Assad has the overwhelming support of the Syrian public. As of April, there is overwhelming opposition to intervention by US public. No idea if news reports about chemical weapons will change this much.
Another victory for democracy!
Wellll . . . If the rebels win with U.S. help, the new government will at any rate be friendlier to the U.S. than Assad’s has been. Not that that’s saying much, and not that the U.S. really needs Syria’s friendship anyway – all we really need is that they should continue to leave Israel alone.
Given arms to Al Queda in Syria has to be about the worst thing we could do. WE clearly haven’t lost our eagerness to get involved in civil wars.
Neither do I.
Send massive humanitarian aid to Turkey and Jordan for ex-pat Syrians - fine with me. (Republicans in Congress prefer blowing things up to helping people - but maybe just this once they’d make an exception.)
Willingly participate in UN peacekeeping actions - again I’m on board. (Russian veto is the road block to this.)
But to do another Libya? No way.
Why would this be a bad situation? If anything it would be the best thing that could happen to Syrians (except for a natively imposed non-Baathist, secularist regime under a Syrian Ataturk).
You do realize the Tea Party is largely opposed to intervention in Syria due to them seeing the opposition as a bunch of Islamists? The Republicans who support it are the establishment/neocon types like John McCain or Charles Krauthammer.
Why not? Libya was a successful intervention.
Maybe President Spock has been watching too much Star Trek, TOS lately.
He may need A Private Little War.
Any data on, oh I don’t know, the people effected by this policy? Or is the opinion of the US people, who have been propagandized for over a year about “red lines” and such nonsense, the only important one?
Successful in that it freed up large amounts of weapons to be sent to Syria and other unstable regions?
It was, but Libya is a comparatively homogeneous country ethnically and religiously. The on-the-ground situation in Syria is very different, and dims hopes that the rebels can knock out Assad without setting off a wave of ethnic cleansing like in post-invasion Iraq.
Maybe in YOUR campaign…
I really don’t understand what we are trying to accomplish. Do we want one side to win? If so, then we should be all in.
Do we want one side to not lose? Then, WTF?
I say stay out and let them work out their differences without us. If we’re not willing to fully back on side, then just STFO (stay the fuck out). OTOH, if we REALLY want one side to win, then why pussy-foot around? Go in and win. We have the technology.
Politically, we may be able to sell the idea of assisting the FSA.
But a full-blown invasion would be a disaster for both domestic and international politics. It would amplify all the problems that Iraq has largely started*: hatred and mistrust of the US, a desire by the American public to stay the hell away from any future conflicts (even those where a trivial military intervention could save a lot of lives) and so on.
- I’m aware that Iraq wasn’t the first fubar intervention by the US. But it is the most salient right now.
The cynical view is that the goal is to intervene just enough to keep Iran and Hezbollah bogged down and draining their resources.
Still can’t find anything definitive on exactly what sort of aid we’ll be providing. Found one article that mentioned mostly small arms–assault rifles, grenade launchers, and possibly anti-tank missiles. I guess I don’t have a huge problem with that, although I still don’t like the idea. Those are weapons that don’t take much training to use.
More troubling to me is the possibility of providing body armor and night vision equipment. That’s technology I really do not want us giving to potential terrorists. Worst of all would be serious anti-aircraft weapons, but I haven’t seen any mention of us actually providing those.
I still think we ought to just stay out of this, but Mr. Obama has once again failed to check with me before making an important decision.
Stupid move. Obama wants to send mainly small arms and ammunition, but Qatar and Saudi Arabia have already been arming the Sunni groups for billions of USD. Qatar alone, reportedly with 4 billion USD, with Western (Croatian) arms too. Nobody is going to convince me the CIA hasn’t been involved in this already. Some additional hundred millions or a few billion USD won’t make a difference. The Sunni groups are too incompetent and divided to put it to good use. And even if they could would that really be a favorable outcome? The groups opposed to Assad are already fighting amongst themselves, and engaged in ethnic cleaning and ethnic massacres of Shiit villages. Egypt just opened its doors for jihadist to go jihading in Syria, which already is overrun with tens of thousands of foreign jihadist warriors.
The only outside intervention that would make any sense at this point is one accompanied by a willingness to insert the hundred of thousands of men on the ground needed to stabilize the situation after Assad has been removed, to protect minorities and prevent ethnic cleansing and religious civil war.
Just arming the one side and sit back and hope for the best is a plan doomed to miserable failure. Also a victory by Assad is often put forward as the worst possible outcome. I think a continuation of the civil war is a much worse scenario, closely followed by a chaotic Sunni victory.
The idea is to pretend international law has some nominal value, instead of the 5 permanent members using it to maintian their imperial positions.
It obviously doesn’t, but the pretence can come in handy sometimes (as per Iraq) so lets keep pretending …
This will not end well for anyone involved. I recommended to Mr Obama just last night (in an email that was inexplicably returned to me as undeliverable) that we should sit this one out. If Assad’s forces lose, then there will be chaos followed by a Kosovo type ethnic cleansing. Otherwise, there will be … urrrr… chaos and death. This isn’t Sophie’s Choice, this is a Descent into the Maelstrom. We would be better off just watching, hoping for the best and sending humanitarian aid as we are right now.
[godwin]
By the way, does anyone else feel dirty writing those two words together, ethnic cleansing? It sounds quite like using the term final solution.
[/godwin]
Oh, and Oakminster, Michelle says to say “hello, hope you are well”.
If Obama and Mcain are both in favor of the rebels then…OK, I guess, but it would be nice if they would sort out in simple language.
I am struggling with the calculus that Assad is encouraged by Iran,which fundsHezbollah who are all Shiite and who Russia is friendly with for some damnreason and allof whom are opposed to the Syrian rebelswho include Alqueda pricksthat Iraqs like whoare all Sunni and thatthe USsupports forsome damnreason; and where thehell Isreal falls intoplace;andwhy France and theUK have split with the USand EU onthe size ofthemunitions that shouldbe suppliedto therebels and that Saudi ArabiaandTurkey, who wereonce supporting therebelsare nowbarring themfromcrossingtheir bordersandthatJordanispissedaboutSyrianrefugeesandfuckmerunning.
What could go wrong you ask in mock disbelief? We could invite them over as refugees. Nothing like a change of venue to make a civil war fresh and exciting.
We don’t have a side in this. There are no allies who will appreciate our efforts. On top of that, it’s not just a civil war it’s a religious war which guarantees we will be on the shit list of someone crazy no matter the outcome. Take the proposed money to spend on it and … just don’t spend it. We have enough troubles as it is.
True. Seems the sensible thing is not to invest money in the blame game. At least if we do nothing it will be free.
I would reiterate John Mace’s question - what do we want to achieve here? If the intervention is triggered by Assad’s use of chemical weapons, then is arming the rebels likely to prevent their use in the future? It doesn’t seem that way to me.
If the presumption is that anything would be better than Assad, that doesn’t seem clear to me either, especially with at least some of the rebels allying themselves with al-Queda. If the idea is to assist in the creation of a regime friendly to the US and its interests, that is problematic as well - it didn’t work out terribly well in Afghanistan. Although the end game in Afghanistan was more to fuck with the Soviet Union.
If the rebels win, we will get ethnic cleansing and slaughter, and they will set up another repressive Islamofascist state. If Assad wins, we will get slaughter and the continuance of a repressive, not very Islamic state.
It does not seem to me that Assad’s use of WMD makes all that much difference to the US, or even to the rest of the non-Middle Eastern world. Therefore I don’t see why we should do anything we weren’t doing anyway.
Regards,
Shodan