US About To Intervene In Syria - YouTube
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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.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
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/russl...df/RAD-128.pdf
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f2d9bbc8-b...#axzz2dFbgD1yU
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...rabias_problem
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
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.
"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.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
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?
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.
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?