Lindsey Graham: troop withdrawals will lead to second 9/11
- Thread starter Darth Omar
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/MSG/
Uwaa OmO
This? Syria is a genocide to rid Syria of Sunnis and get foreign money to rebuild the country. Syria was a failed state by 2006.
Syria: what if?
excerpt:
So, what if the road to the Syrian hell was paved with the good intentions of liberal humanitarians motivated to act in defence of innocent civilians being massacred in Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown? More starkly still, what if the US-led West (including Australia) had stayed completely out of the Syrian civil war, limiting expressions of abhorrence to strong diplomatic protests? Assad would have triumphed sooner rather than later, but with significantly lower loss of life. Does the West then bear any moral responsibility—not primary, but partial—for the higher humanitarian toll? Or is virtuous intent proof against such tough self-questioning, simply denying the reality of what David Kennedy called The dark sides of virtue (2005)?
Taking sides in the battle to topple dictators who don’t kowtow to Washington’s moral compass is the modern-day equivalent of the white man’s burden that Kipling extolled. Tragically, external interference prolonged, intensified and widened the conflict—and civilian casualties and agony—without dislodging Assad from power. Had the West resisted the temptation to get involved on the side of the rebels, the numbers killed and displaced as the price of Assad prevailing would have been considerably fewer and the scale of the refugee crisis engulfing Europe would have been significantly smaller.
The Syrian uprising began in March 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. It rapidly descended into a vicious civil war, first with a savage crackdown by Assad, then with the influx of freedom fighters, jihadists and mercenaries from all over, and finally with the growing involvement of regional and global powers on rival sides, each with its own agenda. The Sunni/Shia and Arab/non-Arab divisions also intersect in Syria’s civil war. No one knows how many militias are active there, or their strength, allegiances and external patrons.
The US was adamant that Assad had to go, but Russia, backed by China, insisted that the rebels also had to renounce violence and that only an inclusive Syrian political process could resolve the crisis. The anti-Assad forces rapidly morphed and fragmented into increasingly radicalised groups fighting to establish an Islamist regime after Assad’s ousting. The laws of war were violated by all sides.
The seven-year civil war has cost half a million lives (plus two million wounded) and produced the biggest mass population shift of internally displaced persons and refugees—about half of Syria’s pre-2011 total population—in recent decades. Millions have grown to adulthood without experiencing childhood. Physical, social and health infrastructure has been gutted and many priceless historical treasures deserving of the ‘common heritage of mankind’ label destroyed.
Had the stakes been high enough, Western powers could have gone in with a full-fledged invasion force, effected yet another regime change and installed a West-leaning government dedicated to instilling a liberal democratic order that respects the rule of law and promotes human rights norms. Coalition forces tried that in Afghanistan and Iraq with little success. Western forces proved highly efficient at winning the initial war but incapable of securing the peace and became bogged down instead. Western publics lack the stomach for yet another Middle Eastern quagmire where liberators become occupiers, initially grateful natives turn on them as jihadist influence takes deep root, and anarchy is let loose.
A second option would have been to launch air strikes on Assad’s forces to support a rebel offensive to capture the key institutions of government. Following the defeat of the ruling regime, a coalition of anti-Assad forces would form an interim government pending internationally observed elections, and peace and good governance would prevail. Unfortunately, that approach didn’t work out too well in Libya. And Syria had a far greater potential to fragment and collapse into a sectarian bloodbath involving more numerous and vicious militias than their Libyan counterparts as the centre failed to hold and the state withered away.
The policy actually pursued was to encourage anti-Assad forces, give them arms, money and training, and back them diplomatically in international discourse, but without crossing the line into coordinating bombing raids with them against government targets. The returns on this form of investment in ‘moderate’ rebel forces were risible. Western governments could not distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ rebels. As the ranks of the former thinned and the latter swelled, disillusionment grew in the West and the policy gradually changed from trying to overthrow Assad to trying to defeat Islamic State. From the start, Trump indicated a willingness to work with Putin to this end, thereby drawing to a close Barack Obama’s ill-conceived insistence that Assad must go.
Washington gave false hope by providing enough support to the rebels to prolong the armed conflict but not enough to secure a decisive victory. Western interference has worsened the pathology of broken, corrupt and dysfunctional politics across the region from Afghanistan through the Middle East to North Africa.
There is no humanitarian crisis so grave that outside interference cannot make it worse.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/syria-what-if/
Centerleftfl
Verified User
Actually, CHENEY had RUMSFELD run their own INTEL operation inside the Pentagon.
Bush and Cheney wanted war in Iraq BEFORE Bush was elected.. Look at Operation Mass Appeal in the UK with Sir Derek Plumbly and Richard Dearlove.. from about 1997.
.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3227506.stm
Former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter said the disinformation drive in the late 1990s was designed to shift public opinion.
Mr Ritter has been a vocal critic of military action against Iraq since leaving the inspections team in 1998.
A spokesman for MI6 said the allegations were "unfounded".
He told reporters in the House of Commons that he was involved personally with Operation Mass Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August 1998 when he resigned from the UN.
Mr Ritter said the MI6 operation was designed to "shake up public opinion" by passing dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media.
The so-called "non-actionable intelligence" dealt with Saddam Hussein's alleged campaign to possess and conceal weapons of mass destruction. He said the intelligence was "single source data of dubious quality".
Mr Ritter claimed this was the first time the existence of Operation Mass Appeal had been revealed.
He urged MPs to hold a fresh inquiry in the use of intelligence in the run up to the war against Iraq.
Yep.. They wanted the Invasion of Iraq at any cost.. See Operation Mass Appeal brought to you by Sir Derek Plumbly and Richard Dearlove.
this: The Threat in the White House
you should love the bashing of Trump, but this below is what caught my eye.
Rice is every bit the neocon of Boot and Kristol,etc. She believes US occupying Syria is essential to check Iran and Russia. she's a dangerous mind..... I bolded the "reemerge of ISIS". she's saying we can never leave an insurgency
~~
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/opinion/trump-mattis-syria-afghanistan.html
The Threat in the White House
The Pentagon estimates that 2,000 to 2,500 fighters continue to control territory in southeastern Syria, while tens of thousands more remain throughout Syria and Iraq. Although many militants have melted back into the population, they can re-emerge, as we saw after the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. Stabilizing the areas liberated from the Islamic State to prevent its revival remains as important as ever.
Cutting and running from Syria benefits only militants, Turkey, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Russia and Iran. We are abandoning our Kurdish partners, leaving them vulnerable to Turkey’s offensive, after they did the hard work of undermining the Islamic State.
Controlled Opposition
Note my apathy
Watch out for false flags!
Like the Saudi booze war of Nov 2000 brought to you by Sir Derek Plumbly.
cancel2 2022
Canceled
You make me laugh, I've never met anybody so deluded as you regarding the Saudi government. Your bullshit might work on ignorant Septics but not on me.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jan/30/saudiarabia.davidpallister
Darth Omar
Russian asset
Darth Omar
Russian asset
I agree with you in principle but the people in charge will never want to leave Afghanistan or Syria. It will soon be 20 years in Afghanistan and Graham resorts to histrionics over it.
It’s not sustainable, politically or otherwise. We’re doomed to lose ‘the war on terror’ by being slowly bled to death in low grade wars that don’t have clear objectives.
It TDS didn’t force the lefties to go full neocon, they would be totally behind Trump on this. Not only in principle but because the cost of Perpetual War is money that could go for social programs. Or infrastructure enthusiasts that want to rebuild our own country instead of rebuilding Afghanistan.
Loved your link. There was NO competing bootleggers story and the Saudis knew it.. They gave the Brits a pass rather than call them out... Brits were killing other Brits in a botched false flag operation.
I had just returned from Arabia and the ex-pat community was howling with laughter over this farce. There always plenty of bootleg business to go around. There was NO bootlegger's feud.
The incident that triggered the bombings was a massively successful fund raising marathon for Palestinians.
true. The New Left is also the New Neocon (libs)
And I agree about leaving. There is always 1 good contingency to plan for why we can't leave -so we never leave
canceled.2021.1
#AMERICAISDEAD
After Kavanaugh I don’t think Graham is reflexively anti Trump. He is an interventionist though
Darth Omar
Russian asset
I swear it’s like an addiction with some of them.
They need to realize how far out of step they are with the rank and file on this.
Bush -Cheney marginalized anyone who disagreed to include diplomats, oilmen, historians, military professionals,and the Europeans.. Do you remember "freedom fries"? Do you remember why Prince Bandar was called back to Arabia? Do you remember the attacks on the character of Scott Ritter?
Do you remember the claim that Saddam was trucking WMDs back and forth between Syria and Sudan?
Iraq was crippled by two decades of war and sanctions BEFORE the invasion.
yep. He and McCain were the Bobsie twins of interventionism, but they were hardly alone. Add Hillary in there.