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eridani

(51,907 posts) Sun Jun 7, 2015, 04:43 AM Jun 2015

Sleepwalking to Another Mideast Disaster

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30573-sleepwalking-to-another-mideast-disaster

If sanity ruled U.S. foreign policy, American diplomats would be pushing frantically for serious power-sharing negotiations between Syria’s secular government and whatever rational people remain in the opposition – and then hope that the combination could turn back the military advances of the Islamic State and/or Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

But sanity doesn’t rule. Instead, the ever-influential neocons and their liberal-hawk allies can’t get beyond the idea of a U.S. military campaign to destroy President Bashar al-Assad’s army and force “regime change” – even if the almost certain outcome would be the black flag of Islamic nihilism flying over Damascus.

As much as one may criticize the neocons for their reckless scheming, you can’t call them fickle. Once they come up with an idea – no matter how hare-brained – they stick with it. Syrian “regime change” has been near the top of their to-do list since the mid-1990s and they aren’t about to let it go now.

That’s one reason why – if you read recent New York Times stories by correspondent Anne Barnard – no matter how they start, they will wind their way to a conclusion that President Barack Obama must bomb Assad’s forces, somehow conflating Assad’s secular government with the success of the fundamentalist Islamic State.

On Wednesday, Barnard published, on the front page, fact-free allegations that Assad was in cahoots with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in its offensive near Aleppo, thus suggesting that both Assad’s forces and the Islamic State deserved to be targets of U.S. bombing attacks inside Syria. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT’s New Propaganda on Syria.”]

5 replies

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Sleepwalking to Another Mideast Disaster (Original Post) eridani Jun 2015 OP

For the foreseeable future, House of Roberts Jun 2015 #1

Sleepwalking? RobertEarl Jun 2015 #2

The Dishonest Reporting Of Anne Barnard Wilms Jun 2015 #3

As long as we don't go back to the Reagan days of reflexively supporting repressive governments pampango Jun 2015 #4

Removing bad guys in the ME has never resulted in anything but disastrous chaos n/t eridani Jun 2015 #5

House of Roberts

(5,177 posts)

1. For the foreseeable future,

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Sun Jun 7, 2015, 04:56 AM

Jun 2015

the only faction worthy of US help in Syria is the Kurds in the northeast, and we can't do too much for them before Turkey gets very nervous.

RobertEarl

(13,685 posts)

2. Sleepwalking?

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Sun Jun 7, 2015, 05:10 AM

Jun 2015

More like herding the sheep until they can finally get the war going full speed. Remember September 11, 2001? That was a pretty damn good job of herding. The bush had 90% of the sheep backing his war. The warmongers know they can't get away with it so easily this time.

Besides, getting Syria to roll over and play dead, means those dirty commies in Russia lose!!

Wilms

(26,795 posts)

3. The Dishonest Reporting Of Anne Barnard

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Sun Jun 7, 2015, 05:14 AM

Jun 2015

Anne Barnard reports from Beirut for the New York Times on the war on Syria. The Angry Arab has several times called out her biased and misleading writings. But today's report on Syrian air attacks is probably the worst she has ever written:

In Talbiseh and across Syria, insurgent fighters who oppose the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the foreign-led militants of the extremist group called the Islamic State are being pummeled by a new wave of attacks and assassination attempts.
...
Insurgents of all stripes, except for the Islamic State group, say the Syrian government appears to be stepping up its attacks on them ahead of the threatened American air campaign. Pro-government and antigovernment analysts say Mr. Assad has an interest in eliminating the more moderate rebels, to make sure his forces are the only ones left to benefit on the ground from any weakening of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Mr. Assad has maintained from the start of the conflict that he and his allies are the only force in Syria capable of battling the extremists effectively. But Islamic State activists in Homs said on Wednesday that there had been no recent government airstrikes against the group, adding to opposition suspicions that Mr. Assad prefers to focus on attacking his other opponents while letting the Islamic State’s unchecked brutality argue the case to Syria and the world that his rule is the best alternative.

Barnard is insinuating, not for the first time, that the Syrian government is not hitting ISIS but is solely hitting other insurgents. The "moderate", human liver eating insurgent groups the U.S. supports have claimed several times that there is some truce between ISIS and the government.

But that is a lie and Anne Bernard knows it is one because even her paper, the New York Times, reported on intensified Syrian air force attacks against ISIS targets only some ten days ago:

snip

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/09/the-dishonest-reporting-of-anne-barnard.html

pampango

(24,692 posts)

4. As long as we don't go back to the Reagan days of reflexively supporting repressive governments

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Sun Jun 7, 2015, 09:14 AM

Jun 2015

because 'the alternative is worse' ("worse" meaning "communist/socialist" to Reagan, perhaps meaning "terrorist" now). The idea of supporting people rebelling against repression is not one that most would consider a genuine Reagan conviction.

Reagan supported South Africa's minority apartheid government because the 'alternative would be worse'. In his mind the Black majority were socialists or terrorists and incapable of or unwilling to run an open democratic government. (He has been proven wrong, of course.) I suspect Assad feels the same way about the Sunni majority in Syria.

If the modern history of South Africa had unfolded differently and the apartheid government had decided to use all means necessary, including its military power, to remain in power what would the American left's reaction have been? If SA's white government had decided their military power would be decisive in a civil war, they might have tried to eliminated all elements of peaceful non-racial forces in the Black opposition. If that left only the most militant and violent Black resistance fighters that might have been the civil war scenario that the apartheid government could have considered 'winnable'.

We should not support Assad or any other dictator reflexively just because he says that 'the alternative is worse', in this case that the Sunni majority (rather than the Black majority in South Africa) is incapable or unwilling to run an open democratic government. Obviously, dictators (and repressive minority governments) are always going to say "It's either me or the really bad guys." Most dictators are smart enough to know that most people don't accept kings and dictators as the "natural way of doing things" as would have been acceptable a few centuries ago. So they have to paint a picture.

While the choice was not "Assad or the 'really bad guys'" in 2011 (unless one thinks the Sunni majority really is evil and even more repressive), that was the 'picture' Assad painted. In that he has been quite successful. Four years later reality has come to look like the picture he prematurely painted. He has got the civil war he thought his large military could win and that South Africa avoided). It really has become a case of "apres moi, le deluge".

Congratulations, Mr. Assad. We can't congratulate the Syrian people but you have been in power for an extra 4 years and that's what really matters.

eridani

(51,907 posts)

5. Removing bad guys in the ME has never resulted in anything but disastrous chaos n/t

Reply to pampango (Reply #4)

Sun Jun 7, 2015, 05:43 PM

Jun 2015

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