Let's have a vote: Should the West intervene in Syria?

[Lord Baal]

Which would seem to indicate that the latter is far more beloved than the former.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Which would seem to indicate that the latter is far more beloved than the former.

Yes, you are clearly more loved on this firum than I.

But, since it was the US and the influential Cuban Mafia making the attempts, I'd vote Castro is more loved.

Castro is treated quite well in the US by its people.

And that's just part 1 of 9!



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[bhsup]

Which is which? Besides, there have been over 600 attempts on Castro's life -- and not ONE on Obama's.

I -hope- that's true that there haven't been, but I wonder how much of that is the Secret Service (like the CIA) not advertising their successes. Sure, we're gonna hear about their failures such as attempts when someone actually manages to get a shot off or whatever, but what about plots that are stopped cold because of diligent investigation on their part?

 

[Ajidica]

Yes, Castro is so well loved he hasn't bothered having open elections, ever.
To put it in perspective, when Castro came to power in 1959, not one British, French, Belgian, or Portugese colony in Africa was independent.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Yes, Castro is so well loved he hasn't bothered having open elections, ever.

WRONG

Casting doubt upon the Cuban political system is a fundamental pillar of the US-led anti-Cuban campaign, often neglecting to mention that elections take place every five years and there have been turnouts of over 95% in every election since 1976. In addition, a number of constitutional reforms have taken place in Cuba since the 1959 revolution in an effort to improve the government’s responsiveness to the needs and views of the population.
Elections in Cuba have two phases, firstly, delegates are elected to the Municipal Assembly every two and a half years and then secondly, from this deputies are elected to the National Assembly every five years. The Assembly is the country’s highest legislative power.
From the members of the National Assembly the Council of State is elected. It acts on behalf of the National Assembly between sessions. The National Assembly also appoints the Council of Ministers, the government’s highest executive and administrative body. In the event of a Presidential succession in Cuba, it will be the National Assembly that elects the new President.
Features of elections in Cuba include:
• Suffrage is universal to those over 16 years of age
• Voting is secret
• Votes are counted publicly, with anyone able to attend including press
• Anyone elected must receive more than 50% of valid votes, meaning that in a number of constituencies voting goes to a ‘second round’
One virtually unique feature inherent in the Cuban political system is the voters’ right to recall delegates who are not fulfilling their mandate. The aim of this is to ensure that assembly members carry out their mandates effectively.
The way candidates are nominated in the Cuban system is also unique, with the aim of ensuring those elected are rooted and supported in the local community:
• Anybody can be nominated to be a candidate for election. It is not a requirement to be a member of the Communist Party
• Neither money nor political parties or orators have a place in the nomination process. Instead, individuals directly nominate those who they think should be candidates
• These nominations take place at urban and rural community meetings where residents select the nominees by raising their hands
• In each electoral district the maximum number of candidates is eight with a minimum of two.

Who's the Cold War relic?

To put it in perspective, when Castro came to power in 1959, not one British, French, Belgian, or Portugese colony in Africa was independent.

And your point, which reinforces mine, is that Fidel and the Cuban Revolution have made this possible?

I agree.


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[Ajidica]

Somehow, I don't find it particularly convincing that Cubans have decided their best leader is whichever Castro is feeling less zombified that morning.

And your point, which reinforces mine, is that Fidel and the Cuban Revolution have made this possible?

Considering Cuba's involvement in Africa was limited at best until the South African Brush Wars and the nasty civil wars in the Congo and Angola, I would say that Africa managed to secure its independence irregardless of the Cuban Revolution.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I didn't think for a minute you thought Cuba had anything to do with it -- but they did.

In this first account of Cuba's policy in Africa based on documentary evidence, Gleijeses describes and analyzes Castro's dramatic dispatch of 30,000 Cubans to Angola in 1975-76, and he traces the roots of this policy—from Havana's assistance to the Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961 to the secret war between Havana and Washington in Zaire in 1964-65 and Cuba's decisive contribution to Guinea-Bissau's war of independence from 1966-1974.

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[Ajidica]

As I explicitly mentioned, Cuba's involvement in African independence politics was decidedly minimal until the kerfuffle down in the south of Africa in Zaire (forgot it wasn't called Congo at the time, my bad), Angola, and the Bush Wars.

As far as assistance to the FLN, I haven't seen any mention of that anywhere, despite the Algerian Wars featuring heavily in Robert Fisks The Great War for Civilization or the current book on decolonization I'm reading (which just wrapped up the section on the FLN-French War). Given that this book went into some detail on the OAS-Gaullist War which is almost perpetually ignored/forgotten about but didn't mention Cuba I am forced to wonder how significant their aid was.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Well, Cuba's first medical mission ever was to Algeria.

Anyway, let the Africans speak to Cuba's impact

Cuba’s support for South Africa’s liberation was of a different sort from that of other Anti-Apartheid Movements: it came not in the form of civil society activism, but as a state in alliance with provisional governments and independent states in the African continent. Cuba’s military engagement in Angola kept the apartheid state in check, foiling its geopolitical strategies and forcing it to concede defeat at Cuito Cuanavale, and ultimately forcing both PW Botha and FW de Klerk to the negotiating table.
Already in the 1960s, Che Guevara provided support for the liberation movement in the Congo, and in the 1970s Cuba helped defend Agostinho Neto’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against aggression by the US and its agents, Zaire and South Africa. This support continued until the 1980s, when the aggressors were forced to back down, leading to the liberation of the entire subcontinent.
At the first Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Summit in Belgrade in September 1961, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado denounced apartheid. Attending the United Nations (UN) Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva in 1961, Che Guevara, the minister of industry, said that South Africa ‘violates the Charter of the United Nations by the inhuman and fascist policy of apartheid’, and he called for South Africa’s expulsion from the UN. Speaking at the 19thGeneral Assembly of the UN in New York in December 1964, Guevara pointed to the UN’s failure to act against apartheid.
In 1960, Cuba began to receive students from the Republic of Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville and Mali, and in 1963 Cuba sent a team of medics to newly liberated Algeria. By 1999 more than 28,000 African students had graduated from educational institutions in Cuba, and more than 76,000 Cubans had served in Africa in some capacity or other.
Perhaps Cuba’s most sustained support was for the Angolan MPLA when it was locked in a struggle against South African troops. This intervention was crucial for the entire subcontinent, whose peoples were held in subjection by an unholy alliance between a racist regime (South Africa), a superpower (the USA), and a corrupt dictator (Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko). South Africa, in fighting the MPLA, was willing to go to war because it saw in the MPLA the demise of apartheid rule in South Africa and Namibia. In fighting the South Africans, the Cubans were thus fighting for the liberation of Angolans, Namibians, and South Africans.

Okay? This oughta draw out the crack WH hit squads.

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[red_elk]

Considering Cuba's involvement in Africa was limited at best until the South African Brush Wars and the nasty civil wars in the Congo and Angola, I would say that Africa managed to secure its independence irregardless of the Cuban Revolution.

There's only 5 years period between Cuban revolution and its involvement in Congo. Their involvement might be limited due to limited potential of the country at that time (though their military success in Angola was more than impressive). But 5 years is not long enough time to say that Cuba just sit and watched African countries securing their independence.

 

[Borachio]

I think that in order for something to qualify as a refutation, you have to provide evidence, or at least reasoning, for why something is not the way somebody else says it is. I would say that it was uniquely poor because your response to my claim that there was no military intervention against the forces causing atrocities in the Congo was to bring up the existence of...the forces causing atrocities in the Congo.

Here's an example of something similar. Say that at some point during Game 7 of the NBA Finals, the Spurs team and coaching staff gets together. Gregg Popovich basically tells everybody, "Okay, guys, I don't know how we can handle LeBron. We've tried doubling him in the post, we've tried cutting off his passing lanes by fronting Miami's shooters, we've tried straight zone, and even Timmy can't totally stop him in the restricted area. We need a solution." Some assistant comes up and says, "Guys! Guys. There's a lockdown defender in this very building. Why don't we use him?" Everybody looks at him expectantly. The assistant leans forward conspiratorially, then says, "Let's put in LeBron James. He'll shut that guy down for sure!"

That's what I mean. I don't think I've ever seen somebody suggest something that silly before. That's why I called it unique.

OK. Though of course those committing the atrocities probably didn't see it that way.

As for it being a uniquely silly suggestion, well, I can only say I've seen at least equally silly. Which isn't at all to suggest mine wasn't.

Anyway. I am in no way here to argue in favor of American military intervention in Syria, or that of any other country. That's not what I do. Prescriptive policies aren't my thing. The point that I am trying to make is that humanitarian aid is well and good in a country suffering from violence, but it won't stop the violence. It's a Band-Aid on the global conscience at best, a way for Concerned Citizens to pat themselves on the back and say "okay, well, at least we're doing something to help" when the very thing that's making life so crappy for people - the war - is still happening. Care packages, blankets, clothes, and tents don't stop the bullets. Often, as I mentioned in the Congo example, aid not backed up by force can be seized by the very people who are sustaining the war, and used to finance their struggle.

It's nice that you think that this aid must be accompanied by "a concerted, sincere, and persistent diplomatic effort", but I don't think that you - or anybody else, including me - has any idea what that means, or whether it will help anything. It's basically meaningless boilerplate. And what happens if this mythical Diplomatic Solution doesn't end up working? The list of conflicts that have kept rolling while endless negotiations are drawn out to no point or purpose is long and depressing.

And sure, there are plenty of armies that have spun their wheels in endless repetitive conflict that doesn't solve anything, too. That's usually why intervention gets brought up in the first place. Naturally, people should have a good idea of how the military side of an intervention ought to work, just as with the diplomatic or humanitarian angles. But that's, again, not why I'm here. You can argue that, if a military intervention in a given conflict had been pursued differently, it might have turned out better (or worse). The problem with a purely humanitarian approach, however, is that you can't change the fundamental calculus of being at the mercy of the men with guns that are actually fighting the war. No amount of aid, or aid differently disbursed, will change that. Humanitarian solutions must be pursued in a context without violence, and there are only two ways to make sure that happens: either get the protection of an army, or stop the war somehow (also usually involving an army).

You make some good points, that's for sure. Perhaps you're right: under certain circumstances the only possible thing you can do is outright kill someone. (I can't help feeling this ambition rather undersells itself, though.)

And that a humanitarian non-violent approach can only result in the death of the aid-workers, and countless others, at the hands of these outraged killers on the loose.

It's just that military solutions by themselves don't do anything either.

And there really doesn't seem to have been any shortage of attempts at military solutions in recent history.

Africa, in places, is still labouring under the pernicious influence of colonialism, wouldn't you say? And the arbitrary division of the land into convenient administrative portions without any regard to the ethnic divisions on the ground.

As a result many countries find themselves being governed by one ethnic elite to the disadvantage of the other ethnicities. So, much of the conflict could simply be the result of real or perceived injustices?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

See my post above.

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[Borachio]

I think Cuba is an important enough country to have a thread of its own, don't you?

What's happening in Syria, right now?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24043751

US President Barack Obama has put military action against Syria on hold and vowed to pursue diplomacy to remove the regime's chemical weapons.

Damascus has admitted for the first time that it has chemical weapons, and has agreed to abide by a Russian plan to hand over its arsenal.

Meanwhile, the latest report by UN rights experts, released on Wednesday, says torture and rape are widespread and war crimes are being committed by both sides.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I think Cuba is an important enough country to have a thread of its own, don't you?

What's happening in Syria, right now?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24043751

Thanks. Any opportunity to tout communist contributions to work history, well, can't pass them up because there are soooooooo many.

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[Borachio]

And not all of them positive ones, either.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

And not all of them positive ones, either.

Well, plenty of other posters are more thab willing to bring those up, so why break their rice bowl?

German spies apparently overheard communications from Syrian officers requesting to use chemical weapons, requests which were denied.
Assad brought up use by US of depleted uranium and Isreali use of white phosphorus. Nobody drew a red line then.

What is wrong is wrong for everyone. I hate to get Kantian, but we are talking about international law, not just moral imperatives.

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[Borachio]

The point is to present a balanced view.

If you rely on your opponents to counter your arguments, I suggest you're giving them fuel for their own preconceptions.

If, instead, you presented both sides at once, you might deny your opponents some ground. And gain credibility for yourself?

Still, there may be nothing in this.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

The point is to present a balanced view.

If you rely on your opponents to counter your arguments, I suggest you're giving them fuel for their own preconceptions.

If, instead, you presented both sides at once, you might deny your opponents some ground. And gain credibility for yourself?

Still, there may be nothing in this.

Point taken, thank you.

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[red_elk]

What's happening in Syria, right now?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24043751

Top-rated comments are interesting:

BBC coverage - "Russia/ China block US-led peace attempts with majority UN backing while UK ruin special relationship with cowardly parliamentary vote. France capitalises as key ally"
Reality - "US desperately tries to get support for military action against widespread international public opinion. France hedges bets. Obama wavers in face of Russian-led sanity".
---
If it wasn't so tragic it would be amusing to see the nation which brought us napalm and Agent Orange.lecturing another about chemical weapons.
---
it seems like the only person pushing for war is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace prize!

 

[Chiteng]

It seems that there will be no action. For all the wrong reasons of course.
But at least, we are saved the embarassment of watching Obama make a even more complete
fool out of himself.