Update on Syria: Americas Latest Perpetual War

really, none of us have to travel half way around the world to find deeply disturbing and immoral shit going on.

Of course not, most of us can probably walk twenty yards and find it if we're really honest, but it's easier somehow to see evil in a far away country with a different culture whilst denying it in your own back yard. It's a natural psychological process and something policy makers play on, we're off to crusade against the evil Arabs and bring civilisation to them whilst just oh so conveniently securing favourable oil deals from neighbouring countries who are watching closely and don't want to be next on the hit list.

Just don't go counting the bodies.....

Uh-uh. You didn't refer to "Iraqs history". You tried to justify the invasion by implying that there was continuing strife between Muslim sects on the eve of the invasion and by claiming that that Saddam's dictatorship had arisen because of previous strife, both of which are incorrect.

Amazing how the facts can become so distorted in the popular perception.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

A quick run through of this thread reads like a Facebook post. And, no, that isn't a compliment.

First off, can we bin off the whole illegal war schtick? I mean, its cute we try to codify uncivilised activities, but really, it's a paper-thin conceit that gets torn into confetti often enough to show the truth of the matter, and whilst it is a nice bit of internet lawyering when discussing various interventions, it is of only practical use against smaller nations unable to laugh off larger nations throwing their weight around.

Next, I think the Balkans was the last war and reconstruction we didn't totally balls up. Afghanistan and Iraq were proof the West could still win wars, but no longer knew how to win the peace - which is concerning, as that is the most important part for the invaded nation and their population, and, really, for the West. Those two nations should be well on their way to being another Germany and Japan, that they're not should be a source of complete shame to the US, UK and our allies.

Libya and Syria indicate we may no longer even know how to win wars. The left have no appetite for tearing down nations, and the right no appetite to rebuild them - and if you're not going to do the latter, lay off doing the former until you are.

As for who we pick to save, and who we studiously ignore until shamed into doing something, it's less about oil and about the fact that most states are proxies for the bigger boys. It's not necessarily about playing Team America: World Police, it's about containing and curtailing other powers. Syria is - well, was, now I guess the US is going home in a huff - about bloodying the nose of Iran and Russia, but like a punch drunk boxer we've mostly missed, pratfalling and faceplanting all over the ring.

Now Iran I'd rather see us backing than the Saudi's, mainly as the Iranians are a mostly civilised bunch that found themselves with nutters in charge. Bit like America at the moment come to think of it.

The Russias and Chinas of the world, on the other hand, need pushing back and pushing back hard. For me, the US leaving Syria just ticked up the chance of war with Russia in the not so distant future. An emboldened, victorious Putin isn't going to put his Risk board away to pop off for a bit homoerotic horse riding, or suddenly retire to join the Seniors Judo circuit, no he's going to spot weakness and consider how best to profit from it. I wouldn't be placing too many bets on Ukraine being an independent state much longer. Or that we'll do anything about it.

Right now we have an assertive Russia and China, two nations with an awful lot less restraint than we do. We have a fuckwit PM who sent vans round basically going "tsk! Immigrants go home!", the Chinese are building city-scale internment and re-education camps. We allow people to waggle placards when we invade somewhere, Russia is more inclined to send in the heavies and imprison and murder their organisers.

We go quite rightly look at something like Kent State in horror, Moscow and Beijing call that a Tuesday.

No, we're not "the good guys", no fucker is, it's the real world, not a children's pop-up morality play book, we're just "the better guys" - which is pretty much all you can hope to be, and keep on hoping to you get better still and watch you don't backslide.

So we can be as hands-off as we like, others won't, and that not only rapidly becomes an existential threat to us and our perception of human rights, but takes an attitude of relaxation to the suffering of others and their future generations. Nations will always have blood on their hands, it's in the fucking job description, you have to choose if its from trying to do right, trying to do wrong, or sitting on a fence as others suffer from your inaction.

I don't think anyone is looking for (or cares for) your approval, so please try to better than starting your post with an insultingly smug tone as of a teacher disappointed with the class, you'll get a warmer response.

No, sorry but we can't. I don't care if you find the idea of international law to be quaint, it's there and the principle of it matters regardless of our ability to enforce it. We hear endlessly about the sanctity of a constitution which actively harms the citizens it is supposed to serve, it's not all that unreasonable to give similar respect to international conventions and courts which are at times merely toothless rather than double edged.

Those wars were illegal, like it or not, caring for ideals isn't naivete when you acknowledge that they will probably never be realised in practise but push for them anyway.

Here I agree with you, the idea of war as a zero sum game doesn't really seem to have much bearing in the modern age and military strength is much more viable as part of a suite negotiating tools than something to deploy in anger.

I'm not personally convinced we did win them, rather the nature of the enemy changed and adapted until eventually we realised there was never going to be an end game, merely perpetual and constly grassroots conflict of exactly the sort this thread is about, did we "win" in Northern Ireland?

The two are not mutually exclusive, I'm not sure anyone literally believes the coalition forces set out to start forcibly shipping oil en masse from the middle east, but as strategic assets oil production centres are massively important on a great many levels. Those particular states are by virtue of being central to the geographical heartland of OPEC highly symbolic of intent and resolve where it comes to negotiating deals and also represent a measure of strategic control and political influence over the region, placing a heavily fortified flag in territory that Russia have long since demonstrated a comparable interest in. It's an area of the world any sensible strategist would covet even if it's only in terms of denial of resources and economic leverage.

That doesn't make the wars legal or humanitarian in intent or outcome.

Really? In terms of foreign policy I tend to see China as having been much more restrained in recent years than either us or the US. Arguably they are currently very much a stabilising influence on the world stage.

Are we? Is it that simple?

I think we go to some effort to paint ourselves that way, it's inherent to democracy that power requires some degree of public consent, but the veneer doesn't necessarily tell us much about the reality underneath and pointing to internal matters is a strawman when we are comparing nations in terms of foreign policy.

Again, let's not pretend there was anything humanitarian about any of this, regardless of the sales pitch.

Here's where I'm really going to call bollocks, trying to "do right" is a pretty unrealistic way of viewing repetition of a course of action experience tells us is almost certainly bound to be counterproductive. If Iraq were our first rodeo I could see this reasoning, we could claim a learning curve but the fact of the matter is we are long past the point where policy makers are under any illusions here.

You enact regime change and you exacerbate whatever internal problems that country is facing, you make not be striking the match but you're sure as hell throwing petrol over it then holding your hands up claiming you were trying to put it out.

I'll grant you the Balkans to an extent but you know perfectly well the scenarios differ on many levels, whereas defensive actions against Japan and Germany acting as aggressor states aren't really on the chart as analogies, which I'm suspecting you realised when you typed this.

So no, Iraq and Afghanistan weren't "trying to do the right thing" when it was so widely understood that doing nothing was by far the more humane course and making that claim does in fact come across as overly simplistic and naive regardless of your apparent academic background.

Jeff Goldblum agrees: That's, uh, a lot of wow.

"Really? In terms of foreign policy I tend to see China as having been much more restrained in recent years than either us or the US. Arguably they are currently very much a stabilising influence on the world stage." - spot

If by "stabilizing" you mean "exploiting" you are correct! Their latest business venture is "stabilizing" Africa with shady deals that I'm sure will benefit the Africans and everybody wins! Of course this hinges on if they can find time when they aren't oppressing their uighur population.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/chinas-investments-in-africa-whats-the-real-story/

https://www.dailysabah.com/asia/2015/04/26/uighurs-suffer-from-continuous-chinese-oppression

Well, the Western model of geopolitical domination was so successful we can't blame them for emulating it.

hmmm......would your comment be an example of "whataboutism?"
Of course not! That only applies when conservatives bring up comparisons - what was I thinking?

I'm not giving approval, I'm giving opinion. You're relatively new, so I hope most of the board know it comes from a source of weariness than smugness. If I'm the mood to be a cunt, you'll know.

Well, you care enough to tell me. I'll leave it to your imagination the level of indifference I have in response. And the US constitution is different as there is an actual government there to enforce the rules, the international ones are more of a glorified book club for frumpy spinsters, at least until the worst nightmares of the black helicopter brigade actually happen.

I've no problems with caring for ideals, prattling on after the fact for year after year on the other hand is both tedious and ineffective. Oooh, they were illegal? Did a lot of good did it? No? Well, shut up about it then so many years after the fact, and maybe bring up something less abstract like the horrific number of deaths?

I mean, anybody not know they were illegal? Is this new information? Hey, did you know Princess Diana died? Oh no, spoiler alert!

Maybe the constant repetition will shame the next President? Oh! The audience is rolling with laughter at that one!

War is nearly always a negotiating tool, the only ones that aren't are those that are genocidal. All sides know there is a negotiation table at the end, it's just being a position to get the biggest piece of pie. It's a horrible way of doing things, but no side is going to suggest they'd be the losing ones and skip all the misery.

We won the wars, the original enemy was defeated. That there was post-war opposition was pretty much guaranteed, happens in most wars in some manner, from the German Werwolf and Eidelweiss Piraten groups looking to harm the occupation up to some of the Japanese, so batshit crazy programmed, who couldn't conceive of surrender and so just kept on fighting. You'd be hard pressed to find any occupying force not opposed in some manner.

The levels of resistance shown in Iraq and Afghanistan were from the sheer stupidity and arrogance shown by the post-war planning though. Northern Ireland is a whole other bag, and like most other conflicts, ended up round the negotiating table.

Russia has less interest in ME oil than you may think, given it sits on one of the worlds greatest reserves of both crude oil and natural gas. It's interests lie in having ports and influence. As for the US, yes, they've an interest in oil, but given they're one of a few nations capable of achieving self-sufficiency, not quite to the extent you think. A lot of their businesses on the other hand...

Not claiming that, they're pursued out of self interest in our own values.

Yeah, building artificial islands in disputed waters, claiming international waters as their own, keeping NK functional and interfering with neighbours... I can see why you think that

Pick someone better than the West at the moment.

We have many, many flaws, and gaining several more dangerous ones thanks to governments love affair with technology and belief it is a magic panacea. A DNA database! Facial recognition! What could possibly go wrong!

But, currently, I'm not seeing any other set that offers such freedoms, comforts, opportunities or intent towards equality.

Oh, we paint a pretty picture of ourselves, nicer than we are, but that doesn't reduce the underlying point. Cristiano Ronaldo is an arrogant prick who shamelessly self-promotes, doesn't stop him being a great footballer. Same with the West. Trick is not to buy into your own promotion. Never forget you can be better, don't sit on your laurels preening, thinking you are the pinnacle.

The likes of the US and France may fall into the trap on occasion, but the likes of the UK and Germany balance that out.

But, again, I'm not necessarily claiming anything humanitarian about it - UK foreign policy (including arming the Saudi's) isn't exactly great - but either expanding our values, or thwarting the expansion of competing ones, has the effect of being humanitarian.

And it's not a false dichotomy either, both Russia and China are actively expanding the spheres of influence, by and large it's what power blocs do. Even the EU does it, which partially triggered Russia's invasion of Crimea. So it does become a question of our values, or theirs, at least until there is a major change in how we do things.

Since ours is geared to increased social liberalisation, I'm firmly on that side.

I'll tackle Iraq first - you had a Western-installed dictator, cheerfully gassing Kurds and trying to eradicate groups like the Marsh Arabs. Now, I disagree with the Iraq war, but it needn't have been the failure it turned out to be, and should have been a humanitarian success. Alas, you had the idiot Bush, surrounded by other idiots, like Rumsfeld, doing idiot things.

Shock, horror. Turned out badly.

It was still our original mess to clear up though. Had it been a non-Western installed leader, then you're into a chain of history, but no, Saddam was "our" guy, our responsibility. I'd rather have seen it dealt with without invading, but I'm not sorry we saw Saddam go. I am sorry we made such a fucking embarrassing mess of it.

Afghanistan had some justification, but was mostly the wounded US lashing out and the rest of the world letting it. Again, no reason a well planned post-war occupation wouldn't have worked. Instead we pissed off the warlords, pissed off the farmers and tried to centralize a traditionally decentralized nation.

Shock, horror. Turned out badly.

We know regime change can work. It takes local knowledge, local "buy-in", planning, respect for local laws and traditions, engagement, and lots and lots of time, resource and money. No poor farmer is going to go and join the Taliban if you've a much better deal on the table, where even playing both sides isn't worth the risk, it's the poor, desperate and, in the West, morons with romanticized views of freedom fighting who do that sort of thing.

So Iraq was trying to do the right thing, albeit for the wrong reason. Afghanistan was doing the wrong thing, albeit for an understandable reason.

As for Germany and Japan, Japan only threatened Imperial territory and Germany would have taken a peace treaty had we been prepared to sell Europe down the river, so both could have been avoided out of self interest. Or, rather, temporary self interest. I don't imagine Hitler would've gotten bored with collecting territory.

Instead we defended Imperial territory and got around to implementing our mutual defence pact with the Poles.

And it's a fine example of how a humanitarian result can come out of the pursuit of self-interest - in the 30's, view on Jews in the UK were not that far removed from German ones, yet by the end of the war we'd stopped industrial genocide, not out of intent, but as a side-effect of the initial attack. It wasn't until late in the war we realized what was happening, the reports from Pilecki initially disbelieved.

Yeah, might want to check the provenance of the rare earths in your phone, just as the Dutch may want to more closely look at their diamond trade.

Africa has been historically fucked over by everyone. If I could fire a nuke back through time, Belgium's Leopold the Second would be one of a few people to have one brief, yet interesting, afternoon.

Killed by the press, for ratings. Not as obvious about it as in Network with Albert Finney, but the same effect whatever the motives. Today they're more diligent about looking for scalps to sacrifice, anything that begins with "T". To you, bud, I'd say you should try to strip away some of the packaging and look past the obnoxious manner to see the results of what's going on in the US - the last guy said (and meant?) things 'global warming is the greatest threat to America today', and 'we must become more like France.' So America picked a reality tv spectacle in reaction; and meanwhile, this "clown" is doing quite a bit better than his counterparts pretty much everywhere else in the world - admittedly a low bar, but still. Merkel, May, Macron, Putin, Xi?

So, it's rhetorical, but why should americans be dying for this? Protestors of Vietnam help ensure our troops came home; the forefathers of modern libs to this day still pat themselves on their back without a thought to the millions exterminated in the 'killing fields' of Cambodia/Kampuchea that directly followed as a result of their conscientious activism.

seriously though - does anyone really think that the US will pull all of our troops out of Syria within 30 days as Trump claimed?
Color me highly skeptical at best. Not saying it can't be done......but it won't be done.

I care enough to point out it's not your opinion that actually matters here. There are over 7 billion people on the planet and a lot of us do care about international law, you may not value those institutions but they exist and they matter.

Cope with it.

I did bring up the number of deaths repeatedly and yes someone here did think they weren't illegal, that's the point. By all means feel free to re read the thread that you found to be so much like a facebook exchange and get it right this time, I'm not doing your work for you.

I have no idea what a future POTUS may or may not think and neither do you, but having that conversation in the public domain isn't exactly an unhealthy thing - would you prefer we value ignorance? Perhaps schools shouldn't be teaching history if it can't be changed?

Except here it wasn't used as a negotiating tool, quite the reverse. The nominal efforts at negotiation were used as a paper thin justification for the wars that were already in the pipeline

Again, I'm not sure it really qualifies as winning if it's self declared and the opposition continue fighting and yes I do realise how murky and nebulous that makes the whole concept of victory. That murkiness is no bad thing if it makes it harder to justify conflict with easy self determined victories in the first place.

None of which remotely addresses my post.

Which is exactly what I was saying all along, if you agree on that single fundamental thesis which everything else has here has been a consequence of what exactly is your point?

So not invading anyone, not murdering foreign civilians on their own soil, not destabilising any regimes at the cost of millions of lives, keeping NK comparatively in check and doing nothing worse than the sort of territorial testing of the water that every single nation in the history of the human race has engaged in, us included?

Who are "the west" exactly here? I'm not sure we come as some kind of "western bloc" that can be lumped together like that. Leaving Japan aside there are a great many nations which are setting far better examples than the US or the UK and you don't need me to tell you that. Of course many of them are western but that is a deliberate misnomer if you are making the link to the coalition simply by virtue of what hemisphere they are on.

Exactly, again, not sure what you are actually disagreeing with here beyond simply being perverse.

Not always, you are taking an already pretty dubious generalisation and applying it in the specific despite having previously pointed out why that doesn't work. The end result of western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were anything but humanitarian, which is rather the point of the whole discussion.

Who was it asking for something less nebulous, like the number of deaths?

Is it? We seem to be well on the way to pretty blindly backtracking there.

Agreed in the proximate, but you said it yourself - western installed. Again you are making a hell of a show of going in circles disagreeing whilst coming to the same conclusion I had already drawn. This was the latest instance in an ongoing pattern of western interference being anything but humanitarian, even by accident. We've been expanding our sphere of influence in the region for centuries and it's yet to have the positive humanitarian outcomes you claim that such expansion by power blocs unintentionally brings.

Yup, hardly an endorsement of the values you claim mark them out.

As keeps happening, which is again my point which you keep attacking only to rephrase and throw back at me.

But almost always doesn't, the odd exceptions you can bring to the table don't change the grim reality that is debacle after debacle and there was never any intent to make it anything else. Hence the wrong thing done for the wrong reasons and a cynical enough propaganda machine to make claims to the contrary.

So we were acting in self defence in WWII, which we weren't in Iraq.

Which is what I said in the first place.

perpetual war? More like perpetual bore!

better than perpetual vore.

google at your own risk.

I JUST REALIZED THIS.......perhaps Trump thinks pulling out of Syria will win him the Nobel Peace Prize like Obama!
Obama got one (if memory serves, maybe he was just nominated) just for not being more of a warmonger than he could have been. Yanking all your troops out of a war zone more than proves that you are serious about peace, love, cultural divergence, and whatever else buzz words are tossed about these days.

I'm not sure Obama really warranted the nobel to be honest, but the idea of doing things with the goal of earning one seems to run counter to the point of recognising genuine altruism on the world stage.

It was a participation prize.

I'm not sure Trump could understand that even if you put it in crayon or building block form. I don't think the idea that one might do something without hope of recognition is something his noggin can process.

Literally no where did i say that - i didn’t even reference the eve of the invasion at all - i even used the words “Tensions between different Muslim sects existed long before that”.

And in regards to the dictatorship i was saying is that it served to calm things between the Shi’a and Sunnis to a certain degree

You’re the one that literally said “Muslims in Iraq were not killing each other before that“

I didn’t make you type that utter nonsense, kid

What’s with you and @spot261 constantly trying the change the framework and move the goalposts of the arguments in this thread to better suit yourselves anyways

And you guys choosing the “Afghani War was illegal” take as your hill to die on, wow

Where did the goalposts move? I've consistently made it clear we were talking about the (then) latest in a series of escalations of existing tensions tied to western interventions, not a sudden commencement of internal hostilities within the muslim world.

You are ignoring the evidence presented that those tensions have spiked out of all proportion in recent years and that spike has been directly linked to outside interventions.

The Afghan war was illegal and you are literally the only person here claiming otherwise, it's not @RickDeckard and I dying on that hill. There was no legal or moral case for destroying a country and causing the tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people as a consequence. That's not really in dispute anywhere, here on WF or out there in the larger world, I'm not sure why you'd believe otherwise.

You aren’t understanding me then - I get what you’re saying about Afghanistan and I simply don’t give a fuck that you or anyone else say it was illegal and I completely support the decision President Bush made back then

Re Syria
Scenario a: Trump just blunders along and he's an idiot
Scenario b: there's a bigger strategy that we don't know anything about

Obviously anyone watching the movie: 'Trump bad, period' could only conceive of scenario a.

Explain that?

That decision cost way more lives than 9/11 did, it was always going to and any reasoning which disregards that is essentially akin to that of a terrorist, the intent to wreak havoc in misplaced retaliation which costs innocent lives. Preventing such actions is exactly why we have international legal frameworks to prevent such escalations which have massive implications for millions of people.

None of those civilians who died in Afghanistan deserved to suffer the US impotent rage on behalf of a man their government wouldn't extradite.

Bombing raids were never going to lead to the capture of OBL, nor was a violent occupation which lasted years after he left the country.

It was about lashing at someone, making anyone suffer as long as they were muslims.

Obviously anyone who's sole mission in life is to piss off liberals will ignore anything that interferes with that pleasure. Oh yeah, I'm sure you're thrilled that Trump fired Mattis. Mattis's resignation letter is a giant 'fuck you' to Trump.

Putin has no more need of our troops being there.