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The Coming War in the Middle East (2013)
- keeganjw 10y agoThis article should have a (2013) tag at the end of it. But yeah, the Hoover Institute predicted this fight pretty damn well.
- finid 10y agoIt's easy to predict a war long after it has started. It's like predicting WW II in 1942. The Syrian war, which we have a heavy hand in - before and after it began, started in 2011. That article was written in 2013. And did you check the bio of the author. It's easy to predict a war after it has started and when you have inside knowledge and a hand in how the war should proceed and end.
- ralmidani 10y agoThe notion that the Syrian Revolution began with foreign (especially US) meddling is absurd. In 2011, the US was in the process of normalizing relations with the assad regime. Obama had appointed a new ambassador the year before. Clinton thought assad was a 'reformer.' The war broke out for a very simple reason: assad's forces kept shooting peaceful protesters. Despite assad's violence, the Revolution remained largely peaceful for several months. It became a full-blown war almost a year after it began, when it became clear assad was not interested in reform, much less stopping the killings.
- pjc50 10y ago.. and a substantial part of the Syrian population were refugees from Iraq. http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19388 http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19388 This contributed to destabilising the place and offered a supply of Sunni recruits to ISIS. That's why the furthest extent of ISIS territory was an arc across Syria, Iraq and up to "Kurdistan".
- finid 10y agoThat's the official (US) narrative, and it's the real absurdity here. You should find out how those "peaceful protests" started, and the activities of the US ambassador to Syria just before the protests broke out. It's from the same playbook that was used successfully in Libya and Ukraine, and almost succeeded a few years ago in Cuba. It's an interesting exercise if you have the time. Venezuela is in the same neighborhood too.
- hx87 10y agoThat's the conspiracy theory narrative, and it's the real real absurdity here. US ambassadors don't have the power to raise hell on the streets of any given country, especially in one where a significant portion of the population have long-standing and legitimate aggrievances against the current government.
- tdkl 10y agoThat's why CIA exists.
- finid 10y agoAmbassadors are not supposed to meddle in the affairs of the country they're serving in, but when was the last time that stopped us from doing what we want? Even our elected officials are not supposed to do that, but who's gonna to stop them?
- ufmace 10y agoIt's not a conspiracy theory so much as a oddly popular Chompsky-ite view of foreign policy that can be summarized only a little tounge-in-cheek as: America is somehow responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened anywhere in the world. Nothing bad can happen anywhere without it somehow being a result of something that America did. Which serves to infantilize the entire population of every other country in the world. See the GP's belief that apparently a few words by the US Ambassador is more powerful than thousands of years of history and culture, very difficult conflicts between religious sects, clans, and tribes, etc.
- Nokinside 10y ago>Despite assad's violence, the Revolution remained largely peaceful for several months. It became a full-blown war almost a year after it began Please clarify how this is possible. I don't see how this narrative can be correct. First two protesters were killed 18 March 2011 (Hussam Abdel Wali Ayyash and Akram Jawabreh.) Then already in March 23, 2011 two another men who were killed (Sa’er Yahya Merhej and Habeel Anis Dayoub) were part of the Syrian Arab Army and not civilians. It seems that initially peaceful protests turned into violent almost immediately because they were hijacked by organized militants. Armed gunmen were already moving into Syria long before the protests. http://www.innercitypress.com/LASomSyria.pdf http://www.innercitypress.com/LASomSyria.pdf According to the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, 2,569 Syrian government forces were killed by March 2012 while total number of people killed was 5,000.
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- X86BSD 10y agoThis is all false. The reason the US suddenly wanted to kill Assad is very simple. Qutar has natural gas. Europe relies almost solely on Russia for natgas. The west doesn't like that at all. So they want to build a pipeline from Qutar to the med through Syria. Assad says absolutely not. Assad is now enemy number one for denying the pipeline which would've freed Europe from Russia's natgas stranglehold. This is all about energy folks. It's that simple.
- nickik 10y agoThat is totally false. Oil is a major factor but some people throw sense out of the window and want to reduce everything to energy politics. No expert on foreign policy, or the middle east I have heard give talks in the last years, considers this to be true. The only people who believe this narrative are naive leftist who don't understand the real situation.
- ars 10y ago> So they want to build a pipeline from Qutar to the med through Syria. They want to what??? You really need to look at a map before saying things like that. I just..... Do you realize Qatar is on the coast? Why would you need to build a pipeline to another coast? And why go through Syria of all places? There are so many other routes you can take, and you think they want Syria so badly they triggered a war?
- jwtadvice 10y agoHe's correct. The proposed pipeline goes from Qatar, though Saudi Arabia, through Syria, into Turkey and then would provide Natural Gas to Europe. There's a second proposed pipeline people often don't talk about... it would go from Iran, through Iraq, through Syria to Europe. Guess which one Europe and the United States want.
- ars 10y agoYou can just route it a bit to the East and bypass Syria completely, going directly from Iraq to Turkey. If you are willing to go underwater you can go through Jordan, Israel and Cypress. I get that it's a bit shorter to go through Syria, but a war, just for that? There's a major station in Doğubeyazıt, you can link to that.
- jwtadvice 10y ago> The notion that the Syrian Revolution began with foreign (especially US) meddling is absurd. That's because foreign meddling is absurd. The FSA was organized out of Turkey, with it's high level leadership and intelligence feeding in over the border. The primary branches of al Qaeda and militant groups were funded and supplied by foreign organizations. Special forces in the United States had been perturbing for revolutions and US propaganda operations performing a regional 'blitz'.
- finid 10y agoWhat you wrote about Obama is actually correct. True, Obama came in with a set of foreign policy objectives that were not inline with standing US foreign policy. So he lost that battle. He was very reluctant to involve the military, especially in the ME. So in Libya, for example, and even in Syria, he was accused of leading from behind. Even with respect to Russia, recall that he wanted to "reset" relations with that country, but that, too, was not in line with what the military guys, that is, the guys who actually run the country, wanted. So he lost that battle too.
- akytt 10y agoThe view of military running the us is probably rather simplistic. Also, remember Russia had been pulling increasingly agressive stunts since 2009 - it's a hard background for a reset
- iuhgdwij 10y agoWhen you say "we", who do you mean? Hacker News readers? Tech people? Europeans?
- mason240 10y agoIt was widely predicted that Iraq would descend into sectarian war if the US withdrew before the Iraqi government and military was ready, but the party that wanted the withdrawl said the didn't care - it wasn't our problem.
- EGreg 10y agoAnd how do we as a civilization in the 21st century prevent foreign meddling and funding of armed groups?
- jalfresi 10y agoStop funding and meddling with them?
- mwfunk 10y agoYes, but how? As an American I can try to vote for politicians that are opposed to meddling in the region, but the most that would do is create a non-meddling America. That's not going to affect the policies of other countries. In fact, a non-meddling America would likely open the door for even more meddling by countries like Russia. So: how? I really want to know.
- ufmace 10y agoTrue that the more America stays out of it, the freer hand Iran and Russia have to meddle to their heart's contents. Our only options are to either essentially let them take over the region, or try to meddle better than they do.
- clarry 10y agoI don't think Russia is interested in meddling. If anything, it seems like a made up "threat" the US officials can use to justify whatever the heck they're doing.
- blahi 10y agoAs somebody from Eastern Europe, I can assure you that Russia is most definitely interested in meddling, controlling political parties, parliament, almost all the newspapers, key industries, online comments and pretty much everything in my country and I suspect the countries around me. I know it is a joke, but I really have to say: THANKS OBAMA.
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- nickik 10y agoThis is a pretty good article and worth a read for people who are not already informed. They were not completely correct. They seem to underestimate the stability and staying power of Jordan. Both US and Israel help to make sure that Jordan is protected. Stability of monarchies are typically underestimated. Syria's government has not fallen, and Nusra (now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) never managed to unify the rebel to any great extend and build a real powerful land and tax base. Thanks to Russia and Iran Syria is (very) slowly winning the fight against the rebels. Looking from Saudi Arabia into Yemen we see as somewhat different picture now. Al Qaeda has a solid branch in Yemen but they have been very much infused into the culture and politics of the region. They lack real reach and hitting power for global jihad. They are to busy marrying tribal chiefs daughters and smuggling (mostly gas). The real issue for the Saudis in Yemen is not Al-Qaeda (who are in the South) but rather the Hutti rebels that live right along the border to Saudi Arabia. These guys have been extremely successful and Saudi Arabia does not like it at all, they are spending Billions to fight them, much more then they spend to fight Al-Qaeda in Yemen. They seem to view the Hutti mostly as a Iranian Proxy (maybe future proxy) even while the evidence for this is currently rather thin. The Hutti seem to want Iranian support but the Iranians seem to think that even without much direct support the Hutti are already doing a good job. Saudia Arabia is spending money like nobody buissness and the Iranians handle the same conflict with a tight budget. Its the other way around in Iraq/Syria, there Iran is blowing the money and the Saudis can be rather conservative. One interesting thing for everybody to know is also the strong decentralisation of Al-Quida, groups like ISIS and al-Sham (Nusra) do their own thing now. Al-Quida in Yemen is also not a very good branch of Al-Quida central.
- pjc50 10y agoIf I've got this right, in Syria, Iran is opposed to ISIS/Daesh and Saudis are funding them? While the Russians are supporting the status-quo Assad/Alawhite faction and the American backed "liberation" factions have mostly died out? (People seem to have stopped talking about AQ in the context of Syria?)
- sremani 10y agoThere are no "liberal" syrian rebels, the factions america along with Saudis are supporting are Sunni militias which are cousins if not brothers of AQ. You have divided interests of Kurds, Turks, Alawite regime + Russian, Sunni Militias + Saudi + USA, Iraqi Shia + Iran each having their varied interests. Assad wants ISIS to linger around since the focus would be on it rather than him, and he is focused on fighting the Sunni militias (freedom fighters according to US kind of like 80s afghanistan), Turks do not wants Kurds to be powerful and are interested in marginalizing them in Northern Syria. Kurds want to fight ISIS with help of US and score brownie points for Kurdistan. Sunni militias do not have much problem with ISIS want to fight the Alawite regime and make Syria Sunni Again ;). Iraqi Shia and Iran want to marginalize the Sunnis supporting ISIS. To say the least its a giant clusterfuck and US is willingly in bed with Al Qaeda ( wannabes like Al-Nusra front)
- ars 10y agoAmerica should rescue civilians and force safe corridors to stay open, but otherwise stay the hell out of there, and let them fight it out. And yes, that includes ISIS! If the people who live there can not defeat ISIS American help will not work long term.
- saiya-jin 10y agothis advice should have been used and adhered to for last 50 years, and the world would be truly much better place. what a dream...
- ars 10y agoSort of. Most of the time America intervened not for the benefit of the locals, but for its own (or its allies) benefit (including as a proxy against Russia). It's harder to criticize that. It's bad for the locals, but America needs to do what's good for America. In this case though, it's entirely "for" the locals, so America should stay out of it because it's not actually helping the locals.
- enraged_camel 10y agoIt's difficult to claim that America's actions in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world have been good for America. In fact, the only war America participated in that ended up being a net good for America was World War 2, which resulted in the devastation of much of Europe and allowed American industries to expand and advance virtually unchallenged for almost 50 years. The Vietnam War however was a disaster of epic proportions. So was the Iraq War. The latter, instead of installing a friendly regime that guaranteed the uninterrupted flow of cheap oil, resulted in even more instability in the region, not to mention further radicalization of extremist forces. And things continue to go downhill. At the end of the day, it is worth understanding that America's wars benefit only a small number of people in America: higher ups in the military-industrial complex, the oil companies and the construction conglomerates. For everyone else, it's a waste.
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- jwtadvice 10y agoThis article is okay, but it misses much of the context. For example it says: "Just as Al Qaeda in Iraq has ostensibly been fighting to free Baghdad from what it calls heretical “Persian”—read “Shia”—domination, the Nusrah Front today fights to free Syria from the supposedly heretical rule of the nominally Shia Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad." But then later posits: "If Al Qaeda/Nusrah can establish a base in Jordan, Saudi Arabia will find itself threatened by Al Qaeda franchises on both north and south that will be well-positioned to resume the pursuit of Al Qaeda’s core goal of toppling the Saudi monarchy and “liberating” the holy cities of Mecca and Medina." Al Qaeda is and has been fighting a pan-Islamist fight to extricate foreign influence - what it sees as continued colonialism - from the Arab World. Interestingly, both the Ba-athists (Shia governments of Syria and Iraq) and Al Qaeda claim to be fighting against the forces of foreign manipulation. The Ba-athists approach it from a Pan-Arab manner rather than Pan-Islamist, but have histories of Western support (indeed the Alawites in Syria were originally militarily conceived by the French and the prior Sunni regime in Iraq conceived by the British) that can spoil their claim to independence. The article also misses the regional proxy war aspect, where Gulf Countries and the United States have been arming proxy groups to achieve geostrategic ends, such as the establishment of energy pipelines and determining the future of Mediterranean access.
- jwtadvice 10y ago[META] A huge amount of disinformation in this thread, including people who are pushing personal opinions and state narratives as fact. Sad to see this on Hacker News.
- finid 10y agoWell, exercise your privilege and correct them.