If you are debating intervention in Syria ...

[Pangur Bán]

Perhaps we should keep discussions over in my thread, we're I've clearly delineated two levels of separate discussion possible:

1. If US is not lying and intel is true, should we intervene?
2. Would US lie about intel?

It make little sense to combine the two. If the US is lying and providing false intel, then I'm completely and utterly wrong, and we should not even touch Syria with a 10-foot-pole. Of course, then what can we do about it - if the US can lie, the US can also go ahead and do whatever it damn-well pleases.

If the intel is correct, do we move in?

The point of this thread is not to have a pointless debate like that, but discuss why we let it set out agenda for us. Obviously the US agencies would make representations of intel that would suit the political actions they want. That's not really up for debate. It's why we let power-players set such agendas.

I already looked at the evidence myself. The only risk here is that it is a massive conspiracy by the US and all lies. Something I seriously doubt when they've declassified the information in an unprecedented manner.


Why would you assume "Asaad has brains" instead of "Asaad is a monster" or "Asaad is a cocky bastard that knows US won't intervene because of international politics and internal US politics"? Chemical weapons are so much more effective at eliminating targets, and terrorizing the populace into surrendering.

That's why you have to look beyond the headlines and make the judgement for yourself in each case. Nobody is advocating for you or anyone to eat up what the media's serving you and believe it at all costs.

But neither are you correct in insinuating that you should never eat up what the media says. If the media tries to argue for one point, then this isn't categorical and undeniable proof that the exact opposite is correct.

Well, whether or not Assad is a 'monster' or a 'demon' or a 'big bad witch', he's a politician from a successful political dynasty who has managed to keep the US from overthrowing him despite being forced to take anti-Israeli / US positions by the forces around him. Any real debate frankly ends when you replace rational political thinking with fairytale caricatures, or you label the rational realpolitik of great powers 'conspiracy'. Yes, Assad would use chemical or nuclear weapons if he 'had' to, if you put him in that position. So would the Americans and the British. But currently they are not likely to serve him well when the US has already publicly positioned this casus belli in the hope that it will be useable.

 

[Pangur Bán]

So the fact that Mursi was trying to grant himself all sorts of extra power that Mubarak didn't even have doesn't mean anything to you? Also, the military didn't just decide to overthrow Mursi unilaterally, there were MASSIVE demonstrations calling for Mursi's resignation. Mursi continuously denied the will of his people, so the military told him to step down within 48 hours or be removed from office. I actually applaud the Egyptian military for carrying out the will of the people rather than propping up the corrupt regime of a would-be dictator.

You should also probably do a little homework about someone if you are going to make comments about what you perceive to be their political and personal beliefs. Just a cursory look at my posting history would tell anyone that I am neither a Bush supporter or a Christian, as you seem to think I am.

But hey, don't let little things like facts stop your little anti-US rant here...

You're just parroting propaganda. The Egyptians voted for Morsi free elections, free elections the US government pretended to support in public. They didn't like the outcome, so they tacitly approved (and probably gave a wink in the back channels) to the military and they overthrew him. Now they are killing democratic activists, and your media are reporting it as a kind of intractable conflict with neither goodies or badies that brown people often find themselves in.

 

[Defiant47]

The point of this thread is not to have a pointless debate like that

How is that a "pointless" debate? It is essential that we break down what we're talking about.

If I'm arguing that we need to stop the Syrian regime because of the use of chemical weapons, while you're arguing that the US is lying, then all of the following are true:

• I will call you a selfish man who doesn't care about Syrian lives. I might be totally incorrect, in that you fully agree that we should have a full-scale invasion if the intel is correct, but you do not believe it to be. =Misunderstanding
• You will call me a puppet of the media and the US government. And you might be incorrect, in that my beliefs that we should intervene are solely predicated on the intel being correct, and maybe I haven't established an opinion or analysis on that. =Misunderstanding
• We will both be wasting our time

So unless you want to go in circles by misunderstandings, we need to discuss:

• In a magical land where somehow the intel is 100% legitimate, what should we do? Even if the intel isn't legitimate now, maybe the situation will change in the future, or new information will come out. So it's a valuable discussion to have. Otherwise, we're never going to do anything, ever, since all we'll be talking about is whether the information for decision-making purposes is reliable, and never actually getting around to a decision.
• Even if we're not ever going to intervene in a war ever again. Even if we're going to intervene full-scale with boots on the ground in the case of chemical weapons. Is the intel reliable? Would the US lie blatantly about such facts?

Well, whether or not Assad is a 'monster' or a 'demon' or a 'big bad witch', he's a politician from a successful political dynasty who has managed to keep the US from overthrowing him despite being forced to take anti-Israeli / US positions by the forces around him. Any real debate frankly ends when you replace rational political thinking with fairytale caricatures, or you label the rational realpolitik of great powers 'conspiracy'. Yes, Assad would use chemical or nuclear weapons if he 'had' to, if you put him in that position. So would the Americans and the British. But currently they are not likely to serve him well when the US has already publicly positioned this casus belli in the hope that it will be useable.

The "caricatures" are there to speed up the conclusion of the following question. Should a person who ordered protesters and civilians to be slaughtered in order to hold on to his own power, be considered "rational" in the execution or non-execution of crimes such as the use of chemical weapons? She we give Asaad the benefit of the doubt?

 

[Tycho]

The rebels are a fractured bunch, and both they and the regime have not exactly been playing by any rules of war. Though, I have to say that the regime is a lot more brutal in this case due to what they've done before (siege of Homs and Hama, airstrikes on civilian locations suspected of helping the rebels, widespread capture and torture of civilians supporting the rebels), yet there is no clear cut way to figure out a solution in the Syrian civil war because without a lot of focus after a possible intervention, it's going to slide back to square one (and if Assad wins, it goes back to square one anyways).

 

[Rashiminos]

(siege of Homs and Hama, airstrikes on civilian locations suspected of helping the rebels, widespread capture and torture of civilians supporting the rebels),

Seems familiar.

Would the US lie blatantly about such facts?

That does seem to be the question, doesn't it?

Sort of like, "Has the US engaged in torture in the past decade?"

Maybe you could try asking Kissinger. I hear he's still hobbling around.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Should a person who ordered protesters and civilians to be slaughtered in order to hold on to his own power, be considered "rational" in the execution or non-execution of crimes such as the use of chemical weapons? She we give Asaad the benefit of the doubt?

Even accepting that interpretation of events, yes, that can be rationale. There is nothing irrational about killing enemies or trying protect yourself by creating fear (a cornerstone of most justice systems in fact). What's irrational is replacing thought with childish Hollywood caricatures.

 

[Defiant47]

Right, Asaad totally isn't a monster for slaughtering soldiers and civilians who oppose him. That's just a "Hollywood caricature" and we all know those are always wrong.

 

[Tee Kay]

What's irrational is replacing thought with childish Hollywood caricatures.

I'm not sure about the "Hollywood" adjective, but reducing the complexity of Western foreign policy to imperialist conspiracy is certainly a caricature.

 

[Rashiminos]

reducing the complexity of Western foreign policy to imperialist conspiracy

Okay...

Edit: Time to travel back to the old OT and look for Israel/"White Phosphorous" threads.
Like this one.
Or maybe this one in which Forma provided pictures.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Victoria Bitter-swilling down-under stereotypes* notwithstanding, any flat characterizations devoid of data are suspect.

Stick to the facts. The OP presents comparitive examples. I am a US citizen who doubts his own governments stated intentions for military action anywhere. And I base that on historic precedent and ideological differences with said system.

*MY favorite Aussie drinks Veuve, btw. Very classy.

Sent via mobile.

 

[Borachio]

What? Veuve de Vernay?

It's alright. I wouldn't call it classy. Just cheap champagne. Which, too, is overrated, btw.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

But classier than, say, Martini & Rossi asti spumante, n'est pas?

Still, for anAussie to have and get something from Riems is classy, I think.

Sent via mobile.

 

[Borachio]

Rheims? (which isn't pronounced anything like one would think; /ˈriːmz/ is incorrect; while /ʁɛ̃s/ is correct) As far as I know Vernay is in Rhône-Alpes. I'm not sure what Rheims (Champagne-Ardennes) has to do with it.

And the Australian expertise in viticulture is said to surpass that of the French (who really don't think they need to try).

But hey! This is derailing the thread.

edit: I do apologize, apparently Reims is an alternative spelling according to wiki. Notoriously unreliable though it is.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Thanks for the correction. Yes. Rheims.
Lazy Sunday with my friend in his hospital bed. Killing time while he sleeps.

Sent via mobile.

 

[Borachio]

That's a close friend you have there. What's the current prognosis? I mean, what have the medical people told you? I know he's undergoing repeated chemo. So presumably there's a good chance he'll recover?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

No, he's terminal. His goal, our goal is to survive until someone finds a cure. A whole crew of us rotate 2 days at a time so he can get support he needs and updates from our work across the country.

He is not happy about war in Syria and asks what did Assad do to the US to get on its bad side.

Edit: that is, US allies murder people all the time. Not saying Assad did, but what makes him so hated by the US. Is there oil? (No)

Sent via mobile.

 

[Borachio]

I take it that isn't some flippant observation that we're all of us terminal? That would seem a very unlikely thing to say.

But in that case, isn't holding out till "someone finds a cure" a bit of a forlorn hope? As far as I know medical science doesn't suddenly make leaps of discovery like that. (or it only very very rarely does)

Though often enough medical interventions in terminal cases is very often concerned to prolong life. Which is a good thing. Supposing that the quality of life isn't too badly compromised as a result. It's all a bit of a trade-off situation.

 

[Pangur Bán]

I'm not sure about the "Hollywood" adjective, but reducing the complexity of Western foreign policy to imperialist conspiracy is certainly a caricature.

Part of the problem is that so many people think you need a 'conspiracy' to have a rational self-interested political actions and relationships in current affairs,even though many of you take it for granted in any period preceding the immediate present where power play is more distant from information politics. No, big economically self-interested states managing foreign affairs in their own interests is not the equivalent to FBI alien cover-ups or 911 plotter theories.

But indeed, that so many of you are inclined to evoke such implicit analogies is illustrative of the thread's core issues. The media don't show how politics really work, they show a punch-an-judy spectacle that allow people the opportunity to parrot or dispute manufactured narratives that carry very little relationship to the politics of the real world. Hence, for the most part, we don't actually discuss it. It's as distant from us as the elites who participate in such politics.

 

[Borachio]

The media don't show how politics really work, they show a punch-an-judy spectacle that allow people the opportunity to parrot or dispute manufactured narratives that carry very little relationship to the politics of the real world. Hence, for the most part, we don't actually discuss it. It's as distant from us as the elites who participate in such politics.

This, I feel, is true to some extent.

But that is, in itself, a conspiracy theory.

You know: unknown forces working behind the scenes in unknown ways for unknown reasons.

I don't think there's anyway to know for sure.

No one can know what they cannot know.

Or do you have some inside knowledge denied to the rest of us? In which case there's wikileaks just waiting to hear from you.

 

[Pangur Bán]

This, I feel, is true to some extent.

But that is, in itself, a conspiracy theory.

You know: unknown forces working behind the scenes in unknown ways for unknown reasons.

I don't think there's anyway to know for sure.

No one can know what they cannot know.

Or do you have some inside knowledge denied to the rest of us? In which case there's wikileaks just waiting to hear from you.

Any crime commited by more than one person is a conspiracy, but using the term in public discourse is designed to make actions seem more unlikely than they are by invoking phony comparisons with UFOers, 911 theories and so forth. The reality of international power politics is not just some mystery, you have good access to it by reading academic books, journals and so forth. But the media don't give people access to those insights, they report spinned press releases, comments, etc, from the power players themselves and their ideological allies. In my experience, Westerners are the most infantilized people about this kind of thing, perhaps along with people in the Far-East. Your average Middle Eastern educated person has a better understanding of real world politics than most Western journalists have.