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Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin! Who would have thought it would be the US president who Putin "absolutely didn't" put into offi

Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin! Who would have thought it would be the US president who Putin "absolutely didn't" put into office?

kafkaesq 10y ago
Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin! Except for the fact that the move indicates nothing less than complete and utter chaos in his stance vis-a-vis Russia. And that it remains to be seen how Putin will decide to "stand up" for his symbolic ally in response.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Who cares if his stance on Russia is inconsistent, if it used to be "let Putin do as he likes" and it's now "don't let Putin's proxies commit war crimes"? I'm not going to attack someone for flip-flopping from a terrible position to a promising one.
- douche 10y ago
  What I am not sure I understand is why anyone cares what happens in Syria, save maybe Israel. It's not an oil producer, and it has been a shitshow, rather than a regional power for 20+ years.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Human rights more than anything else; Assad's response to the Arab Spring was a pretty ugly one, especially by the standards of people who weren't overthrown. (The other issue is that Russia really likes that naval base. Wouldn't it have saved time to just give them the city and get them to stop interfering with the rest of this?)
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    What I am not sure I understand is why anyone cares what happens in Syria, Well there's this thing known as "empathy", in regard to those who are suffering. You might want to look into it sometime. (Then again, with a handle like yours...)
aerovistae 10y ago
I really can't tell which side you're taking here. The quotes make it seem like sarcasm but that doesn't really make sense.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  I think Putin had a lot to do with Trump getting into office (we know he had Republican National Convention e-mails too, and didn't leak them), so it's a very pleasant surprise to see Trump standing up to Putin in spite of that. And see that Politico article linked to elsewhere in this thread: Putin responded to the missile strikes by suddenly discovering that he, too, had a problem with his ally using chemical weapons! He certainly didn't say that in 2013!
flukus 10y ago
Yeah, let's let Islamists take over Syria, that'll be so much better...
- clock_tower 10y ago
  We could always give it all to the Kurds -- which is what's going to happen anyways, at the rate things are currently going. (The PKK has secured their home territory, and is now conquering their neighbors to create facts on the ground and get more out of the peace settlement.) Alternatively, I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines, to avoid a situation where Alawites, Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities end up in a majority-Sunni country. There are plenty of alternatives other than control by one or another pack of exceptionally ugly monsters. (I say "exceptionally ugly" because even the Kurds have committed some atrocities. Not without provocation, but still.)
  - stevenjohns 10y ago
    Which Kurds? You mean the Kurdish Islamic Front (KIF) which wants to extend Shariah across Syria?[0] Try not to be so explicitly racist in your analyses. Kurds are an ethnic group of 40 million people with different ideologies, interests and goals. Saying "give it all to the Kurds" says more about your racism towards other regional ethnic groups (Arabs, Syriacs, Turks) than some grand understanding you have of the Middle East. > I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines Nobody except casual MSM observers wants this racist, separatist outcome and anybody with any understanding of the country would know that the country doesn't have "ethnic lines" that you can just build a wall across and somehow produce mini-states that will be economically successful, productive and start working in harmony with their new neighbours. [0] http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54367?lang=en http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54367?lang=en
    - clock_tower 10y ago
      Which Kurds? The Rojava (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava), the Democratic Socialist (Sanders-like) Kurds of the northeast. The Kurdish Islamic Front (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Islamic_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Islamic_Front) does not represent the Kurdish mainstream. As for the rest, the pro-Assad forces are mostly Alawites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha) and Christians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_militias_in_Syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_militias_in_Syria), organized along ethno-religious lines. Incorporating them into Lebanon, or creating a "coastal Syria" with a minimum of Sunnis in it (and probably under Russian tutelage, since the Christians are Orthodox and the Alawites have reason to see Russia as a protector) would allow them to live without either being tyrants or being tyrannized.
Cyph0n 10y ago
I agree, this is excellent news. Assad's regime is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the torture of children, the setting up of torture chambers in hospital wards, and much, much worse. The blatantly repeated use of chemical agents on non-combatants isn't helping Assad's case either. He is the definition of human scum, and I'm glad to see the US finally step in.
- graycat 10y ago
  > He is the definition of human scum, and I'm glad to see the US finally step in. I agree with the "scum" part. For the "step in", hmm ...? If are trying to civilize Assad and/or his enemies, then that looks hopeless. If are trying to deter Assad from more use of ugly chemical weapons on babies, maybe that can work, a little, for a while. If trying to replace Assad, then an early question has to be -- with whom that would be better? The replacement should be better, and in such situations that ain't nearly guaranteed. I'm no expert, but it may be that Syria divides into people who (A) more or less like Assad, at least will let him get by with rigged elections without being really bitter about it, and (B) hate Assad and all the people in (A) and would eagerly torture and murder all of them by the most brutal methods they could implement. Yes, the people in (A) might be equally eager to murder all the people in (B). That is, first-cut, we're talking a lot of people who still are back in essentially Medieval times, maybe as if they were still fighting over very limited water and grazing land, and still isolated from the lessons from the religious, etc. wars of Europe of the past 1000 years, e.g., separation of church and state, basic humanism, etc., lessons not well honored in Europe even as recently as Hitler. Hitler was brutal, in Medieval terms, including with gas, likely also on children and babies. So, is it too surprising that maybe a lot of people in Syria are Medieval, brutal, inhumane, etc.? To me, from about 1/4th the way around the world away, one of the big lessons needed in the Mideast is separation of church and state, and I can't believe that any significant separation will take place there for at least another, say, 200 years. E.g., apparently one of the main recruiting attractions of ISIS -- in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. -- is a closed, isolated, Medieval, brutal, sectarian dictatorship. So, that stuff still gets lots of people over there to vote with their feet, lives, etc. Over there, maybe they were having wars and, there, killing babies, etc. going way back. Some of the situations and scenes in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, a side-show of WWI, seem to suggest so. In such situations, there is an approach to peace, that of the grave. I do suspect that with some well placed bombs from the US, it is possible to send a message that even the most dedicated sectarians can hear, the parties can understand the message, calm down for a while, sign a deal, get some strong geographical lines of separation, maybe monitored by the UN, and, then, live essentially in peace for some decades, say, until there is another ambitious, bloodthirsty, leader eager to take over territory and willing to exploit religion to do so.

Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin! Who would have thought it would be the US president who Putin "absolutely didn't" put into office?

kafkaesq 10y ago

Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin! Except for the fact that the move indicates nothing less than complete and utter chaos in his stance vis-a-vis Russia. And that it remains to be seen how Putin will decide to "stand up" for his symbolic ally in response.

clock_tower 10y ago
Who cares if his stance on Russia is inconsistent, if it used to be "let Putin do as he likes" and it's now "don't let Putin's proxies commit war crimes"? I'm not going to attack someone for flip-flopping from a terrible position to a promising one.
douche 10y ago
What I am not sure I understand is why anyone cares what happens in Syria, save maybe Israel. It's not an oil producer, and it has been a shitshow, rather than a regional power for 20+ years.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Human rights more than anything else; Assad's response to the Arab Spring was a pretty ugly one, especially by the standards of people who weren't overthrown. (The other issue is that Russia really likes that naval base. Wouldn't it have saved time to just give them the city and get them to stop interfering with the rest of this?)
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  What I am not sure I understand is why anyone cares what happens in Syria, Well there's this thing known as "empathy", in regard to those who are suffering. You might want to look into it sometime. (Then again, with a handle like yours...)

aerovistae 10y ago

I really can't tell which side you're taking here. The quotes make it seem like sarcasm but that doesn't really make sense.

clock_tower 10y ago
I think Putin had a lot to do with Trump getting into office (we know he had Republican National Convention e-mails too, and didn't leak them), so it's a very pleasant surprise to see Trump standing up to Putin in spite of that. And see that Politico article linked to elsewhere in this thread: Putin responded to the missile strikes by suddenly discovering that he, too, had a problem with his ally using chemical weapons! He certainly didn't say that in 2013!

flukus 10y ago

Yeah, let's let Islamists take over Syria, that'll be so much better...

clock_tower 10y ago
We could always give it all to the Kurds -- which is what's going to happen anyways, at the rate things are currently going. (The PKK has secured their home territory, and is now conquering their neighbors to create facts on the ground and get more out of the peace settlement.) Alternatively, I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines, to avoid a situation where Alawites, Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities end up in a majority-Sunni country. There are plenty of alternatives other than control by one or another pack of exceptionally ugly monsters. (I say "exceptionally ugly" because even the Kurds have committed some atrocities. Not without provocation, but still.)
- stevenjohns 10y ago
  Which Kurds? You mean the Kurdish Islamic Front (KIF) which wants to extend Shariah across Syria?[0] Try not to be so explicitly racist in your analyses. Kurds are an ethnic group of 40 million people with different ideologies, interests and goals. Saying "give it all to the Kurds" says more about your racism towards other regional ethnic groups (Arabs, Syriacs, Turks) than some grand understanding you have of the Middle East. > I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines Nobody except casual MSM observers wants this racist, separatist outcome and anybody with any understanding of the country would know that the country doesn't have "ethnic lines" that you can just build a wall across and somehow produce mini-states that will be economically successful, productive and start working in harmony with their new neighbours. [0] http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54367?lang=en http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54367?lang=en
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Which Kurds? The Rojava (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava), the Democratic Socialist (Sanders-like) Kurds of the northeast. The Kurdish Islamic Front (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Islamic_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Islamic_Front) does not represent the Kurdish mainstream. As for the rest, the pro-Assad forces are mostly Alawites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha) and Christians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_militias_in_Syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_militias_in_Syria), organized along ethno-religious lines. Incorporating them into Lebanon, or creating a "coastal Syria" with a minimum of Sunnis in it (and probably under Russian tutelage, since the Christians are Orthodox and the Alawites have reason to see Russia as a protector) would allow them to live without either being tyrants or being tyrannized.

Cyph0n 10y ago

I agree, this is excellent news. Assad's regime is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the torture of children, the setting up of torture chambers in hospital wards, and much, much worse. The blatantly repeated use of chemical agents on non-combatants isn't helping Assad's case either. He is the definition of human scum, and I'm glad to see the US finally step in.

graycat 10y ago
> He is the definition of human scum, and I'm glad to see the US finally step in. I agree with the "scum" part. For the "step in", hmm ...? If are trying to civilize Assad and/or his enemies, then that looks hopeless. If are trying to deter Assad from more use of ugly chemical weapons on babies, maybe that can work, a little, for a while. If trying to replace Assad, then an early question has to be -- with whom that would be better? The replacement should be better, and in such situations that ain't nearly guaranteed. I'm no expert, but it may be that Syria divides into people who (A) more or less like Assad, at least will let him get by with rigged elections without being really bitter about it, and (B) hate Assad and all the people in (A) and would eagerly torture and murder all of them by the most brutal methods they could implement. Yes, the people in (A) might be equally eager to murder all the people in (B). That is, first-cut, we're talking a lot of people who still are back in essentially Medieval times, maybe as if they were still fighting over very limited water and grazing land, and still isolated from the lessons from the religious, etc. wars of Europe of the past 1000 years, e.g., separation of church and state, basic humanism, etc., lessons not well honored in Europe even as recently as Hitler. Hitler was brutal, in Medieval terms, including with gas, likely also on children and babies. So, is it too surprising that maybe a lot of people in Syria are Medieval, brutal, inhumane, etc.? To me, from about 1/4th the way around the world away, one of the big lessons needed in the Mideast is separation of church and state, and I can't believe that any significant separation will take place there for at least another, say, 200 years. E.g., apparently one of the main recruiting attractions of ISIS -- in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. -- is a closed, isolated, Medieval, brutal, sectarian dictatorship. So, that stuff still gets lots of people over there to vote with their feet, lives, etc. Over there, maybe they were having wars and, there, killing babies, etc. going way back. Some of the situations and scenes in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, a side-show of WWI, seem to suggest so. In such situations, there is an approach to peace, that of the grave. I do suspect that with some well placed bombs from the US, it is possible to send a message that even the most dedicated sectarians can hear, the parties can understand the message, calm down for a while, sign a deal, get some strong geographical lines of separation, maybe monitored by the UN, and, then, live essentially in peace for some decades, say, until there is another ambitious, bloodthirsty, leader eager to take over territory and willing to exploit religion to do so.