Sovereignty of Violence: A Visit to Syria’s Civil War
Money for the rebellion is coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The FSA no longer has to rely on small smugglers’ convoys to bring the lifeblood of arms and ammunition. The Gulf Arabs’ money — along with reported U.S. direction — is helping to turn the rebels into a fighting force able to mount an effective challenge to Assad.
The results in the field have been plain to see. Once, the rebels had only rifles and RPG-7s, grossly inadequate against the armor, artillery, and attack helicopters of the dictator. No longer: they are destroying tanks and armored vehicles in Idleb now. They are taking on the army head on in Homs Governorate, the heartland of the rebellion. Increasingly large areas of Syria are no longer under the control of the regime: from the Turkish border down to Hama; north and south of Homs city; and in Zabadani.
In Idleb, the army controls the main highways, but the troops now rarely venture too far away from the main road. In the open areas and in the villages, armed men wait to strike at cumbersome, unsuspecting patrols.
It is a cruel, ugly, and brutal conflict. Assad, aware that the walls are closing in, is employing his sectarian thugs in what looks like a systematic attempt to clear out non-Alawis from the Latakia Governorate in the northwest. He appears to be creating a stronghold of Alawi population, which will form a safe zone and baseline for his side in the sectarian civil war now underway in Syria.
His forces routinely butcher civilians. Whole families in Taftanaz. Children in Houla. And these are only the examples that the news media or researchers managed to reach. This is a regime steeped in blood.
The bloodshed leaves a wake of broken lives. There are traumatized children in Binnish, instantly recognizable: kids who will not leave their parents’ sides, even for a moment. These children who have learned too early that the world is not a safe place, that the tender stories parents tell their young ones with love about the kindness and order of the world outside are only stories.
These are children who witnessed the rampage of the Shabiha through their homes, in search of their hidden activist fathers. Who watched as the pumped-up, steroid-filled giants of Alawi killers smashed their homes to pieces. They have lost their innocence, at a time before the resignation that living brings could replace it with calm and acceptance. The result is in their eyes, which are prematurely knowing.
Jonathan, it is one thing to read about the Islamic carnage in the Middle East, but it is quite another to live cheek to jowl with them. Moreover, awaking this morning to a wailing siren – to test its operational ability – brings Israel’s perilous situation to the fore.
NOT that I require any reminding, evidenced through my various efforts – as many PJM readers/posters are aware – nevertheless,those living (especially in North America)would do well to internalize my latest commentary from this morning. In fact, it directly involves Syria, and all the attendant players – and much more.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/19/northeast-intelligence-network-digs-deeper-deeper-and-do-americans-know-who-their-neighbors-are-the-jihadists-next-door-compounds-galore-hezbollah-cells-too-commentary-by-adina-k-136/
Forewarned is forearmed!
By the bye, as Jonathan posits, ‘smothering it with alcohol’ more than compounds the deep, visceral pain. The readers may want to click on my op-ed on this very subject – http://www.jewishpress.com/in-print/alcoholism-the-wreckage-in-its-wake/2011/12/18/.
ANYONE who has laid witness to ‘alcoholic wreckage’ realizes, that numbing oneself with booze will only result in worst nightmares than anything else they seek to subsume!
You have to allow the family to put the person away for 60-90 days just on their request to a judge-that would go along way. The intervention process is just too stupid as it is. Also, co-dependents and enabelers are as sick and weak as the alky. As you know running, or escaping from ones personal demons with alcohol can cause a lot of pain-and alky’s can take a lot of pain. Most people rightly say “why are you doing this?”.
It is a devastating affliction committed upon ones self, that is truly baffling.
The US was founded by alcoholics. The Progressives gave us the Prohibition and the Mafia.
This is a sad state of afairs and it will end one day in Freedom but the cost in human suffering is astounding. My heart goes out to Israel and it’s ongoing fight for survival in a homeland surrounded by enemies.
Let all of those who read the Syrian post recognize it for exactly what it is. The post is about a regime who wants to dictate life to a select group of people. The regime wants to control every aspect of existence and keep the people under constant pressure and surveillence. They want the population be be slaves to the regime and support the regime in all matters. There is to be no FREEDOM for Individuals. Assad is a dictator, he makes the rules and he doles out the favors and punishments to whomever he chooses.
We have someone in our White House who is of this mentallity and he is slowly through HOPE and CHANGE rearranging our government into this model.
Wake up, Freedom is lost one small step at a time. First they corrupt your money, then they corrupt you morals, then they put the chains on you and you must obey or die…
Al,
“Assad is a dictator, he makes the rules and he doles out the favors and punishments to whomever he chooses”
Replace “Assad” with “Mohammad” and the self-sustaining nature of perpetual misery over there will become clear…
The Shakespearean quote in the beginning of the article has great relevance…although violence and bitterness have plauged many Western civilizations at various points, it is always in the theme of them all to LAMENT such sufferings….as the FOUNATION of them all is the Knowledge, and the longing for, a better way. Of the way they’ve been told forever, in dawn of their existance, in the very DNA of their grasp of the universe, of how we should NOT be. Of the way it SHOULD be. Of Christs way. Of His plan, and his METHODS, for us to live in peace.
There is NO SUCH PARALLEL in Middleastern culture…they know nothing but the rantings of a tyrant, a murderer, a pedophile, a torturous criminal warlord who lusted for power, loot, sex, control and humiliation of all before him.
He is their “perfect man”, the practiced and expected social model of every Dictator, Governor, warlord, militia leader, Iman, soldier, scholar, man and boy of that region, for the last 15 centuries.
They have no OTHER experience, legend, or revered historic personage to emulate in their culture. No “better way” to hope for the return of, or at last blessedly turn to….no belief in, or even knowledge of, the POSIBILITY of some other more viable mindset for living.
It is a brutal “Gangland” mentality of violence and subjugation, not one of acceptance, tolerance or productive cooperation. As each individual embraces the “rightness” of the lowest and most visceral temptations of Mohammad style power, they strive through treachery and violence to command a “Gang” of their own…honor, insult and reprisal follow as each “gang” then fights to control the territory, women, loot and resources of the other…with none that produce anything good or useful of, or for, themselves.
Sectarian Violence, violence between clans and within them…all to promote credibility, to prove superiority, to be in charge, to be powerful…they vary by mere shades of pretended difference…wedges and excuses…Suni, Shiite, Allawite…all created once in the violent style of Mohammad to merely seek power, sex, riches and slaves…with the false excuse that THEY will/can/should eventually command the all the forces that will finally strike down the REAL enemies of this criminal sham they call “islam”. This is their persistent and perpetual dead end.
And they will swirl in that broken, vicious cycle of inevitable failure, FOREVER. Poverty, despair, humiliation, blame and a lust for continuous revenge are all it can EVER produce. When all of your cultures history, myth, legend, personality and sense of Self in the Universe is based on hatred and death, your souls are simply, irrevocably, lost.
We must quarantine them forever, behind secure walls on the other side of the planet, far away from anyone or anything we hold dear… or we must completely destroy their very belief in, and even and knowledge of, this despicable creature they call Mohammad.
We must treat their territories on this earth just as we do our own prisons here….the isolated places we store dangerous social animals we dare not mingle with…
Or, we must conquer them once and for all…Destroy all of their Capitals, Shrines and symbols, and kill their leaders and outlaw their party….re-write their constitutions to reflect generic Western/Christian Principals, and raise a new generation of them ourselves, taught to forever to despise what they once were.
Consider World War Two as a stretching exercise, a warm-up, a practice run, for what this endevor will require if we are ever to have them shed their current ways, and become Human.
There are no other options.
FYI,
I said “Chists way” with no intentional denegration to the Jewish roots of my faith….Jews are simply the big brothers and older cousins of my being
OK, you can all beat me now…
Spell check “Christs Way”
Adina, I dunno. I would not be so quick to despair. I have the latest Harper’s with Anand Gopal’s article Welcome to Free Syria wherein he travels to the area around the Northern town of Taftanaz which threw off the regime yoke early on and was, in April, brutally hammered by a counteroffensive.
He talks to ordinary people on the ground and they appear to want nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They are also forming their own organic representative government–town councils–that send a representative to a District Council and reports to a Syrian Revolution General Command which claims nominal nationwide leadership.
By Mr. Gopand’s description, these do not sound like raging Islamists or people who want another dictator’s boot on their necks. Judging from the opinions the author hears, most of the homegrown rebels do not have a grudge against Christians, Kurds or Druze but the Alawites can expect bloody payback.
I anticipate a decentralized future Syria with powerful local militias who will not truckle to any authoritarian successor government of any stripe.
Furthermore, I hate to sound brutally cynical, but I essentially agree with another opinion voiced on this venue…that all this bloodletting and economic collapse bodes fairly well for Israel and the West. No matter how things thrash out in Syria, Hezbollah and the IRGC will not be dictating events. The Syrians hate the Mullahs and hate Hezbollah. Iran’s ally in Syria will be no more and its puppet statelet in Lebanon will be cut off and die on the vine. If Bashar wants to break out the bug spray and depopulate his country before he’s given the Mussolini retirement plan I say let him. I really don’t see a downside for us.
Egypt is about to starve/collapse/what-have-you and if a President Romney steps on its billon-and-change military gravy hose it won’t be in a condition to invade anyone. An Iran shorn of its nukes is a militarily laughable entity. It looks more and more that the brief era of Soviet-supported Pan-Arab dictators with powerful, modern military machines was an historical fluke, not to be repeated. Starving, chaotic Islamist regimes are incapable of waging modern warfare (as a young Mr. Churchill himself wrote over a hundred and ten years ago). The only way the Muslim Brotherhood can invade their neighbors is on camelback, waving scimitars. If the Muslim world wants to jump back into the dark ages with both feet, that is regrettable but it’s their business.
I have often wondered what Netanyahu and Putin discussed since the King David Hotel was partially closed for the Russian leader’s entourage a few weeks ago, in a story that the Washington Post and Economist (and PJM!) did not want to cover. Only the lads at Breitbart.com covered it and took seriously the thought that a subtle shift may be taking place. Israel is as Putin loves to point out the largest Russian speaking Diaspora outside of the former USSR.
But there are those who prefer not to ask such questions.
Thank you, Mr. Spyer, for this sobering analysis, and poignant account of what was obviously a heart-wrenching visit to this ancient civilization, and to a proud people. As a Christian pastor, I think often of the pivotal role of Damascus, and of the early Christian community there, in the dramatic story of the conversion of Saul to the Christian faith. The Apostle Paul took the message to the many and varied great cities of the ancient near east and Europe.
Now, adherents of this faith, and obviously those of Judaism, are most likely under siege and fearful for their lives as they helplessly watch the various Islamist factions slug it out until the bitter end. My prayers are that “cooler heads will prevail” in the long-term in Syria, and throughout the middle east. Developments in Libya are the tiny sliver of a silver lining behind the black clouds of an Arab spring fast becoming a cold, harsh, winter.
It is islam isn’t it dave? Proud people? Ancient civilization? Islam has ruined it all-and it always will!!
There, I said it for you.
What we have here is a musical chairs but a very brutal musical chairs. It will in all likelihood simply be replacing one dictator with the next. Where in the Muslim world have we seen a democracy flourishing? Where do Muslim people have respect for life and justice? Where have they learnt to live peacefully with people that are different – with both those who have a different form of Islam as well as those who are not Muslims? Has the Arab Spring brought real freedom? Until they start to love their own children, even those who choose to convert to Christianity, and publicly express outrage at the bombings of civilians like those on the bus in Bulgaria, we will see no meaningful changes and so it is surely foolish to take sides like certain Western politicians do.
“Where in the Muslim world have we seen a democracy flourishing?”
I will gladly answer your question. We saw democracy evolving rapidly into what would by now be an established fact of monumental positive consequence in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Where? In Iran. And then in an act of total incompetence and/or stupidity Jimmy Carter arrived on the scene and pissed it all away. Imagine the difference in the world situation today if Iran was a dedicated friend and even just a reasonably democratic state. I lived and worked in Iran during that period and saw the possibilities that were eventually squandered. Both heartbreaking and disgusting.
Hate to be so ignorant, but could you explain in a couple of sentnences just what Carter did to stifle democracy or the beginning of democracy in Iran?
Thanks.
Jimmie Carter is the one who pulled support from Reza, the Shah of Iran and allowed the coming of the religous theocracy to power. Iran has been a nut case ever since.
But, that being said, we must acknowledge that Reza had cancer and would have died within a year or two anyway, which would have allowed the shift of power anyway more than likely.
Carter actively funded and armed Khomeini while he was an exiled bum living in a ghetto squat in Paris. Khomeini was an Arabist Lenin; an Iranian-born Arab who destroyed Persian culture.
The great Shah was a beautiful humanitarian who lifted his people up to more wealth and freedom than had existed in the Middle East for a thousand years.
An Iranian I spoke to (I suspect he was a spy) admitted that the poor and the working class loved the Shah. He was the first to break the mullah’s yoke.
That crap about SAVAK was invented later by Democrats and communist Tudeh liars. SAVAK was so professional in conduct JFK replaced the sadists from Cuba that Democrats were using for US domestic operations with Iranian pros- clean and quiet.
Khomeini and Ahmedinijad slaughtered the Tudeh students after using them to seize the embassy– then they got to work strangling whole warehouses of little girls, literally. Rafsanjani went from selling persimmons out of a pickup truck to becoming president. The guy peddling the ‘Green revolution’ in 2009 became head of the secret police.
Reza Shah was a genius whose only crime was to try to create a non-Arab ‘Islamic’ trading bloc. Iran, western India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Madagascar.
Their population outnumbered the Arab bloc and were richer and freer as well.
The Wahhabists and Russian-trained Nasserite generals struck back.
Carter, a Marxist, serviced both Arabia and Russia, and destroyed any chance for the formerly peaceful Middle East. Beirut, Tehran, and Riyadh used to be like Paris or Las Vegas, open to all comers. No more.
Even Afghanistan was such a peaceful place, ruled by a family dynasty for 400 years, that the king got on the shortwave every night to each province to hear if any problems, such as TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS, had occurred.
Until the Afghan Marxist Party started violent overthrow in 1973.
Which was repeated by the homo-pedophile Russian asset, Yassar Arafat, declaring war in Beirut on the last Christian Arab country, Lebanon, in 1975.
Which was then trumped the the Arab Lenin in Persia, 1979.
The Middle East had a chance, and was joining the modern world.
They weren’t just ‘killing each other for thousands of years’.
We could have helped them do it- American teens happily worked in Iranian bazaars in the ’70s- until Carter helped murder all hope for the ME. Obama’s community organizers in Egypt have brought us the next phase of that grand ambition.
He promised the Shah his complete support only to later withdraw it in favor of bleeding-heart liberals who swung public opinion with variations of the theme that Reza Shah was a brutal dictator and that the Iranian people should be allowed to chose their own leaders. The Shah was dying but it is not to be assummed that the mullah barbarians would have succeeded him. That is certainly not what the Iranian people desired since they were busily building a pro-democracy and actively capitalist nation for themselves. In other words. they looked to a modern future not to a 6th century throwback. There were ample forces in Iran who wanted no part of Khomeini. Carter abandoned them and surrendered to the New York Times editorial board. The shah was no sweetheart but he lived in a world where nice guys finish dead. But Iran was changing and the Iranian people were overtaking the old brutish and tribal ways and replacing it with robust pro-western economic activity which the Shah had cultivated and was powerless to stop even if he wished to…..which he did not. Then came Jimmy who lacked resolve and the rest is history. We betrayed a deeply pro-American Iranian people in exchange for sappy liberal approval.
Exactly puzzled. We have one set of islamic barbarians killing the other; not many rerasons to step into that hornets nest. Maybe the Sunni soudi’s could be bribed into ousting Iranian influence in syria-and lebannon-I am thinking they would go along. That would deal Iran a defeat the islamic world would mock them over. That seems to be the best we could hope for until we exploit our own energy resources here at home to take the middle east out of our equation.
The kind of moral clarity that comes with “Evil Empire” speeches, and “Axis of Evil” speeches is what the world is thirsting for. That is what the US needs to be about. If Romney wins (which I believe he will), he could be the most consequencial prez since Lincoln; if he takes a STRONG stance on/against Islam.
“There is no reason, though, to believe that the rebels in Syria represent any kind of new dawn in the blighted politics of the Arab world. The Sunni jihadis are now coming across the border form Iraq, smelling blood.
The U.S. decision to back the Saudis and Qataris in financing and arming the rebellion is helping this process along.
It should surprise no-one that sponsoring Qatar and Saudi Arabia to build the rebellion in Syria will result in a Sunni Islamist-dominated insurgency. The Qataris back the Muslim Brotherhood, so that is who is now growing stronger. The Saudis support the Salafis, so they are growing too. It is the Sunni Islamists who have the shiny new hardware that is destroying Assad’s tanks and his helicopters.”
Be careful what you wish for. If Assad goes, there is absolutely no guarantee that what replaces him will be any better. In fact, it could be a lot worse, if the al-Qaeda and Salafists end up taking control of the entire country. The big question is, will the new rulers of Syria get along with Hezbollah in Lebanon? If they don’t, it could actually be a plus for Israel, because it would lose Hezbollah an important ally and weapons supplier in Syria. But if they DO get along together, you could have an even more dangerous alliance against Israel than the Assad/Hezbollah alliance. There are a lot of questions here and nobody seems to know what these rebels intend to do if they do win. Something tells me we should just stay out of it and let the Muslims settle it on their own. They’ve been slaughtering each other for centuries. They don’t need any help from us in settling their disputes.
Excellent reporting, however: “The Alawi-dominated regime is implacably hostile to the West. The Saudis and Qataris are obviously less so.”
That’s just wrong. We were attacked by radical Sunni Islam on 9/11, not Alawi fanatics as if such a thing existed. Yes the Assads are bad guys, no question, but they do not pose a threat beyond their region. Their ‘opposition to the West’ comes from the fact that they are manipulated by factions that see us as competitors and they have not been important enough for us to try to coopt them. Islamism in contrast has a lot of adherents and fans outside the middle east – its an ideology that has ramifications for the whole world.
We are in the position of the Germans in WWI when the sent Lenin into Russia in a box car. We are helping to unleash a powerful political ideology that we can not control, which is universalist and which is not opposed to using violence to achive its goals. In fact we are aiding its violence.
Your point about the Germans and Lenin was well put.
I don’t entirely agree w/your take on KSA’s current policies. In some ways (opposition to removal of Mubarak and Iran) they seem to have a better understanding of US interests than the present administration.
My take on the Saudi royal family is that it rather likes a decadent West — where they can go to party, unIslamically, and that buys their oil. Assad is an ally of Iran, and the Persians and Arabs generally don’t get along. So hurting a Persian ally makes sense, but I don’t think trying to build an alliance with the MB is a good idea — they’ll next turn their sights on Mecca, which means the House of Saud.
Basshar should have stayed an eye doctor in London.
If the Brits made him an offer to abdicate, return to London and live the quiet life as an opthamologist under MI-5 surveillance would he take it?
I’d guess that the Saudi’s see the Muslim Brotherhood as a competitor to their influence within the Islamist movement. If the MB becomes the government of Egypt they will pose a significant threat to Saudi influence. Even though the MB and the Saudis are allied in Syria, they are competing to become the heads of the Islamist movement.
I would guess the Saudis are more interested in coopting sincere Islamism and focusing it into rather worthless goals (from the Saudi point of view) such as screaming at the West and Israel and anyone but the Saudis themselves. The MB aren’t so afraid of concepts such as democracy because, not having direct power at the moment themselves, they are not closed to changes in government that might give them control.
The mistake nearly everyone makes is that KSA’s royal house is united.
We are not- no one is- why should they be? Murdering one’s kin is called an election in the Arab Islamic world.
911 allowed the Rebel Five princes take the Throne away from the pro-Western faction represented by the Carlyle Bin Laden family. (Osama himself was once a trimmed, tweeded member of the Young Gentlemens Oxford Club.)
Prince Abdullah murdered three of his brother and seized the throne after 911.
He tried to kill his father too, but the terminally ill Fahd escaped to Bahrain. Abdullah is violently anti-Western.
Once secure, now-King Abdullah visited Bush at Crawford.
There he threatened to collapse our banks at home and our currency overseas by withdrawing cash from our banks, and dumping off Treasurys on the world market, unless Bush did something about the armed threat next door.
Saddam had bought vast arsenals of second hand weaponry from Russia, China, France, and Brazil, and was buying off the UN with Oil-for-Food through Paul Martin and Totelfina.
Some Saudis, meanwhile, had been funding AQ Khan’s stolen nuclear network in Pakistan- aided by Al Gore and the Clinton regime. Pakistan owns the Afghan Taliban- Mullah Omar is a Pakistani puppet governor. He’s also an uncle by marraige to Osama, who requested sanctuary after having been fleeced by Sudan (his mother’s country.)
We ‘couldn’t find’ Osama because he was spending most of his time in the ultralux Royal falconrey ranges in Afghanistan. Clinton didn’t want to his allies, the Rebel princes.
Democrats couldn’t afford to; they had already lost the BCCI terrorist bank.
(Prince Turki Al-Faisal Al-Saud, “past head of Saudi intelligence, coordinated Saudi financial and logistical support for al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
In July 1998, Prince Turki brokered an agreement between these parties in which the Saudis provided al Qaeda the Taliban with generous financial assistance in exchange for a pledge by bin Laden and the Taliban that al Qaeda would not attack the Saudi royal family.”
*Prince Salman Bin-Abdulaziz Al-Saud “has a long history of funding Islamic extremists through his work as chairman of the General Donation Committee for Afghanistan. In this capacity, Prince Salman made substantial personal contributions to al Qaeda front charities with the full knowledge the charities were misappropriating funds and involved in terrorist activities.”
*Prince Naif Bin-Abdulaziz Al-Saud, “who has long supported Palestinian suicide bombers, provided pay-off money to al Qaeda. His oversight of al Qaeda charity al Haramain allowed it to support bin Laden and al Qaeda unabated.”
*Prince Mohamed Al-Faisal Al-Saud “headed the Islamic bank Dar al Maal al Islami, which provided global financial services and financing to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.”
*Prince Sultan Bin-Abdulaziz Al-Saud, “whose responsibilities included overseeing Islamic charitable funding in Saudi Arabia, funded al Qaeda through personal contributions to Islamic charities known to support bin Laden and his terrorist organization.)
I agree with the commenters below. “How to learn to stop worrying and love the Muslim Brotherhood/Saudis/Qataris” as so many Twitterati and Soros-funded globalists are urging seems like a book destined to end in tears.
It seems to escape you that Syria is Iran’s proxy on the Med., and supports Iran’s Foreign Legion, Hezbollah.
Fine. Feel sorry for the innocents who always get mowed down when change sweeps in. But muslims killing muslims? Go for it. Music to my ears.
“This is the reality of the Middle East, of the Arabic-speaking world”…forever. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.
I believe in the Syrian people.
I believe that the Syrian people don’t exist, that they are a conglomeration of tribes and ethnicities with little connection to one another. The only thing that binds them, Islam, pulls them one against the other in the same measure, Shi’a versus Sunni.
I believe that the Syrian people are faithful to the traditions of the Arab Middle East. Those among them that differ – perhaps some of the Christians and other scattered minorities – are thoroughly marginalized and in constant danger.
I believe that the Arab Spring and its results – and I slightly hesitate to say this here – are overwhelming proof of the folly of the Bush Doctrine as applied to the Middle East – ‘democratization’ of the Arab world. So, for all the madness that emanates at times from the Obama Admin, Mr. Bush has to bear some responsibility for helping to unleash this madness..
This terse quote of yours clarifies part of this West Asian muddle….
…”I believe that the Syrian people don’t exist, that they are a conglomeration of tribes and ethnicities with little connection to one another. The only thing that binds them, Islam, pulls them one against the other in the same measure, Shi’a versus Sunni.”
I’m wondering if the Sykes-Picot Agreement had never had happened, that if British/French Colonialism had not hand-drawn these artificial borders straddling these above cited murderous ethnic tribes and religions, but had permitted them to live separated from one another as Nature seems to have dictated in the first place….that we’d be faced with these murderous civil wars today. Conjecture, of course….but….just where are the accusing fingers indicating irritation towards the French who’ve been so coyly standing in the wing/shadows hoping no one will notice. At least the Brits have committed what they could, considering their dire economic straits.
There’ll be no end to these civil wars, because their tribes’ inherent differences will never end. Borders will continue to straddle.
…..and, this leads me to my defense of the Bush Intervention because we Americans could not stand idly by watching Saddam take over Kuwait, gas his Kurdish area, and more.
Can’t anyone just hear the shrieks and cries of, “Where are the needed Americans with their young men and materiel…Oh, my! Send us the Americans! Send more American cash!”
I’m irritated that these discussions too many times end with something to the effect that this noxious Islamic Central/West Asian cauldron would’ve been alleviated if only we Americans had not become involved.
Since we Americans are tied, Gulliver-like, to some involvement in that nasty cauldron, I’d say let us cut off the Dollar Cash Faucet/Asia Division, immediately, and limit our military involvement to special Forces and Drone strikes at selected sites.
This of course will create additional anti-American carping……but we’ll just have to consider the source. Again, there’s simply no end to the hypocrisy.
I did not detect any anti-Americanism in my remarks, Charlie. I understand your viewpoint. I also reserve the right to criticize Mr. Bush as I generally supported him.
In order to accept your criticism of my criticism, which I’m glad to do if it makes sense, I need to accept that the US motivation in going into Iraq was primarily to save Kurds and Shiites. I doubt that, but I don’t know.
My brother, a deep-and-dirty Special Forces vet of Cambodia, Laos, and Carter’s war against Rhodesia, said Iraq/Afghan was a training war.
I saw it as an American bootprint in that turbulent, essential region, surrounding Iran and pointing tanks at Arabia.
(HWBush had gotten the earlier benefit of protecting a Bush family asset- they own half of Q8, the Kuwaiti state oil company.)
We are now the only military in the world with extensive experience in dealing with Islamic soldiers, excepting some middle-aged Russian vets.
The reason Sykes-Picot happened is because the Ottoman Turks, then the Arabs, kept joining the wrong side. Germany lost twice.
British TE Lawrence unified the Arab bandit families to fight Germany’s Turks.
FDR then bought them off to protect our Army’s gas supplies and ended the ‘Final Solution’ Amin Hussein offered to the Nazis in return for 400,000 Arab Nazi soldiers and the oil if Iraq.
Nixon and Kissinger saved us from the collapse of the Bretton Woods gold standard with the petrodollar.
I wish these guys would just stay bought.
Greetings:
Once again, Islam shows itself to be the millstone. If your plan doesn’t include constraining or eradicating Islam, you don’t have a plan. What you have is a hope.
My question is: Where are the hardware and munitions being manufactured that are being supplied to the rebels by Quatar and Saudi Arabia?
That is a seriously good question.
Didn’t Obama just sell them their largest aquisition ever, of American jets?
Of course, those may just be toys for bored princes.
Having little industry and a tiny stock market, most royal males take sinecures with the military. And Arab maintainence is a joke- abandoned Cadillacs litter the highways, because oil changes are beyond them. Most of their mechanics, even in the military, even at the Royal airport in Jeddah, are illiterate. Show jobs with foreigners doing the actual work.
Let me know when all the people in Syria are dead. That will be less we have to kill later. Who cares how they die.
Hey, I got one right here, wants to marry your daughter.
Bloomberg News Pentagon Resumes Arms Aid to Yemen for Counter-Terrorism By Tony Capaccio on July 18, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-18/pentagon-resumes-arms-aid-to-yemen-for-counter-terrorism
Like it or not, Syria is a glimpse into the future of this country. Region against region, tribe against tribe and most of all makers against takers.
The only comment that I care to mention is the point you make on the Syrians who manage to reach the west. I would add that they don’t come with good intentions. We are tired of Muslims given a second chance in life and going back to their old way of thinking. They remain Muslims forever and secretly hate the west. Be careful in bringing in Syrian refugees just as we have done with Somali’s, Afghans and others of their ilk. Being American doesn’t mean being suicidal.
The problem is that Americans want to believe that other human beings want to be free, that they want “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. This is a case of Americans trying to shape reality into something it is not.
Many people are not culturally equipped for freedom and will never be unless they abandon their cultural heritage almost completely. It is also why Multiculturalism is destroying the USA and why assimilation is important. For whatever reason America is the sole repository of “freedom”. Europe is where the seeds origininated but it never really bore fruit there, America is where it took root and blossomed. Europe loves socialism because they are culturally used to an “elite” directing the masses, the socialist beaurucrat and politician is the new aristocracy. “Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.” ~ Sallust.