there have been others like it—exhibits a plenitude of military speculations but is void of political analysis. To judge by what he writes, Filkins did not consult Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Pape, or any other well-known authorities whose previous warnings have proved accurate. In fact, Brzezinski recently issued a sharp admonition in Time:

The various schemes that have been proposed for a kind of tiddly-winks intervention from around the edges of the conflict—no-fly zones, bombing Damascus and so forth—would simply make the situation worse. None of the proposals would result in an outcome strategically beneficial for the US. On the contrary, they would produce a more complex, undefined slide into the worst-case scenario.
Filkins’s article closes by quoting a government official who gets away with saying unchallenged that Iraq was “a crisis…that was contained.”

Contained at what cost, and for how long? The day of the Boston Marathon bombings saw seventy-five killed in Iraq, and 356 wounded: just one story, which few Americans will have read, out of dozens about the aftermath of the American occupation. Our rehearsals of our own good intentions, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, and now in Syria, have swollen to the shape of a rationalized addiction. What then should the US do? Nothing, until we can do something good. But the situation could not be less promising. At present, the main support of Syrian opposition forces comes from Saudis and Qataris. The US has offered help at two removes, but lacks the intelligence to perform much more without strengthening al-Qaeda as we did in Libya. Luis Lema, in a recent editorial in Le Temps of Geneva, rightly remarked that the war is becoming “not only less and less ‘legible,’ but more and more unpredictable.”

And each day adds a new reminder of the futility of allegedly pragmatic solutions. A Times report on May 15 by Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada (“An Atrocity in Syria, with No Victim Too Small”) told of the sectarian “cleansing” by pro-government forces of Sunni enclaves, in the village of Bayda and the city of Baniyas, both located in a mainly Alawite and Christian province. Three hundred twenty-two corpses have been identified, many of them horribly mutilated. As a pledge of retaliation, a rebel commander filmed himself “cutting out an organ of a dead pro-government fighter, biting it and promising the same fate to Alawites.” It is a saccharine optimism that says the country has begun to fall apart and a more “proactive” US could hold it together.

Syria has already largely disintegrated. The government and its Alawite and Christian supporters have secured the west, the Kurds are in the northeast, and the Islamist rebels are in the east (where the al-Nusra Front has already begun to enforce sharia law). The grossness of the chatter about intervention is suggested by a recent debate between American advisers on Syria and the “moderate” rebel forces they are best satisfied with. The question in dispute, as Phil Sands revealed in a May 9 report in The National (“America’s Hidden Agenda in Syria’s War”), turned on whether the moderates should go into combat first against the Assad loyalists, or against the al-Nusra Front whom they will eventually have to kill.

But the untold story of Syria concerns something beyond the atrocities on both sides. It has also to do with the sinews of war—the financial motive and muscle that keeps it going. A Financial Times article by Roula Khalaf and Abigail Fielding-Smith on May 17, “How Qatar Seized Control of the Syrian Revolution,” quoted persons close to the Qatari government who estimate that $3 billion has thus far been spent bankrolling the rebel groups. Sources inside Syria had guessed only a third of that. But the money must keep coming, since Qatar is buying up the loyalty of networks of rebel forces as an investment in the divided Syria of the future. This is calculated for geopolitical and economic influence, without clear religious or ideological motivation: the rulers of Qatar have no apparent common ground with the Islamist sects they are subsidizing. Nor does their involvement bode a peaceful future order: the flow of money, according to Khalaf and Fielding-Smith, “has already created many enemies inside Syria, and not just among pro-regime supporters.”

Against Qatar and Saudi Arabia stand the Shia powers including Iran and its ally Hezbollah, along with numbers of Iraqi Shiites whom the war of 2003 displaced. All these groups support the Alawites—related to Shia Islam. All of them except the Alawites are outsiders to Syria who for religious, cultural, and political reasons do not believe that they are outsiders. The US, by contrast, is seen throughout the region as a perfect outsider. The violence has now taken almost 80,000 lives, yet it remains a reasonable fear that disorders sprung from another American war could lead to still more ferocious bloodlettings. Our ally Turkey, which has supported Syrian rebels, is troubled by the prospect of separationist energy driving the Kurds of Syria to form a state of their own; and the International Crisis Group report on Syria’s Kurds (issued on January 22) contains an entire section uneasily entitled: “From Arab Uprising to Kurdish Opportunity.”

Americans for a long time have tended to think (when we think of other countries at all) that the more new nations spring up, the better. This goes with our relaxed communitarianism but bears little relation to realities elsewhere. Our latest siege of optimism, which followed the collapse of the Soviet empire, has now been given a fair trial over a quarter of a century. It has not always worked out well. Not in the Balkans, not in the former Soviet republics, and not, it seems, in the Middle East.

The high-pressure bid for intervention in Syria may have come to a temporary halt. (The quickness of its start and stop recalls those weeks of March and April 2007 that witnessed an equally sudden press for war with Iran.) On May 7, John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced their plan for an international conference on Syria, possibly as early as the end of May. And barring the extreme possibilities—a White House panicked from other causes and desperate to prove its potency; another Israeli bombing of Syria that succeeds in dragging the US in—it might require a breakdown of negotiations to prompt Barack Obama to follow the militarized advice he is getting now from sources that do not include the US military.

An article on the Kerry–Lavrov meeting by Peter Beaumont in the May 5 Observer of London made clear, as no American publication yet has done, the extent of the damage to the US from the miscarriage of NATO actions in Libya. The powers outside NATO whom we must rely on—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—eventually realized that in Libya the three leading powers, France, Britain, and the US, were all bent on regime change rather than merely the enforcement of a no-fly zone. Those countries, as Beaumont pointed out, felt betrayed and they will be understandably harder to move on Syria.

The difficulty of uniting so distrustful a group will be matched, in any negotiations on Syria, by the disunity of the Arab League. They are divided between Shiite and Sunni loyalties and often further divided within. But theirs is the region that will bear the burden of the nearly one and a half million Syrians who are now refugees, most of them in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. Iranian involvement, qualified observers have said, will be necessary for a lasting peace agreement, given the role of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran in the hostilities; and by keeping Iran in the outer darkness, Obama’s lack of imagination may have served his cause as poorly as his insistence on saying again and again that “Assad must go.” A good result of negotiations would be a transitional governing body that offers Assad a slow exit, but the obstacles to such an outcome are formidable.

The refugees of the Iraq war were the great unspoken disaster of the bombing, invasion, and armed occupation of Iraq, during the first five years of our nine-year stay. Two and a half million fled that country, out of a population of 27 million. Thus far the US has admitted as immigrants 64,000: a little under 3 percent. The vast majority of those displaced lives have become the unasked responsibility of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and other Arab nations. And the scale of the crisis of the refugees from Syria is only beginning to be recognized. Of the nearly one and a half million refugees scattered by the civil war into foreign lands, 500,000 are in Jordan alone, more than half of them under the age of eighteen.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote about the millions of stateless and rightless persons cast up by the early wars of the twentieth century and the imperialist manufacture of new nations before and after World War I. A whole generation of the displaced were brought into the world so lacking in hope, so without access to elementary rights that, for them, to live within the law presented no advantage over crime and for that matter terrorism. “The calamity of the rightless is not that they are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Arendt wrote, “but that they no longer belong to any community whatsoever. Their plight is not that they are not equal before the law, but that no law exists for them.” The disasters of the twentieth century, as she judged them, had proved that a globalized order might “produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages.” An end no happier, if we do not take care, awaits us down the road of the “carefully choreographed” violence and the “symphony of diplomacy” conducted by the last of the great powers.

—May 23, 2013

[Stavros]

There are errors in both reports, in the case of both (although Bromwich's article was written in May) there were reports a few weeks ago that Jabhat al-Nusra has split with one faction supporting the union with the Islamic State of Iraq and Shams, and the other faction rejecting it. Jabhat al-Nusrat is believed to have become the al-Qaeda franchise because it was so condemned by the USA which is an unreliable source; it seems to have become as riddled with factionalism and personality cults as other Syrian rebel grouplets.
In the case of Harkin he writes:
Those in think tanks like to float the break-up of the Syrian state as a potential solution, but I have yet to meet a Syrian who is enthusiastic about it, or who even thinks that it will happen. The borders of the Syrian state may have been drawn up in 1916 by the British-French Sykes-Picot agreement to suit the national interests of those two countries, but they have acquired a reality over the passing decades.

This is factually incorrect, as the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement envisaged the Vilayet of Mosul, which is now in Iraq, as being part of the French zone of influence. The French foreign minister, Berthelot, was so hung over at the San Remo conference he signed Mosul away to the British because he wanted to go back to bed, although the French had second thoughts about it anyway because of the size of the French zone of influence. Subsequently, at Lausanne in 1922-23 and after, the Turkish government attempted to 'reclaim' Mosul for Turkey and failed -taking their revenge on Britain and France with the illegal annexation of Alexandretta in 1938-39, a province still claimed by Syria. In the end (in 192-eight the French got into Iraq through the Compagnie Francaises des Petroles (f1924, better known these days as Total) when the shareholding of the Iraq Petroleum Company was forcibly re-structured by the British.

[Dino Velvet]

NB: THis post has been edited to remove ultra explicit images of death.

"Rebel" group Jabhat al-Nusra beheads a Catholic Priest.


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/01/francois-murad-catholic-priest-beheaded-jihadist-fighters-syria-_n_3527372.html

Francois Murad, Catholic Priest 'Beheaded By Jihadist Fighters In Syria'

Huffington Post UK | By Sara C Nelson (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sara-c-nelson) Posted: 01/07/2013 09:25 BST | Updated: 01/07/2013 16:24 BST




A Catholic priest has been killed in Syria, it has been confirmed by the official Vatican news agency (http://www.news.va/en/news/asiasyria-a-catholic-priest-killed-bishop-hindo-he).
Franciscan Father Francois Murad died after fighters linked to the jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra attacked the monastery he was staying at, local sources say.




It shows a man the channel understands is the priest, sitting cross-legged with his hands bound, alongside two other men while fighters surround them chanting “Allah Akbar” (God is great).
As the first man, believed to be Father Murad, is beheaded with what appears to be a kitchen knife, several observers are seen stepping close to his body to capture close-up photographs and video.
The site claims Father Murad had been accused of collaborating with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tag/bashar-assad), though the accusations are unconfirmed.



The official report into Father Murad's death – submitted via the Fides news agency - states he died in Gassanieh, northern Syria. It claims the circumstances of his death “are not fully clear”, but confirms the monastery where he was living had been attacked by militants.
Fides states Father Murad had began the construction of a coenobitic monastery in Gassanieh, shortly after being ordained. At the start of the civil war, the structure was bombed and he moved to the convent of the Custody of the Holy Land for safety.
“Let us pray,” wrote the Custody of the Holy Land Pierbattista Pizzaballa OFM “so that this absurd and shameful war ends soon and that the people of Syria can go back to living a normal life.
"Unfortunately Syria has now become a battleground not only between Syrian forces, but also between Arab countries and the international community."



Speaking to Syria Report (http://syriareport.net/catholic-priest-executed-as-foreign-weapons-flow-into-syria/), he added: "The world must know that the support of gunmen by the west is helping extremists in killing Syrians. With such stances, not a single Christian will remain in the east."
In May David Cameron (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/david-cameron/) announced Britain is to double military support for Syrian rebels to help them withstand the "onslaught" from Assad's regime.
Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, titular of the Syrian Catholic archeparchy in Hassaké-Nisibis told Fides: "The whole story of Christians in the Middle East is marked and made fruitful by the blood of the martyrs of many persecutions.
“Lately, father Murad sent me some messages that clearly showed how conscious he was of living in a dangerous situation, and offered his life for peace in Syria and around the world."

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1220353/thumbs/o-FATHER-FRANCOIS-MURAD-570.jpg?6


http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1220176/thumbs/o-BEHEADING-PRIEST-570.jpg?6

[idiotbaba]

The Western Media is lying big time about Syria. I travel frequently to Syria and all my friends are of a mixed group, Muslims, Christians, Alawis, Druze, Shi'i, Communists, Atheists, etc. They all support Bashar al-Assad, the only people against him are the Saudi funded Wahabi terrorists and the Western Hypocritical nations.

Pray for the safety of Syria!

[Prospero]

Well that is one view idiotbaba... though I would encourage others to read widely and explore other ideas on this. There is considerable and immense opposition to Assad which started way before the involvement of Saudi Arabia or international Jihadists. Assad continued in his father's tradition of slaughtering his own people... after what were originally peaceful protests. It is a sectarian conflict now - with Hizbollah and iran- and indirectly - Russia which has its own islamist problems) funding and supporting Assad. This has the potential to be a regional war - and possibly a wider conflict than that.

[nitron]

Nothing, this is an internal matter, this is between two groups, both internally and externally. If you are a secular liberal , or secular humanist,this has nothing to do with you. All I see is two bigoted religious groups,and at there helm are cloaked psychopaths using them as cannon fodder for there own selfish ends. We should look to our own houses, we have enough problems within our own lands.

[yosi]

Syria chemical weapons - Sarin gas attack near Damascus? - Truthloader - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GPTqxf8rE)

[Ben]

Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying:

http://warisacrime.org/content/lying-about-syria-and-lying-liars-who-lie-about-lying

[Ben]

Americans Oppose US Intervention In Syria But... - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUTwZCeBS0U)

[Prospero]

But? The whole region is poised on the brink. We should stay out.

[BellaAmore]

I agree, Its going that way though isn't it!

I think that the images of those babies lined out on the floor packed out with ice blocks will stay with me for the rest of my life! They could have been sleeping! All those beautiful and deserving lives ended so unforgivably

There really are some dirty barbaric people in this world!

(PS Yes its me... Non work related, just me, wanting to socialise and join in with the conversations)


xxx


But? The whole region is poised on the brink. We should stay out.

[broncofan]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/politics/us-syria

It looks like there will be a military response. I'm not sure what the extent of the response will be, but I think it will probably be fairly significant. Hagel has said that U.S forces are ready for action. Then again, they could simply let the time pass, but after all this talk, it would be difficult not to act.

It does have the appearance that the region is locked in a constant state of war. Whether there's a bloody revolution and democratic elections or a military coup and no elections, one faction always seems unwilling to tolerate the status quo.

Peaceful protests lead to government crackdowns, but then again any sort of protests do look like a threat to the current order given what we've seen in Egypt, Syria, and Libya. Obviously in Syria we're well past the point of protests and into a bloody civil war. But regardless of the outcome of this fight, what next? I don't mean to be cynical, but what next...there seems to be a dynamic here that is not beyond our ability to describe, but well beyond our ability to resolve or even mitigate.

If we stay out people die, if we get involved people die, but we might temporarily assist in bringing about a regime change. But that wouldn't be the end of it.

[trish]

I can’t begin to describe the emotions that are sweeping over me as we undoubtedly prepare for some kind of military strike on Syria. Like BellaAmore the vision of those poisoned bodies hovers over my retinas when I close my eyes. Now the dread of yet another decade of war in the MiddleEast looms just as we are about to draw a previous decade of horrible war (and the economic Earthquake it brought in its wake) to a simpering and tentative close. More soldiers with traumatic head wounds, more amputations, more lives lost and ruined, and more money down the dark sucking drain of grief and greed. I’m sick. I don’t want anything to do with it. But the moral-immoral pull of it is irresistible. We seem to be beyond the point of escape. I hate sand and fucking red-lines that men of power draw in it.

[Ben]

US About To Intervene In Syria - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otLBUTWat_U)

[Ben]

How US Media Is Pushing For War With Syria - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urrFL95bjcU)

[Stavros]

I can’t begin to describe the emotions that are sweeping over me as we undoubtedly prepare for some kind of military strike on Syria. Like BellaAmore the vision of those poisoned bodies hovers over my retinas when I close my eyes. Now the dread of yet another decade of war in the MiddleEast looms just as we are about to draw a previous decade of horrible war (and the economic Earthquake it brought in its wake) to a simpering and tentative close. More soldiers with traumatic head wounds, more amputations, more lives lost and ruined, and more money down the dark sucking drain of grief and greed. I’m sick. I don’t want anything to do with it. But the moral-immoral pull of it is irresistible. We seem to be beyond the point of escape. I hate sand and fucking red-lines that men of power draw in it.

I had formed the impression that Obama and the JCS General Dempsey were both reluctant to get directly involved; but that Hagel and Kerry saw an opportunity for a 'surgical strike' that would 'send a message' to the Syrian Government, as well as the Russians and the Chinese, about the willingness of the USA to act -having said that, it was a mistake for Obama to make a speech declaring that there was a 'Red Line' because it invited someone to cross it -could have been Asad, his mad & angry brother Maher, another faction in the government/military, the 'rebels' -take your pick; as of this moment, we still don't even know what chemicals were used.

I guess this is Obama's 'Clinton moment'; except Clinton did bomb Iraq with the support of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair; and yes, he did preside over the Ohio talks on the Serbian Nationalist war, and did sponsor the peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians...this is probably the best moment for the USA to seek a rapprochement with Iran, Rouhani and his new government are the most likely to respond positively. Saudi Arabia would of course object, and it wouldn't happen without a predetermined 'result', but at some point someone must choose between the long term difficulty of establishing a popularly elected and accountable form of politics in the region, or enabling an authoritarian, largely Islamic autocracy to take hold. The USA supported the rebels on the assumption that the Government would fall; it didn't fall, and now the USA, France and the UK are proposing to take military action that would be of some benefit, however small, to political groups whose entire ideology is premised on its objection to the presence of 'outsiders' existing in any form in the region.

The worst case scenario, that a domestic struggle for power would become an international conflict, is coming to pass; Qatar and Saudi Arabia are crucial to these developments, in Saudi Arabia's case, part of campaign against democracy that has been going on since Abdul Aziz ibn Saud tried to restore the Caliphate in the 1920s -this remains the core objective of the Saudi family.

I would not be surprised if both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been pushing the USA to intervene directly; both have been instrumental in developing the military capacity of the rebels, yet the consequence has been disarray and disunity while Iranian support enabled Hezbollah to defeat the rebels in Qusayr near the Lebanese border earlier this year.

Basically, Asad's government is still in power, and doesn't look like it is about to collapse. This isn't good enough for Saudi Arabia or Qatar -SA wants domination over the region to promote its narrowly-defined Islamic values against any form of popular democracy; Qatar wants a gas pipeline to the Mediterranean to capitalise on its colossal gas reserves as European demand increases relative to the decline of its own resources (fracking aside).

The USA has an unhappy history of intervention in Syria. When President Reagan sent troops to the Lebanon in 1982, the result was an unmitigated disaster -less well remembered are the air strikes on targets in Syria which led to more than one plane being shot down, and one pilot, Robert Goodman, being taken prisoner, until Presidential Candidate Jesse Jackson went on a mercy mission to Damascus to negotiate his release with Hafiz al-Asad.

Links below are to
1) the Goodman story
2) an analysis of Russian ideas about the Syrian conflict from this summer
3) FT article on Qatar's involvement, stressing its importance
4) FP article on Saudi Arabia's involvement, stressing its importance rather than Qatar's.

http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id407.htm

http://www.laender-analysen.de/russland/rad/pdf/RAD-128.pdf

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f2d9bbc8-bdbc-11e2-890a-00144feab7de.html#axzz2dFbgD1yU

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/06/syria_is_now_saudi_arabias_problem

[Prospero]

Everywhere in the region now there is deepening anger against the West. A misjudged attack would unleash something appalling. I am travelling in the region now (presently in Mosul) and all the signs look very frightening.

[broncofan]

I am not sure whether an attack is prudent or wise, but I do know that there have to be red lines. Unless the entire world is willing to cede that mass murder in any form can be exclusively an internal affair. And if that red line is not drawn at the use of chemical weapons, then where?

And yes, I realize that this conflict has the appearance of a proxy war between powerhouses in the Middle East for continued influence. And those who oppose Assad do hold an extremist ideology, but what about his supporters? It's not as though they are benign in their support of this man who is willing to kill thousands to maintain control.

Besides, I thought the West's tendency to impose its own values on the region was resented. What matters is the will of the people, not whether we think the opposition holds views compatible with ours. And if there are some who vehemently oppose Assad's regime, it cannot be based entirely on Saudi Arabian prodding.

One self-serving reason for not wanting the west to intervene in Syria is that it puts a lie to the tale that every cycle of violence in the Middle East is the result of the West's interference. Is there a course of action the West could take that would not inflame some sect or be exploited in some way by all of the corrupt players in this conflict? Even inaction has moral consequences.

[broncofan]

-take your pick; as of this moment, we still don't even know what chemicals were used.

If cooler heads prevail, then perhaps the administration will wait for all evidence to be gathered, present it to the security council and recommend an international response. This has to be better than a surgical strike as a retaliatory measure for mass killing.

I don't really see how altering the balance of power in a civil war (ie. aligning ourselves with the rebels) redresses the wrong allegedly committed by the use of chemical weapons. So I think the collection of evidence and its presentation to the international community has to be the first step, if the United States really wants to be neutral.

I suppose what I am curious about is how the West can go about adopting a policy of non-intervention in Middle Eastern affairs without our absence being seen as equally pernicious. I really see this as a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario.

[broncofan]

"the long term difficulty of establishing a popularly elected and accountable form of politics in the region, or enabling an authoritarian, largely Islamic autocracy to take hold."

The latter does seem to be the more stable option. If democratic elections follow an uprising against an autocratic regime, there's a good chance some sect will not tolerate the outcome of the elections. I am not well versed in the politics of the region, but isn't an authoritarian regime more likely to be an equilibrium point insofar as they can better consolidate power and mobilize their forces against any possible dissent? I'm not saying it is a more just form of government, only a more stable one that can better stave off cycles of violence.

Even if the people's will is better expressed through an accountable and popularly elected democratic government, might this not be offset by the potential for instability?

[Stavros]

"the long term difficulty of establishing a popularly elected and accountable form of politics in the region, or enabling an authoritarian, largely Islamic autocracy to take hold."

The latter does seem to be the more stable option. If democratic elections follow an uprising against an autocratic regime, there's a good chance some sect will not tolerate the outcome of the elections. I am not well versed in the politics of the region, but isn't an authoritarian regime more likely to be an equilibrium point insofar as they can better consolidate power and mobilize their forces against any possible dissent? I'm not saying it is a more just form of government, only a more stable one that can better stave off cycles of violence.

Even if the people's will is better expressed through an accountable and popularly elected democratic government, might this not be offset by the potential for instability?

I believe this goes to the root of the political issues that has generated the cycle of revolutions in the Middle East, and for that matter in history: autocracy cannot reform and survive, it must either be autocratic or be replaced -but what happens in dictatorships when civil society is eroded and the population have no freedom with which to live without the constant interference of the state, is that the opportunities for alternative modes of expression to co-exist in a market-place of ideas is replaced by monolithic opinions -it is hardly surprising that autocratic, or authoritarian regimes when overthrown are often replaced, immediately or some time after, by another authoritarian regime as the release of incoherent 'people power' may give rise to chaos, lawlessness and a nostalgia for the stability of terror.

For this reason, apres-moi le deluge has been used by dictators who first smashed to pieces any semblance of alternative order in society, then warned their critics that if they were to go, chaos would surely follow. The whole point of the Ba'ath Party dictatorships in Syria and Iraq was to make opposition futile, and life without the Party a chaos of incoherent politics and violence so terrible that the majority would rather have order than freedom.

Moreover, politics in Syria before the consolidation of Ba'ath party rule in the 1970s was characterised by sectarian and fractious ideologies, but this is also part of the way in which Syria was created.

From the very beginning the population made their wishes known, and these were brushed aside -after a long and bitter struggle against Ottoman forces (mostly recruited from the Arabs of what is these days Syria, Lebanon and Jordan), the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force commanded by Allenby entered Damascus in October 1918 where they linked up with the Arab Army under the Hashemite, Feisal who had fought a guerilla campaign on the eastern flank.

Allenby divided up the conquered area into Occupied Enemy Territory Administrations -separating Beirut from Damascus as OET-North. Feisal in Damascus declared it the capital of an independent Arab kingdom and formed a government much to the annoyance of Churchill and the French; the next year Woodrow Wilson asked a Commission to report on Syria -the King-Crane Commission- who dutifully pointed out that the people wanted to be independent. Churchill dismissed the report, and through the post-Versailles conferences, the secret deals that had been made with the French during the War, were used to transfer authority over the newly emerging states as 'Mandated territories' of the League of Nations (Class A), so-called because these states were not considered mature enough to 'stand alone under the strenuous conditions of the modern world'...

On the ground, it was a calculated act of war that ended independent Syria- the French military under Henri Gouraud confronted Feisal at Maysalun in 1920 and sent him and democracy packing. Just to rub it in, it is alleged (there are several versions) that Gouraud marched into the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, rested his boot on the grave of the Kurdish warrior and Hero/Villain of the Crusades Salah ad-Din and shouted We're back!
The French claim on Syria was derived mostly from the commercial interests in silk and textiles developed in the Ottoman period by the merchants of Lyon, and French intentions to match the British Empire's land grab, and exploit as much as it needed for its shattered economy.

Modern Syria was formed from the barrel of a gun, it was not created and sustained by its population; they have never been given the decades of rule that it takes for democatic politics to establish itself as a fair, if imperfect alternative to dictatorship.

Throughout these histories, external powers found it easier to be indifferent to the operations of dictatorship, rather than promote the inherent messiness of democratic politics -this goes for the USA, the UK, France, Israel, Germany, Japan none of whom promoted and nurtured a domestic opposition in Syria in the same way that the US did in Iran and Iraq, and does not do in Saudi Arabia or the monarchies of the region. The UK broke off diplomatic relations with Syria over the Hindawi affair in the 1980s, but few people broke sweat to eject Syria from its violent interventions in Lebanese politics, when Syria was thrown out, it was thrown out by popular revolt, a popular -pre 'Arab Spring' uprising that Israel and the Bush Presidency did all it could to derail.

Even today Syrians feel they are not entirely part of the country they feel they ought to be part of: again, from the outset, 'Lebanon' was carved off as a separate, and at the time mostly Christian state; followed by the incoherence of international boundaries that left Kurds, and Druzes communities living on either side of the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraq boundaries; followed by an act of Grand Larceny which robbed Syria of the port city of Alexandretta (Iskenderun) and the surrounding countryside, annexed by Turkey in 1938; not to mention the distortion of political representation when less than 10% of the population -the Alawite- control 90% of the state and most of the officer class of the armed forces. And so on.

Do the majority of Syrians want to live in an Islamic state? I doubt it. Will they be given the opportunity to choose their own destiny? Not at the moment.

If order is better than chaos, would this justify a dictatorship in the USA?

[Stavros]

I forgot to add that Syria's experience from 1948 onwards was disorderly, but so too was politics in France and Italy where one coalition government followed another until, in 1958 in France, De Gaulle was elected to create a more dirigiste Presidential system, something that did not happen in Italy. In Syria, barely ten years into independence, the charismatic leader Nasser persuaded Syria to join a 'United Arab Republic' which meant, in effect, taking orders from Cairo. This was no solution to internal bickering in Syria, and not long after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 left part of Syria under occupation; it was a national humiliation, and paved the way for the belief that western style politics had failed and that a ruthless centralised form of politics was the only hope.

[broncofan]

What a read, and right on point for what I was asking. It was just a supposition on my part based on the fact that we've seen such appalling and unrelenting violence.

I don't believe that there's any place in the world where the people aren't ready for freedom or deserve or prefer autocracy.

But to your last question: If I saw people being killed every day, even for the sake of eventual freedom, civil rights, and their ability to express themselves politically I think I would be willing to give up quite a lot of my own freedom to make it stop. As your analysis suggests, this pressure is part of what helps an authoritarian regime maintain its authority.

If you'll indulge one more question (sorry). This is the last question. What is the place of an outside nation to help in this struggle? Is it their place to help tip the balance to those seeking greater freedoms? If a democratic government is being overthrown by reactionary forces, is it advisable to support the currently elected government against this coup? Or to do nothing because an externally applied force disrupts the internal forces that are in some way a greater reflection of the will of the people?

[Ben]

Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18449-killing-civilians-to-protect-civilians-in-syria

[Ben]

Does Obama Know He’s Fighting on al-Qa’ida’s Side?

‘All for one and one for all’ should be the battle cry if the West goes to war against Assad’s Syrian regime

by Robert Fisk (http://www.commondreams.org/robert-fisk)

If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.
Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa’ida (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/jerome-taylor-alqaida-or-not-this-spread-of-terror-could-be-disastrous-7546204.html) – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa’ida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa’ida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa’ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa’ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/only-a-peace-conference-not-air-strikes-can-stop-further-bloodshed-8784836.html) are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube.
And while we’re talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.
Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/did-syria-gas-its-own-people-the-evidence-is-mounting-8783590.html), in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run.

© 2013 The Independent

[Ben]

Questions for President Obama — Before He Pulls the Trigger on Syria:

http://billmoyers.com/2013/08/26/questions-for-president-obama-before-he-pulls-the-trigger-on-syria/

[Stavros]

Broncofan: "If you'll indulge one more question (sorry). This is the last question. What is the place of an outside nation to help in this struggle? Is it their place to help tip the balance to those seeking greater freedoms? If a democratic government is being overthrown by reactionary forces, is it advisable to support the currently elected government against this coup? Or to do nothing because an externally applied force disrupts the internal forces that are in some way a greater reflection of the will of the people?"

The simple answer to your question is a corpus of law on humanitarian intervention, codified since the first Geneva Convention of 1864. The not so simple answer is in the competing claims of when how and why such laws apply, in specific cases. I fear the true answer may be that humanitarian intervention is shaped by politically expedient conditions.

As for examples, take your pick from history.

Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 because Germany invaded Poland; domestic policy in Germany which had already seen discrimination and widespread violence against Jews, other 'non-Aryans' and minorities, was not a casus belli.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia/Kampuchea in 1979 and put an end to the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, but did so in retaliation for Kampuchea's (alleged) violation of Vietnamese sovereignty not because the Khmer Rouge had slaughtered half its population -and the Conservative govt of Margaret Thatcher continued to recognise the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate govt of Kampuchea so as not to endorse Vietnam's invasion and the installation of a 'puppet government'; what the Cambodian people thought about it was not important.
An earlier British government had condemned Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974 but in practical terms, other than refusing to recognise the so-called government of 'Northern Cyprus', nothing was done then or since even though Turkey is a fellow member of NATO and British troops are based in Cyprus -or maybe because of those factors, even though the invasion was and remains a violation of international law. When Saddam Hussein ordered his armed forces to invade and occupy -or 're-claim'- Kuwait in 1990, the international response was the co-ordination of a 'Coalition of the Willing' which used military force to evict Iraq from Kuwait, something that had never been done to evict Turkey from Cyprus, or Israel from the Occupied Territories -when asked why, the Foreign Secretary at the time, Douglas Hurd replied, 'Because we don't have a security council resolution to authorise it'. Any attempt to use force to evict Israel from Occupied Palestine would not get the approval of the USA, ditto Turkey in Cyprus; hence Russia as an obstacle on Syria, China on North Korea, and so on.

None of which undermines the moral cases in Israel, Cyprus, Syria or North Korea, but as I say, there are examples that show both the limits of international humanitarian law and the way in which it can be manipulated.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has a useful section on humanitarian law, otherwise there is a vast literature on it, though Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, and the work of Charles Beitz and Henry Shue might interest you.

http://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/overview-war-and-law.htm

[Ben]

Obama strike plans in disarray after Britain rejects use of force in Syria:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/30/obama-strike-syria-britain-vote

[Stavros]

But there has been no coherence from the beginning on this issue; Obama's caution has been sunk by bad advice, he will have to carry the responsibility on this with France. Cameron re-called Parliament to get an endorsement for military intervention in Syria; then Ed Miliband, who had initially registered support for the motion, insisted there could not be such a vote until the UN Weapons Inspection team report, so Cameron had to modify the original proposal -slagging off Milliband as 'fucking cunt, and a copper-bottomed shit' -in private of course; and then publicly present 'intelligence' in Parliament in which it is stated that the British government isn't 100% sure that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attack; and all this with no real knowledge of how effective any military action will be, or what the consequences might be -yet Cameron wanted a vote on it. This was a colossal mis-judgement on his part, as he is one part of a Coalition whose own party doesn't trust him on Europe and immigration. They stiffed him.
And really, does the USA depend on the UK when making plans to attack another country? The 'Special Relationship' - nice to have, but no need to have.

[Ben]

Fool Me Twice, Shame on US - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLugG3-AAPQ)

[Ben]

Al-Qaeda Links Cloud Syria as U.S. Seeks Clarity on Rebels:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-08-29/al-qaeda-links-cloud-syrian-war-as-u-dot-s-dot-seeks-clarity-on-rebels

[up_for_it]

This is a tricky situation- the use of chemical weapons is unconscionable, but a few cruise missile strikes are the equivalent of the West patting themselves on the back. They won't destroy stockpiles without running the risk of contamination or surviving ordinance falling into the hands of a number of different groups. The strikes could also force the Syrian military to decentralize their remaining munitions, making them even more difficult to control or keep tabs on.

If a U.S. led coalition does attack, it also runs the risk of encouraging militants from both Sunni and Shia enclaves in Lebanon and Iraq becoming even more deeply involved, raising the possibility of a regional sectarian conflict. Iraq itself has seen the bloodiest summer since the surge in 2006. Then there is always the threat of a retaliatory strike on Israel, which Assad has mentioned several times over the past few months as a possible doomsday scenario is his regime is removed from power by western forces.

So, its a very difficult situation and the only way to prevent the use of chemical weapons would be to insert some sort of larger presence in Syria or wage a protracted air campaign. Then again, there is always the chance of mission creep and putting troops on the ground, something Obama is highly allergic to after over a decade of war, which has helped tank the US economy. No one, not even the hawks, want another counter insurgency operation. Finding some way to bring both sides to the peace table seems the best option, although Assad has clearly become even more of a hardliner, especially after the victories around Homs- he thinks hes winning. For their part, the rebels are still too fragmented. So, the real question seems to be: how much influence can the US and Europe exert and if so, will it run the risk of starting a regional conflict which will be even more tragic than the current plight of Syrians? Some people are already comparing the conflict to the situation in the Balkans prior to World War I, when a variety of super powers were involved in that region.- Russia, Iran vs. the US and UK. Things could escalate and go a number of directions very quickly.

[Prospero]

Arab papers here report that Syria has moved political prisoners into main army bases in Damascus in expectation of US strikes. That was a tactic that Saddam adopted during bombing strikes on Baghdad.

Incoherence all the way down the ine as i see Stavros pointed out.

But one is forced to ask - without seeming callous - what form of regime in Syria is a greater threat to global order. The vile Assad government or aJihadist dominated regime with a deep seated and violent animus towards the West?

[Stavros]

This is a tricky situation- the use of chemical weapons is unconscionable, but a few cruise missile strikes are the equivalent of the West patting themselves on the back. They won't destroy stockpiles without running the risk of contamination or surviving ordinance falling into the hands of a number of different groups. The strikes could also force the Syrian military to decentralize their remaining munitions, making them even more difficult to control or keep tabs on.

If a U.S. led coalition does attack, it also runs the risk of encouraging militants from both Sunni and Shia enclaves in Lebanon and Iraq becoming even more deeply involved, raising the possibility of a regional sectarian conflict. Iraq itself has seen the bloodiest summer since the surge in 2006. Then there is always the threat of a retaliatory strike on Israel, which Assad has mentioned several times over the past few months as a possible doomsday scenario is his regime is removed from power by western forces.

So, its a very difficult situation and the only way to prevent the use of chemical weapons would be to insert some sort of larger presence in Syria or wage a protracted air campaign. Then again, there is always the chance of mission creep and putting troops on the ground, something Obama is highly allergic to after over a decade of war, which has helped tank the US economy. No one, not even the hawks, want another counter insurgency operation. Finding some way to bring both sides to the peace table seems the best option, although Assad has clearly become even more of a hardliner, especially after the victories around Homs- he thinks hes winning. For their part, the rebels are still too fragmented. So, the real question seems to be: how much influence can the US and Europe exert and if so, will it run the risk of starting a regional conflict which will be even more tragic than the current plight of Syrians? Some people are already comparing the conflict to the situation in the Balkans prior to World War I, when a variety of super powers were involved in that region.- Russia, Iran vs. the US and UK. Things could escalate and go a number of directions very quickly.

All good points, because the Syrians have observed what happened in Iraq since 1990 (at least) and have amended their deployments to create a strategic complexity which Iraq did not have in the relatively simple case of the Kuwait invasion. The WMD that followed a decade later was a figleaf for regime change -years later Blair said of Iraq 'I took the view that we needed to remake the Middle East' -nothing to say about protecting the UK from attack. Syria has been a difficult place for the US historically, and it's intelligence on the country has been poor and dependent on Israel. But is it not the case that when Obama said there was a 'Red Line' that Syria should not cross, it was not just an invitation to do just that, but implied that anything else was in some way acceptable? As if using conventional weapons was not such a big deal! A big mistake and either personal or the result of poor advice.
Obama had political ambitions yet, like Blair before him, never took the time to understand the Middle East when learning his trade, and appears a novice even now, after five years in office. His advisors are not much more savvy either, I believe Kerry was a Skull & Bones man when in Yale, not a great pedigree to have. It doesn't make sense militarily.

The diplomatic impasse has been created by the failure of the rebels to bring down the government, and the lack of any major defections from within the regime. On this basis, the Russians and the Chinese see nothing to negotiate about, and see the 'West' attempting to remove a pro-Iranian, pro-Russian government as being more important than what follows. Chechnya effectively collapsed under the weight of Russian arms (a conflict in which the USA had no input) yet eventually the Russians found someone to take office and give the place a semblance of normality. Hafiz el-Asad saw off the Brotherhood and other rebels in the 1980s, perhaps they think Bashar can emulate his father and that the broadly speaking moderate rebels will prefer a deal with Asad than a pact of losers with the Jihadists--?
On the other hand, something will have to be done about the refugees, many of whom are too scared to go home, if they still have one.

[Stavros]

Arab papers here report that Syria has moved political prisoners into main army bases in Damascus in expectation of US strikes. That was a tactic that Saddam adopted during bombing strikes on Baghdad.

Incoherence all the way down the ine as i see Stavros pointed out.

But one is forced to ask - without seeming callous - what form of regime in Syria is a greater threat to global order. The vile Assad government or aJihadist dominated regime with a deep seated and violent animus towards the West?

I think you underestimate the impact of the Jihadist groups ability to alienate the people they need most to survive -they appear like the Bolsheviks in 1917 and many of these groups like the Palestinian guerillas of the 1960s/70s have been modelled on the Bolsheviks and the Cuban cells -but the Bolsheviks though small and not well known were able to take advantage of a vacuum of power in Russia and use their people-friendly slogans, superior organisation and ruthless violence to win converts. The Syrian govt is not in disarray, and I think it is conceivable that if there is no significant change on the ground, the majority of rebel groups as time wears them down, may seek an accommodation with the regime rather than allow the minority Jihadist to hijack the state -many -most?- are not Syrian anyway. It could be like the 'awakening' in Iraq when the Sunna elites who had benefited from Saddam's largesse and then lost it, rebelled against the al-Qaeda militants whose agenda was even worse than the Shi'a in power.

There is now a suggestion that Qatar is having second thoughts on the long-term impact of its support for the Syrian rebels -because it hasn't worked, and many Arabs across the region may come to see Qatar as an interfering nuisance waving money around as its badge of honour so to speak. It played a major role in Libya, but as expected the smooth transition there has been beset by revenge attacks, and the political incoherence that follows years of dictatorship. Not sure how secure this makes the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, if that ever goes ahead.

[up_for_it]

All good points, because the Syrians have observed what happened in Iraq since 1990 (at least) and have amended their deployments to create a strategic complexity which Iraq did not have in the relatively simple case of the Kuwait invasion. The WMD that followed a decade later was a figleaf for regime change -years later Blair said of Iraq 'I took the view that we needed to remake the Middle East' -nothing to say about protecting the UK from attack. Syria has been a difficult place for the US historically, and it's intelligence on the country has been poor and dependent on Israel. But is it not the case that when Obama said there was a 'Red Line' that Syria should not cross, it was not just an invitation to do just that, but implied that anything else was in some way acceptable? As if using conventional weapons was not such a big deal! A big mistake and either personal or the result of poor advice.
Obama had political ambitions yet, like Blair before him, never took the time to understand the Middle East when learning his trade, and appears a novice even now, after five years in office. His advisors are not much more savvy either, I believe Kerry was a Skull & Bones man when in Yale, not a great pedigree to have. It doesn't make sense militarily.

The diplomatic impasse has been created by the failure of the rebels to bring down the government, and the lack of any major defections from within the regime. On this basis, the Russians and the Chinese see nothing to negotiate about, and see the 'West' attempting to remove a pro-Iranian, pro-Russian government as being more important than what follows. Chechnya effectively collapsed under the weight of Russian arms (a conflict in which the USA had no input) yet eventually the Russians found someone to take office and give the place a semblance of normality. Hafiz el-Asad saw off the Brotherhood and other rebels in the 1980s, perhaps they think Bashar can emulate his father and that the broadly speaking moderate rebels will prefer a deal with Asad than a pact of losers with the Jihadists--?
On the other hand, something will have to be done about the refugees, many of whom are too scared to go home, if they still have one.

Thanks for your response Stavros. Many of your comments point towards two important factors undergirding the entire mess:

1. Assad and his backers are in fact winning, in the sense they've regained lost territory in the north, areas which will allow them to reorganize and form a solid logistical base for further operations in northern Syria by securing the coastal Alawite enclaves and Hezbollah's supply lines into Lebanon. The conflict appears to be settling into a static phase, and although the western media hasn't made much of Homs, its a key location which will enable Assad to push northwards in a methodical and secure manner.

2. I think anyone keeping up with Syria can sense western governments not just the US but also the British and Germans in particular, are more concerned with making sure support would reach non-fundamentalist groups, hence the lack of concrete assistance due to a lack of intelligence on the various disparate organizations. This is the lesson of Iraq: a brutal dictator may be less problematic than what will come after a regime change, especially in a country that was already socialized to political violence well before the current conflict began ( think Syria's own internal repression operations and also the influx of Iraqi civilians in the early 2000s) Unfortunately, the conflict may just be building up steam compared to what might come after it- years of sectarian conflict which could well metastasize into a regional religious war. Not removing Assad may actually stabilize the situation if diplomacy can work. Right now, for the West, it is less about Syrian civilians and more about making sure Iraq, Turkey, and Israel don't get pulled in.

[Ben]

Obama, of course, has sought Congressional authorization to use force in Syria. But we should all remember Libya...

House Rejects Authorization of Libya Intervention:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/house-rejects-authorization-of-libya-intervention-20110624

[Ben]

Bill Richardson: We Need A "Coalition Of The Willing" For Attack On Syria:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/08/31/bill_richardson_we_need_a_coalition_of_the_willing _for_attack_on_syria.html

[Ben]

U.S. Depleted Uranium as Malicious as Syrian Chemical Weapons:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-considine/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3812888.html

[Queens Guy]

Will the folks at the Norwegian Nobel Committee want their Peace Prize back?

[Stavros]

One wonders not only why Obama was nominated, but why he agreed to accept it. The prize originally was to be awarded to to those who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses"-you could at least argue that Henry Kissinger negotiated a peace with Vietnam at a congress in Paris even if his critics don't think he deserved it. In 1948 the committee decided not to make the award, so it is not as if they have to make a choice. But why has this Nobel Prize fetish become so important to some people?

[Ben]

The New Crossfire: Where Both Sides Support War With Syria:

http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/08/28/the-new-crossfire-where-both-sides-support-war-with-syria/

[surf4490]

Simple answer nothing

[Ben]

Forget about Syria for the moment. What's goin' on w/ John Kerry.

John Kerry’s face looks different: Exhaustion, illness, Botox?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2013/09/04/john-kerrys-face-looks-different-exhaustion-illness-botox/

[Ben]

Calling Off America’s Bombs (http://www.project-syndicate.org:80/commentary/why-america-should-not-attack-syria-by-jeffrey-d--sachs)

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-america-should-not-attack-syria-by-jeffrey-d--sachs

[VictoriaVeil]

Forget about Syria for the moment. What's goin' on w/ John Kerry.

John Kerry’s face looks different: Exhaustion, illness, Botox?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2013/09/04/john-kerrys-face-looks-different-exhaustion-illness-botox/


IDK, but better question, Why put Kerry the Sec of State on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows instead of the VP Biden, Last I checked (admittedly its been a while) Sdec State should be working with foreign nations...

[trish]

Sorry, but I’m still not able to approve of U.S. military action in Syria. Yes, gassing civilians is horrible and immoral. But so is shooting them. Bombing Syria (actually using Tomahawk missiles costing several hundred U.S. grand a piece) in an attempt to degrade its capacity to use gas will cause little damage to Assad while undoubtedly killing and maiming more people. Wouldn’t it be better to spend that money feeding and transporting refugees? Building hospitals? I do not believe that degrading Syria’s capacity for delivering such weaponry will deter anyone else who might want to use gas in the future. We ourselves gave gas to Saddam Hussein to use in his war against Iran. We do not have the moral high ground here. Neither do I believe the action will be restrained to a one-time-only mission. McCain has already proposed language that makes tipping the scales of the civil war in favor of the rebels a primary goal of U.S. interference. I do not believe the rebels, themselves would refrain from gas attacks had they the capacity. Nor am I convinced we should unreservedly be on the side of rebels. Certainly many of them are anti-western radicals. Finally, it seems almost certain to me that military interference in Syria will invite more terrorist attacts against the U.S. and the allies.

Tonight’s PBS News Hours ended (as it often does) with a role call of the recent dead (U.S. military) killed in Afghanistan. The faces of six young soldiers in uniform filled the screen each in succession. We are looking forward to finally pulling out of that quagmire, and as far as I can tell we left is worse off then entered nearly a decade ago.

Yes, when a leader gasses his own people, or simply shoots his own people, or runs them over with tanks, it is incumbent upon the world to respond to the outrage. But answering with another outrage is not a moral solution. Messages can be written in ink as well as blood.

[Ben]

IDK, but better question, Why put Kerry the Sec of State on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows instead of the VP Biden, Last I checked (admittedly its been a while) Sdec State should be working with foreign nations...

I agree.
I'm not a fan of either Biden or Kerry. But Biden seems more congenial.
Or maybe they should just, well, screw it all and play poker on their iPhone like crazy McCain.
They're debating whether or not to use deadly force in Syria and McCain is playin' poker. Unreal. So, that's what we pay our Senators to do: play iPhone poker -- ha, ha!

[Ben]

Max Keiser's Marshmallow Gun of Truth | Think Tank - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWKF0SA-90I)

[Ben]

Interesting interview w/ Patrick Cockburn of The Independent:

Victory Out of Reach for US in Syria - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_kUIA5xcmc)

[Stavros]

IDK, but better question, Why put Kerry the Sec of State on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows instead of the VP Biden, Last I checked (admittedly its been a while) Sdec State should be working with foreign nations...

It might just be my perception from far away, but I believe John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have brought a more strident -aggressive?- tone to foreign and defence policy since replacing Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta. I don't know who is driving foreign policy making on Syria, I think Kerry, with his attempt to bring the Israeli's and Palestinians together, decided he can do something Mrs Clinton could not. There may even be some attempt to deal with the image Kerry had -generated from his Presidential bid- that he is dull, dithering and diluted....?

[Stavros]

Sorry, but I’m still not able to approve of U.S. military action in Syria. Yes, gassing civilians is horrible and immoral. But so is shooting them. Bombing Syria (actually using Tomahawk missiles costing several hundred U.S. grand a piece) in an attempt to degrade its capacity to use gas will cause little damage to Assad while undoubtedly killing and maiming more people. Wouldn’t it be better to spend that money feeding and transporting refugees? Building hospitals? I do not believe that degrading Syria’s capacity for delivering such weaponry will deter anyone else who might want to use gas in the future. We ourselves gave gas to Saddam Hussein to use in his war against Iran. We do not have the moral high ground here. Neither do I believe the action will be restrained to a one-time-only mission. McCain has already proposed language that makes tipping the scales of the civil war in favor of the rebels a primary goal of U.S. interference. I do not believe the rebels, themselves would refrain from gas attacks had they the capacity. Nor am I convinced we should unreservedly be on the side of rebels. Certainly many of them are anti-western radicals. Finally, it seems almost certain to me that military interference in Syria will invite more terrorist attacts against the U.S. and the allies.

Tonight’s PBS News Hours ended (as it often does) with a role call of the recent dead (U.S. military) killed in Afghanistan. The faces of six young soldiers in uniform filled the screen each in succession. We are looking forward to finally pulling out of that quagmire, and as far as I can tell we left is worse off then entered nearly a decade ago.

Yes, when a leader gasses his own people, or simply shoots his own people, or runs them over with tanks, it is incumbent upon the world to respond to the outrage. But answering with another outrage is not a moral solution. Messages can be written in ink as well as blood.

I think you are right to express the outrage most decent people feel when they see victims of chemical warfare -or any kind of violence for that matter. I think that the problem with the discussion on chemical warfare is that it operates from a position in which the horrors of the First World War led to the international conventions that banned them -yet the USA dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945; used Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, and chemical weapons have been used by 'terrorists' such as the Syrian rebels earlier this year in Aleppo, and by Aum Shinrikyo on the Japanese subway system in 1995; and yet I understand that white phosphorous is only banned (in 1980) as a weapon of war if fired into civilian areas -in other words it may be legal to use it 'on the battlefield' -so that Israel in Operation Cast Lead in the winter of 2008-2009 could claim its use was 'not illegal', even though it also regularly identifies civilian areas as the battlefield and phosphorous bombs were dropped in refugee camps in Gaza -the IDF has also ripped up olive groves and plum orchards that stood for thousands of years on the West Bank because they claimed terrorists were using them as cover for attacks on the IDF, et etc.

None of this should mitigate our concern with the use of chemical weapons, but it does skew the argument, as if regular warfare, or acts of 'ethnic cleansing' were in some way less urgent. The shredding of the human population -accompanied by mass rape- in Darfur in the Sudan did not lead to any military intervention there; indeed, what would happen if the international system decided that the use of rape -already a crime under international law- as a weapon of war marked a 'red line' beyond which no state could hope to pass without being challenged?

More to the point, as with my reply to Victoria above, I don't understand what is driving Obama's foreign policy on Syria. The Obama presidency was supposed to pull back from military confrontation and offer considered diplomacy as an alternative. This, talk of 'Red Lines' and the absurdity of the Nobel Peace Prize, was a gift to anyone wanting to provoke an alternative, contradictory reaction. Yet the Russians claim the USA lied to them when they supported the Security Resolution authorising the use of air power against Qadhafi to pre-empt his attack on the Bengazi and eastern Libya -because the result was widespread bombing resulting in regime change. And it must be said, that when the USA takes -or appears to take- the position that the so-far 'alleged' chemical attack in Damascus was a 'Red Line' incident without waiting for any independent confirmation, you have to ask if this is indeed a 'punishment attack' or part of a wider strategy to so weaken the Syrian government that it is 'bombed to the conference table'.

Perhaps Hagel and Kerry, no doubt prompted by Saudi Arabia -Qatar I believe is re-thinking its position- pushed Obama for an aggressive response, one that would also make it clear to the Russians and Iran that the USA retains force as an option; while Obama is still cautious -clearly, if Obama wants Congressional approval and can wait, the 'urgency' of a response to the chemical attack was not that intense that it could not wait.
Ever since the assassination of Ambassador Stevens, there has been a claim the Obama Presidency is a soft touch for terrorists; an administation that has backed off from retaliation, that is letting other people push the USA around without responding. McCain, walking into Congress this week, dismissed the Russians and Ban Ki-Moon as 'irrelevant', and with it the whole of the UN, an echo of the narcissistic violence espoused by George W Bush, Dick Cheney and John Bolton, the very stance that lost the Republicans the election and became part of the events that discredited the USA. McCain's role in provoking the Obama administration is not based on clear strategic thinking about Syria, it is driven by a belief that the USA must continue to show Russia and Iran that it will respond militarily when it wants, where it wants, and to whom it wants.

Such aggression may speak the language understood in Moscow and Tehran as McCain sees it, what it doesn't do is address the disarray among the rebels in Syria or the apparent strength of the Syrian government, because I don't think McCain is that interested in Syria at all, it is part of an attempt to undermine the different path Obama wants the USA to take. I don't know what happened with Hillary Clinton and the Russians when the Syrian crisis began, I am not sure how keen Obama is on violence as a US response, but I do think that Rouhani is keen for some rapprochement with the USA, and that a change in Iran is one of the keys that can unlock this dilemma, as Iran is a key backer of the Syrian government. To talk face to face with Putin may be difficult, right now even pointless, but as I said in another post, does Obama have the courage to go to Tehran and talk face to face with Rouhani? Yes, Israel, McCain and his friends would go berserk, but sometimes it takes a bold move to break an impasse -much as Sadat's visit to Israel in 1977, the outcome of which was an historic peace treaty brokered by a Democrat US President.
There are precedents to follow.

[thombergeron]

It might just be my perception from far away, but I believe John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have brought a more strident -aggressive?- tone to foreign and defence policy since replacing Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta. I don't know who is driving foreign policy making on Syria, I think Kerry, with his attempt to bring the Israeli's and Palestinians together, decided he can do something Mrs Clinton could not. There may even be some attempt to deal with the image Kerry had -generated from his Presidential bid- that he is dull, dithering and diluted....?

I think that's pretty accurate. Clinton was a diplomatic machine. She spent most of her tenure on the road, negotiating face-to-face with foreign leaders. Panetta quietly ran DoD from the background, preferring soft-power solutions.

Also remember that both Kerry and Hagel are veterans. Both volunteered to serve and come from families that emphasized military service. Neither is true of Clinton or Panetta.

Tough to say that this change of tone was an intentional move by Obama, since it seems that Kerry was his second choice for State after Susan Rice, who I think would have been more of a soft-power diplomat.

[Ben]

Always remember that morals, not money, shape America's foreign policy... :)

Senators Authorizing Syria Strike Got More Defense Cash Than Lawmakers Voting No:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/syria-war-authorization-money/

[Ben]

As the American poet Allen Ginsberg wrote: "War is good business/Invest your son."
It's true. War is good for business, big business....

US Military Contractors Celebrate Record High Profits and Stock Prices - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ARUVpS05Cc)

[Stavros]

I think that's pretty accurate. Clinton was a diplomatic machine. She spent most of her tenure on the road, negotiating face-to-face with foreign leaders. Panetta quietly ran DoD from the background, preferring soft-power solutions.

Also remember that both Kerry and Hagel are veterans. Both volunteered to serve and come from families that emphasized military service. Neither is true of Clinton or Panetta.

Tough to say that this change of tone was an intentional move by Obama, since it seems that Kerry was his second choice for State after Susan Rice, who I think would have been more of a soft-power diplomat.

Thanks for the insight -there are nuances to the reporting of news in the USA which escape us in the UK. I wonder what the view is on Obama's decision to refer the military strike to Congress. Some might see this as a weakness, a concession to those who believe that policy making was going too fast when it is up to the President to act decisively. Or that by going to Congress he is taking a political risk he doesn't need to, while in the process re-affirming the importance of Congress as a voice for 'the people' through their representatives, and is thus more inclusive than was experienced under the Bush administration.

Perhaps a mixture of the two, or maybe doubts about the consequences are now weighing more heavily than the 'moral' argument for action following a chemical act which according to Bild, in Germany, may have been caused by rogue elements in the military; although the same German intelligence body (the BND, gathering intel from a ship off the Syrian coast) claimed to have intercepted a phone call between a Hezbollah official in Beirut and an Iranian diplomat in Damascus which claims Asad ordered the attack.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/08/syria-chemical-assad_n_3889551.html

[cameron47]

Absolutely NOTHING...It is a civil war where you have the bad against the bad. You have the Assad regime fighting the rebels who are joined with Al Qaeda....there are no good guys here. The rebels are killing Christians and burning down churches...and I will bet both sides have used nerve gas. This is a conflict we need no part of and over 90% of the American people are against taking any military action....as nothing good will come from this.

[runningdownthatdream]

Thanks for the insight -there are nuances to the reporting of news in the USA which escape us in the UK. I wonder what the view is on Obama's decision to refer the military strike to Congress. Some might see this as a weakness, a concession to those who believe that policy making was going too fast when it is up to the President to act decisively. Or that by going to Congress he is taking a political risk he doesn't need to, while in the process re-affirming the importance of Congress as a voice for 'the people' through their representatives, and is thus more inclusive than was experienced under the Bush administration.

Perhaps a mixture of the two, or maybe doubts about the consequences are now weighing more heavily than the 'moral' argument for action following a chemical act which according to Bild, in Germany, may have been caused by rogue elements in the military; although the same German intelligence body (the BND, gathering intel from a ship off the Syrian coast) claimed to have intercepted a phone call between a Hezbollah official in Beirut and an Iranian diplomat in Damascus which claims Asad ordered the attack.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/08/syria-chemical-assad_n_3889551.html

I think Obama is going for the Pontius Pilate play and counting on a NO vote from Congress. It's the surest way he can wash his hands of the problem and keep up his anti-war persona while still making noise about what should be done.

[trish]

I think Obama is going for the Pontius Pilate play and counting on a NO vote from Congress. It's the surest way he can wash his hands of the problem and keep up his anti-war persona while still making noise about what should be done.That was my impression (and hope) until he started selling it. Why address the Nation tomorrow night if not to try to sway the general public? (On a side note, did all the type face get unreadily small in here, or did I do something to my setting?)

[runningdownthatdream]

That was my impression (and hope) until he started selling it. Why address the Nation tomorrow night if not to try to sway the general public? (On a side note, did all the type face get unreadily small in here, or did I do something to my setting?)

He already knows from the polling that a huge majority is opposed to any military action against Syria - he'll make a pitch about the awfulness about oppressive regimes, gassing of citizens, etc but he's counting on losing that vote in Congress. There's no real impetus for America to do anything other than some token word-play about human rights abuses. Americans in general don't really give a shit about non-white people killing each other. More-so that these are muslims killing each other.

In fact notice the massive upheavals in muslim countries in and around the middle-east since Obama took power? It kinda speaks to the methods he was advocating during the 2008 election. Namely that people in those countries should determine their own fates. I suspect American money has contributed to many of those opposition movements - certainly American technology (Facebook and Twitter to name a few) has had a profound impact on whats happened over. These same companies which may or may not be influenced by the CIA and NSA behind the scenes.

America has benefited from that upheaval as the internal conflicts over there has kept conflicts from America and its partners - all in all not a bad thing at all. Let the people in those countries figure out what's best for them.

On another note, what do you think about American politicans wanting to arm nameless/faceless Syrian 'rebels' with assault weapons to fight their own internationally recognized government while simultaneously decrying their use domestically? Are the conspiracy theorists right after all about the government wanting to ban assault weapons because they're fearful of another revolution?

...............................you must have screwed up your browser settings as i don't have any issue with reduced typeface

[Stavros]

That was my impression (and hope) until he started selling it. Why address the Nation tomorrow night if not to try to sway the general public? (On a side note, did all the type face get unreadily small in here, or did I do something to my setting?)

Must be your settings, it all looks the same from here.

Will be interesting to see if the Russian proposal to take Syria's chemical stocks leads anywhere- it started with what is becoming an irritating habit by John Kerry to improvise policy, suggesting in a speech in London the option of removal and then discounting it, only for the Russians to pick up the ball and play with it.
On the one hand, it would de-escalate the tension on this issue, but then the admin kicks in = identifying all the stocks, appointing independent people to remove them, verification that it has removed all the stocks, rather like verifying arms control between the USA and the USSR or decommissioning the IRA's weapons... suddenly the Russians and the Iranians -whose troops were subjected to chemical attack in the war with Iraq- realise that there must be limits, not least because in Russia's case those weapons could find their way into Russia as well as the Caucasus...I wonder if this is part of a movement that leads to a gradual run down of the violence -it won't end it, but perhaps it is time for the Syrian opposition, which militarily has barely achieved a stalemate, to reconsider its political strategy -if it has one.

[Ben]

Andrew Bacevich: Drama from Obama:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175744/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_drama_from_obama/

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

[Stavros]

Guess who's coming to dinner? Or not, as the case may be...

http://i.imgur.com/ipObN9R.jpg

[Ben]

Did Climate Change Cause Syria's Civil War? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgCXwmtLDls)

[Stavros]

What is the point of this rambling chatter? Climate has shaped farming in the Middle East since the Neolithic revolution, but surely in more recent times the volume of water for farming in Northern Syria has been affected by dams in Turkey, just as the volumes in the south-west have been affected by the competition for scarce water resources with Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. There was a famine in the 1930s and some political agitation accompanied it, although in Syria they didn't need bad harvests to complain about the French mandate, and in Palestine much of the conflict was shaped by the deterioration of relations between Arabs and Jews. That the Syrian government was unable to cope with a crisis in farming should not surprise anyone given the poor record of management the government has had for years; it is a dictatorship, the needs of the people come a distant second to the needs of the elite.

[trish]

Climatology currently is an amalgam of atmospheric physics, geography and statistics. No serious climatologist can point to a specific weather event, a tornado, a hurricane, a forest fire and claim it was the result of global warming. Though one can point to a series of such events as evidence for global warm. It is the same with the conflict in Syria. It is one particular event, and one that at first glance is fairly far removed from global warming. As Stavros points out, there are more probable hypothesis ready at hand that account for the current civil war. Badly managed resources, religious animosities and old tribal disputes. I doubt very much we can with a good scientific conscious point the finger climate change.

This is not to say that climate won't play a huge role in the future of Northern Africa and the Middle East. I mentioned in another thread that I had recently been to Morocco and marveled at the irrigation network that was being developed there. It is snow melt from the mountains that feed that network. Should the snow-caps vanish permanently, there would be no water to irrigate Moroccan crops. I think similar dangers prevail throughout the two regions.

[dderek123]

http://www.livememe.com/vacsuch.jpg

[Stavros]

Climatology currently is an amalgam of atmospheric physics, geography and statistics. No serious climatologist can point to a specific weather event, a tornado, a hurricane, a forest fire and claim it was the result of global warming. Though one can point to a series of such events as evidence for global warm. It is the same with the conflict in Syria. It is one particular event, and one that at first glance is fairly far removed from global warming. As Stavros points out, there are more probable hypothesis ready at hand that account for the current civil war. Badly managed resources, religious animosities and old tribal disputes. I doubt very much we can with a good scientific conscious point the finger climate change.

This is not to say that climate won't play a huge role in the future of Northern Africa and the Middle East. I mentioned in another thread that I had recently been to Morocco and marveled at the irrigation network that was being developed there. It is snow melt from the mountains that feed that network. Should the snow-caps vanish permanently, there would be no water to irrigate Moroccan crops. I think similar dangers prevail throughout the two regions.

I would agree with this, but add that in the cases of the terraced agriculture practised in Morocco and the Yemen (but which is common in many places in the world, such as China and the northern Philipppines) in recent years it is not just issues around water but terrace management that has put these 'hanging gardens' under strain. Pity as they are great to look at when maintained...
(in order: the Imli Valley in Morocco, and Yemen

http://moroccoonthemove.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/imlil-valley-morocco.jpg?w=610&h=405

http://www.filaha.org/images/introduction_popups_pics/terraced-fields-dira-yeme_L.jpg

[Ben]

A Plea for Caution From Russia
What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?hp&_r=1&

[Ben]

A Plea for Caution From Russia
What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?hp&_r=1&

An accompaniment to the article I posted....

[Ben]

Putin NY Times Op Ed On Syria Sparks Outrage - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnxXxPWdXxE)

[Ben]

Syria crisis: US and Russia agree chemical weapons deal

Inspectors to be given 'immediate unfettered access' with a 'comprehensive list' of weapons from Damascus within a week, says Kerry

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/14/syris-crisis-us-russia-chemical-weapons-deal

[Ben]

Assad Interview With Dennis Kucinich On Fox News - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdvgz-PnGE)

[thx1138]

This is interesting:
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/syria-chemical-weapons-victims-were.html

[Ben]

Mission Accomplished In Syria? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6f55m7o3E0)

[Dino Velvet]

http://news.yahoo.com/syria-39-assad-sends-message-pope-194045940.html


Syria's Assad sends message to pope

http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/news/2013-08-26/d19448d6-6aaa-4359-a768-eadacf5fbca9_afp-gif_new.gif (http://www.afp.com/) 51 minutes ago



Vatican City (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a message to Pope Francis Saturday, that state media said expressed his determination to defend Syrians of all religions against hardline Islamists among the rebels.
The message was passed on through a Syrian government delegation that held talks at the Vatican with the pontiff's Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and foreign affairs official Dominique Mamberti."The delegation brought a message from President Assad for the Holy Father and explained the position of the Syrian government," a statement said.
The official Syrian Arab News Agency said Assad expressed his government's "determination to exercise its right to defend all its citizens, whatever their religion, against the crimes committed by the takfiri (Sunni Muslim extremist) bands who attack them in their homes, in their places of worship and in their neighbourhoods."
Assad's regime prides itself on its secularism. While the rebels fighting for its overthrow are mainly Sunni, the government draws much of its support from Assad's own Alawite minority, as well as from Christians and other minorities.
Assad said the conflict could be resolved only by a "national dialogue between Syrians without foreign interference, because the Syrian people is the sole master of its own destiny and it alone should its leadership."
He condemned the "military, logistic and material support being provided to the terrorists by neighbouring countries," an allusion to the aid being provided to the rebels through Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.
The pope, who was elected in March, used his first "Urbi et Orbi" speech on Christmas Day to plead for humanitarian aid access in Syria and an end to the violence.
"Too many lives have been shattered in recent times by the conflict in Syria, fuelling hatred and vengeance," the 77-year-old pope said on Wednesday.
"Let us continue to ask the Lord to spare the beloved Syrian people further suffering, and to enable the parties in conflict to put an end to all violence and guarantee access to humanitarian aid."
The conflict is estimated to have killed more than 126,000 people and displaced millions since it first started out as peaceful anti-regime protests in 2011.
Earlier this month, the pontiff called for prayers for 12 nuns seized from their convent in Syria.
In September he organised a global day of prayer for peace in Syria, speaking out against the prospect of Western military intervention.

[Stavros]

The ‘Geneva II’ talks are scheduled to take place next week -in Montreux. Geneva II is supposed to take to the next stage the measures that were announced in Geneva I in June 2012. Most of the parties to the conflict have said they will attend the talks which are aimed at bringing a halt to the fighting and the start of meaningful talks on political change in Syria and ancillary issues, such as refugees. However, at this stage the Syrian govt has already stated it will not hand over power, which makes the attempt to plan a transition seem pointless if there is not going to be one. The Syrian govt can claim to have made concessions to the Syrian National Coalition which previously said it would not attend the talks if the govt did not release prisoners, especially women, whereas now that the Govt has said it will do that the SNC has said it will go. The SNC says it will be bringing with it representatives of the Kurdish communities and other rebel groups, but the Jihadi have condemned the talks and claimed anyone who goes is a traitor. Iran did not sign the Geneva I communique and has not been invited although the US thinks the Iranians should be there.

The prognosis for the talks achieving their primary objectives is poor. The Syrian Govt is in a powerful position, entering the third year of the conflict without any sign of weakness. The armed forces and the political machine have both survived defections, and the Syrians may feel that the decisions made by the UK and the USA not to become engaged militarily has strengthened their position. Although this might be true militarily, politically the government is trying to hold on to a status quo ante, as if a ‘military victory’ were not only possible but would return Syria to the situation it was in before the conflict began in March 2011. If anything, the lack of political initiatives coming out of Damascus will maintain the fighting in the absence of a credible alternative, unless the Syrians are going to show us something different.

The Syrian opposition continues to be the weak link in the overall picture. The initial assumptions that the conflict in Syria would lead to a rapid change of government have turned out to be false, and the badly divided opposition has enabled the survival of the regime largely through its own incompetence which, in turn, has lead to a crushing lack of confidence in it in the west. Notwithstanding the allegations about who was responsible for the chemicals weapons attacks which were supposed to be a ‘game changer’, the refusal of the British Parliament to support military engagement, and President Obama’s referral of the matter to Congress reflected the lack of confidence in both the outcome of a military engagement and in the ability of the existing opposition to take advantage of it.

I think the best outcome which has a realistic chance of being approved by all may concern the fate of the refugees, of which over a million now rot in camps in Jordan and Turkey. This displacement of refugees relative to the population of Jordan, for example, is equivalent to the entire population of Poland arriving in the USA seeking help. One slim feeler which has also emerged in the last three months or so is the realisation among some opposition groups that the Jihadi groups operating mostly in the north-east and in areas around Aleppo are undermining their long term political ambitions. As with the ‘Arab Awakening’ in Iraq that was coincident with the ‘surge’, the mostly foreign Jihadis with their extremist ideology have alienated local people, and while it is still too soon to see the Syrian opposition dealing with the Syrian govt in order to eliminate this component of the problem, it is not beyond the realms of possibility. It is not only the Govt that seems to lack initiative, the Syrian opposition has to ask itself where it is going, because it is not clear to outsiders.

On the positive side, there seems to be some acceptance by the US that the Russians are in Syria for the long haul, and are more likely to play a positive than a negative role; the same is also true of Iran which the Americans see as a key player as the backer of both Asad and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The US wants to keep the conflict out of Lebanon (to protect the security of Israel) but also is coming round to the idea that the Rouhani govt is genuine in its desires for reform and that this is the best opportunity in years to bring Iran into the mainstream of Middle Eastern politics, although this is one of the issues that most annoys Saudi Arabia.

On the negative side, Saudi Arabia is still seething with rage over Obama’s referral of military engagement to Congress. Robert Gates, in his book states that Obama has an aversion to military solutions to political problems -an obvious legacy of the Bush Presidency but also something I think most Americans approve of- whereas the Saudis were desperate for the US to get more involved and by not doing so believe they will now have to engage more than they have done so far. This is a problem because the Saudis have not used their troops in a regional conflict since the ‘revolutionary’ war in the Yemen in the 1960s (other than than sporadic air force activity in Desert Storm in 1991), which leaves them with the option they have used ever since, to fund covert autonomous or semi-autonomous guerilla groups. But this has already backfired on them as the al-Qaeda franchise shows in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Nevertheless, the Saudi position to extend the military engagement on the basis that it is the only way to eliminate the Asad regime and in doing so weaken Iran, remains in place.

In the long term, Saudi Arabia continues to believe it should rule throughout the Middle East, what is most worrying is not just that they are extending the misery for a political objective they can’t guarantee, there is now a belief that the rocket attack from Lebanon last month was launched by an 'al-Qaeda' unit, whatever that means these days. There is no guarantee that the 'autonomous' groups fighting for the Saudis might not improvise their tactics and decide to attack Israel as part of the wider Jihad, in other words, the more the Saudis get involved the worse for all concerned.

In sum, if there are any practical agreements at the talks they will not have been a waste of time, but on the fundamental issue of political change in Syria I am pessimistic about an agreement, and for every day that passes, more people will die.

Mark Katz on Russia and Syria (4 Myths)
http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/russia-and-conflict-syria-four-myths

New York Times on the rocket attack from Lebanon last month:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/world/middleeast/region-boiling-israel-takes-up-castle-strategy.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0

[Prospero]

Pessimism is is utterly appropriate. I see no early end to things there.

[Dino Velvet]

Impressive post, Stavros. Thank you.

[Stavros]

Although the last month has seen some important developments in the struggle for power in Syria, as usual it is hard to know how these will affect any long term attempt to bring this catastrophe to an end (Polio is now rife in Syria and in the refugee camps, one of the bleakest components of the conflict).

1. Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia last month is now believed to have been difficult, possibly confrontational, but one from which both sides have tried to find a compromise in order to retain the relationship the USA has maintained with Saudi Arabia since the 1930s.
-Bandar bin Sultan, the intelligence chief and the most prominent pro-American Saudi in the ruling family (he has personally known every American President since Jimmy Carter), has been removed, or resigned, largely because his aggressive stance on Syria has failed to produce regime change. If this was a sign that Saudi Arabia has lost a sense of direction, then its anger with the USA for not stepping into the gap with its military forces may have been assuaged by the news that the Syrian opposition is now using American made weapons, not the first rate 'MANPAD' shoulder-to-air missiles, but the lesser BGM-71 TOW anti-tank rockets though it is not clear who supplied them and it us unlikely they were provided directly by an American source. These weapons are supposed to be used against the Syrian Air Force, but there are fears they could end up in the hands of Salafi groups.
In addition, the US has agreed to increase the number of Syrian rebels it has been training in Jordan where for years the US has monitored the Middle East -they built an enormous new embassy there not long after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Obama, it seems, is more tuned to covert action than its more accountable alternative.
The problem for me is that the Syrian opposition is so weak politically, I don't see what it can do on the military front, even with American weaponry, except delay a conclusion to this conflict for several more years.

2. The other concern about Bandar's removal/resignation is that it signals a moment of change within Saudi Arabia, as King Abdullah is dying and his nearest successor Salman is apparently suffering from dementia, so there is talk of the next King being a 'youthful' 68 year old called Muqrin who is not descended from the Sudairi Seven, the sons born to Ibn Saud's favourite wife who have provided all of Saudi Arabia's kings so far, although Muqrin is one the 45 official sons Ibn Saud did produce...Muqrin might be a moderniser in the context of Saudi Arabia, but his hostility to the Shi'a is well documented, so this is unlikely to lead to a rapprochement with Iran.

3. The success that Putin has achieved in the Crimea, and the pressure he is exerting on the Ukraine to reduce its ties to NATO and the EU, suggests Russia will also not be looking for a diplomatic conclusion to the Syrian conflict just yet. Russia believes its support for the Damascus government is paying off, and that it will strengthen their position as a world power with influence.

Some recent reports (of varying quality)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-conflict-a-shift-for-fading-insurgency-as-foreign-backers-look-to-reverse-months-of-military-defeats-at-the-hands-of-government-soldiers-9265567.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-obama-appears-ready-to-expand-covert-assistance-to-syrian-opposition/2014/03/27/06717e6a-b5ff-11e3-8020-b2d790b3c9e1_story.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/04/17/358894/bandar-dismissal-no-letup-for-syria/

http://www.meforum.org/3683/bandar-bin-sultan-syria?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=450&width=600&caption=Middle+East+Forum+%3A%3A+Writings

[martin48]

OMG, forgot about Syria. Is it still there? News has moved to Ukraine now!

[trish]

Forgive me, but I'm American (and proud of it). Where's Ukraine now?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/

Sorry for the digression. As you were. Smoke, if you got 'em.

[martin48]

All you need to know, Trish, is that it's those commie bastards again, and you are going to get really tough with them.




Forgive me, but I'm American (and proud of it). Where's Ukraine now?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/

Sorry for the digression. As you were. Smoke, if you got 'em.

[Stavros]

Forgive me, but I'm American (and proud of it). Where's Ukraine now?


I didn't do as well as I thought I might on the capitals of US states and in the one on Middle Eastern states it includes Afghanistan, Uzbekistan etc which are not really in the Middle East.

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm

http://lizardpoint.com/geography/

[Stavros]

If you believe what you read in some of the papers, this has been a momentous week in the history of the conflict in Syria. This evening the BBC reported on refugees returning to their homes in Homs, where the conflict began in 2011, following a negotiation between the government, the rebels and the Iranians, whereby the rebel fighters have been allowed to leave Homs, while they in turn have released Iranians they were holding hostage. The Iranians claimed therefore to have 'won' and the apparent retreat of the rebels has been presented as a sign that the Syrian government is winning this 'war'.
But what in fact has the government of Bashar al-Asad actually won? The people the BBC spoke to were returning to Homs not to start again, but to collect their belongings, such as they were, and go somewhere else, preferably out of Syria altogether. And while Homs is a major victory for Asad owing to its strategic location, the government does not rule over Syria, which remains a fractured state. And we may as well say in advance because we know that Asad has won the elections planned for the 3rd of June, not least the landslide vote for him in Homs where the mere idea that an election could take place is an obscenity characteristic of this civil war.

Crucially, this is a victory for Iran, and conforms not just the deep relationship between the government, Iran and its proxy militia in Lebanon, but the fact some of us pointed out in 2003, that regime change in Iraq would be a significant boost to Iran's regional aspirations. Commentary, a journal not noted for its sympathy for Middle Eastern political issues unless they serve the interests of Israel, has made the telling point that the primary negotiator in the Homs deal though Iran's ambassador to Syria, has a background not in the diplomatic corps, but the Revolutionary Guard. While this is a telling point Michael Rubin's attempt to suggest the New York Times did not report on this because "to suggest that under Obama’s watch the IRGC is supervising and confirming the defeat of Syrian rebels" sidesteps the nodal point that without George Bush and Tony Blair, Iran might not have been in a position to crow about its 'diplomatic' achievement.

An intriguing prospect now looms -Iran's Republican Guard has set up shop in Syria, a commander in the Republican Guard set panic buttons off when he stated
"Today we fight in Syria for interests such as the Islamic Revolution…” and “Iran has formed a second Hezbollah in Syria.”
So his comments were immediately removed from the public sphere (some hope!). And yet...the Salafi extremists in the north loathe and detest the Iranians, and vice versa -but who has the firepower to crush the other, if it can be done...enter the Russians. Watch this space.

Articles from Commentary, The Economist and the comment by Hussein Hamedani of the Iranian Republican Guardlinked here -

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/05/08/what-the-new-york-times-omits-on-syria/
http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/05/syrias-war
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/05/09/Homs-truce-underscores-high-degree-of-Iranian-involvement.html

[AlexisDVyne]

Solution for Syria..

Get the USA to stay the fuck out of it..

Everyone in the USA needs to hammer this all over the twitter accounts of all the people in office.. I'm talking like 10's of millions of twitter posts..

This is part of the global destabilization campaign of the USA backed Banksters..

They lost the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.. they can't win in Syria or Ukraine either.. When they can't win they destabilize..

I guarantee if you give them more weapons.. those weapons will kill americans one day..

The biggest problem with american sheeple is that they're 99% passive to getting fucked over by their government..

The middle east isn't ruled by democracy.. it never will be.. It takes a powerful man with charisma to unite them under a single banner.. they rule by the gun and so it shall be.. as long as religion divides them this is how it will be..

The american version of democracy is a fucking joke.. There's no normal people in congress.. Just well to do's that have no concept of work or suffering..

Of course they'll just hire Blackwater if they can't send in troops..

[Stavros]

As over a year has passed since this thread was live, a re-cap may be in order as there is, possibly, a new chapter opening in the Syrian conflict -again!, and not for the last time.

Syria is or was a country of 23 million, of whom 7.6 million are now classified by the UN as internally displaced people, while 1 in 4 of every refugee in the world today is Syrian, meaning that overall 43% of the population has been displaced by war in one way or another. Three out of four Syrians live in poverty, and the estimates of the numbers killed range from 220,00 (UN figures) to 320,000 (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights).

The government of Syria continues its aerial and land assault on what it calls 'rebel held areas', where something like 11 or more un-coordinated armed rebel groups are fighting the government, funded or supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the USA, not including Daesh or the Nusrah Front.

For its part, the Syrian government continues to rely on support and direct military assistance from Iran in the east, and Hezbollah in Lebanon in the west. It is the claim that though resilient, the Syrian armed forces are stretched and tired that may explain an apparent increase in Russia's commitment to the Asad regime, with the deployment of materiel and personnel (but not yet ground troops) to an air base north-east of Damascus, while Russia maintains its naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast.

The key point of interest in the last month or so is the claim that the USA has lost its leading influence on regional politics and that the Russians are entering this vacated space. The loss of the USA's influence has been noted first in the failure to mend the broken system in Iraq since the departure of President al-Maliki, a failure that has entrenched Daesh in Iraq with no sign of a Sunni-led attack on it; second is the failure to sponsor an armed rebel group in Syria at a cost of $500 million -a project intended to create a force of 5,000 sent an initial group of 54 into the field who were attacked and routed by an affiliate group of al-Qaeda leaving 4-5 as the only fighters left, though at least 200 are still in training. Third has been the alienation of Saudi Arabia from the Obama Presidency which led the Saudis to visit Moscow and which may lie behind what is being seen as a Russian-sponsored attack on Daesh in Syria (see below). Although fighting a proxy war with Iran, Saudi Arabia is furious with the USA for not doing more to attack both Daesh and Asad in Syria at the level it wants, but much of this comes from the aggressive new monarchy of King Salman and in particular his sock it to 'em Crown Prince Mohammed who has been a driving force in their futile war in the Yemen.

Whether or not Obama has 'abandoned' the Middle East is debatable, given the enduring support for Israel and the continuation of drone strikes in Syria and the Yemen. The criticism from outside is in effect levelled at Congress for not authorising more direct action, but it comes from states who do not need, indeed never seek the authorisation from their people to engage in war.

According to Robert Fisk in today's Independent (28th September 2015), Vladimir Putin may be organising a military campaign to oust Daesh from the ancient town of Palmyra, a campaign that is expected anytime between now and the end of 2015. This is seen as militarily 'doable' hence the build-up of materiel in an air base north-east of Damascus, and if successful -and that is a pretty big IF- would demonstrate that Daesh can be beaten by direct action, while the Russians would be in a strong position (they believe) to protect the Asad family through a diplomatic initiative which would support a 'transition' in Syria, but one that would take years during which Asad would remain head of state. Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Moscow where he was told of Russian plans so as not to alarm Israel should Russian jets fly into Israeli air space.

The claim that Russia is in the ascendancy and America in retreat has yet to be played out for real. The Russians are making what to me looks like a huge gamble on Palmyra, if that is what is about to happen, given that predictions in the Middle East are always unreliable.

It sets up a dilemma for either Republican or Democrat Presidential candidate in the next 18 moths, as the situation may change, but as the arguments for or against more involvement in Syria rise and fall. I suspect most Americans cannot see an end-game in Syria that would advantage anyone least of all the USA, and are therefore reluctant to get involved, I believe the same is true of opinion in the UK; but for the USA to hold back to some American foreign policy insiders is a dangerous long term position in a region where the USA needs to maintain a presence, and not just in Israel.

Only one thing is certain: the fighting will continue, with no end in sight, for even if the rebels agree to negotiate with the Asad government, and some have indicated a willingness to do so, Daesh is unlikely at the moment to engage in diplomacy, while the prospect of Turkey creating a buffer-zone in Northern Syria remains an option that in itself could lead to a long drawn out conflict with Syrian Kurds. Or to put it another way, Syria is what the Americans call a cluster-fuck, and best of luck with that!

[buttslinger]

I don't think it's any big secret Obama wants to fight his war in poor black neighborhoods, not the middle east. We should send McCain and his little buddy Lindsey Graham over there with some Jets and a few billion bucks and show ISIS and Putin who calls the shots on this planet.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=buttslinger;1638772]
I don't think it's any big secret Obama wants to fight his war in poor black neighborhoods, not the middle east.
--What? I don't understand this.

We should send McCain and his little buddy Lindsey Graham over there with some Jets and a few billion bucks and show ISIS and Putin who calls the shots on this planet.
-The US Air Force has been bombing targets in Syria for over a year, what does McCain have to do with it?

[broncofan]

I read your write up two posts ago Stavros and it does portray a clusterfuck. It almost seems there is no course of action in the Syria that can relieve tensions, quiet hostilities, or get rid of either ISIS or Assad (the latter of which is becoming increasingly difficult because the Russians and Iranians want to prop him up as a bulwark against the former).

As you say, it may not be the case of Obama abandoning the Middle East but rather recognizing the U.S has very little power to quell a civil war that is becoming a regional proxy war, and we should be wary of our expenditures as they do not seem to be moving us in a clear direction.

[broncofan]

but for the USA to hold back to some American foreign policy insiders is a dangerous long term position in a region where the USA needs to maintain a presence, and not just in Israel.

But not to hold back would mean figuring something out that is constructive. Killing Daesh members with airstrikes seems to have little downside. Trying to oust Assad or to support rebel groups who are trying to do the same now seems like an enormous liability since it would be directly antagonistic to what the Russians and Iranians are now committed to doing. We don't even know what end game we want except for Daesh to be gone, Assad to be gone, and some semblance of organization in the country. But what action by the U.S gets the country anywhere near that outcome?

[buttslinger]

I don't think it's any big secret Obama wants to fight his war in poor black neighborhoods, not the middle east.
There used to be a saying "No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger"
If you live in a poor black neighborhood you don't want Dick Cheney pouring cash and blood into the sand of Iraq, you want to focus on the problems of this nation first. Build Schools and Hospitals here. Obama's political career started in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago, I really do think he's in this for them. In his Heart.
The US Air Force has been bombing targets in Syria for over a year, what does McCain have to do with it?
You'd have to live over here to know McCain is almost cartoonish when it comes to the Middle East. He wants a military solution to everything. Boots on the ground. Boots up people's asses. McCain's dad was a hot shot general, he grew up a military brat, just like Obama came up as a black man in the United States (kinda)
Hillary comes right from her stint as Secretary of State, and you'll see her take a lot more interest in the Middle East than Obama. If Bush wasn't such a complete imbecile we might have actually WON the second Iraq War. We could have been a stabilizing force. Hillary is much more willing to get in bed with the devil than Obama is. To achieve her goals.

Maybe the Russians will get lost in Afghanistan again. I can't see one good thing than has ever come out of the Middle East for the US, not one thing.

[fred41]

But not to hold back would mean figuring something out that is constructive. Killing Daesh members with airstrikes seems to have little downside. Trying to oust Assad or to support rebel groups who are trying to do the same now seems like an enormous liability since it would be directly antagonistic to what the Russians and Iranians are now committed to doing. We don't even know what end game we want except for Daesh to be gone, Assad to be gone, and some semblance of organization in the country. But what action by the U.S gets the country anywhere near that outcome?
Politics is everything here.
Our air strikes don't seem to have even nearly enough effect...and some of our gaffes, such as the 'red line' fiasco have only made things worse...We're walking a tight rope here...
There's a limit as to what we can do there - it's going to be a nuanced affair...but in that particular area of the globe, I think one of the worst things you can do is to appear weak.
No one likes Putin...but they fear him, and right now, that may be more important than a country that 'says' the right things, but won't help or protect you when you may need them.

[buttslinger]

Bashar and Vlad are business partners from way back. When there's blood on the streets buy real estate.
Let Turkey and Saudi Arabia kill people for a while.
As long as we are spending all that money on jets and drones, using them for humanitarian reasons sounds good to me, better than letting them rust on the ground, but our middle east plan is getting oil from US Shale.

[Stavros]

I read your write up two posts ago Stavros and it does portray a clusterfuck. It almost seems there is no course of action in the Syria that can relieve tensions, quiet hostilities, or get rid of either ISIS or Assad (the latter of which is becoming increasingly difficult because the Russians and Iranians want to prop him up as a bulwark against the former).

As you say, it may not be the case of Obama abandoning the Middle East but rather recognizing the U.S has very little power to quell a civil war that is becoming a regional proxy war, and we should be wary of our expenditures as they do not seem to be moving us in a clear direction.

One way of looking at this cluster is to see which parts can be picked off to reduce the number of parties engaged in the conflict, or at least to stop the fighting. Just last week the Syrian government and rebel groups reached a ceasefire agreement -the 'Zabadani ceasefire' (see the link below)-allowing for a local agreement to stop the fighting and evacuate towns and villages under siege. The location is in Idlib province, the same one attacked yesterday and today by Russian jets, but presumably not in the same places, but illustrating how on the one hand local agreements can become a piecemeal part of a wider peace, yet remain fragile to the point of collapse.

The US in this context could conceivably join with the Russians (I believe John Kerry is meeting Segei Lavrov today -1st October 2015)- to promote this kind of solution, rather than show just how effective their military can be -or not. In the short to medium term, if this means Asad has to remain President of Syria then this must be part of the deal, as long as there is a longer term programme for a transition to a different political arrangement. In Syria the lack of confidence between the parties is not much different from those years when there was no confidence between the Israelis or the PLO that either side was serious about peace, yet the Peace Treaty did eventually get signed.

But what that also suggests is that there is never a 'final solution' to these conflicts and that the best one can have is a managed peace. Because Daesh is a 'state within a state' it appears to be easy to pick off, but as has been shown with the Taliban in Afghanistan, total defeat may not be possible and in this sense attempting to 'wipe out' Daesh is actually meaningless. I can see the so-called 'Islamic state' collapsing from within as much as without, but the dream of a Caliphate is not going to die anymore than Irish republicans will ever give up their yearning for a United Ireland. The point would be that for all their current hatreds the parties to the conflict in Syria can compromise, as has already been shown, but to reach a point where enough parties to the conflict accept this and agree to meet to negotiate we need external actors like Turkey,Saudi Arabia and Iran to stop pouring fuel on the fire.

It may that the Syrian government believes this 'surge' by the Russian military will finally tilt the balance in favour of more ceasefires from exhausted rebels, and that may be why Syria has (presumably) asked the Russians to attack the rebels first, but it could make the situation worse. For that reason I would rather the US and the Russians talk in practical terms about how to bring these parties to the table, rather than take them to the graveyard.

The Zabadani Ceasefire agreement can be read about here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Zabadani_cease-fire_agreement

[fred41]

...or Russia may in fact, be targeting rebels to leave only Assad and Daesh, so the US will have no choice but to back Assad.
That theory is making some of the media rounds...don't know how true it is.

[Stavros]

Fred there is a lot to say about the theory you outlined, with the usual 'But...'. In a post a few days ago I picked up on Robert Fiks's claim the Russians would prove what great guys they are by evicting Daesh from Palmyra some time between now and December, whereas it is now clear their initial campaign is to attack the Syrian rebels, even if this does not rule out strikes on Daesh. An analysis in The Guardian yesterday claims that a key reason for the Russian intervention has been the depletion of the troops the Syrian army can put on the ground. From a force of around 300,00 at the start of the war, the army can now only rely on between 80,000 to 100,000 -

Officials and analysts say Moscow decided to deepen its involvement after the fall of the northern towns of Idlib (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/19/syria-rebels-seize-key-regime-base-mastouma-idlib) and nearby Jisr al-Shughour (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/27/syrian-rebels-hail-fall-of-jisr-al-shughour-as-sign-of-growing-strength) in May served as a “wake-up call” about the parlous state of the Syrian army. Both were taken by the Jaysh al-Fateh (the Victory Army), a coalition of Islamist rebels.

Russia’s move was prompted in part by Assad’s other main ally, Iran, which plays a powerful though discreet role in Syria (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/21/irans-shadowy-influence-in-syrias-maelstrom-fuels-paranoia-and-wariness) but is usually reluctant to commit its own forces. “The Iranians told the Russians bluntly: if you don’t intervene, Bashar al-Assad will fall, and we are not in a position to keep propping him up,” said a Damascus-based diplomat.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/01/syrian-military-weakness-russian-intervention

Yesterday Sergei Lavrov clarified Russia's perception: "If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it's a terrorist, right?" This for Russia is hugely important because they not only believe that overthrowing dictators causes more problems than it solves, this was also the position of the USSR, while the right of governments to 'suppress' armed opposition using maximum force is taken as the sovereign right of that government, much as Putin trashed Chechnya as one of his first acts when becoming President in 1999 - the suppression of the democracy movement in China in 1984 is another example, Hafez al-Asad's brutal suppression of the insurrection in 1983 another and more pertinent one.

The assumption behind all this is yes, that the Syrian rebels will either be defeated or sue for peace, which as I suggested yesterday has already happened with some groups in Idlib Province. And that if there was a sequence of talks this will lessen the fighting between the Syrians and the rebels and clear the way for the long awaited attack on Daesh, because so far, the Syrian government has more or less left Daesh alone, as David Blair claims in today's Telegraph:
A study conducted by IHS Jane’s, a defence consultancy, found that of 982 operations launched by the regime’s forces in 2014, only 6 per cent targeted Isil. This was the year when Isil overran swathes of eastern Syria, seizing valuable oilfields and their de facto capital, Raqqa. While this was happening, Assad was hurling 94 per cent of his military effort against the other rebel movements. When Isil advanced, they often captured territory not from the regime but from rival insurgents. By using barrel bombs, chlorine gas and strike aircraft against the rebels in Isil’s path, Assad actually helped the terrorists to gain ground.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11905028/Vladimir-Putins-catastrophic-plan-for-Syria-would-deliver-war-without-end.html

What happens next I don't know. Both Russian bases on the Mediterranean -the naval base at Tartus and the air base at Latakia- have been shored up with ground forces, a battalion each I believe, but it is still a gamble based on the military might of Russia changing the agenda. If it succeeds, it doesn't end the war as Daesh will go down fighting; if it fails, the war will go on.

[nitron]

What to do about Syria? What to do about ......(most places on the map,all kinds of p)

[Stavros]

There is no doubt at the moment that the priority for Russian targets are rebels fighting Asad rather than Daesh, as the map of air strikes in October shows (below with link). We do not yet know if the claim by Daesh that it downed the Metrojet plane over Sinai is true, or if there was a bomb on board, or if the plane broke up from other causes, but it does raise the prospect of the Russians having to increase their strikes on Daesh in Syria.

What has interested me in recent weeks is the argument in which those who support the Russian strategy in itself and because it exposes the 'weakness' of President Obama, make the judgement that Daesh is the bigger threat and must be dealt with urgently. The point of interest is that we have been here before at least twice in history, and the record of supporting 'the bad guy' in order to eliminate the 'even worse guy' is not a good one even when the worst is seen off the stage. Consider -

Case 1: USSR
In 1919 in an attempt to derail the Bolshevik Revolution and support the 'White' armies, British, American, Chinese and other troops landed in various parts of Russia to engage the enemy -with no success. Retreating behind an emerging Cold War the deep mistrust of the Bolsheviks hardened with the ascendancy of Stalin and the USSR's interventions in the Spanish Civil War, but reached a nadir with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. But when the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, the West found itself in a situation where it was able to -indeed felt it had to- form an alliance with the USSR because Nazi Germany was the greater threat to Europe. As a consequence political economic and military support flowed in to the USSR on land and by sea and played a role in the eventual defeat of Germany.
What happened next was that Stalin used his new found status as the free world's buddy, and used it to carve up Europe giving the USSR control over most of central and eastern Europe. In the years between 1945 and Stalin's death in 1953 there was a renewal of the purges that had taken place in the 1930s, even more people were summarily executed or sent to the Gulag Archipelago, while in the areas under Soviet control every uprising against it was met with brute force -Berlin in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980.

Case 2: Iraq
The career of Saddam Hussein -who was destined for a life in crime until he realised politics paid better- took off when the Ba'ath Party mounted a successful coup in 1968, aided by the CIA whose primary concern at the time was to see off the Iraqi Communist Party. They supplied many of the names on the list which was given to the B'ath party's security service who used it to deal with the Commies in the only way they knew how (imprisonment, torture, death), a steep learning curve for Saddam which also gave him an entry into the higher reaches of the Ba'ath Party's security apparatus from which he launched his leadership campaign which saw him get top job in 1979. A year later, urged on by the USA, Iraq invaded Iran in order to derail the Islamic Revolution and however bad Iraq was in this war, and it was bad enough to use chemicals weapons to attack both Kurdish rebels in the north, and Iranian forces (many of whom were under the age of 16) in the south, Iran was considered the greater threat.
What happened after the Iran-Iraq War was that Saddam Hussein, who had bankrupted his country -indeed, both Iran and Iraq spent more money fighting the war than the entire revenue they had acquired from oil- used his alliance with the USA to invade Kuwait, according to some account with the approval, or more precisely without an explicit objection, on the part of April Glaspie who was the USA's ambassador to Iraq at the time. The consequence for Iraq was not just a devastating war following hard upon a devastating war, but a sanctions regime and the beginnings of the dismemberment of the state that has worsened ever since.

But here is the key point, summed up by Henry Kissinger earlier this year:
“The destruction of ISIS is more urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who has already lost over half of the area he once controlled. Making sure that this territory does not become a permanent terrorist haven must have precedence."

But what happens if, for the sake of argument, Asad is backed because Daesh is the greater enemy and is destroyed in Syria. Would this not embolden the Asad regime to see off its remaining rebels? And what about Lebanon? Syrians like Asad have never accepted the separation of Lebanon from Syria and see it as part of Syria, as is also true of the old Sanjak of Alexandretta which was annexed illegally by Turkey in 1938 and is these days called 'Hatay'.

Asad may be better than Daesh, but neither he nor the clique around him who own Syria are trustworthy and none can be trusted 'after the war' to do anything other than anything that will give them power and riches -and if as is likely Syria continues to decline, Lebanon would be considered 'fair compensation' for its losses.

Maybe in the light of history, Obama's caution is the wisest position to take. Strengthening the position of a mass murderer has been tried before, and in the long term was just as bad, if not a worse, option.

Link to Kissinger's remark is below the map.

890355
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/russia-in-syria-russia-launches-missiles-against-isis-from-caspian-sea-a6684631.html

http://www.newsweek.com/kissinger-right-about-assad-and-isis-388902?ref=yfp

[buttslinger]

I think you could say that outside interference into Middle Eastern Politics has just compounded a age old problem into a present mega-problem. In the 20th century Europe drew the map for the middle east and didn't do a very good job. Then it helped put Israel in the middle of it. In many ways the middle east is more about tribes than countries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_jDX2WtiA

[buttslinger]

If your family has lived in Idaho from the very beginning, that's probably 7 or 8 generations. Before Jefferson sent Lewis and Clarke out there, the civilized world didn't even know Idaho was there!
The Cradle of Civilization.....the Garden of Eden.......is between the Tigris and Euphrates, before that, there was no civilization. All those begats and begats in the Old Testament Bible go back to this area, the Middle East.
So I really doubt that any real American gets what is going on over there, it would be impossible.
On the other hand, I'd bet the CIA has as good a guess as anyone on what is "going on" in Syria, and based on that Obama decided to LET IT BURN.
Practically every leader over there is a bully or tyrant, that's no accident, you have to be a Political Strongman to keep all your individual tribes in order. Paul Ryan would not last 5 minutes over there.
Probably the most despicable recent example is Idaho's favorite son, Dick $heney, who sent our National Guardsmen over to Iraq for four tours to protect his Haliburton goals. Haliburton won that war.
I think one Reason Obama is sending guys into Syria now is because of what happened on that Isis rescue mission: our ADVISORS couldn't just stand there when bullets started flying, the "boots on the ground" guys (I hate that phrase) they are sending in are not 19 year old National Guard weekend warriors....these guys are special forces Seals and Rangers who are born killers and really are the best trained troops that have ever existed. Isis be punks.
I also think Obama didn't want Hillary to be the one tagged as putting BOOTS ON THE GROUND in Syria. Where Obama represents the Dove side of the Democratic party, Clinton leans Hawkish. So Obama sees the writing on the wall and is doing Hillary a SOLID by doing some groundwork for the inevitable future.
But this still leaves questions on what would happen if Bashir was nixed. Every realistic replacement would not be a friend to the U. S. or Israel. All you can really do is remind Russia and Iran that we have a long arm and will use it if necessary.
And I have a feeling Hillary Clinton is going to be a lot more hands on when it comes to flexing America's Power. Hillary is going to be a lot more Shakespearean than... maybe any President, uh-oh.

[daltx_m]

bomb them all into submission.

[Stavros]

bomb them all into submission.

What has four years of bombing achieved so far? And what do you when 'they' submit?

[buttslinger]

What has four years of bombing achieved so far? And what do you when 'they' submit?

As far as four years of bombing goes, that's kind of a GESTURE more than bombing. People forget that if the United States really puts it's back into something, they could take over Iraq in a week, or certainly blow up the entire infrastructure of Syria. The problem really is that "they" will never submit, and why should they?
You can bet your bottom dollar the CIA has it's eyes focused firmly on Syria, and has decided the best course of action is the only real course of action, let things play out. As soon as the USA develops a practical electric car, (25 years?) then the middle east will be broke. What's left will be FAMILY PROBLEMS, no need to get in the middle of those. Then all we'll have to worry about is Israel and Iran starting WWIII.

[buttslinger]

I notice DINO VELVET started this thread, the Syria War has being going on, what, ..five years?

All the towns in Syria are rubble, refugees are flooding into Europe, and in just the last two weeks, because of Paris, things have come to a head.

I have finally figured out why I thought ISIS sounds like a cartoon villain name, it is the name of the spy organization on the TV show ARCHER.
If this sounds trivial, that's part of the problem OVER HERE,....ISIS is messing up my pain over the Redskins humiliating loss to the Carolina Panthers, The reality of war in Syria is messing up my Thanksgiving plans. To be honest, there is NOBODY in my life that I sit down with and have a serious talk with about Syria, other than interest, there is no "GO TO" place to get the facts, the War is completely different if you tune into FOX News, ..or MSNBC.

The way I see it is that the War in Syria is the center of the mess, and the problem is the USA wants to get suckered into saving Assad's job and cleaning up the trillion dollar mess he made.

It's a clusterfuck of the highest order, lawless gangs living out their "HOSTEL MOVIE" fantasies robbing banks and stealing billions of dollars worth of oil to finance an orgy of dark ages violence on "THEM"

Everything is so up in the air over there that you can't get a straight answer out of anyone, and the Republican candidates are deliberately skewing the narrative to suit themselves. I think it boils down to either declaring war on Syria,...or NOT. And we're not going to. Ever.

Sucking the USA and Europe into a war against Syria is what ISIS wants, so maybe you'll see even more outbreaks of terror in the near future???? I am guessing. I have no clue.

Extremist Islam reaches way past Syria and Iraq, there's actually more bloodshed in Africa, but you don't hear about that.

There are lots of other factors to consider, like....
Is it a GOOD thing for Democrats to let the Republicans be forced to drone on about this for a year?
Where is Iran in this?
What is the best possible outcome for the USA in all of this?
What is the best solution for the Middle East?
What is the best possible outcome for ME!!!......BUTTSLINGER???!!

What are Hillary's plans? Can we turn lemons into lemonade and hurt Russia, Iran, and our major global enemies in one big hand of International 5-card stud?

Is there a way to make ISIS .........LOOK BAD??? (ha ha ha)

Who do we actually WANT in charge of this mess when it's all over, and does it really matter, or more importantly, can we pull it off?
Do we want our American Boys in uniform having dreams about killing civilians the rest of their lives?
We sure killed a lot in Iraq.

Its us vrsus them, and we cant even say who "US" is, or "THEM" is.

To be or not to be. Double double, toil and trouble
Hurly Burly to THE MAX!!!

[Misterman1993]

We should just leave Syria altogether and have the USA have a more inward foreign policy. The days of meddling in other nations must come to an end. It's costing us a lot more, than what we initially bargained for.

[fred41]

We should just leave Syria altogether and have the USA have a more inward foreign policy. The days of meddling in other nations must come to an end. It's costing us a lot more, than what we initially bargained for.

I believe that's no longer an option...at this point in time how can it be?

[buttslinger]

I believe that's no longer an option...at this point in time how can it be?

What is every man woman and child paying every year for the CIA, NSA, and FBI to keep eyes on every Muslim person here AND abroad? A thousand dollars?

Sympathies to the San Bernardino victims, but that "terrorist cell" was a joke.

If we go "ALL IN" in Syria and Iraq, you know that means we help Assad and the Russians, and then end up paying half a trillion to rebuild the place.
I guess the wise thing is to talk to Hillary and her people and set up a little foreplay before she gets ta' fuckin' fo' real in 2017.

But without knowing anything, I think IGNORING the death and carnage over there is fantastic. Just like we do in Africa. And lots of other places.
Murder the National Debt if you want to extinguish the greatest threat to American Liberty. Now that's a sobering fight.

[fred41]

I'm not sure what you think San Bernardino has to do with my quote.
And I didn't say we had to go "All in"...but we're already involved and so are some of our closest European allies...and obviously some countries that will never really be considered allies. Shit like that is nuanced. President Obama is already scaling it up just a touch...we can have a debate as to whether we should be more involved or less, but if you think at this point we're just going to completely close shop and go home then you are delusional. Most Republican candidates and Hillary Clinton are all mostly for the things our president is already doing...some just trying to sound tougher doing it.

....and I NEVER think ignoring the death and carnage in other countries is fantastic, but unfortunately we can't always get involved in ways that I would like to...and for the record, I wish we did get more more involved with some of the mass murder and kidnappings in Africa....But just because you can't solve every problem doesn't mean you shouldn't try to help solve some of them...because changing your Facebook avatar to the colors of the French Flag or hash tagging the kidnapping of girls in Nigeria is nice, but it don't mean or do shit if you never get involved with anything global.
...and even though we sometimes debate about taking in Syrian refugees, we will take them. But you know what? Taking in refugees is also pointless if your not going to even try to do something about the mess going on there.

Interesting how you're voting for Hillary, but your foreign policy sounds more like Rand Paul.

[buttslinger]

Interesting how you're voting for Hillary, but your foreign policy sounds more like Rand Paul.

I probably misunderstood you. sorry.

[peejaye]

Keep the f**k out of there!

Doesn't history tell you anything?

[nitron]

Where's the UN, why aren't they sending in troops like they did during Korean conflict in the 50's. This should be an "International- community- problem".The UN should force a negotiated agreement as well, which is happening now, (good). The US should not send in ground troops at all. Now this has become Sunni vs Shea regional war, and the US had a big hand in it, so they should keep on the down low.
The migrants should be helped and kept comfy at the camps now(but with haste, push negotiations and International pressure to end the war). But I fear most migrants are religious conservatives in there political and social outlook, and as a Left Lib , I don't want them here. It's a pain in the ass to fight all the culture wars all over again. To me, there no different than letting in a bunch of Evangelical conservatives into the West. No thank you. Keep them out. I know that it's declining demographics that have spurred the Western Governments to allow them into our countries, but that's only a temp solution to our long term problem.
Lastly , we in the West should switch to renewable' s , stop feeding the real Troll's

[Stavros]

Last year the Russians entered Syria en masse in a 'surge' that was desiged to buttress the armed forces of the Syrian Government that were under pressure at the time. It was also claimed to be part of a major offensive against Daesh although the finer point is that the Russians defined anyone and everyone opposed to the government of Bashar al-Asad as a terrorist and thus made no distinction between rebel groups supported by the US and NATO and thus could divert their bombers from Daesh itself to attack targets in Idlib in the North-East and Aleppo.
With the Ceasefire Agreement in place in February this year, in March Putin declared 'Mission Accomplished' and began withdrawing the troops that had been deployed to Syria. And, indeed, the Syrian Armed Forces did appear to retain their grip on most of the country.

However, the ceasefire agreement has failed to stop the carnage in Aleppo and the most recent attempt by rebels there to break through the government lines has exposed yet again the temporary nature of 'victory' in this war which some analysts believed had reached its 5-year cycle of exhaustion and would gradually wind down, as has been noted in civil wars of the past.

The current points of interest focus on the talks Putin held with Erdogan this week, and the drivel that comprises Donald Trump and his supporters views on this conflict.

The point of interest in the first concerns a NATO ally holding cordial talks with the President of Russia with whom Turkey appeared to be on course for a war of their own after shooting down a Russian jet in late 2015. Since the attempted coup against Erdogan and his counter-coup that has shredded the top echelons of the armed forces, shut down newspapers, schools, universities, and rounded up thousands of journalists, teachers, soldiers and civilians, Erdogan has had to face the fact that for the time being the Turkish military is at its weakest since it joined NATO in 1951. This is good news for Putin because it means that a crucial but militarily weak NATO member in the eastern Mediterranean region is a benefit to Russia, and an additional benefit because Turkey has been fighting for the removal of Russia's ally Bashar al-Asad but clearly has no military strength to maintain this objective.

Turkey benefits, if at all, through the support it may seek from Russia to attack Kurdish forces in Syria in much the same way that Russia helped out the Syrian Armed forces last year. There have also been discussion between Turkey and Russia on joint projects in gas pipelines and nuclear power development.

These talks however brush up against the other angle, because the primary focus of Turkey in weakening if not destroying Kurdish political ambitions and using Russia to help them brings them into conflict with the USA and NATO who have been backing the Kurds and, as far as it goes, have been the primary agents of the decline of Daesh in Syria and Iraq while Russia and Syria were busy shredding civilian life in other parts of Syria, bearing in mind that Russia has insisted it has never killed a single civilian in Syria (but they have killed 'terrorists').

Turkey's move and its criticism of the USA for not extraditing Mohamed Gulen clearly poses a problem for NATO and one being relished by Putin who may take some form of military action against the Ukraine over the current spat over Crimea just to show NATO has no practical response and is weak, and the Presidency of Obama weak too; but it may also be an attempt by Turkey to bargain with the US for Gulen over closer Russian involvement (as in 'prove to us we are allies and hand him over').

Trump would doubtless continue to claim this exposes Obama's weakness, and his supporters, such as Piers Morgan, for example have claimed Obama has 'zero interest doing anything tangible to really deal with ISIS' in spite of the facts showing the complete opposite. Trump admires strong leaders like Putin, but it is not clear how he would respond to this current situation given that he has already criticised NATO members for not 'paying their dues' and lumbering the US with their problems. He has also repeated the rubbish about Obama, or Mrs Clinton or both having been the creators of Daesh which alone reveals his pathetic ignorance of a history recent enough for him to have lived through and, indeed, to have asked people who were in Syria and Iraq to explain to him.

The depressing truth is that the Syrian government will continue to bomb the rebels into submission with no regard for the human cost, and that Russia will continue to support the government, and the US/NATO and others continue to support a weak and divided rebel movement that includes extremists with no coherent agenda of their own. Mrs Clinton has, it is claimed, been thinking of a 're-set' with Russian relations, and/or the imposition of 'no-fly zones' in northern Syria, surely impossible to achieve without Russian and Turkish agreement, but with all sides facing the possible scenarios that either Syria will revert to the one-party state that it was before the war started, or that a form of cantonization will take place creating autonomous zones as has happened in Iraq.

I suppose the question in an election year for the US is what does US policy in Syria look like over the next year, does either candidate offer change -and change that can bring the conflict to an end? Can either of them use their new mandate to bring the parties together for a conclusive deal that will leave Asad in place on the basis of political reform that in time will create a new Republic?

[nitron]

For sure , since the president is at the end, no big stuff will happen until the election is over. Fairly sure that this is a proxy war between sunni and shia , (daesh/wasabi groups vs Assad). I don't think there any really strong opposition groups who are secular or pro democracy , to speak of. Just after the protests started, at the beginning, this was co opted by the sunni backed emirates.
Maybe the Russians will pull out because of financial reasons, just like in Afghanistan, but the Iranians are in it and that means allies.So they will probably stay. My question is how far will the US back the Saudis? Do they stand to make a lot of money from the armaments ? If so, they will let this go a long time without intervening. But if it looks like it starts spreading to other parts of the world, then I think chances are good , she'll send in a force with a smattering of international players.