10-24-2018, 08:40 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-24-2018, 08:53 PM by Eric the Green.)
(10-24-2018, 04:20 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: Exhibit 2. Let's consider the road to the Vietnam war for that. The starting point for this was when N Vietnam associated with a proxy the VC. France tossed that to the US from perhaps decolonization. That probably happened because WWII left the French unable to keep its empire because resources. Empires require resources like a huge military and enough wealth to keep. So that was why. France didn't have enough resources to have a sufficient military along with other resources to stay an empire. There resultant power vacuum did leave enough space for <insert bad guys here.> Also, the US and USSR installed bad guys who were basically patsies for which big guy who put them power. Therefore, unless this->bad guy is at present an existential threat then no intervention is needed at all . If "bad guy = evil" = is the only unqualified reason for intervention, then that's stupid because there has been no logical thought process done to support vague nonsense. Other common vague nonsense are statements of non fact like "national security interest(s)", "human rights", and "friends and allies".
"(Exhibit 3)" Now let's take the reasons to intervene in Syria. There was of course some sort of uprising. The proximate reason for this was high food prices due to drought, not "we want freedoms". The next thing to consider why Assad i= bad guy. Syria as assorted groups, like Kurds,Sunnis,Alawites,Shias,etc. So, with that, some sort of repression happens to keep the infighting somewhat stable. So... since the US chose to intervene, there result was contained chaos. The chaos in Syria is from Russia and Assad. This is better than the results from regime change in Iraq. Failed states are really bad and are certainly worse than Assad. Libya is an even better example. Regime change turned the space there from a repressive area, but at least folks could eat,drink, and not live in a shithole in general. Likewise, this is why so many refugees went to Europe and is now a huge clusterfuck. ISIS happened because of Iraq state failure + Mujahedin which are religious crackpots who became Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
That sequence is ISIS = blowback(Proxy,regime change). There were lots of stupid policy that lead to ISIS, that's for sure. However all said decision were to intervene someplace. The US proxy fight in Syria of course made territory easier to get in Syria. The best policy here would be to just blow off what's going down in that country. As for gassing. Well, that accusation hasn't been independently verified by a valid 3rc party. The "White Helmets" are essentially some monitoring folks from our proxies. That's not good enough for me.
Bill and Brower made good points. I think your response illustrates the wisdom on your part and theirs of seeking a balanced policy rather than acting on dogmas.
On #1, Bill was right; we were too wimpy and allowed Hitler to amass too much power before stopping him. We overlearned our lesson. After WWII we acted preemptively to stop what we considered aggressors amassing too much power, when the situation was much more complicated than that, and included nationalists such as the Vietnamese seeking self-determination.
On #2, Vietnam as well as African countries illustrated the wisdom of "nation building" by the UK rather than mere colonization by the French. Although British colonies once freed have done somewhat better, Zimbabwe and the 4 countries to the north of it show it was not a black and white situation. I don't know if colonization had many beneficial effects as opposed to harmful ones anywhere. It was mainly exploitation and imperial power plays. I lean toward the idea that allowing the countries to develop on their own would have been better. Sometimes I heard (according to Gates' Africa documentary for example) that just trading with these countries inspired them to develop; domination was probably not necessary. India would have been generally better off if left alone.
On #3, you continue to just get it wrong, Rags. It would be wise to read further on this Syria business. Your proximate reason was correct, but it was also the desire for freedom, especially among younger people. On social media the ideas spread among youth in the Arab countries that freedom would bring greater prosperity and opportunity. It was a chain of rebellion, and I look to the quadrature of Uranus-Pluto-Saturn in circa 2010 and 2011 as indication that according to the cycles of humanity and the cosmos around us, it was time for a big revolution somewhere. It broke out in Tunisia under a solar eclipse and exact conjunction of Jupiter to Uranus (then in sq to Pluto) on the same day, which targeted that location according to astrology rules. These planetary alignments are well known to corrrespond to the great revolutions since the one after which the USA was founded.
That just shows that this was a natural, periodic outbreak of revolution in an age when humans are expanding in their abilities and powers to create the world they want. Aspirations cannot be denied anywhere on Earth without periodic outbreaks of movements for freedom. That's what happened in the Arab countries, and Syria was just one in a chain of them, which also spread around the world in the following few years, even to Wall Street.
The US did not choose to intervene; it did not intervene. To say that the USA intervened in Syria is a total fabrication. The people demonstrated en masse. Assad started shooting them down, regarding the protests as dangerous to his rule. Barrel bombs, tanks and machine guns were used. Later, so were chemical weapons, as verified indeed by 3rd parties. So, an army of freedom fighters was formed. All that happened even before the USA gave any aid at all to the rebels. Obama was really slow about that. He did not act in time to give the rebels the power they need to win. They almost did.
This was the failure Bill refers to. The balance was wrong again. We had been so in error with our over emphasis on intervention (to stop another Hitler, another Munich appeasement) since world war two, that since Vietnam there was a trend to learn a lesson again and not to intervene. Before that, we didn't want another Munich. Now, we didn't want another Vietnam. This is what Obama and perhaps Trump represent when it comes to Syria.
But on the eve of rebel victory, Russia and Iran stepped in to save Assad. The rebels did not have enough support to stop Assad and Russia. Although, since they didn't get much support, the rebels seemingly had accepted the help from jihadist volunteers. This was welcome, since the Saudis and other supposedly moderate Arab and Turk allies didn't send anyone. But this provided an excuse for Assad to claim that the rebels are terrorists. In fact, Assad helped invite them in so he could claim this. And he claimed it anyway, of course, even though the rebels were primarily just citizens defending themselves from Assad.
It does get complicated, because Assad does have the support of a Shia minority group in Syria, so that the rebels were mostly the majority Sunnis. But the Sunni majority of citizens rebelling for freedom and protecting themselves did not have the goal of repressing the Shias. The Shia orientation of Assad also provided an incentive for Iran and Hezbollah to intervene on Assad's behalf.
In any case, Iraq is in much better shape than Syria now. Syria is a totally failed state; Iraq at least has a chance. Assad is worse than any other failed state, by far. It is correct, though, that our USA unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003 created the conditions for the formation of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later became the Islamic State (aka ISIS), which in 2014, 3 years after the rebellion started in Syria, took advantage of the chaos to seize territory mostly in eastern Syria as well as in western and northern Iraq. The IS is an abomination, and horribly cruel and genocidal. But they are not the rebels against Assad, and have no connection with them.
The failed rebellion in Syria is the main source of the refugee crisis, which has inflamed nationalism and racism in Europe and the USA and gave the white house to Trump. And that is truly a disaster we could have perhaps prevented with some timely intervention in Syria.
This is all fact and easily verifiable if you don't go by propaganda put out by such people as Tulsi Gabbard or Assad himself.