USA once again prepares to throw out baby with Ba'athwater:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-syria-attack-20130827,0,3461698.story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23847839

As of the last few days, the US Defense Department has indicated that yet another war in the Middle East and continuation of George Bush's policies on the part of President Obama is in the offing. Instead of the GOP and Bush taking the plunge into an invasion of Syria, it will be Obama and the Democrats. The USA went into Iraq to remove Saddam and 'make democracy' and wound up with an outright Iranian proxy in control of Iran. The odds that the USA will be able to do any better in the even more volatile and unstable internal situation in Syria are rather less.

By any objective standard the invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian catastrophe with few parallels, where an incompetent regime run by a man with a Stalin fetish in 2003, after a long military stalemate and a lost war and over a decade of sanctions was better-able to provide for Iraqis than the rich, affluent, powerful United States of America. Iraq went from a tinpot mini-totalitarianist state to an anarchistic hellhole with power concentrated in the effective range of paramilitaries and their firepower. Syria is a country which used to have a military coup every year after independence until the elder Assad imposed his power in blood and iron. It is a country where a minority Shia sect created a practical inversion of Iraq, the minority-religion based secularists maintaining a tyrannical regime over the vast majority. It is now a country where both Al-Qaeda Mk. II and Hezbollah are already in a major internal clash of extremist movements seeking to establish new geopolitical bases. The United States defines subtlety as reducing towns to charred, broken buildings still standing as opposed to finely pulverized rubble and will see the Republicans, the loudest proponents for this war five seconds after it begins turn it into another anti-Obama conspiracy gift that keeps on giving in the usual hypocritical style.

If this actually happens, it would have been better to use Turkey as NATO's proxy in the region. The United States does not need another clusterfuck caused by hubris in a region where it has already created too many.

Edit: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/27/20209022-military-strikes-on-syria-as-early-as-thursday-us-officials-say?lite

It's confirmed that there will be missiles as early as Thursday. Well, Assad got what he wanted, the war's widening even further than it already is.

Comments

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

"throw out baby with Ba'athwater"

NICE.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I admit that it's an obvious, bad pun. :P

[dwer.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I don't think any US involvement in Syria will approach what happened in Iraq.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Eisenhower and Kennedy believed the USA could intervene in another civil war without it going horribly wrong. They were wrong. Bush and Cheney believed the USA could go into Iraq a second time and it not turn into a horrible disaster (albeit SecDef Cheney didn't think that in 1991). I give an administration that hires a guy with tax evasion to be Secretary of the Treasury no credit whatsoever with the ability to into a powder keg of a civil war without a clusterfuck happening. If I'm wrong, wonderful.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Kerry's not exactly Rummy, and Bremmer's not around, but still, I'm a little concerned that any inevitable rebuilding team might show the same kind of ignorance, willfull blindness and mercenary arrogance that we saw in post-Garner Iraq. We don't have a particular good track record on this kind of thing recently.

I don't think it would be as bad, but I'm very concerned about it not being good.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

By the looks of the cautious approach by the current administration, I'm prone to agreeing.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Don't you get it? The whole point of the Orwellian-named "War on Terror" is to create terrorists, thus continuing the justification for ever-increasing the powers of the police state.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If the state was capable of that kind of elaborate exercise the Drug War seems more logical to use as a proxy. I don't think the state has that kind of capability.

[papasha-mueller.livejournal.com]

"It is now a country where both Al-Qaeda Mk. II"

Bullshit Mk 2, I think.
In search of Al-Quaeda you go Saudia.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

Let the Arab League take the lead. This will only be a repeat of Iraq if the US gets involved. More innocent people will be killed if they go in and then when they inevitably pull out, sectarian violence will begin all over again. The only thing the US should be doing is sending aid to displaced refuges.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Gulf Emirates are already involved. The problem is that this help is worse than the original problem.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Thank God we have an exit strategery this time...

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

Do we need an exit strategy for a limited bombing campaign?

[oportet.livejournal.com]

It's obvious this will be another 'damned if we do damned if we don't' situation, 'damned if we don't' probably being about a trillon dollars cheaper though...

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Well shit.

I wish there was something else to say besides that....

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Me too

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I do feel a bit sorry for Obama here. He did bring some of this on himself with his bright red line comments, but every option is bad. The rebels are a disorganized group, but most of the powerful groups are not ones we'd want winning the war. Assad is of course no friend of ours either, so really we don't want either side to win. Of course standing back and providing humanitarian aid for people who survive being shot isn't really as good as preventing them from being shot in the first place, but it seems the obvious choice.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

What of Russia? Why is it valuable to USA to fight proxy war with Russia in Syria again?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Deterrent missile strikes and a boots-on-the-ground invasion are totally different things. The US has repeatedly said that it doesn't even expect these strikes to significantly impact Assad's ability to continue to fight the rebels, just to punish him for using the chemical weapons.

This isn't that far off from the June 1993 bombing of Iraq, in scope or purpose. Equating it to Bush's 2003 invasion is a bit off the mark.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Assuming it stays at missile strikes, I'll be happy to be wrong.

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

is anybody really clear on what we are trying to accomplish by launching a bunch of cruise missiles into syria? are we just going to kill some people, blow up some runways, and hope that Assad sees the light? this just doesn't seem very prudent.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Aren't there a bunch of people in the Pentagon who figure those sort of things out?

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

will not end well

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Have any of the governments released any evidence that it was the Syrian government behind this? Or are we still at the "no, trust us, this time we're really not lying" stage?

Seems to me that it's the rebels who are benefitting most...

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Have any of the governments released any evidence

That's coming on Thursday. Skeptics will be skeptical of that evidence. And who can blame anyone after Iraq.

[404.livejournal.com]

Let the British and French deal with Syria. The region today is a direct result of their attempts at post WWI colonization. Our adventure time of regime change should be over.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That is like saying, "Let the fox guard the chicken coop."

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Well, Assad got what he wanted, the war's widening even further than it already is.

It hardly seems logical to me for Assad to do something it knows will give NATO and the U.S. justification to enter the fray, but it makes a lot of sense for some desperate opposition rebels in need of allies and greater support than the U.S. can provide under the table. It makes sense for the U.S. empire seeking more footholds in the region as part of its continuing plan to gain control in the Middle East in the wake of the post-Soviet collapse.

If you think Assad is driving this thing, you are buying the U.S. propaganda even more than I thought. If the U.S. were to seriously step in, having Turkey and Israeli allies so close and training the rebel opposition on the ground, it is not a conflict Assad's regime can survive, whatever domestic fallout the U.S. will face and losses it will suffer. Encouraging this does nothing beneficial for him, it just serves to strengthen the narrative the U.S. desires in order to justify military intervention and widen its still murky geopolitical aims in the Mideast. The U.S. has been country hopping over there for about a decade now, with some type of military action everywhere from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and Libya.

will see the Republicans, the loudest proponents for this war five seconds after it begins turn it into another anti-Obama conspiracy gift that keeps on giving in the usual hypocritical style.

Hey friend, it's not the Republicans going to war this time (their assignment was the last ones in Iraq and Afghanistan), it's Obama and his Democratic allies like Senator John Kerry (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579036173795495190.html#). If you're an ideologue of Obama, whatever, but at least be honest and call a spade a spade.

So here we go again... Just more of the same.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Remember when he was having his army shell Turkish villages? Which, given Article 11, would have ensured the USA was involved regardless? Obviously not.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

But let me get this straight...

Taking out Assad has at least been considered on the table at least since as far back as last year, if we consider the Brookings Institution report "Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change" (http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/03/15-syria-saban). And possibly even further back then that (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE07Ak01.html) according to some as part of a larger U.S. campaign, with vague designs mentioned even before 9/11 (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/26/wes_clark_and_the_neocon_dream/singleton/).

Now we have to go start firing missiles at Syria because supposedly Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian rebels in a death toll of at least 1,000. With the report to again supposedly confirm and 'justify' this in the waiting. The U.S. has been, as far as I had heard, backing these Syrian rebels, many of whom would be considered part of al-Qaeda right, its supposed enemies in the War on Terror, for some time now?

Now, if I also remember right, back in May weren't there reports suggesting (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188) these rebels themselves had used deadly chemical agents such as sarin?

The entire ordeal of the U.N. chemical weapon inspectors is rather weird as well, especially this bit:

U.N. inspectors faced gunfire Monday from unidentified snipers as they investigated reports of a chemical-weapons attack last week in the Damascus suburb of Mouadhamiya, one of the areas allegedly struck last week in poison-gas attacks. The U.S. had earlier delivered a caution to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, with a senior official telling him the inspection mission was pointless and no longer safe, said a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Ban ordered his team to continue their work, this person said. The U.N. investigators are mandated to determine whether chemical attacks occurred, but not who initiated them. U.S. officials said Monday they expected their own intelligence assessment on the attacks, details of which could be released publicly as early as Tuesday, to conclude that forces loyal to Mr. Assad were behind the poison-gas attack, not the rebels, as the Assad regime and Russia have alleged. Administration officials made clear Mr. Obama would make his decision based on the U.S. assessment and not the findings brought back by the U.N. inspectors. (emphasis mine).

Even more worryingly, the Wall Street Journal reports: (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324906304579039342815115978.html)

"One crucial piece of the emerging case came from Israeli spy services, which provided the Central Intelligence Agency with intelligence from inside an elite special Syrian unit that oversees Mr. Assad’s chemical weapons, Arab diplomats said. The intelligence, which the CIA was able to verify, showed that certain types of chemical weapons were moved in advance to the same Damascus suburbs where the attack allegedly took place a week ago, Arab diplomats said."

With the Iraqi "Weapons of Mass Destruction" fabrication debacle still very much with us and the fact that both of those countries have invested interests in the region, can we really trust this secret intelligence we will never be allowed to examine being funneled by the Mossad to the CIA and into the President's ear? Which his administration has made clear will form the entire basis for his military decision, *not* the independent, one could hope less bias U.N. inspection report, which the U.S. in on record trying to subvert and saying it will not consider if it deviates from their narrative.

Lastly, your use of the term "anarchistic" to describe the post-U.S. invasion Iraqi hellhole is both inaccurate and, to me, offensive as an anarchist myself. There is nothing anarchistic about a country ruined by invasion and rocked by civil war and bloody strife. Rather, that is authoritarian to the core.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I suppose you did not get the memo on the infallibility of Mossad. Anyone who questions their integrity is automatically labelled a neo-Nazi and accused of crimes against humanity.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I believe you meant to say, "wound up with an outright Iranian proxy in control of Iraq."

I agree that this does not bode well for anybody. It will probably mean an escalation in the violence to the "blood shower" level that we saw in Iraq and Libya. The irony of the whole thing is that Saudi Arabia and Israel have been contending for their own slices of the Syrian political scape by supporting different anti-Alawite factions. Regional allies of the West push the country into civil war and then a western alliance screams "foul" and escalates.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

An interesting interview with Zbigniew Brzezinsky (http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/brzezinski-the-syria-crisis-8636?page=1). He was very critical of Obama's approach to the Syrian situation, which he argues is very illogical and inconsistent. At first, the Arab Spring began because of the drought and the food shortages, but it was then flamed up by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And the US suddenly said Assad had to go. Brzezinsky is at a loss why the US would want the destabilisation of Syria. Later, the administration backpedaled a bit when they realised that not all of the rebels were so "democratic".

He argues that this time the risks for the US are much greater and it'll be impossible to contain the crisis only to Syrian territory, as there's a myriad of armed groups involved in the civil war. He thinks the crisis should be addressed by involving as many international participants as possible, especially ones like China, Japan and India. The ultimate goal of course is to reach a point where free and democratic elections would be possible.

Whichever way the US chooses to intervene, it'll be largely ineffective, and in the best-case scenario it'll result in further deterioration of the trust in America in the region. The worst-case scenario is seeing a regime come to power that would be much more hostile to the US than Assad is.

He also spoke about the future US role in the region and the prospects for Israel. His conclusion is somewhat curious, so I'll quote it:

"[The US] is a highly motivated, good country. It is driven by good motives. But it is also a country with an extremely simplistic understanding of world affairs, and with still a high confidence in America’s capacity to prevail, by force if necessary. I think in a complex situation, simplistic solutions offered by people who are either demagogues, or are smart enough to offer their advice piecemeal; it’s something that people can bite into. Assuming that a few more arms of this or that kind will achieve what they really desire, which is a victory for a good cause, without fully understanding that the hidden complexities are going to suck us in more and more, we’re going to be involved in a large regional war eventually, with a region even more hostile to us than many Arabs are currently, it could be a disaster for us. But that is not a perspective that the average American, who doesn’t really read much about world affairs, can quite grasp. This is a country of good emotions, but poor knowledge and little sophistication about the world."

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

http://ecfr.eu/content/entry/commentary_eight_things_to_consider_before_intervening_in_syria