Apparently we're concluding that that they did in fact use sarin gas on their own people.
So whats going on here? Are we just containing Iran, actually acting in the best interests of the Syrians, or something else?
I vote for containment of Iran.
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honestly, I"m sick of us telling the rest of the world we're going to solve their problems. When has this gone well? Seriously?
::frustrated::
World war 2 not rolling into world war 3 as russia took the rest of europe too?
Rest of the world does not want you to solve their problems. It's your government officials who insist on solving their problems.honestly, I"m sick of us telling the rest of the world we're going to solve their problems. When has this gone well? Seriously?
::frustrated::
Fixed that for you.
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There seems to be a general move to replace unpleasant secular(ish) regimes - Iraq, Libya, now Syria - in the Middle East with what our Glorious Leaders imagine will be nice, pliable goverments that look democratic enough to salve their liberal-y consciences. Of course, most of the money comes from the Saudis (and similar - I've got my tinfoil hat on and it's staying on), so what ends up happening is the better armed/trained/motivated/funded Islamists steamroller over the semi-demi-friendly people the West has been more or less behind and we end up with a godawful mess like Libya & Mali.
No-one is going to come out of this well, and what Assad is doing inviting a grotty bunch of British and European "nationalists" over on a sight-seeing expedition is anyone's guess.
The Foreign Office tends to wax nostalgic for the days when they could run about doing as they pleased in countries run by people slightly browner than themselves, too, which is why we end up tagging along on every grubby little adventure that comes up. After all, funding primary education programmes in Botswana isn't nearly as fun as putting on a kaffiyeh and pretending to be Lawrence of Arabia, which is what most of them signed up for to begin with.
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Most people don't see the difference. After all, it's the majority of you who put them in office, right?
Just to clarify, of course I don't blame regular people for this. I'm just saying what the majority of the world thinks.
Considering that the winner in the last US presidential election got 51,1% of the votes in an election with a turnout of 58,2%, I'd not say that's a fair assessment.
So do the locals have any agency in this? Were the uprisings in Libya and Syria pure Western/Saudi fronts from the very start?
Sure they got involved once things got started, but the Arab Spring really seemed to catch everybody off guard. Even in Libya and Syria.
Once things got going the various powers all try to push them in the direction they want, sure, but I don't think the West wanted any of this upheaval.
I'm as fond of imperialist conspiracy theories as anyone, but I also dislike ignoring the agency of the people living in these countries.
Iraq was obviously a different case.
Quite so - didn't mean to give the impression that I thought it was all a huge plot. The days are long gone when Western governments could topple a regime on the other side of the world just by pointing at it, though s**t-stirring is another matter entirely, and even that's quite constrained (compared to past times) given the general balance of forces.
Of course the locals have some agency in this. Some of the locals are the gang-raping, murderous agents of blood-drenched secular dictator Bashar al-Assad. Some of the locals are gang-raping, heart-eating Islamic fundamentalists who would love nothing more to purge the Shi'ites, Alawites, Christians, and the Forces-of-Dialectical-Materialism only know how many other religious and ethnic minorities there are in Syria. And some (most from what I'm reading) of the locals just wish both of these teams of murderous thugs would just stop all this shiznit and disappear.
But then there's American imperialism who is the number one force of war, terrorism, and general evilness in the world today. And American imperialism, along with its older Britishiznoid brothers, have rarely encountered a Middle Eastern crisis that they can't take advantage of.
As for the Arab Spring: Western imperialism might have lost influence in Tuisia (and I'm only conceding here because I know little about what's going on there), but they retained their grip on Egypt and Bahrain, took out Qadaffi and installed some pretty compliant stooges (what the al-Qaedists did afterwards wasn't part of the plan, admittedly), and if you're really ready for some tinfoil hat shiznit, some British writers (Dan Glazebrook in the Guardian? Some dude on CeaseFire? I can't recall) speculated that the wave of radicalized Tuaregs that caused such a ruckus in Mali were actually aimed at Algeria.
The civil war in Syria is terrible, and I fervently hope that the workers there will finally come to their senses and overthrow both sides, but I am totally opposed to American intervention into Syria and will hold a picket sign to that effect when I attend our candidate for Boston City Council's election rally tomorrow. And I don't care if the comrades look at me funny and call me an ultraleft.
Obligatory Slogans
Down with the Mullahs, Sheikhs, Colonels, and Zionists! For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!
Vive le Galt!
I just had to get it out at least once. And seeing Comrade Longears in a politroll thread got me excited. I'll be quiet for the next 24 hours so the thread doesn't devolve into a wrangle between the Second, Third and Fourth Internationals.
Vive le Galt!
Largely agreed. It was the implication that it was the West/US that was starting all the trouble that I was mostly reacting to.
I'm less sure about retaining US influence on Egypt, at least in the long run. That's still in flux. Not that the likely alternative is better. I can pretty much guarantee Washington was happier with Mubarak.
Putting aside the tinfoil for the moment, I really see the Arab Spring as a legitimate uprising from below, driven from below. Which set all the various powers in the area (The West, Iran, Islamist groups, the threatened governments themselves) scrambling to stomp it out or direct it to their advantage.
Wasn't the original incident that set things off an unemployed Tunisian graduate setting himself alight , or am I making that up? The way things have developed differently in each country is interesting - I suppose the fact that mass (non regime) secular parties are a thing of the past in most of the region accounts for a lot; the unions played a pretty strong role in the Tunisian events, I think, but they've had a pretty hard time of it over the last couple of years, so it was never going to be 1848/1917/1968/1989 (delete according to preference) all over again.
With Syria, given that the ruling class is largely Alawite and the majority of the population is Sunni - and the fact that that there was an Islamist rebellion in the '80s that Bashir's dad (the Oliver Cromwell to his Richard) suppressed by levelling most of a city with artillery, IIRC - a religious/ethnic edge was always likely to creep in to any sort of anti-regime activity there, though you may well be right about the original nature of the rebellion. Whether it would have succeeded as was without Western boots on the ground (and I imagine the powers that be were pretty keen to avoid *that* for one reason or another) isn't something I'm at all qualified to comment on.
And arguments about how many Engels can dance on the head of a Kropotkin will have to wait for another time ;)
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US interests in Syria were already screwed. Assad hates us for telling him to step down (and the whole Axis of Evil thing), and the rebels hate us for not doing anything about Assad. Jumping in at this stage probably does not change the math all that much. It seems like a giant no-win situation to me.
US interests in Syria were already screwed. Assad hates us for telling him to step down (and the whole Axis of Evil thing), and the rebels hate us for not doing anything about Assad. Jumping in at this stage probably does not change the math all that much. It seems like a giant no-win situation to me.
We;ve been thanked for being the late comers before. Setting up a no fly zone would go a long way towards having people forget we were late to he party...
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The civil war in Syria is hitting me pretty close to home, and it's like a thorn at my mind. The casualty toll is so absurdly high that most people I know don't even have an idea how to start thinking about it. Plus, I know some people who live really close to the border (in territories conquered from the Syrians in 67, so one might say that those people choosing to live there are part of the problem) who experienced light artillery fire more than once coming from Syria.
I really don't have enough knowledge of the complicated history and geographic situation of Syria, but I do know that this war is more about different sects of religious fanatics and racists competing for dominance in that country.
I had an interesting encounter with a Druze who's family originates from Syria (he has been living in Israel most of his life though) who seemed to honestly believe the upraising in Syria is an international scheme propagated by Turkey and the United States to bring down Assad's rule. While I think the idea is ridiculous, the fact that an ex-citizen might feel like that just shows me how complicated and alien things are over there - an outsider will have to really struggle to understand*.
I just really wish my government would have been more active about this - finding a way to sneak food supplies and medical assistance into Syria to aid the citizens would not have only been the most humane thing to do, it could have also advanced the chances for a lasting peace with all Arabs in the middle east and (perhaps) all Muslims in the world, by showing that Israelis are not the enemy. Alas, I think the government is either afraid to take even such an indirect action against Assad (which might be a reasonable line of action, in case he wins), or maybe just doesn't care enough to extend resources. Either way, I feel there is a great missed opportunity here.
It seems that the general populace in Syria sides with Assad again anyways: http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/05/31/nato-data-assad-winning-the-war-for- syrians-hearts-and-minds/
People want what is logical: to end the killings and get on with what is left of their lives. If the rebels are really another set of religious zealots now, the US should not interfere there. We don´t need another set of religious extremists in power in the middle east, especially not on the border of Turkey, which is part of the NATO and can call for military aid in case of an attack.
Besides, I think that Obama "pulled a three-headed monkey" there, as a blogger put it. How convenient to declare that the red line has been crossed at the same time when the NSA whistle blowing reaches boiling point. It is a tried and true tactic for the US government: if they have domestic problems, they start a war somewhere (or get involved in one) to create a distraction and unite the people behind their president. Meanwhile, while everybody looks to (place any war zone of the last 25 years here), they try to smoothe the domestic problem - not solving it, but toning it down enough to make it disappear from the media.
The US might once have been a force trying to make the world a better place for all. Nowadays, the govt. just tries to keep the status quo with the US on top of all others, which gets harder by the day, with China rising, and India and Russia following.