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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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
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_Z...fire_agreement
...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.
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 and nearby Jisr al-Shughour 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 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/201...n-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/worl...thout-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.
What to do about Syria? What to do about ......(most places on the map,all kinds of p)
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.
Attachment 890355
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a6684631.html
http://www.newsweek.com/kissinger-ri...388902?ref=yfp
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
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.
bomb them all into submission.
What has four years of bombing achieved so far? And what do you when 'they' submit?Quote:
Originally Posted by daltx_m