This ridiculous game playing and one-upmanship is a total loss for everyone involved, with the exception, of course, of the contractors and war manufacturers.

Even George H.W. Bush warned long before Junior rolled into Iraq that toppling Saddam would lead to an epic cluster fornication.

There were voices saying the same thing about Libya and Syria.

I suppose the OP may be in favor of that approach.

concerning our installation of a junta in Turkey.

Wiki doesn't provide adequate information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Turkish_coup_d'état

If you or I knew that it would be a mess then you know that they knew. They just didn't care because either the resources or they are deaf to the suffering.

What part of disaster capitalism are we not getting?

I recommend Naomi Klein.
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
http://m.

Syria's not even in the top twenty oil producing nations, producing less than half a percent o the world's oil - it's below Australia. Syria' major economic resource is agriculture - And don't say we're after their olive oil, that would be... well kind of funny, but mostly silly.

Assad's main threat is that he's not a raving madman like Saddam. In fact he's a very smart and capable guy, very low-key as dictators go. Salazar, compared to Saddam's Stalin. He's a solid politician and has, until recently, been able to hold his country together pretty well. And against the odds, he actually seems to be pulling it through the current crisis with some power to spare.

So we have on our hands a smart, capable Arab ruler - an asshole, but smart and capable. That's trouble for US policy in the region - as I outline below, we like our Arab states in a state of carnage, or manned by pliable, feeble dictators like the Sauds or the Kuwaiti Emirs or Mubarak or Mubarak's shit-licking puppy al-sissi. and then of course we have the added twist of the whole thing between Syria and Israel. More specifically, Golan - or to be very specific, the Sea of Galilee.

As ever, we want out Shitty Little Client State to have its every heart's desire - because otherwise it'll probably turn its affections towards Russia or China (and good luck to them, they have NO idea how high-maintenance this romance is!) So we want a Syria that will just blithely write off a large chunk of Syria in exchange for say, a nice floppy check and a bag of cashews for the kids. Failingthat, a chaotic, uncontrolled Syria is just as good, because while Syria is in anarchy there's no one pressing for application of international laws and struictures from Damascus, and our SLCS can do as it pleases anyway. Win-win really.

I think these things should be taken on a case-by-case basis; there isn't a good blanket rule.

...eom.

Those were real WW II Nazis, not just right wingers. We enabled the Croation ethnic cleansing of the Krajina, which was just as bad as the threatened cleansing of Kosovo. That's the thing about being an imperial bully--you are the only decider about who the "worthy" victims are. The attack against Serbia hit lots of state and worker owned factories, but magically missed the ones with foreign ownership--none occured in any area where ethnic cleansing was actually threatened.

So what will it be? Either cleansing the Krajina and Kosovo are both bad, or they're both good. Make up your mind.

Do you mean Franjo Tudman? If so, I think you may be confused about which side he fought on in WWII.

And I'm pretty sure Alija Izetbegović (if that's who you mean by Itbegovic?) was no Nazi either, although I'm not sure if he fought.

I'm not sure what "here are some other atrocities the West didn't prevent" has to do with the fact that it was a good thing that it prevented the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. I am not trying to make a general point that all Western leaders have made the right decision all the time; I am citing a specific example in which I think opposing and (effectively) removing from power a particular secular dictator was the right call.

Bombing Serbia for 78 days was a PNAC plan

http://web.archive.org/web/20040214052139/http://www.newamericancentury.org/balkans.htm



Clinton's "defense" secretary Cohen (R) said there were up to 100,000 "mass graves". When the UN and FBI inspected they found 2000, and couldn't id the bodies.

Meanwhile, trains, TV stations, the Chinese Embassy, marketplaces and hospitals were bombed. No statute of limitations on murder.

Wesley Clark almost started WW3, and Camp Bondsteel is still in operation.

Who knows the story of the Rambouillet accords? There's the answer. Few will bother.




A Democrat started the first PNAC war and no one noticed.

Only the ones started by Republicans are bad.

Remember, opposition to war and violence is only valid if it's directed against one's political opponents.

( just in case)

When he died the whole artificial construct fell apart. Milosevic is like the rest of these vultures in Iraq, Syria, etc..

Wow... really? Look, I get your "we should butt out" position, but... that's a really ignorant thing to say. Especially in the context of Saddam's Iraq.

Remember what he did to the Kurds in '88? Cyanide and chlorine gas.
How about his "reprisal" against the shia in the wake of the Gulf war? he massacred about three hundred thousand people - while the Us watched from the air after having encouraged their uprising.
How about his cultural - and then physical - genocide of the Maʻdān - the Marsh Arabs of the river deltas?
And then there's the generic abuse of Turkomen all through his regime's career.

But, oh, Iraqi Christians did okay, and that's what's really important to the American audience, I guess? I mean they still suffered the same grotesque abuses that all Iraqis did, but weren't especially targeted.

Know what happened with Iraq? it wasn't the toppling of Saddam. He was entirely exchangeable, in the big scheme of things. Hell, I imagine most of his party would have been all for it. No, what happened was that we then basically destroyed the existing power structure in iraq, dismissed the entire military, and left the place to go to the dogs. We could have worked with the existing power structure - loosened it a bit perhaps to allow more parties than the baath - but still, could have gotten a restabilized iraq. we could have kept the Iraqi military - disarmed, but ready for reestablishment of sovereignity. Instead we dismissed them entirely, leaving a lot of armed men with no jobs and a grudge.

was this the result of incompetence? of poor planning? of George Dubya boobery?

Well, yes, he was a boob, but no, this "failure" was entirely intentional - and as we see it is apparently still supported by the obama administration. The goal at the time - as it seems to be now - is the dissolution of iraq into three states - two failed and competing Arab states split on sectarian lines (always a great way to settle territory - ask India! Er, India and Pakistan!) and a US-supported, funded, and armed Kurdish state that pumps oil through Turkey into the Mediterranean, thereby cutting out an awful lot of middlemen we'd rather not deal with. There's a reason why we're throwing all our resources towards the Kurds, while telling Baghdad to bite a dick.

The plan now - as ever - is a destabilized and dependent middle east suborned to US desires whether through direct US force, or proxy agents such as Israel, or eventually Kurdistan - who are themselves largely dependants on the US. Arab power in the middle east is unfathomable and unacceptable to the united states.

Frankly it's sort of a blessing for our foreign policy that ISIS is such a gigantic raging bag of assholes, isn't it? if they were even half-decent, they could really form an Arab solidarity movement. Hell, if we're not careful, that might actually be an outgroth of the campaign against ISIS... which is another reason we're working so hard on Kurdistan - it would be a nice destabilizing capstone to the endeavor, not just with Iraq, but probably with repercussions in Turkey, Syria, and iran as well. Four for the price of one!

based on what i'm hearing from the muslim world is that these guys actually don't know much about islam at all.

and i'm not talking about debates about interpretations either. but they say these guys are not even informed enough to even have a debate on the quran and other parts of the religion. they even have trouble reading it.

just look at the hostages who were released saying that they mostly talked about the money they were making and how they could live the good life and retire early .

One almost imagines if they took off their hoods, you'd find this fellow underneath

if not for the actual violence they cause which mostly kills other muslims.

i still have to wonder if the below pics are not from something like SNL .

i don't think these guys would last if they had to live in caves or anywhere else without their luxury and had to actually study the quron instead of rapping, showing off their tanks and guns and bragging about how they will conquer spain, the white house , etc.

We are so fucked!



Who are those kids behind him, his fucking boy band dance troupe?

Also used the Kurds as a cat's paw against the regime and hung them out to dry. AS Kissinger put it "Foreign policy is not social work." No encouragement of a Shia uprising = no massacre. Butting out of Iraq's affairs would have left all these groups intact.

I agree with you about the destabilzation policy--maybe we should just quit doing that shit?

Also, Saddam had considerable limits on his power--he failed to negotiate taking TANKS back from tribal leaders, ferchrissakes!

The Kurds were targets because they were somewhat friendly to Iran. it was our logistic support and weaponry that made it easier... but he would have gone after them anyway, Because of that. same story with the Shia of iraq, who really began to suffer after the war turned sour for Iraq. After the Gulf War, yeah, we did encourage both groups into an uprising - and then only game (nominal) upport to the Kurds, lettign the shia get butchered. But halabja was three years before that, and he was already targeting shia all through the war with iran.

Which is, all told, an absolutely fascinating tableau of the depravity of US policy in the middle east. Also an interesting note is that it's one of the few points where the US and Israel weren't in alignment - israel was supportive of Iran during the war (though not to the point of arms trades or anything) because it saw Iran as an opponent of Arab nationalism - same reason Israel would later fund and arm Hamas in '88... '88 was a big year for bullshit, wasn't it?

yes, we should definitely stop the policy, but i think we should actively attempt to reverse it as well. Though I'm not sure how we'd manage that, since I can't imagine anyone out there would trust our meddling fingers. but still, at least the honest offer should be there.

The US switched sides a couple of times, always helping whoever seemed to be losing.


http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/iran_iraq_war_american_interest.php

The Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 (on the pretext of resolving border disputes) thus solved two major problems for the US. Over the course of the following decade two of the region’s leading military powers, neither of them hitherto friendly to the US, were tied up in an exhausting conflict with each other. Such conflicts among third world countries create a host of opportunities for imperialist powers to seek new footholds, as happened also in this instance.

Despite its strong ties to the USSR, Iraq turned to the west for support in the war with Iran. This it received massively. As Saddam Hussein later revealed, the US and Iraq decided to re-establish diplomatic relations —broken off after the 1967 war with Israel—just before Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 (the actual implementation was delayed for a few more years in order not to make the linkage too explicit). Diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq were formally restored in 1984 —well after the US knew, and a UN team confirmed, that Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranian troops. (The emissary sent by US president Reagan to negotiate the arrangements was none other than the present US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.) In 1982, the US State Department removed Iraq from its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, and fought off efforts by the US Congress to put it back on the list in 1985. Most crucially, the US blocked condemnation of Iraq’s chemical attacks in the UN Security Council. The US was the sole country to vote against a 1986 Security Council statement condemning Iraq’s use of mustard gas against Iranian troops — an atrocity in which it now emerges the US was directly implicated (as we shall see below).

Iraqi pilots...
Russian planes..
German built pesticide plants subverted to make chemical/biological weapons...

Where's the US role?


As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

The Kurds are not persecuted because of their religion but because they are Kurds. They have been fighting for Kurdistan in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Perhaps the Shia in the south of Iraq were seen as allies of Iran and so enemies of the state.

Iraq under Saddam was a repressive but stable state. With Desert Storm it was a state without teeth and so was not a threat to outsiders. The 2nd war against Iraq could have ended better if that idiot Paul Bremer and his cronies hadn't destroyed the administrative infrastructure of Iraq by tossing out low and medium level governmental workers whose only negative is they were members of the Baath party. That meant all of the civil servants as one had to be a Baathist to work in government.

we did the same thing in post WWII Germany, we forced out anybody who was a member of the Nazi Party ignoring the fact that pretty much any government employee HAD to be a member of the Nazi party to remain a government employee.

I've always assumed that the allies kept the German army intact but I've never found any information about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

The German military was disbanded and not allowed to be reformed until 1955

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr

I'll have to read it in detail later but I think there were significant differences that took account of trying to keep a functioning state apparatus in Germany.

history repeats itself in the patterns, not in the exact details.

It wouldn't surprise me much if the underlying skeleton of our occupation plan for Iraq didn't originate from what we did in post WWII Germany

and add in al sisi to those 3.

and a big part of religious fundamentalism getting power is often because of thugs like Saddam, Gaddafi , and assad.

I say everyone is better off with secular thugs.

Here in our comparative Ivory Towers, things look very different.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]

Tunisia, thankfully is at least a success story here. It's a sad thing, but when many sectors of society unite to oppose a dictator, the fundies are always the ones sufficiently well organized to take over the whole show. That happened in Iran way back in 1979 also.

It takes a coalition of many to toss out the existing order. Once that happens the real fight begins. The coalition is broken and the victors fight it out for control. It happened in France, Russia, Ireland, probably every nation in Latin America.

Morsi was a mildly corrupt buffoon and a bad president, sure. But... so was Bush, and nobody was howling for a military coup in America followed by slaughters and mass executions of Republicans...

Which is what happened in Egypt when al-Sissi seized power. Morsi didn't kill two thousand people in a Cairo crackdown, and four thousand more aroudn the nation in a purg of his political enemies. no, he just ignored them like the dickhead he was. The killings, the butchery, all came fom al-Sissi. More, Morsi was fairly elected in a clean electon, while sissi simply seized power and installed himself as president in a vote where only he and some of his friends were allowed to run - and since the demonstrated penalty for voting for the opposition was death, we can see how that went.

Morsi was no shining beacon on a hill for Egypt. More of a 30 watt bulb in an outhouse, perhaps. But nations are allowed to have lame-ass presidents - lord knows, we've had our share (take out a $20 bill and have a good look at one of the worst motherfuckers in our history, for instance) and as mediocre and flawed as Morsi was, he was a good goddamn lot better than the following act was, is or will ever be.

I'm not saying al-Sisi is great but the election of Morsi was widely considered to be a disaster for good reason, not least of which was that he immediately began acting to eliminate the nascent Egyptian Democracy and make himself the new dictator of a Islamic Totalitarian state, going so far as to lean on the Egyptian court to decertify the Constitution he was elected under and replace it with one that curbed personal freedoms, repudiated secularism, and in-effect created a permanent "Brotherhood" regime. We're hardly to blame if they opted instead to use their authority to expel him from office and the subsequent administration returned the Muslim Brotherhood to their previous status as a terrorist organization barred from participation in the political process.

Morsi wasn't any better than Mubarek before him or al-Sisi after him. As the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, they were permitted an opportunity to participate in the Egyptian political process for the first time since they organized the assassination of Anwar Sadat...they tried once again to destabilize the Egyptian secular governance and implement an anti-Democratic theocracy. They had been told by their own people what would happen if they attempted that...and got what they were promised.

Don't waste sympathies on Morsi, he's not worthy of them.

Just a thing, I guess.

The only 'religion' they believe in is the religion of keeping absolute power in his hands until he dies a peaceful, natural death and then passing the dictatorial reins over to a son.

And what if tens of thousands of people under the 'enlightened' guidance of 'secular dictators' take to the streets because part of being a dictator is repressing the population with secret police, midnight arrests, torture and execution? You can make a good case against intervening in such situations, but where to you draw the line between not promoting 'regime change' and to actually promoting 'regime protection' when people revolt? I would not want to be the person that went to the masses in the street and said, "You know it could be much worse. Why don't you just go home and take a second look at the benefits of living under a 'secular dictator'."

"Religious and ethnic minorities were much safer" under Assad and Saddam. Both of them came from religious minorities so what you say is very accurate, although the Kurds were far from well off under Saddam. (They were not the 'right' minority, I guess.) I'm not so sure you could make the case that 'religious and ethnic' majorities were much safer, however. The Shia majority in Iraq and the Sunni majority in Syria were subject to much repression because they represented a threat to minority-based governments.

is what you need - and then get into 'regime protection' for 'nasty secular dictators'.

"Given a backward society and a nasty dictator, what influence points are there that might be used by world citizens (preferably individuals rather than government) to promote change? Other than trying to bomb reactionary thought out of existence, that is.

which are our allies. We don't support the protests.

We don't even support protests in our own country.

For example, I didn't see Victoria Nuland handing out cookies in Ferguson.

would be the way to go. None of us want to be in the business of regime protection for any kind of dictator whether he (and it is always a he) is secular or religious.

and Indignado.

But no, I don't agree.

IMO we should quit meddling in other countries' internal affairs.

You show an enormous lack of knowledge of the conditions in those countries, especially in Iraq, where Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of Shia and Kurds.

You may think genocidal dictators are ok as long as they are secular, but many of the rest of us recognize a monster when we see one.

Even worse, when presented with facts you continue to support your ridiculous belief that a secular dictator is some how "better".

If you are going to bring up Germany and Japan, please describe their tribal factions.

and my only reference to Germany was that the post Iraq War policy of removing Baathists from civil service was very similar to the post WWII de-nazification program.

And somehow I think the Kurds & Shia would disagree with you about being better off under Saddam and their opinions are worth enormously more then yours will ever be

Actually, the failure was only at lower organizational levels, which is why post-war Germany was able to have a functioning government. If the US had just removed some of the Baathist leadership and left the lower levels intact, things might have turned out differently. The problem is that imperialists just can't let go of trying to control a society. The US had no desire to do that to a European country.

don't survive under their dictatorship.

In every case, western intervention has made things worse, starting with Iran in 1953.

regions are better served by brutal dictators.

also, some of these uprisings were not western interventions.

Why is it that objecting to making things worse is always taken as an assertion that bad = good?

I doubt the South Koreans would agree with that sentiment.

Also, they had a bunch of nasty secular dictators. In time, without specific outside intervention, they were supplanted by a democratic goverment. Lucky for them they had no oil. Iran might have developed that way without the western coup against a secular democrat.

Most of the people complaining were the ones were western oil corporations and Christian religious zealots. Now look where we are and the rest of the world.

And I knew for certain that when Obama oversaw the successful apprehension and killing of Osama bin Laden, the GOP and the rest of the Obama haters would go full throttle against him. How dare he accomplish what the GOP gang could not!!
How dare he give the impression that a black man int he White House could not only ward off the greatest financial calamity since the last great depression and at the same time oversee the apprehension of the claimed biggest enemy of the US in history. I believe they would rather have had bin Laden commit another atrocity than have Obama administration catch him.

For justification of the continual intervention the OP complains about.

Didn't murder millions enroute to "stability"?

Please.

Who do you think egged him on to attack Iran?

And Saddam was for all intents and purposes an employee of the US until he misunderstood April Glaspie and concluded he had our permission to invade Kuwait.

If the US and Europe took more of a Japanese attitude toward ME oil resources, none of this would have happened. Trying to get the Japanese to pony up more money to pay for the first Gulf War, an American diplomat pointed out that Japan was highly dependent on ME oil, and did they want that under control of a madman like Saddam? A japanese diplomat said something to the effect of "We feel that whoever owns the oil will realize that they have no other alternative but selling it." If we'd just buy the fucking stull, that would be way cheaper than trying to conquer it.

And I think you know that

Stability of their own country.

Yes. Destabilization makes states unstable.

Your premise is they were hunky dory to begin with.

But glad to see your back your own subject.

-- that bad = good in the first place. In Syria, all the Islamist groups--"moderate" or otherwise, are behind the policy "Christians to Beirut; Alawites to the grave." Assad is their protection, but how the fuck does that make him a good guy overall?

Hell got hotter because we poured gas on it.

And we also kindled a few fires in addition to that.

And don't take so much credit ether

In case you, or anyone that is reading this, hasn't read it, great book on the topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man