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These situations are always unfortunate. The U.S. does nothing: Innocent people continue to die The U.S. does something: Innocent people die (It is war, after
by ProfessorLayton 10y ago
These situations are always unfortunate.
The U.S. does nothing: Innocent people continue to die
The U.S. does something: Innocent people die (It is war, after all)
Whats worse, is what'll happen when one of the strikes inadvertently hits some of Russia's troops?
Whats the solution to all this?
- danharaj 10y agoIt would have been nice if the US hadn't been a direct actor or accomplice in every destabilizing event in the middle east for the past 50 years. isis and the civil war did not emerge out of the vacuum.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoI'm not sure that the civil war in Syria comes from US intervention, or even from ISIS. ISIS tried to take advantage of an existing situation, which was triggered by Assad's brutality to (initially non-violent) protests of his regime.
- cup 10y agoIraq --> Syria
- clock_tower 10y agoIt was Assad's brutal suppression of protests that started the civil war; ISIS (formerly al-Qaida in Iraq, formerly Tawhid wa-Jihad) moved into the east once it was under way.
- danharaj 10y agoWho knows how the war would have gone without isis in the picture?
- clock_tower 10y agoI don't think it would've been very different. There would have probably been an Islamist insurgency in that region anyways (Sunnis in arms, especially against secular rulers, tend to be Islamist these days), and it would've probably been about equal to ISIS in ability: less of ISIS' evil "star power", but more military ability since they wouldn't have everyone on the planet bombing them.
- 67726e 10y agoThere are many factions in the Syrian civil war, not just Assad and ISIS. I'm sure many an ISIS fighter would just join another faction, e.g. Al Qaeda affiliates, had ISIS not arisen.
- danharaj 10y agoYou say there would have been an insurgency anyway, but daesh was precisely the insurgency that formed from the conditions that made it favorable for such an insurgency to form. These ideologies always exist in a latent form, but they take socioeconomic upheaval to turn into a self sustaining rupture in the political order. The United States both in the short term and the long term has incubated these movements with its ill planned policies and wars. Like, coordinating coups and dropping bombs over and over again tends to have that effect.
- clock_tower 10y agoDAESH/ISIS didn't form in the civil war; they renamed themselves that, but they already existed as al-Qaida in Iraq. A native east-Syrian Islamist insurgency would probably have been more benign; they certainly wouldn't have had eight years of war with the US to refine their tactics, write The Management of Savagery, develop a webzine, and so on.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nandemo 10y agoUS was openly funding and training rebels as early as 2013: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-first-cia-trained-rebel-unit-about-to-join-fighting-against-assad-regime-says-president-8796873.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-cr... And the US had been covertly funding the opposition for at least 5 years before the war erupted: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0418/Cables-reveal-covert-US-support-for-Syria-s-opposition http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0418/...
- afarrell 10y agoIt would have been nice if Britain and France hadnt drawn the Sykes-Picot line. But they did. 2017-Americans can only take actions in 2017.
- Udik 10y agoThe US has been financing and training the "rebels" for years. Had the US sided with Assad from the start, the war would have been over in two weeks, and costed 500 times less victims. The problem has never been the war, the problem is that "Assad must go". For the strategies and gains of the US and a number of its allies. Any excuse and any false flag will do, and any amount of victims is acceptable to this end.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThe problem was that Assad in power, not during war, turned out to not be free from victims.
- graycat 10y ago"solution"? Maybe get all the parties to the fighting to get serious, sit down, shut up, listen up, and make a deal. For the first part, the "get serious", have some bombs wake them up and get their attention. Or may want a BATNA -- best alternative to a negotiated agreement -- to be much worse than so far. Or, call it making the parties motivated. Or, maybe the attack with the 50+ cruise missiles was to "make an example". Why try to make the parties more motivated -- could that help? Well, easily enough, there are enough people among the parties who are willing to have that several sided civil war continue at the current level of bloodshed for a long time. But, maybe by making the war more costly to selected parties, can get a deal. I don't know enough of the details to have any idea if any of the above would be realistic, feasible, correct, etc. Instead, I'm just floating some of what might be part of the situation. Or as General Mattis explained, a war is not over until the enemy says it is -- the enemy also gets a vote. So, for a war to be over, all the sides need to be motivated to agree it should be over.
- sharun 10y agoThe solution has been known for a long time. Dismantle the military industrial complex.
- reddytowns 10y agoHow about open a wormhole in space time to travel back in time and fix things in the past? Both have about the same probability of happening.