4 ms·

> One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I dunno,

by ashark 9y ago

> One hopes neoconservatism is good and dead. It was an ambitious ideology which presumed everyone in the world shared western values or wanted them. I dunno, seemed to last well into Obama's tenure in practice if not in rhetoric, from what I can tell, and Syria may well be a bigger disaster than Afghanistan and Iraq combined by any measure, including realpolitik (see: its effects on European politics, maybe also on the situation in Turkey though I'm less certain on that one). Yes, yes, the war in Iraq contributed to it in certain important ways, but didn't dictate our response to it, which was about as wrong as it could have been, unless there were some serious poker chips in play with Russia that we mere observers couldn't see, i.e. aside from the obvious ones. There's been no widespread condemnation of that action or even common recognition that we're the reason it's such a big mess, as there eventually was in the case of Iraq at least, and incidentally we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, so neoconservatism seems to be alive and well in some sense. Mind, I protested the war in Iraq, was overall a fan of Obama's domestic policies, so I'm not a partisan looking for reasons to bash Obama or try to rescue Bush's incredibly poor legacy or anything like that.

mc32 9y ago
The take I get is that both their foreign policies were pretty hawkish neocon. Hillary was of the same quilt. Only Sanders and Trump bucked the hawkish trend. Domestically their policies differed a little bit and also Obama was more charismatic, more like B Clinton, in that respect. GW was seen as a buffoon and tool of industry.
addicted 9y ago
Syria is inseparable from Iraq (it's ISIS for a reason) and almost certainly would not have happened, and happened at the scale it did if it wasn't for Iraq.
- ashark 9y ago
  Sure, but Syria would have burnt out before that got started if we hadn't half-assedly propped up the opposition, just enough to ensure they couldn't be defeated but not enough to actually make them win. Year after year. Iraq was really bad and contributed to all this significantly, but in no way did it force us to turn the brief fire in Syria into a years-persisting human misery factory and radicalization engine of a smoldering brush fire as part of a proxy war with Russia.
  - nikdaheratik 9y ago
    We don't actually know that. From what I've seen, the Syrian government faction was maybe a third of the fighting force, but they had air power and the other factions were never able to unite for various reasons. The arms from the U.S. didn't make that much difference, and the war dragged on because the government didn't have a good way to end it without losing alot of soldiers in the cities (and massacring even more civilians). That left siege warfare and massive bombing as their only options, and both of those are slow and ineffective.
fishcolorbrick 9y ago
Same - I supported Obama for years, and yet my favorite bar trivia anecdote is "Name all the Nobel Peace Prize winners who have killed other Nobel Peace Prize winners" [0]. [0]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-apology-dwb-1.3261009 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-apology-dwb-1.3261009
empath75 9y ago
I happily voted for Obama twice, but his policy in Syria and Libya was a complete clusterfuck and in retrospect I think perhaps the country would be in better shape today had we elected Romney, who while I disagreed with his policies is fundamentally a decent human being and probably would have allowed the country to blow off steam without electing a monster like trump.
nikdaheratik 9y ago
Syria is a huge mess, but the U.S. isn't the one paying most of the costs there (for good or ill). It's closer to the proxy wars great powers fight all of the time while the U.S. was and is on the front lines for Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the U.S. response has been to ISIS in Iraq, which is winding down but can be seen more as more fallout from the Iraq war than anything else.

by ashark 9y ago

mc32 9y ago

The take I get is that both their foreign policies were pretty hawkish neocon. Hillary was of the same quilt. Only Sanders and Trump bucked the hawkish trend. Domestically their policies differed a little bit and also Obama was more charismatic, more like B Clinton, in that respect. GW was seen as a buffoon and tool of industry.

addicted 9y ago

Syria is inseparable from Iraq (it's ISIS for a reason) and almost certainly would not have happened, and happened at the scale it did if it wasn't for Iraq.

ashark 9y ago
Sure, but Syria would have burnt out before that got started if we hadn't half-assedly propped up the opposition, just enough to ensure they couldn't be defeated but not enough to actually make them win. Year after year. Iraq was really bad and contributed to all this significantly, but in no way did it force us to turn the brief fire in Syria into a years-persisting human misery factory and radicalization engine of a smoldering brush fire as part of a proxy war with Russia.
- nikdaheratik 9y ago
  We don't actually know that. From what I've seen, the Syrian government faction was maybe a third of the fighting force, but they had air power and the other factions were never able to unite for various reasons. The arms from the U.S. didn't make that much difference, and the war dragged on because the government didn't have a good way to end it without losing alot of soldiers in the cities (and massacring even more civilians). That left siege warfare and massive bombing as their only options, and both of those are slow and ineffective.

fishcolorbrick 9y ago

Same - I supported Obama for years, and yet my favorite bar trivia anecdote is "Name all the Nobel Peace Prize winners who have killed other Nobel Peace Prize winners" [0]. [0]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-apology-dwb-1.3261009 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-apology-dwb-1.3261009

empath75 9y ago

I happily voted for Obama twice, but his policy in Syria and Libya was a complete clusterfuck and in retrospect I think perhaps the country would be in better shape today had we elected Romney, who while I disagreed with his policies is fundamentally a decent human being and probably would have allowed the country to blow off steam without electing a monster like trump.

nikdaheratik 9y ago

Syria is a huge mess, but the U.S. isn't the one paying most of the costs there (for good or ill). It's closer to the proxy wars great powers fight all of the time while the U.S. was and is on the front lines for Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the U.S. response has been to ISIS in Iraq, which is winding down but can be seen more as more fallout from the Iraq war than anything else.