I haven’t written much about this because I don’t know enough. I think it’s worth noting, at this point, that the full commitment of Hezbollah seems to have swung the war in Assad’s favor. I am not surprised by Hezbollah’s involvement. Had the rebels won, Hezbollah’s supply lines to Iran would have been cut. Russia seems to agree that Assad now has the upper hand.
Assad’s not a good man, he routinely engages in very nasty torture, and I have no mandate for him or his regime. But those opposing him seem to be a very dodgy bunch as well.
What is happening in Syria is another cost of Mubarak. Assad cannot step down, he knows he will not be allowed to go into exile in the South of France, but will be tried. So he fights, as did Qaddafi. Unlike Qaddafi, I suspect he’s going to “win”.
Realpolitik at its worst. There are only interests.
Carol Newquist
I agree. He is not a nice man, he is now winning this struggle and he will not step down. What that means is he will have to double down in perpetuity to maintain power until he passes away at an old age, or is assassinated before then. Either way, Syria now becomes an even tougher place to live from here on out…..a microcosm of things to come for the 1st world in the not too distant future.
Another thing. As the oil diminishes, so too does the power of all these Middle Eastern potentates. Their time was always limited by the availability of plentiful, cheap oil. There will come a time, maybe ten years from now, perhaps twenty to thirty when the timeless sands of that vast desert area will flow crimson red with the blood of those barbarous tyrants at the hands of their own people, or what they thought were their own.
What’s amazing to me is Assad’s wife, Asma, once the darling of the European press, is pregnant with their fourth child, or so it was reported back in January. This doesn’t sound like a couple that is worried all that much that they may be executed at any moment. Such is the nature of hubris, I suppose. It’s a prerequisite of the job. Just look at Obama. He’s the chairman of Club Hubris.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/asma-assad-pregnant-rumors_n_2573175.html
Bruce Wilder
“I haven’t written much about this because I don’t know enough.”
That you view ignorance as an obstacle to forming and expressing an opinion makes your judgment exceptional in our degenerate discourse. Let me add my voice to the chorus of gratitude for your gifts to us.
Carol Newquist
So Bruce, the implication of your statement is that we should all keep our mouths shut until we have thoroughly devoured the opinions of the so-called experts in these matters? Is that correct? We’re all just a bunch of ignorant hicks who are incapable of observing familiar patterns played out over and over again like broken fucking records? Pat Lang’s an expert Bruce, so perhaps we should just rely on his murdering judgment and the judgment of the think-tank lackeys whose job it is to form public opinion about such matters. The accuracy of their respective narratives is irrelevant. What matters is they aren’t ignorant. They are fully aware of what they do and say and the impact it has. Gee, look where that’s gotten the human race thus far. “Please tell me what to think because I’m wholly incapable of thinking for myself. I am an ignoramus without you. Take the clay that is my mind and mould it to your delight. Tell me how to think and what to think, and if you say it with a penchant for erudition, I will never doubt our relationship. Ever.”
Ken Hoop
I assume Welsh knows enough to know that the US should stay out and should not assist in any way either of the sides. I assume Ian realizes Israel’s cheif fear now is Iran and Hezbollah and that the American imperialist policy in tandem with Zionism is to get a stable Baathist Syria– thus Hezbollah– out of the way to better get Iran weakened. I hope Ian also realizes Obama’s economic war against Iran is immoral-(as was the similar war preceding the violent war against Iraq) and I hope Ian realizes all this is of course unnecessary if the goal be preserving a decent standard of living here, rather than expanding Empire for its own sake.
I assume also Ian believes if Israel has the bomb Iran is entitled to the bomb and that, rather, the entire Middle East should be a nuke-free zone, but The Lobby will not allow it.
Roman Berry
Enhanced interrogation techniques, Ian. Enhanced interrogation techniques. (And as I recall, some especially enhanced techniques directly on behalf of the United States post 9/11.)
Sorry for the snark. It’s sad snark (really) because as a US citizen I can’t point to the governments/rulers of other nations anymore and cry “Torturer!” with any moral authority whats so ever. The US has no moral authority to draw on.
As for the Syrian rebels, I’m not the least bit sure why anyone thinks that “they” (scare quotes because who “they” are is so mixed that there is no single “they”) would be any better then Assad. I expect in the absence of the current Syrian government we’d see something of a replay of the devolution into long term sectarian violence that we saw in the “new and improved” Iraq.
If harm minimization is what we want. supporting rebels in a civil war in Syria would be sure to have the opposite effect. I figure harm minimization should be the goal, because the US really doesn’t use things like freedom and democracy for much more than an excuse for war. And no matter how bad Aassad is, the violence being done to overthrow him and the violence being done in response is many orders of magnitude worse.
Ian Welsh
Using pliers to rip a man’s fingernails is a bit beyond endhanced interrogation techniques. Not necessarily more damaging, but less… deniable.
Alcui
A friend sent me a link to a blog that I’ve not read before: Niloufar Parsi. S/he has a lot to say about the Middle East that is interesting. In one of the postings on the blog, a link to this Stratfor piece was made. Now, I know that Stratfor doesn’t have a particularly good reputation, but a realistic appraisal of hierarchy is useful, from time to time…
Alcuin
A friend sent me a link to a blog that I’ve not read before: Niloufar Parsi. S/he has a lot to say about the Middle East that is interesting. In one of the postings on the blog, a link to this Stratfor piece was made. Now, I know that Stratfor doesn’t have a particularly good reputation, but a realistic appraisal of hierarchy is useful, from time to time…
Michael Collins
That’s about right, imho. I’ve researched this to a fair degree and tried to put it in the context of post WWII foreign policy. After establishing the Nuremberg Principles, the leaders of the United States sought to violate those principles at every turn. This is one of those turns. Obama’s policies lack any moral core. He and the rest of them behave like the heads of organized crime families. ‘Guy’s not cooperating. Get rid of him.’ They never pause long enough to think that implementing that is both illegal by our own standards and, in its implementation, appaling by any civilized code of coduct.
Syria neither attacked us nor posed an imminent threat to attack us.
This is no different than Iraq.
Obma is no different than Bush in his behavior.
The only difference is body count.
markfromireland
Syria is worse than in Irak both in terms of its regional consequences and in terms of the humanitarian catastrophe it represents when you add internal refugees – refugees who haven’t managed to get across the border, to the number of refugees who have managed to get across the border you’ve got a bit more than three million refugees. Then there are the orphans, the households now headed by widows, and the households now headed by a teenage child, to say nothing of the children now living on the street an easy prey to whoever wants them.
Nobody who has ever lived in the countries ruled by the Ba’ath has much time for them. But the rebels are far far worse. Rather like the behaviour of the American forces in Irak they commit atrocities as a deliberate tactic and also like the American invaders in Irak, they do it so frequently and to the extent that the only reasonable approach to accusations of atrocities committed by them is to assume it’s true and invite them to disprove it. It’s not even slightly surprising to me that the Americans are allied to the rebels. There are no ‘good guys’ in a civil and a civil war is what the USA and its regional allies have been fomenting in Syria for years. A civil war is the worst form of warfare because in a civil war every side commits atrocities and the difference of atrociousness between them is one of degree.
As you say Ian this is
it’s short-term and blinkered realpolitik to boot. The blowback from all of this even if the Ba’ath survive is already horrendous and going to get far far worse.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
mfi
Fools Russian
“I haven’t written much about this because I don’t know enough.
…I am not surprised by Hezbollah’s involvement. Had the rebels won, Hezbollah’s supply lines to Iran would have been cut. ”
You’re right. You don’t know enough.
http://justworldnews.org/?p=3789#more-3789
Ian Welsh
There is nothing in that post that I don’t know (I actually know a fair bit about Hizbollah), and nothing that contradicts what I posted.
Fools Russian
Talking to a right-wing Israeli I drink with.
“So now [in practical terms] Israel is supporting Al Qaeda against Hezbollah”
“Ha!… Yes”
This is from a year ago, and it’s gotten worse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/23/syria-foreign-fighters-joining-war
Hezbollah is not the destabilizing force. Ask a Syrian Christian.
We’re backing Al Qaeda the way the we backed the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese defeated them.
Your world weary neutrality is BS.