Syria: War Over the Ruins
The loyalty of the Syrian Alawis, the cohesion of vital combat units, and — perhaps most importantly — the active and very extensive aid from Russia, Iran, and Hizballah have enabled the Assad regime to stay in existence. The decision of the U.S. and the west to refrain from serious involvement and support for the rebellion is no less responsible for the regime’s survival.
Yet at the same time, the regime clearly has no realistic hope of reconquering the areas it has ceded, which amount to about half of the entirety of the territory of the country. And the evidence suggests that Iran and Hizballah’s prominence in the fight against the rebels has reached such a level that to refer to Assad’s side as the sovereign government of Syria may be outdated.
It may be more accurate to now see the Assad regime as in a process of transforming into merely the best-armed and best-supported militia in a war (or series of wars) being fought over the ruins of Syria. With much of its infrastructure in ruins, and around 70,000 of its people killed, Syria is today a failed state, a geographical rather than a political designation.
The central dividing line of this conflict remains between the mainly rural Sunni Arab rebellion supported by Sunni regional powers such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and the mainly non-Sunni (Alawi, with Shia and Christian support) element gathered around the civil and military infrastructure that once ruled Syria, now supported and maintained by Iran, Russia and their allies and proxies.
There is no reason to believe that this war is anywhere close to conclusion.
Maybe the best outcome is an independent kurdish area carved off of the occupying powers of iran, iraq, syria and turkey?
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald “Most Dangerous Man”
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2013/02/09/turns-out-u-s-attorney-patrick-fitzgerald-most-dangerous/
Let’s sit back, for a sensible change, and simply let these barbarous Muslim sectarian divisions play out as they may. These sectarian divisions go back [apparently]for centuries, so there’s absolutely nothing that we unwashed Ameddicans can ever contribute to long term stability in that whole of West/Central Asia divided up so cavalierly by the French and the British [Cf: Sykes-Picot, 1916]. Syria should be France’s problem, not ours. The English own most of the rest of that nasty arena. Let’s end this eternal, infernal attitude of “Let the Ameddicans handle things.”
The hypocrites at the Nations United against America can continue shuffle papers; let these bloated staffers float away as that organization’s budget gets more and more strained as we simply stop supporting them. We need our cash here at home. We’re financing our enemies.
[Selling those new aircraft and tanks to the Egyptians is off topic?....maybe...it's just further indication of our peculiar foreign policy.]
We also need our young Military’s brought home out of that sandy cauldron. Right. Now. We need to consider that whole area hostile and simply not worth shedding our young blood over.
Think Fortress America.
Charlie,
don’t buy into the Arab narrative by assigning a prominent share of blame to Sykes-Picot / the French and the British.
First, given the societal fragmentation in the area roughly between Gaza and Mosul, there was hardly any good way in which the then mandatory powers could have proceeded.
Option (1), the one that was pretty much chosen: Create more or less comprehensive, multi-ethnic and multi-religious states which might be economically viable. But thereby you automatically create disadvantaged minorities, which in the political climate of the ME is not a position to cherish.
Option (2): Create a plethora of more or less ethnically and religiously “pure” statelets (virtually impossible to do given age-old community intermingling). But most of them won’t be viable, plus the Brits and French ever since would have been accused of “Divide et impera”.
As a “colonialist”, by definition you are always in the wrong. It’s no use to engage with “anti-colonialists” in reasoned conversation.
Secondly, and more importantly perhaps, Muslims in the long run simply appear not to be compatible with modern statehood and peaceful, productive lives. They will always find a reason to riot, destroy, murder. The Islamic Paradise on earth simply is never perfect enough, and it must be somebody else’s fault.
Think of Somalia, essentially the only ethnically homogeneous state in Africa; no sinister non-Somalis making life difficult for Somalis in Somalia. (Perhaps for their ethnic brethren in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya, but that’s a different story.)
Well, did their ethnic and religious homogeneity do them any good? Did the Somalis build up an African model state, given that nobody non-Somali and non-Muslim bothered them? Not exactly, I’m afraid.
Now, does it seem terribly far-fetched to connect this failure, at least to a substantial extent, to their quasi-universal adherence to a certain religion?
Even if they are genetically homogenous belonging to the same religion, they will still jump at each others throats and that is because of tribalism.
There is a sequence in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ that pretty much tells it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhBIPZCVj84
Trying to make any kind of sense of this chaos is pointless. The only countries in the region who have been mildly successful are those where the dominant tribe has massacred everybody else (think Qatar and Saudi Arabia).
Re;
“…..don’t buy into the Arab narrative by assigning a prominent share of blame to Sykes-Picot / the French and the British.”
I’m not in the least “buying into” any Arab narrative at all……this is my thought, and it certainly is not original with me. Whatever an Arab says is instinctively flagged by me as taqiyya and is without merit of any kind.
Most unfortunately for us, the former Mandatory Powers’ problems have become our problems, those Colonial Era hand-drawn borders straddling those butchering Muslim divisions have created problems that we Americans with our cash and young blood are somehow expected to alleviate because the French and English have now such vastly diminished means to do much of anything at all…and so it’s…”let the Americans handle it”….again….and as an American I resent this dependence upon us Americans since the First World War to pick up the pieces and come to the aid of the British and French and then be given that “Yanks Go Home” treatment after our cash has been spent and blood shed.
Cf: deGaulle saying sometime during the 1960′s that he wanted all Americans out of France…..the then Secy of State Dean Rusk, is said to’ve quipped: “Does he mean out of the American cemeteries in France also?”
Cf: that alleged sniffey saying of the English just before the Normandy invasions…”Over fed, over sexed, over paid and over here”.
Charlie,
America should not pick up the tab (full disclosure: I’m German), at least not without thinking long and hard before, in each individual case.
While the liberatory and nation-building strategy of the Bush Adminstration represented a noble effort — and one which I supported at the time (a lonely stance in Germany then, let me tell you) — it should not mindlessly be repeated elsewhere without pressing need.
Let’s remember that America didn’t go into Iraq for the sake of nation-building, but to remove the threat that was Saddam Hussein. And yes, he was a very real threat, despite all the later ridicule about not finding those WMD. They had been there in the case of BC out of the ABC spectrum, and he was certainly intent on getting, and working on, the A component.
But more importantly in this context, nation-building then only came in as a secondary phenomenon, as an attempt to deal with the Iraqi situation constructively instead of just crushing the dictator and then withdrawing. The dividends are to be seen today: Iraq is NOT (well, not yet) going down the way of Libya, Egypt, Syria.
But the Syria situation is different. No global threat there. Therefore, contain and let them bleed. I say that with a heavy heart. But if they didn’t kill each other, wouldn’t they try to be at our Western throats (including Israel) mighty soon? They only lack some of the means, but certainly not the will.
This bloodshed now will sow fresh seeds of intra-regional hatred in all directions (in addition to those that have long existed). For at least a generation to come, it will direct at least some aggressive energies inwardly, which for us is a good thing.
Regards, Randolph
Randolph…..
Thanks for mentioning my solution to these nagging failing nation state questions…..that of course is containment. These failing and failed states are each separate, complicated and generally have cultural, religious, tribal and familial origins going back centuries.
The reason for my wanting, as an alien American, our withdrawal of our massed troops in that swirling-gritty mess in West/Central Asia is that there is nothing, simply nothing, that our mountains of materiel and cash and barrels of blood can do which will have lasting effect. Nothing.
The money finds its way into private elite hands, the materiel is sold or deteriorates because it is so alien to the local cultures, and the …..I won’t even mention that our blood should absolutely remain flowing where it is originally, and not fall out onto that terrible, alien soil.
This octogenarian clicking away here has vivid memories of the 1940′s and the intermittently terrible years following. I was a tiny [civilian] part of our effort in South Viet Nam and Laos.
That’s why I say that there is nothing that we as Americans can ever accomplish, long run inside Asia, any part of Asia. That elusive concept named “democracy” which is so academically attractive has too many variations intruding locally inside all of Asia for it to accomplish what it has, so admirably, in Germany.
Hence it’s time for us Americans to stand aside ….stop all of this major “kinetically” [seems to be the new word]….applied effort and start thinking about what Karzai/Maliki & Co. have taught us about what we’ve “accomplished” in their most troublesome countries, and after our horrific expenditures there. Supposedly, I’m an outsider, but supposedly they were the lesser of the devils we Americans had to contend with.
America should cease to be the default security effort wherever these pop-up Muslims create their bloody throat-slitting mayhem. They’ve centuries of butchering each other….we mere Americans can change any of that? Let them continue. They know best how to kill each other.
Why Us?
Fracking makes “Fortress America” possible, if just barely. Not sure it is the way to go. Since inception, or maybe the last time the English burned down the White House, Americans have held to a multi-generational, group decision that wars are best fought overseas.
While the advent of aggressive guerrilla campaigns has made it difficult to see the line where ‘here’ and ‘there’ lies, it does not change the basic fact that fighting Iran in the skies over Tehran is better then fighting them in the airports, strip malls and elementary schools of America. I can argue that responding to Every terrorist attack by nuking an Islamic city would have ended terrorism as a diplomatic tool for rogue states the moral position of a tit for tat response of that magnitude is shaky.
Fortress America leads directly to an exchange of nuclear weapons. The very idea that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone is wrong.
The existence of a free land populated by a free people is a threat to every despot, tyrant and dictator on this planet. Eventually those same despots, tyrants, etc. will combine to destroy America.
Re your:
“Fortress America leads directly to an exchange of nuclear weapons. The very idea that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone is wrong.”
Not necessarily. It did not result in such an exchange against our [opinions will vary here] rather equally nuclear-equipped soviet-Russians during that Cold War. The soviet-East Bloc eventually collapsed from within nation by nation, arguably, because of our containment of their vast, vast land mass exposed them internally to the innate failures of collectivization…..[another interesting topic] Only those now-closed steel file cabinets in Moscow and Washington know how close we came during that Cuban tension.
When I use the term “Fortress America” it is meant in the “containment” of our Muslim enemy primarily inside their own land mass…….we cannot put up a containing wall as done in Israel…that’s preferable of course; as we have too many latent, sleeper Muslims inside our country claiming our citizenship and using that new “lawfare” technique/tactic complicating this new guerrilla warfare. Our Muslim enemy is very, very good at domestic “lawfare”. They’ve apparently cowed areas of Northern Virginia and Michigan. Smiling imams proliferate.
My “Fortress America” is a line drawn, a declaration similar to that Monroe Doctrine…gasp!…Monroe Doctrine!…..["was a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or ..."] putting these Muslim terrorists on notice that America is “off limits”. The concept remains valid.
Admittedly, we here in America are seriously compromised internally by Muslim madrassas and Mosques in areas such as Northern Virginia and in Michigan, and blossoming here and there in, of all places, Bible Belt Tennessee. But our unsung efforts so far [knock wood] have prevented another 11 September, 2001. Count the years. We must be doing something correctly. [avoiding to type "right"]….
I just want to thank all on this thread for their incredibly intelligent, open, honest and mindful discussion. I learn more realistic ideas here based on pragmatism rather than hopeful blather. Thanks again!
“such as the blood feud that appears to have opened up between the Islamist Farouk Brigade and the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra.”
Splitter!
I thought we were the popular front.
Syria is beginning to remind me of Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. We really, really, don’t need to get involved there. The only thing that we should stop is the transfer of chemical weapons to some third party, like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Other than that, there really isn’t any side to support in Syria that is compatible to our way of government and thinking.
The rebels are now firmly in the grip of radical Islamic organizations like al Qaeda, so there is no sense in giving them weapons just so they can win and then attack us, just like what happened in Afghanistan when we supported al Qaeda against the Russians. Anyone remember how “well” that turned out for us? We don’t need to support a group that will turn around one day and hand us another 9/11. Let them fight it out. It will just mean fewer jihadists to fight at some later date. The Syrians never, ever, liked us, especially because of our support for Israel. There is little reason to support them now, regardless of whether or not the Iranians and Russia are supporting Assad. If we support the rebels and they win, things could actually get worse in that part of the world with a fractured Syria. So let the Syrians figure it out and calls us when they’re done killing each other.
Re:
….”So let the Syrians figure it out and calls us when they’re done killing each other.”……No, No, No……don’t call us. Call the French….remember it was their Mandate, not ever ours. The French are still being coy about Syria, aren’t they?
Let an eerie, rotting quiet settle over that ancient, storied land…..ancient and storied long, long before anyone ever heard of that particular Mohammed.
The Syrians are resistant…the centuries tell us so. We Americans don’t belong there except as tourist buying beautiful hand-pulled rugs and ornately inlaid carved small tables. The archeology is fascinating, remember.
Multiculturalism: Society ultimately degenerates into a war of all against all.
Jonathan, this is truly frightening times, especially for Jews. After all, the Jews always swore to never forget the holocaust. The Jews also swore to never allow a second holocaust to happen, especially in Israel’s own back yard (Syria).
Chanda-Lubatvitch has program called “Tzivas Hashem” (The Army of God), a youth program designed to prepare young religious Jews for holy war, as taught by the late Rabbi Schneerson. All those students do is sit and study traditional religious studies while waiting for the Messiah to reveal himself. The youth want to be a Jewish Peace Corps, because the UN wont act. This is the dream of all these kids, to be a part of something big, like preventing another holocaust in Syria. And the Jewish leaders will listen to a security expert!!! There are tons of volunteer positions, like in hospitals, day care centers, and military bases, and Israel will need all the help it can get, should war break out.
The young generation wants to be migratory volunteers for Israel, as Israel tolerate all their religious zeal. Which Israeli hasn’t heard about Chabad? Israel is trying to integrate the religious into the rest of society, and young Lubavitchers would do anything to help that out, because they’re religious too. But, they need fundraising for plane tickets and advance notice and time to fill out application forms for volunteer positions. Plus, none of these 18-22 year olds have jobs either, so they can pick up and leave for a few months. And if war doesnt break out, all of this will be a practice drill for the times of the Messiah.
The youth are will soon celebrate the upcoming holiday of Purim, which talks about the story of Esther and Persia. They think that this is a religious obligation. The only problem is that all their rabbis and teachers refuse to listen to anyone but themselves. However, given the situation, they will listen to security experts! Especially if it’s for Israel, and they can make a good name for Judaism at the same time. Plus, America would love to have a bunch of young adults do something as a group, as they will all gain experience for when they do enter the American workforce. Win-win situation. Would you please use your influence with the Jewish community, spread this idea, and see about releasing all those thousands of yeshiva and seminary students, both boys and girls, to act as volunteers in Israel?