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The right answer? Kill Assad and help the people take back Syria. We should have done it three years ago before much of the moderate resistance was killed but i

by fineman 11y ago

The right answer? Kill Assad and help the people take back Syria. We should have done it three years ago before much of the moderate resistance was killed but it still needs doing. And as for your Israel jab, they're better to the Palestinians than the Arab states in the area are. And none of the Israelis I've talked to seem to have inherently racist beliefs but many of the recently middle-eastern Arabs do. (About the Palestinians.)

Ygg2 11y ago
Right? Just like killing Saddam and Gadafi stabilized the region. I'm sure nothing bad would happen. It's not like something worse than Al Quaida can happen again. Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  You realize I hope that you are condemning the migrants to the crisis as well. And they're the ones losing big time, Europe not so much.
  - Ygg2 11y ago
    I guess in a way I am, but I do feel sympathy for them losing their homes/loved ones in this whole fiasco. I'm mad this whole thing is happening tbh. But EU is IMO losing just as much. The borders are being redrawn between states, there is palpable tension between EU members(Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      We're totally on the same page here. Which is one of the reasons why I'm advocating restraint and attacking root causes rather than perceived symptoms. That will only worsen things (and quickly so). > And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? That never was openly stated afaik but it would seem to be that the architects of the EU had as one of their main driving forces the fact that they wanted to re-structure the EU in such a way to avoid another war. The problem with their approach is that they did many things without sufficient buy-in of the residents and on top of that started out by setting up all kinds of irrational schemes inside the EU to funnel money to their pet special interests. If they could have waited a few decades with tricks like that it probably would have worked a lot better. The major issue that I see with a really unified EU is that the divergence of cultures within the EU is enormous, much more so than say the Americas, where a strong federal government was the result of a large group of people uniting behind a single good cause. And even then - in spite of that much more homogeneous culture - they had to have it out in a civil war to beat the remainder into submission (and that war was a war of ideology as much as it was a war over money and power). > If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech). Unfortunately, yes, it looks that way. The Euro is quite fragile, the intra-communion tension at record high levels since the previous world-war. Separatists may get emboldened by all this, the refugees are so much kindling on a fire that is already smoldering. It will take some really smart people with the long view to repair this.
- ufmace 11y ago
  If done at the right time, it would have at least had a chance of transitioning to a somewhat more democratic form of government. As opposed to what actually happened when we did nothing, which is Islamic extremists being the main supporters of the resistance, versus the Russian and Iranian backed Assad. Assad believes that the West will grudgingly back him against ISIS extremists, and not so much against secular rebels, so naturally he turned the bulk of his guns against the secular rebels. With nobody supporting them and everybody against them, of course their presence and influence dwindled to nothing. I mostly agree with fineman, except that I think it's too late for backing secular resistance to have much of a point. Just like Iraq, we left them high and dry when they needed us, and so now the only chance of having any significant influence is a direct invasion, which nobody has much stomach for anymore. I'd summarize as grow up already. The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict, and have been for decades. The West keeping out of it only guarantees that one or the other will win and any chance of secular democracy will lose.
  - toyg 11y ago
    > when we did nothing "We" didn't do "nothing". Countries like France, Israel, US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia spent years destabilising Assad and funding those "opposition groups" that eventually started the civil war. Syria originally was a USSR satellite with ambitions of regional hegemony (they basically ruled Lebanon and deeply influenced Jordan), so they had to be beaten into submission. However, there was never a real plan to get involved on the ground, that was just a huge bluff; Assad and Putin saw right through it. "We" (and French elites above all) did way too much already, and it's high time we stopped. > The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict That's really rich. "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime, the US just sold them a new crapload of weapons... nobody gives a shit about that stuff. What "we" care about is that the "right" totalitarian mofo is in charge, like in Egypt. Everything else is theatre and propaganda. The real solution is less weapons and more diplomacy. Get the interested parties in a room and throw away the key until they come up with a shared plan. The US/Russia agreement is a first step in that direction, next it's for Saudi, Turkey and Iran to work out an agreeable compromise and pull their weight in the right direction. Otherwise, until countries like Turkey and Saudi keep buying IS oil and selling them weapons, you can invade a thousand times and achieve nothing except increasing shareholder value in the defence sector.
- fineman 11y ago
  Cutting and running does not work. We're still in Germany and Japan 70+ years later and we'll have to have that kind of roadmap if we plan to help in the middle east. And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.
  - webXL 11y ago
    Germany and Japan have tolerant and compatible cultures, and "world opinion" was controlled by the Allies. I don't think it's possible to shape "world opinion" anymore. The Koran doesn't permit any kind of integration and tolerance. Western "nation building" (rebuilding) is perceived as an attack on that religion. My own libertarian bent tells me that it's at least an unjust attack on their way of life, how alien that might be to Westerners.
    - fineman 11y ago
      An unjust attack on whose way of life? The girls being sold into slavery? The boys forced to fight or die? Those simply murdered? I'm pretty sure the other 99.9% are hostages, and not half as committed to the bullshit as you think, except in stockholm-syndrome ways. Soon after they weren't being killed for not being fervent, they'd be as non-religious as we are.
      - webXL 11y ago
        You think our occupation would prevent those things? I supported the Iraq invasion initially, and had some hope for the surge, but these wars are literally controlled by the news media, because every time a bomb goes off in the wrong place or a soldier shoots a kid for whatever reason, we get more tentative, and our troops lose support for their mission, then a new president comes a long to capitalize. I was wrong. 9/11 jaded and naive about that part of the world. Just cut our losses. Our government has bigger, more understandable, fish to fry.
        fineman 11y ago

by fineman 11y ago

Ygg2 11y ago

Right? Just like killing Saddam and Gadafi stabilized the region. I'm sure nothing bad would happen. It's not like something worse than Al Quaida can happen again. Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.

jacquesm 11y ago
You realize I hope that you are condemning the migrants to the crisis as well. And they're the ones losing big time, Europe not so much.
- Ygg2 11y ago
  I guess in a way I am, but I do feel sympathy for them losing their homes/loved ones in this whole fiasco. I'm mad this whole thing is happening tbh. But EU is IMO losing just as much. The borders are being redrawn between states, there is palpable tension between EU members(Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    We're totally on the same page here. Which is one of the reasons why I'm advocating restraint and attacking root causes rather than perceived symptoms. That will only worsen things (and quickly so). > And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? That never was openly stated afaik but it would seem to be that the architects of the EU had as one of their main driving forces the fact that they wanted to re-structure the EU in such a way to avoid another war. The problem with their approach is that they did many things without sufficient buy-in of the residents and on top of that started out by setting up all kinds of irrational schemes inside the EU to funnel money to their pet special interests. If they could have waited a few decades with tricks like that it probably would have worked a lot better. The major issue that I see with a really unified EU is that the divergence of cultures within the EU is enormous, much more so than say the Americas, where a strong federal government was the result of a large group of people uniting behind a single good cause. And even then - in spite of that much more homogeneous culture - they had to have it out in a civil war to beat the remainder into submission (and that war was a war of ideology as much as it was a war over money and power). > If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech). Unfortunately, yes, it looks that way. The Euro is quite fragile, the intra-communion tension at record high levels since the previous world-war. Separatists may get emboldened by all this, the refugees are so much kindling on a fire that is already smoldering. It will take some really smart people with the long view to repair this.
ufmace 11y ago
If done at the right time, it would have at least had a chance of transitioning to a somewhat more democratic form of government. As opposed to what actually happened when we did nothing, which is Islamic extremists being the main supporters of the resistance, versus the Russian and Iranian backed Assad. Assad believes that the West will grudgingly back him against ISIS extremists, and not so much against secular rebels, so naturally he turned the bulk of his guns against the secular rebels. With nobody supporting them and everybody against them, of course their presence and influence dwindled to nothing. I mostly agree with fineman, except that I think it's too late for backing secular resistance to have much of a point. Just like Iraq, we left them high and dry when they needed us, and so now the only chance of having any significant influence is a direct invasion, which nobody has much stomach for anymore. I'd summarize as grow up already. The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict, and have been for decades. The West keeping out of it only guarantees that one or the other will win and any chance of secular democracy will lose.
- toyg 11y ago
  > when we did nothing "We" didn't do "nothing". Countries like France, Israel, US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia spent years destabilising Assad and funding those "opposition groups" that eventually started the civil war. Syria originally was a USSR satellite with ambitions of regional hegemony (they basically ruled Lebanon and deeply influenced Jordan), so they had to be beaten into submission. However, there was never a real plan to get involved on the ground, that was just a huge bluff; Assad and Putin saw right through it. "We" (and French elites above all) did way too much already, and it's high time we stopped. > The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict That's really rich. "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime, the US just sold them a new crapload of weapons... nobody gives a shit about that stuff. What "we" care about is that the "right" totalitarian mofo is in charge, like in Egypt. Everything else is theatre and propaganda. The real solution is less weapons and more diplomacy. Get the interested parties in a room and throw away the key until they come up with a shared plan. The US/Russia agreement is a first step in that direction, next it's for Saudi, Turkey and Iran to work out an agreeable compromise and pull their weight in the right direction. Otherwise, until countries like Turkey and Saudi keep buying IS oil and selling them weapons, you can invade a thousand times and achieve nothing except increasing shareholder value in the defence sector.
fineman 11y ago
Cutting and running does not work. We're still in Germany and Japan 70+ years later and we'll have to have that kind of roadmap if we plan to help in the middle east. And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.
- webXL 11y ago
  Germany and Japan have tolerant and compatible cultures, and "world opinion" was controlled by the Allies. I don't think it's possible to shape "world opinion" anymore. The Koran doesn't permit any kind of integration and tolerance. Western "nation building" (rebuilding) is perceived as an attack on that religion. My own libertarian bent tells me that it's at least an unjust attack on their way of life, how alien that might be to Westerners.
  - fineman 11y ago
    An unjust attack on whose way of life? The girls being sold into slavery? The boys forced to fight or die? Those simply murdered? I'm pretty sure the other 99.9% are hostages, and not half as committed to the bullshit as you think, except in stockholm-syndrome ways. Soon after they weren't being killed for not being fervent, they'd be as non-religious as we are.
    - webXL 11y ago
      You think our occupation would prevent those things? I supported the Iraq invasion initially, and had some hope for the surge, but these wars are literally controlled by the news media, because every time a bomb goes off in the wrong place or a soldier shoots a kid for whatever reason, we get more tentative, and our troops lose support for their mission, then a new president comes a long to capitalize. I was wrong. 9/11 jaded and naive about that part of the world. Just cut our losses. Our government has bigger, more understandable, fish to fry.
      - fineman 11y ago