The Syrian Rebels get aid in their great struggle against the evils of Assad:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

.......

But they get them from Saudi Arabia and like-minded countries that are solid modern absolute monarchies that are arguably how one, if one were hot and bothered to try, to build a totalitarian state using a monarchy as the template, states which are assuredly not committed to freedom or democracy, but rather to a religious-based totalitarianism that would replace the Assad variant of totalitarianism with an Arab face with a different variant but leave much of the same patterns intact.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2012/05/17/Syrian-Rebels-getting-outside-help/UPI-37271337271787/

Frankly put I am totally and completely ambiguous about this. It's great that they're finally getting real help instead of people talking about how tragic it is that they're getting none, but the people they're getting it from, be they US Allies or US enemies, are precisely not the kind of people whose solutions actually improve as opposed to worsen things. Assad is obviously a monster, if he weren't, he wouldn't be pushing this civil war to the extent he is. But a regime that Riyadh would feel comfortable with is not much of a change for the better and would arguably be one that would be much, much worse.

Your thoughts?

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

It has little to do with absolute monarchies, democracies and the like.

It has everything to do with geopolitics. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the big players in this game, and Syria is one of the bishops. Saudi Arabia will try to knock Iran out of Syria and acquire this geopolitical trophy. And Russia and Iran will try to prevent this.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. All the soundbites and sloganeering around the Syrian crisis would've been hilarious if there weren't hundreds of people dying out there. Freedom and democracy, hah.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

No shit.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that applies with electioneering and wars in general. Electioneering around wars is focused on ensuring that the death of people on both sides is hostage to the mixture of intrigue and incompetence that marks most elections.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, except that Syria is not Qatar, Saudi Arabia playing the Nicholas I to this 1848 is getting very much bigger here. I'm not sure how much the USA can support an Arab proxy doing something like this without completely discrediting its ideological rationale for everything it's done the last few years. If it does go that far, then the USA pretty much has confessed that every single criticism of Mr. Bush's wars was right all along.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Saudi Arabia playing the Nicholas I to this 1848

I'm sorry, I didn't get the reference.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In 1848 the Hungarians under Kossuth rose up to establish a liberal state, the precursor of the contemporary Hungarian state. The Habsburg Emperor, Franz Josef, asked Nicholas I to intervene to suppress the uprising, this the Tsar did. So you had a tyranny intervene to save a feckless, sloppy absolutist regime from itself. I'm using that as a shorthand for a reactionary state invading one in a revolution to bolster a counterrevolution by outside military force.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Ah. This time I started getting it. Slowly.

The reference came to me like a supersonic turtle with a chaingun.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

You're quite the poet there ;)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

20. Extremely bold metaphors are as helpless as a derailed swan with severe constipation. (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1452603.html)

I remain true to the Manual!

(Or as they call it, Teh Mahnmual!)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Ha!

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Frankly put I am totally and completely ambiguous about this.
lulz

But a regime that Riyadh would feel comfortable with is not much of a change for the better and would arguably be one that would be much, much worse.
I see what you did there.

[madnecromancer.livejournal.com]

Are you sure the Syrians are as hostile to the Saudis as you? Lets try to keep in mind *we're* not the ones who decide what type of government best suits those peoples' needs.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To judge by how the Middle East has generally thought of the Saudis? Er, yes. The people there hate the Saudis as much as the US Progressives do, though what they have in mind instead is not always necessarily different from a Western viewpoint. Given how much the Saudis are a US creation in the modern world, actually, we are the ones who decided this.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Given how much the Saudis are a US creation in the modern world, actually, we are the ones who decided this.

Could you elaborate on this point, because it's a new one for me (unless you mean we supply the Saudis with military weapons, etc etc etc).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Saudis only took control of Arabia in 1932, and since the 1940s have been an integral aspect of the US balance of power, the decisions in this regard were made by FDR. We knew then that these were not nice people, but a major reason that petrostate has existed at all is the favor of the democracies of the West have been bestowed on it. The Saudi state is extremely shallow-rooted in terms of a historical scale, and it exists at all in the 21st Century purely from its long-standing ties with the USA.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Eh, the Wikipedia article on Saudi history doesn't even mention the United States, and the Wiki article on U.S./Saudi relations specifically mentions there was hardly of *any* relationship, other than some air bases and after WW2 they were part of the US larger plan to prevent the spread of communism. But I don't see how any of that makes them a "U.S. creation."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia is immensely unreliable on historical matters.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Maybe on arcane minor points, but I seriously doubt they'd be that off on something as large of a topic as the United States creating Saudi Arabia.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Given the degree to which they're off on much bigger historical matters than that, actually, yes they would be.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Edited: someone pointed me into a specific item for further information about this, and they confirmed what you were saying. So thanks for your patience on this thread ;)

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

But I still don't know! This is a public forum, you fools! How can you keep secrets from MOI?!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

How can you keep secrets from MOI?!

Easily!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

{SoFixIt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sofixit)}

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

My thoughts are anything but a surprise.

The payoff is much better for those motivated by hatred for Assad than love for freedom. Assad's enemies can supply the rebels with weapons at a relatively low price. The cost of upsetting the Syrians is low and you can always cut and run if things go poorly. Nobody is expecting a Saudi presence in Syria after all. It doesn't even matter if this helps the Syrian rebels in the long run if the goal is just to hurt Assad.

If you're going to remove Assad and promote freedom, you're probably signing up for a long, hard, and thankless slog. Sending a couple shipments of weapons is unlikely to bring about democracy, some nation building will be needed. Keep in mind Assad wasn't a one man show, there were quite a few people who were part of the elite that would be displaced if he was removed. Entire well armed tribes of people would be upset by this.

It should be no surprise that the list of countries that want to hurt Assad is longer than those who want their own Iraq, minus the oil.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You'd think, though, that they'd realize the risk this might mean for their own regimes. Perhaps another Osama Bin Laden type who hates the regime and may not actually hate the West enough to go poke it in the eye and get it to chase him instead of the Saudis.