The situation in Syria is tragic. But it is not America’s fault. The Assad regime is propped up by Russia and Iran. They carry the burden for what has happened to Syria. We would have to be nuts to take ownership of the problem. We have the legacy of Iraq hanging around our necks, which is bad enough. As bad as the situation is in Syria, at least it is a counterexample that demonstrates that Western imperialism is not uniquely evil.
On one level, this is a humanitarian crisis that is indistinguishable from an earthquake in Haiti or a tsunami in Sumatra. The United Nations is equipped to deal with it on that basis, assisting refugees and supplying aid. But it’s really much deeper than that and exposes fissures in the United Nations because there is no consensus on the Security Council on who should prevail in the civil war.
The United States is in the majority in thinking that the Assad regime has lost its legitimacy and must go, but there are no good guys out there to replace them. Probably the best that can be done is to facilitate a negotiated settlement that will protect the Alawites from reprisals if the Assad regime willingly abdicates its power. The Russians seem willing to participate in that effort, even as they continue to arm the regime with powerful weapons that will complicate efforts to intervene militarily.
The problem is that atrocities committed on all sides have hardened attitudes to the point that trust seems impossible. There is no magic fix. There is no likely result that is in our national interests. While we have to do we can on the humanitarian front, we also need to avoid becoming the owners of this problem.
Tragically, our national interests are best served by keeping an arm’s distance from the problem.
feel bad for Syria.
hell no to American troops being sent there.
Any agreements that dont also protect the Christians and the Druzes are also worthless. That’s even assuming their adhered to.
It would be nice if there were still some old school isolationist Republicans around to support this line of thinking. Maybe there are and I just don’t know about them. There used to be a healthy chunk of them in the Midwest.
“It would be nice if there were still some old school isolationist Republicans around to support this line of thinking”
They’d show up and grab the megaphone approximately one microsecond after Obama intervened in Syria.
Unfortunately, the Universe is NOT arranged for our convenience, and not every problem has an acceptable solution.
Right.
Just as there were plenty of Republicans arguing the old school right-wing isolationist line on Libya once an intervention began.
It’s not that the Republicans were being hypocrites, exactly, but that the party was divided, and the faction that was at odds with the Obama administration at any given moment was handed the microphone.
Well, duh, it’s not arranged for our convenience. I’m just saying it would be nice if we had some genuine, cautious, isolationists in the other party. I’m not saying there are any.
Except for Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, they’re all long dead right along with the political party that dumped the isolationist position in the mid-1940s. Hell, they were calling for nuking N. Korea and Vietnam.
More like 8 December 1941.
They were in at that point but it took the success of that war along with the popularity of it post-conflict and a few years to figure out how to expropriate “defense” to their favor. They achieved that by ginning up, fomenting, the Cold War.
If that’s your political line!!
US and Israel attempt to frame Assad regime for Hariri bombing in 2005
US Congress policy regime change in Syria
US support for Turkey and Jordan to assist rebels entering Syria for Assad overthrow
US support for NATO resolution, stationing Patriot missiles
US and NATO support intelligence gathering for rebels
US attempt to unite a foreign opposition group for Assad overthrow
US and Hillary Clinton undermine Geneva accord with Russia for political solution on Syria
You’ve been criticizing the State Department for assisting the rebels for years now, and you tell me that it is sad that I advocate keeping our distance?
Boo, the CIA and Saudi intelligence have been supplying the local al Qaeda there for years. Syria helped Bush torture people, and helped the CIA move heroin through the Bekaa Valley, but those days are over. The US wants to get back Iran and eliminating its allies is necessary.
False.
The CIA has been working to try to steer weapons away from the Nusra Front.
The assumption that the Gulf states are mere puppets, always doing the bidding of the United States is a crude and outdated stereotype.
You wrote:
As Oui and Marie point out, it is the fault of America (and its allies). Blaming Russia and Iran is nothing but jingoism.
Why has “the Assad regime has lost its legitimacy and must go”? Marie has given the answer. We have seen, with Iraq and Libya, what happens to a secular dictatorship in a Muslim country when the dictator is forcibly removed: a failed state. How can you wish such a thing for the Syrian people?
This thinking reminds me of the libertarian response to massive private-sector failures: they cast around for any government involvement at any point, and proclaim that to be the determining factor that made it happen.
Anything to cling to a beloved narrative.
Calling Libya a failed state is an exercise in a sick variety of wishful thinking, on behalf of a repugnant, racist, and reactionary “Those people need a strong hand to keep them in line” vision of Arabs
You might as well have told me in 1985 that the problems in Poland were our fault because we lent assistance to the resistance to Soviet domination. Syria’s regime is armed and funded by Russia and Iran, not by us. And their poor governance is the root cause of the uprising. That we have given some covert assistance to the resistance does not make us responsible for conditions in Syria.
Trying to make everything in the world America’s responsibility is bullshit.
Nobody is saying that Syria is any kind of model society. But to say that that is the root reason they are in the current situation is frankly myopic, imo. Have you forgotten the Project for a New American Century? Isn’t Syria the next in line before getting to Iran? Just because Cheney isn’t in charge of the Fourth Branch of our government right now (hey, maybe he still is!), many of his minions are still sprinkled throughout the government, military, media and corporate private security forces. Oh, and Israel is still Israel. So the PNAC plan is still in effect, right? We haven’t even repealed the AUMF yet. There is only much so Obama can do putting out brush fires considering the overall political dynamic right now.
And isn’t BENGAHZI!!! really about the CIA shipping weapons to Syria through Turkey?
The Project for a New American Century wanted to go after Syria, so therefore the Syrian government didn’t alienate its people, and the Arab Spring uprising was a fake?
And you base this on…what? What actual evidence is there to indicate that the March 2011 protests in Syria were anything other than what they appear to be – organic expressions of the same frustration that led to similar protests from Tunis to Cairo to Bahrain?
Ask the troops on those “permanent” American bases in Iraq if the PNAC plan is still in effect.
I don’t recall PNAC looking to overthrow Mubarak. I don’t recall PNAC looking to over throw Ben Ali. I sure as hell don’t recall PNAC wanting the Muslim Brotherhood to take power over 1/4 of the world’s Arabs, in a the country that has been America’s core regional security ally for a quarter century.
There are forces in this world that don’t come from Washington or Langley.
Actually, I don’t think I mentioned the Arab Spring at all, and perhaps was too indirect in saying that the Assad regime was offal. And well worthy of being replaced.
However, the issue is OUR involvement and the real situation and dynamic. And the current discussion WITHOUT mentioning PNAC would be a fraud.
Revolutions are almost always messy deals with large contesting populations. There is a significant population inside Syria that wants to join the more open societies. But there are also segments of Syrian society that would take them in a much different direction. Just the cost of breakdown in the society is incalculable. Duh, Iraq.
It’s coming out more now that the neo-zio powers have shifted their strategy from using nationalistic strongmen (Mubarak, the Shah, Qaddafi, Hussein….) acting as local surrogates to control their countries to now ruling nations by just breaking down the societies through black opps, bribery and war. The most effective means, and the one in particular they have been using in Syria is supporting, surprise!, Al-Qaeda like groups. The problem they had with using nationalistic strongmen was that they sometimes took the ‘strongman’ part too far and then an Arab Spring blows through and where are the oligarchs then? On the outside, looking in. Not the place they want to be. But with war going on, who cares about Arab Spring? Active war is the grand nullifier of good things.
So Syria has a lot happening below the media surface that hasn’t reached public understanding yet. It would be foolish to rush in without a lot more vetting. After all, the “Assad” regime has been in place for decades and while very repressive in many ways, it also has been rather non-adventuring in foreign policy while providing a secular state that the majority have, more or less, accepted.
The desirability of a particular outcome is way different than the path to that outcome or whether it is even possible at all.
Actually, I don’t think I mentioned the Arab Spring at all
No, you didn’t. That’s exactly the problem.
You’re discussing what’s going on in Syria entirely in terms of it being a consequence of American foreign policy, without incorporating the locals into your analysis at all, or as anything other than as cat’s paws of the CIA.
And the current discussion WITHOUT mentioning PNAC would be a fraud.
Why? I don’t recall PNAC advocating for or endorsing indigenous, populist uprisings involving coalitions that include Islamist factions. Such a thing would be very dramatically contrary to their stated and demonstrated beliefs and history.
The only way you can get from the Syrian uprising to PNAC is to conclude that anything that happens to oppose the Syrian government must be an expression of covert American policy. You don’t offer any reason to believe this is so; you just insist that we have to take it on faith.
I understand your narrative just fine, and wasn’t looking for a further explanation; I was asking for some sort of evidence to support. Instead, I got further narrative and assurances that this was all so secretive that there couldn’t be evidence.
Well, the brilliant success of those sneaky-petes and covering their tracks is always one reason for a lack of evidence, in any situation. This, however, an alternate explanation when there is a lack of evidence for a theory.
As I noted in this post, Assad faces an election for the first time due to a new constitution passed in 2012. So it’s not as if Assad didn’t respond to popular unrest. Funny how you don’t hear about that in the Western press.
Instead of putting pressure on Assad to make the election fair, the Western powers just want Syria to be in a state of sectarian civil war, as you say.
We shall see how those talks proposed by Kerry and the Russian foreign minister Lavrov go. The latest impediment is France saying it is opposed to Iran attending.
Sounds like a total neocon. The US and its allies destroy one Muslim country after another, and yet it’s Iran that “threatens stability”. And this is a social democratic government! The Gaullist government of Jacques Chirac was one of the main opponents of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. It’s not just the US that is moving backward.
That is what you are writing.
Like there is any chance Assad is going to allow a fair election.
The ability of some on the left to make excuses for dictators never ceases to amaze me.
You are the mirror image of the neocons you hate.
Syria is dependent for armaments on Russia. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the US and Russia together could pressure Assad to hold a fair election, with international observers. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
It used to be called diplomacy.
Your saying “Like there is any chance Assad is going to allow a fair election” is like Bush saying that Saddam Hussein wasn’t cooperating with weapons inspectors, when he was.
You’re the one with the obvious hatred, for the left. If you hate the left so much, what are you doing here, instead of FreeRepublic?
The involvement of Putin’s government gives you more confidence that there will be fair elections?
Okay.
going into Syria because I am damn sure that we do not understand it.
But this is sheer bullshit:
“It’s coming out more now that the neo-zio powers have shifted their strategy from using nationalistic strongmen (Mubarak, the Shah, Qaddafi, Hussein….) acting as local surrogates to control their countries to now ruling nations by just breaking down the societies through black opps, bribery and war. The most effective means, and the one in particular they have been using in Syria is supporting, surprise!, Al-Qaeda like groups. “
So the US is using Al-Qaeda to bring down dictators and rule by chaos? Bullshit.
Sy Hersh detailed how the AQ assets were being installed in Lebanon in Watching Lebanon. Not by the US but our good buddies in the KSA. Not beyond the realm of possibility that they were given the go ahead when protests began in Syria — particularly considering that the KSA is supplying the rebels.
If the KSA were “our good buddies,” why is gas $4 a gallon?
The aftermath of the Iraq War, and the actions of the Malaki government, should have taught people that big, oil-rich Middle Eastern countries in the 21st century are not, in fact, the same thing as small, poor Central American dictatorships in the mid-20th.
Talking about the Saudi government as a mere cat’s paw of the Americans is completely unsupportable from the facts, and smacks of orientalism.
a) Oil is fungible — and we don’t get all that much from KSA anyway. But among Saudi Aramco’s 50,000 employees, a substantial number of higher paid workers are Americans and Brits. And they also buy materials and equipment
b) Price rigging — but one of the various ways the oil market has been manipulated.
c) The KSA is a really good customer for really expensive products from US “defense” manufacturers.
If this country wanted to invade and destroy an oil rich country that has been facilitating AQ activities for decades, that would have been the KSA. We didn’t. So, let’s not play silly word games wrt whether or not the US is buddies with that government.
Now, stop being a bully and leave me alone. How many times must I make that simple request before you behave like an adult?
Yes, let’s not play “silly word games.”
For instance, let’s not use the word “buddies” to evade the distinction between a puppet state, a client state, and an ally.
Let’s not play the little word game where demonstrating a relationship between the United States and another country proves that that other country is a cat’s paw of the US, without any agency of its own, or ability to pursue policies not dictated to it from Washington.
And no, I am not going to “leave you alone.” When you write something stupid, I am going to rebut it. I don’t need your permission, or approval. I’m not doing this as a favor to you, and special pleading with words like “bullying” (for disagreeing) and “adult” (for never disagreeing) are not going to make the lousy arguments you make any less of a target. There is no number of times you can ask me to stop replying that will make me stop replying.
If it bothers you so much to be rebutted, then maybe you should make sure you aren’t writing nonsense. That tends to make an argument harder to rebut.
Ahem:
Those were Russian tanks and guns used on peaceful protestors. When that happens in Bahrain, people like you have no trouble blaming America, but when it happens in Syria you seem to be incapable of blaming Russia. Even more amazingly, you manage to still blame America.
Boo, this is my third comment here. I don’t see that my two previous comments warrant ‘… people like you have no trouble blaming America, but when it happens in Syria you seem to be incapable of blaming Russia. Even more amazingly, you manage to still blame America.’
Just to clarify: I’m not blaming America, I’m not not blaming Russia, I think the Assad regime is brutal and authoritarian.
That being said; I also think we should ponder a little more deeply the effects and outcomes of continuing war and the war psychology and the powers behind talking up war.
But to say “people like you” after two comments and then to put words and meanings in my mouth…
I’m kinda clueless how such a sharp mind, who I have been reading for years, would reach such conclusions.
So it’s a PNAC project, but you’re not attributing the project to America.
Just to clarify, are you equating PNAC with ‘America’?
Because I’m sure not.
And I’m not blaming anyone, even CHENEY! Hey, a Black Lord is gonna do what he do. That last sentence is snark. True now, off to the Hague with him and I volunteer to throw the switch when the time comes.
But we haven’t come close to reigning in the authoritarian greedheaded sociopaths…..yet. But it seems with Obama we have stopped digging, at least, per the meme. I haven’t seen any kind of broad, cogent reason and plan FOR “arming the rebels”, have you?
John McLaughlin, on his group 5-13-2013, had the best quick summary of why NOT to get ‘involved’.
“MR. MCLAUGHLIN: There are 10 reasons why the U.S. should not intervene in Syria.
One: If you break it, you own it; Colin Powell’s dictum, said about Iraq. It’s also true of Syria.
Two: Most Syrian options are not options. There’s no such thing as half-pregnant. They put us on the escalator to full intervention. Even if we set out to enforce a no-fly zone, it ends in full-scale confrontation with the Assad regime.
Three: Syria’s air defenses are first-rate. Some U.S. Air Force planes enforcing a no-fly zone will be shot down. Some U.S. flight crews will be taken prisoner, putting us on the escalator for full- blown confrontation with Syria.
Four: Securing chemical weapons depots. That means boots on the ground, exposing our troops to attack by the very weapons we’re seeking to neutralize. Such an attack would escalate our involvement to a full-scale intervention.
Five: U.S. strikes on regime targets. They will turn the tide of the war. That means regime collapse, and that means the U.S. must secure Assad’s chemical weapons. You break it, you own it.
Six: Key elements of al-Qaida affiliated. U.S. intervention could facilitate their rise to power and control over chemical weapons.
Seven: U.S. public opinion, as measured in the latest New York Times/CBS poll, is overwhelmingly against military intervention in Syria; 62 percent against intervention. Twenty-four percent support intervention. Fourteen percent don’t know.
Eight: Syria is not the U.S.’s problem. It is Putin’s problem. Syria is a Russian protectorate. Obama should publicly put the monkey on Putin’s back to keep Assad from using chemical weapons.
Nine: Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military has engaged in the longest-running war since the Revolution. It stretches the troops too thin to engage in a third Middle East war.
Ten: It’s too late. The toothpaste is out of the tube. If we wanted influence over the Syrian opposition, we needed to take operational control by arming it 18 months ago, before Qatar took over and radical Islamist elements gained a foothold in the opposition.
I want you to dispute those elements or promote them — accept them. But I also want to know how much credibility will President Obama lose if he does not make Assad face any consequences for using chemical weapons?”
I hope that I am not wrong when I get impression that the West in general, and not just the Obama administration, has misgivings about the rebels being Islamists.
As for Syria’s air defenses being “first-rate”: I don’t see how McLaughlin can say that after Israel successfully conducted two bombing runs.
LOL, that air defense claim does sound a little sketchy, but I am not in the loop of the latest Syrian air defense doings. It is worth it to view the show to hear him present the points.
As far as not shooting two Israeli intruders down, the percentage they might be happy with could be a lot smaller, say one in ten or twenty. And if it was seen as a provocation, (well duh), Syria might have recognized they were in no position to engage Israel in a larger conflict. see ‘provocation’. In other words, gambit declined.
I’m out of my depth here. Syria intentionally declined its right to defend its airspace, because it feared the Western response to the downing of Israeli jets in Syrian airspace? NATO hasn’t established a no-fly zone over Syria—yet. (And that may be hard to do, considering that Russia has a naval port in Syria.)
Damascus is very close to Israel, so it’s possible Syria couldn’t scramble jets in time. And if it has decent ground-to-air missiles, it’s possible that it has a conservative policy of not using them unless it’s in a full blown war, to avoid shooting down something that it later wishes it hadn’t. So yeah, after looking at a map, McLaughlin’s comment doesn’t sound unreasonable to me anymore.
The speculation I read was that Israel’s jets never entered Syrian air space. They attacked from Lebanon’s air space. As I understand it, the Russians have given the Syrians a very good air defense system.
Speaking of Syria, Russia, and air defense, I was very impressed by this Time article:
Top Russian Diplomat Explains Reasons for Syrian Arms Sales
A major American publication takes the trouble to dispassionately explain Putin’s point of view. At least some people have gotten the memo that the Cold War is over.
The targets weren’t particularly deep inside Syrian air space; at least the recent ones. Syrian air defence remains an open question, it seems to me.
Carrying out two brief bombing runs is quite a bit different from maintaining the round-the clock country-wide presence necessary to enforce a no fly zone.
Think of the difference between sneaking up on a police officer and shooting him, vs. maintaining an armed force that denies the police the ability to operate in a neighborhood.
Ahem: Have you forgotten the Project for a New American Century? Isn’t Syria the next in line before getting to Iran? Just because Cheney isn’t in charge of the Fourth Branch of our government right now (hey, maybe he still is!), many of his minions are still sprinkled throughout the government, military, media and corporate private security forces.
You are very clearly talking about the American government. The tipoff is your multiple uses of the term “government,” and your equation of these events to the things done by the last administration.
I know you want to change the subject now, but I want to nail this down.
welcome to the site.
I didn’t mean to be rude. I was responding to your comment, which revealed an attitude that I accurately described.
Thanks. It’s all good when we’re sincerely digging deep.
On the bus, Lakeland, 1980-11-28. Most soulful ‘To Lay Me Down’? Tobin soundboard, you decide.
Well, my favorite that I had was from Lake Placid, 1983. It was a shitty recording, audience, with a lot of fuzz.
Here it is. Still audience, but less fuzz.
I’m not a military strategist, but in my reading I agree that we shouldn’t be there as a military force. It’s a complex, tragic situation that involves old rivalries between countries. Adding US troops to the mix seems it would do much more harm than good. And with the GOP trying to create instability in this country to win the White House, it wouldn’t help this country either.
“[B]ut there are no good guys out there to replace them.”
What!?!?!? Of course there are good guys (and gals). They’re called Israelis.
We just have Israel annex Syria along with the Golan Heights (and thereby end that little controversy), and then set up tent camps on otherwise useless land to separate out the Shia and Sunni. Then build walls with remote controlled guns on top of them and voila!–problem solved.
And we’d even have the neoconservatives back us up on that move.
Except its been on “America’s “to-do list” since 2001.
Deferred because our other two wars didn’t go as well as planned (the crowds cheering and throwing flowers at their American “liberators” failed to show up for the parade). After Tunisia and Egypt, the war planners saw an easier and cheaper way to get it done. Syria was to be just like Libya — except they forgot to factor in that nobody liked Gaddafi.
…and as we know, there have been no changes whatsoever in American foreign policy between 2001 and 2011.
Certainly not in Libya: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/03/john-mccains-twitter-archive-reveals-2009-gadhafi-meeti
ng-late-evening/
And how many times do you need to read about the attempted rapproachement towards Syria at the beginning of the Obama administration before you’ll be willing to admit it existed?
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/04/28/kerrys_softer_stance_on_syria_scrut
inized/
Don’t worry – not matter what your number is, I’m sure we’ll reach it.
Narrative uber alles!
LIbya really was a one-off situation, a perfect storm of factors that came together in a very unlikely manner.
Arab Spring was great while it lasted.
I don’t think you’ve ever said anything I agreed with more completely.
>>our national interests are best served by keeping an arm’s distance from the problem
In the absence of the Great Satan a different alignment emerges:
For ‘other sects’ read Shi’ite. As Daniel Drezner says, “A glance at the Syrian conflict reveals its awful humanitarian toll, which stands in stark counterpoint to the coldly realpolitik nature of great-power foreign policies toward that country.” I hear a hint of ‘read it and weep’ in there as far as the human cost and maybe that is something worth considering.
Treating Syria like a natural disaster seems a pretty reasonable idea so long as we aren’t numbered among the protagonists.
No blood for oil!
Syria is after all tied for 31st in oil production with Australia, and at 44, just ahead of Denmark for oil exports.
So maybe it should be ‘Not too much blood for a little oil!’
Louisiana has way more oil than Syria.
Who gets to build/renovate this pipeline: Russia or the Seven Sisters. The oil transport royalties were to be a welcome economic profit for Syria.
The original Iraq-to-the-Med pipeline ran right through the Golan Heights….
The world has managed to live with getting its oil at Kharg Island, or Al Basrah, or Ras Tanura, instead of Sidon or Tripoli in Lebanon.
for wanting to get involved in Syria for some is based on the idea that we need to do “something”. In some ways the origin of this reflex goes back to the knowledge that we had pictures of the holocaust in WW2 and didn’t do anything to try and stop it (except for winning the war).
So horrible images fill the TV screen – and the suffering is very real. Our army is large and advanced, and so the idea of “doing something” is born. This always involves the use of air power – because the advocates of doing “something” know after Iraq that the country will not tolerate putting in ground troops.
In many ways it really is about good intentions. And some times it worked (see the Balkans, Libya).
But in almost every instance advocates of doing something:
Islamist fear drives Israel to support Assad survival
You need to pay Murdoch to read more, but an Israeli paper gives another quote from the article:
So Boo, Israeli officials don’t share your view that Assad “must go”.