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Libluini posted:As ISIS are fanatics, I'm fairly sure the answer starts with "C" and ends with "onvert or die" Yeah that’s what I thought, but then I realized I didn’t really know much about internal ISIS structure or politics and I don’t really wanna put myself on a list by googling it  . In the latest Caliphate episode it just surprised me to hear that the journalist had “contacts within ISIS leadership” who she could call up and ask questions to. In this particular instance she had been interviewing a Canadian and former ISIS recruit and was having trouble with the timeline of events he gave her. So she sent a picture of the guy to “the guy in ISIS/Syria who was in charge of giving new recruits their fake IDs” and he was able to confirm that he’s seen him before and that he’s fairly sure he’s Canadian (without the journalist telling him).
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May 27, 2018 08:25
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Boris Galerkin posted:I’ve been listening to NYT’s “Caliphate” podcast since they started airing it and one thing I’m wondering about ISIS is, where do they think non-Muslims belong in this world that they are supposedly trying to build? Are they “fine” with controlling the world as long as everybody (non-Muslims included) falls in line or is it more “Muslims only, everyone else dies?” Libluini posted:As ISIS are fanatics, I'm fairly sure the answer starts with "C" and ends with "onvert or die" Boris Galerkin posted:Yeah that’s what I thought, but then I realized I didn’t really know much about internal ISIS structure or politics and I don’t really wanna put myself on a list by googling it Ooh, one I can answer! I read their horrific propaganda on a fairly regular basis, and some other related bullshit, but here's a really basic summary of what they nominally claim about the status of other religions if they achieve their geopolitical goals. Their unachievable geopolitical goals. - People of the Book (their definition tends to be on the narrow side, so let's simplify it to 'Jews and Christians' for now) inside Muslim territory are fine and safe as long as they sit down, shut up, and accept being second-class citizens. Too bad everyone who isn't the right kind of Muslim, never mind not-Muslim, is a security risk to the Caliphate right now! - If you're outside of the Muslim world, you don't actually have to convert or submit, necessarily. Your nation just has to A) allow ISIS to run the show re: your Muslim citizens as an autonomous-to-sovereign entity, B) cut all ties of any kind with states hostile to ISIS, and C) allow ISIS to use your territory as a base of operations against states hostile to ISIS. If you do all these things, you will be considered acceptably neutral.  oh also you can't export cultural depravity to the Muslim world edit: also they're both highly technologically literate for theocratic shitfuckers and really super-open about their whole thing, so the only thing that surprises me in any way about a journalist being able to chat with an ISIS bureaucrat is that presumably he was willing to spend the effort to do so without providing enough info to risk getting his rear end droned Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 08:55 on May 27, 2018 |
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May 27, 2018 08:53
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GreyjoyBastard posted:oh also you can't export cultural depravity to the Muslim world This part's likely written moreso due to a fear of competition, rather than anything else.
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May 27, 2018 09:02
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CrazyLoon posted:This part's likely written moreso due to a fear of competition, rather than anything else. I don't really disagree, nothing is more corrosive to theocratic shitholes than glimpses of something better. Malls and jeans and Netflix are challenges that Saudi monsters are struggling with, and they are somehow marginally less horrific than the True Caliphate.
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May 27, 2018 10:19
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Has this thread been brigaded by Tankies?
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May 27, 2018 11:11
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https://www.rt.com/news/427948-russian-military-advisers-syria/ 4 Russian soldiers killed, making this month the worst for Russian forces in Syria since the intervention began.
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May 27, 2018 11:13
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HorrificExistence posted:https://www.rt.com/news/427948-russian-military-advisers-syria/ Excluding the Wagner Group...
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May 27, 2018 11:49
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Volkerball thinks the socialist YPG should submit to a capitalist government in bourgeois democracy
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May 27, 2018 11:55
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Savy Saracen salad posted:Has this thread been brigaded by Tankies? Not really, every time people show up to defend Assad, other people show up to fight them. So it's more like both sides sending companies into battle
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May 27, 2018 13:16
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Volkerball posted:Even Iraq is getting better now in spite of Saddam and in spite of the occupation. hmmmmmm
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May 27, 2018 13:50
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Panzeh posted:Volkerball thinks Fake news.
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May 27, 2018 14:35
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When russian soccer hooliganism is the new form of political activisim in conflict debates
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May 27, 2018 17:55
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Squalid posted:Would all this however have ended the war? I'm not sure sure an alternative universe in which the alt-FSA is currently grinding down baathist resistance in Latakia is much better. Not when the jihadists were always inside the FSA from the beginning. Whose to say they wouldn't have disposed of the moderates anyway, even as the rebels were winning. Would it have endes the war? Ehh Thats debatable. The the FSA would have gained a lot more recognition had they fully controlled Aleppo. We would see homs neutralized next and russia may not have entered the war had we responded to the chemical gas attack the first go around.
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May 27, 2018 19:25
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Volkerball posted:I think a lot of people did. The ones who had to wear the decisions were more concerned with approval polls back home than they were some dead Syrians though. Given how poorly US officials did at predicting the actual course of the war I'm not so sure. Looking at the options available to US policy makers, whatever choices you make there's a lot of ways for things to go horribly wrong. And unlike in Libya where Ghadaffi where there was broad support from European allies and UN cover for intervention, in Syria the US would have a much harder time diplomatically. And whatever the US does, it has to do it all while it simultaneously has 100,000 men deployed in Afghanistan. Like you could destroy the Syrian air force after Ghouta, but what happens if ISIS still takes Mosul and starts sweeping up rebel territory anyway? A campaign against ISIS gives Russia an opening to insert itself into the conflict and start bombing rebels for the regime just as in our timeline. And how do you contain al Qaeda and other radical salafists? You can't bribe these people into changing their religion. Or what if Iran and Iraq increase their support for the government in response? What happens if its not secular militias but Al Nusra who end up running Aleppo and other governments. You can't expect the west to be able to bribe these people into becoming liberal democrats. In the real world the US struggled to stop Kuwait and the Gulf from funneling money and foreign fighters to these these groups and there's not much reason to think it would be any easier in other circumstances. And if in the end Domascus and Latakia falls what comes then? Even if the Sunni radicals are somehow cut out of the new government, what are the odds they still try to overthrow it? What are the odds it actually becomes Democratic, versus just installing a Sunni Colonel as the new President for Life? The opposition was such a mess nobody ever actually could tell what it stood for, except not Assad. That wouldn't be a victory, it would just be more of the same. Wars go well when they have limited and clear objectives. American hawks plans for Syria were the exact opposite, massively broad and overly optimistic. You might reasonably expect you can blow up the regime's airforce and heavy weapons, but you can't predict how the conventional war between ground forces will go afterwards. You can push confrontation with Iran and Russia, but they'll find ways to make you pay if not in Syria than elsewhere in the world. You can give your pet rebels all the guns and money in the world but you can't make them believe in representative Democracy, nor forgo their religion, nor stop your gently caress-up allies like Qatar from meddling in the worst possible way. It's why its important not to do stupid poo poo
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May 27, 2018 20:01
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LeoMarr posted:Would it have endes the war? Ehh Thats debatable. The the FSA would have gained a lot more recognition had they fully controlled Aleppo. We would see homs neutralized next and russia may not have entered the war had we responded to the chemical gas attack the first go around. Abdulqader Saleh and Liwa al Tawheed had a really good reputation at the time. They only allowed in Syrians as a repudiation of JaN and the foreign fighters flowing in, and their successes in Aleppo spoke for themselves. For basically a year there they were at the center of the Syrian world. Saleh got killed in a strike by the regime a few months after Ghouta tho, and things fell apart. Prior to that, there might have been something to work with, but afterwards subservience to Qatar, Turkey, KSA, and jihadist networks began to define all the prominent rebel groups. It was the phase where the hopeful idealist side of the revolution began to die, and cynicism and despair set in. For any sort of positive resolution to the Syrian crisis, that needed to be avoided. Obviously it wasn't.
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May 27, 2018 20:18
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Sinteres posted:You're either being dishonest or you think there's a Goldilocks option here, because you also hated the small US footprint in Libya. So that's too cold, and the Iraq War was too hot I guess, but some undefined alternative, presumably working through proxy forces in some fashion (despite never finding any for years except for the YPG, which you also have contempt for) is going to be just right, and we wouldn't be bogged down occupying Syria for years as the rebels turned on each other after overthrowing the government because ??? You can't really argue with Volkerball, because he's comparing his ideal outcome with the status quo, while you're thinking of what the actual outcome would likely resemble. Unless you can travel to the alternate universe where the US gave more military support to Syrian rebels in the exact way Volkerball imagines, you can't fully disprove his idea that things would have worked out well, and because that's the level of unrealistic proof he's demanding it's basically impossible for this discussion to go anywhere. Like take this post as an example: Volkerball posted:Wrong. I hated that we pulled assistance after the Benghazi attack when the military side of things was already largely wrapped up. The right didn't care if Libya failed and the left wanted it to fail so they could hold it up as an example, and Obama didn't want to deal with the heat, so we pulled pretty much all security and diplomatic aid. We didn't need to send 100,000 troops to occupy the country, we just needed to not abandon them. There was a good two year long period where things gradually fell apart after that, and it could've been averted. Because you can't magically conjure up the results of the hypothetical intervention he describes, that hypothetical alternate world will always be a good one in his mind. It doesn't matter if other interventions of varying levels haven't ended up with the positive outcomes he imagines, because he can always say "no, it totally would have been different if we did things this way." I think that one of the biggest problems with the ideology of people like Volkerball is that they don't take into account the competence and ideology of the people who would be implementing the interventions they describe. Even if a hypothetical helpful intervention like the ones he imagines were possible in a particular situation, it is unlikely that the contemporary US government would correctly execute such an intervention. And given the potentially catastrophic results of a harmful intervention (both directly and in terms of normalizing such policy), the most reasonable option is to just oppose military intervention entirely.
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May 27, 2018 21:01
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Squalid posted:Given how poorly US officials did at predicting the actual course of the war I'm not so sure. Looking at the options available to US policy makers, whatever choices you make there's a lot of ways for things to go horribly wrong. And unlike in Libya where Ghadaffi where there was broad support from European allies and UN cover for intervention, in Syria the US would have a much harder time diplomatically. And whatever the US does, it has to do it all while it simultaneously has 100,000 men deployed in Afghanistan. I think, as usual, you are being cynical to a fault. You can go back years and see reports that predicted things pretty accurately in regards to Syria. There's reports from before ISIS existed that worried about a power vacuum in rural Syria that jihadists could exploit to create a statelet of their own. That's the sort of intel the Obama administration was operating on when it refused to oust Assad, and it was accurate. They knew that things could take on a sectarian nature but they didn't want to get involved to try and prevent that, because then they'd have to try and explain why the guy who was elected specifically to get the US out of Iraq was getting the US involved in a middle eastern war. So they sat back and watched all those predictions come true. As all the idealists get shuffled off into refugee camps or mass graves. Even when things degraded to the point that ISIS was able to make inroads, they still tried to play down the situation so they could avoid getting involved at all costs. They were only the JV team, remember? It was only when Erbil was being threatened and the entire middle east was on the verge of being plunged into chaos that they finally conceded and got involved (despite the Afghanistan war, I might add) But they weren't getting really involved, they just were going to save some Yazidi's trapped on a hill from ISIS, please god don't start comparing us to George Bush. That's what it boils down to. quote:Like you could destroy the Syrian air force after Ghouta, but what happens if ISIS still takes Mosul and starts sweeping up rebel territory anyway? A campaign against ISIS gives Russia an opening to insert itself into the conflict and start bombing rebels for the regime just as in our timeline. Before Mosul, there was the inter-rebel conflict in January 2014 that the US did gently caress all about. Without that footing, ISIS wouldn't be a household name today. We left all those people, who were the first to oppose ISIS, to die, and then act like it was some inherent Syrian inferiority that caused ISIS to come to such heights. The reality is that people in such dire circumstances will take help from the devil himself it it means safety for them and their families, and a lot of people did just that. The ones who were too proud, like the Sheitat militiamen, were massacred in the thousands. And we sat back and watched, just like you wanted. We could've done a lot to prevent that through no fly zones and strikes against the regime to prevent ISIS from ever gaining that kind of influence. Sitting back and watching Syria collapse resulted in the largest jihadist militia we've seen yet, so it's pretty fuckin clear that's the wrong answer, wouldn't you say? Especially considering where ISIS is today after an international coalition got involved. quote:And how do you contain al Qaeda and other radical salafists? You can't bribe these people into changing their religion. Or what if Iran and Iraq increase their support for the government in response? What happens if its not secular militias but Al Nusra who end up running Aleppo and other governments. You can't expect the west to be able to bribe these people into becoming liberal democrats. In the real world the US struggled to stop Kuwait and the Gulf from funneling money and foreign fighters to these these groups and there's not much reason to think it would be any easier in other circumstances. Google the sons of Iraq. That was from the ground up building something through pretty much nothing but paying jihadist fighters to leave, so, wrong. In Syria, you didn't even need to build something from the ground up, because the opposition already existed. You just had to ensure that people bought into it by investing in the opposition to make it a viable alternative to the regime. But at the end of the day, I think it's the idea of investing in something that doesn't benefit one personally that creates such reactionary opposition to the idea of getting invested in any way in a civil war where human rights violations run rampant. quote:And if in the end Domascus and Latakia falls what comes then? Even if the Sunni radicals are somehow cut out of the new government, what are the odds they still try to overthrow it? What are the odds it actually becomes Democratic, versus just installing a Sunni Colonel as the new President for Life? The opposition was such a mess nobody ever actually could tell what it stood for, except not Assad. That wouldn't be a victory, it would just be more of the same. More blind cynicism. What are the odds a Syria under Assad would make democratic reforms that could create positive change for the Syrian people who rose up for their rights? loving. ZERO. Yes, the aftermath of an authoritarian dictatorship is an inherently unstable situation. They are specifically designed to prevent civil society or any other form of opposition from forming. When the dictatorship is gone, almost nothing of the old can remain, because it's all built to be subservient to the whims of one man. What you seem to be missing is that that is not an argument in favor of fascism! quote:Wars go well when they have limited and clear objectives. American hawks plans for Syria were the exact opposite, massively broad and overly optimistic. You might reasonably expect you can blow up the regime's airforce and heavy weapons, but you can't predict how the conventional war between ground forces will go afterwards. You can push confrontation with Iran and Russia, but they'll find ways to make you pay if not in Syria than elsewhere in the world. You can give your pet rebels all the guns and money in the world but you can't make them believe in representative Democracy, nor forgo their religion, nor stop your gently caress-up allies like Qatar from meddling in the worst possible way. It's why its important not to do stupid poo poo We've done stupid poo poo in Syria over and over, most of which you've supported simply because it fits in line with a dogmatic worldview that is devoid of context. Your prescriptions are one size fits all. Every situation is exactly the same. If the US gets involved, Iraq, if it doesn't, well, we don't talk about that. It's childish.
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May 27, 2018 21:14
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Back when the old thread got closed I went back over the posts from 2012, 2013, to try and get a sense of how people's opinions had changed. I was kind of depressed to notice that neither I nor anyone else seemed to change their beliefs very much, regardless of everything that happened in the meanwhile. You'd think with all the new information we'd have evolved and refined our understanding, but it seems that reality just can't compete with our ideology. Shortly before the Russian intervention I was hoping the international community could get enough support together to negotiate a permanent ceasefire, with the goal of freezing the conflict long term. I think probably now that was complete fantasy, especially as groups like al Nusra continued to increase their power. I doubt Obama would have been willing to protect al Qaeda from any airstrikes regardless of how many civilians it saved, and I'm not sure if I would have been willing either. Realistically, nobody can be expected to predict the future, but we still have to make choices anyway. I'm not sure if we could go back what choice would be the right one, and I don't even those who had the responsibility. What the regime was doing in 2013 was terrible but the opposition was so splintered and chaotic it was impossible to say it would have been any different in power. Putting in a no fly zone would probably have saved civilian lives in the short term, but if it just leads to a longer slower war, that's not a good outcome either, and Russia and Iran would probably have found someway to respond to the escalation.
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May 27, 2018 21:27
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You know, sane people hoped for a resolution of the conflict, some even wanted it done peacefully. But that's not how Squalid rolls, he wanted to freeze the conflict so the people of Syria would be trapped in a "ceasefire" forever! What the hell, dude? 
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May 27, 2018 21:36
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Squalid posted:Back when the old thread got closed I went back over the posts from 2012, 2013, to try and get a sense of how people's opinions had changed. I was kind of depressed to notice that neither I nor anyone else seemed to change their beliefs very much, regardless of everything that happened in the meanwhile. You'd think with all the new information we'd have evolved and refined our understanding, but it seems that reality just can't compete with our ideology. I think that's the bigger issue than just how unpredictable Syria was. It seemed far more complicated than it actually was due to the ideologies at play, and the effect of the media. You could find articles supporting whatever the hell you wanted to believe. Not just articles, but entire networks that have been pushing the same view every day for years. You could read all about how the US was funding and backing jihadists then turn around and read an article lamenting the US turning its back on the Syrian people. Whatever you wanted to believe, someone was out there willing to give you source material to back it up. And most of it was bullshit. It's affected all sides, and I've tried to sort through it the best I could, like I would like to think most people have, but there's a lot of nonsense out there. I don't feel too challenged on principle however, because a lot of the arguments people made against me back then have fallen flat on their faces. The US getting involved militarily in Syria would provoke Russia into WW3. Proven wrong. Syrian air defenses would prevent us from establishing a nfz. Proven wrong. There's no way anything positive could've come from US involvement. Proven wrong in Kobane. When it comes to opposition to a nfz, every argument has fallen apart. And all we're left with is the refugees, the destruction, and the bodies of those who couldn't find safe haven anywhere in Syria. I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again, but that one is never going to sit well with me.
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May 27, 2018 21:50
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Libluini posted:You know, sane people hoped for a resolution of the conflict, some even wanted it done peacefully. But that's not how Squalid rolls, he wanted to freeze the conflict so the people of Syria would be trapped in a "ceasefire" forever! Uh, Squalid was posting what he "hoped" in terms of "things that could feasibly have happened." Hoping for the Syrian civil war to suddenly end peacefully in 2013 is like wishing for unicorns to ride in and everyone in Syria to then hold hands and sing about friendship. "Frozen conflict" 2013–20XX sounds a gently caress ton better than what actually happened in 2014-present. But hey, since we're all imagining things, we can also imagine scenarios where it went way worse, right? Jesus.
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May 27, 2018 21:52
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I've never been as opposed to intervention as a lot of other posters here. I thought the limited western efforts to supply and support moderate opposition were correct from the beginning. I also thought Obama was right to threaten strikes after Ghouta, though unlike a lot of people I think he was right to stand down when offered the deal to dismantle much of Syria's chemical weapons capability. I also thought it was right for Trump to retaliate for chemical weapons attacks, and that the limited response was also the correct decision. Though Libya turned out badly, I still think the NATO and Arab league campaign against Ghadaffi was a reasonable response, and things could have turned out even worse. When you're going to fight a war its just important to have clear and limited goals. In Syria, nobody was ever able to define such goals for an anti-Assad campaign. If their had been a Sunni Arab group equivalent to the SDF, with central control, capable of enforcing a clear agenda, I probably would have been all for a campaign. Unfortunately that didn't exist Its not enough to be against something. You have to be for something better.
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May 27, 2018 21:55
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I think intervening would have been the right decision in many respects. I also think not intervening in a more substantial way was the right decision. Somehow both these views seem entirely valid to me. Syria is about the most complicated quagmiriest potential quagmire imaginable and it's hard to conceive of any way whatsoever that intervention would not expand into a massive, terrible, drawn out affair. Simultaneously the brutality of the Assad Regime (and of the other factions involved and especially ISIS) was such that it was a moral failing to not do more to push back. In realistic terms who the gently caress knows how any intervention could have succeeded, it's just way too many layers of hypotheticals. From a moral standpoint, though, the situation is a lot easier to analyze: the innocent people of Syria (and Iraq) were failed by the global community's inaction.
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May 27, 2018 22:19
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Herstory Begins Now posted:In realistic terms who the gently caress knows how any intervention could have succeeded, it's just way too many layers of hypotheticals. From a moral standpoint, though, the situation is a lot easier to analyze: the innocent people of Syria (and Iraq) were failed by the global community's inaction. IMO they were failed as much by overpromising as underdelivering. If we didn't have a realistic plan to help them, we shouldn't have encouraged them to fight the regime just because we didn't like it. We certainly didn't encourage the people of Bahrain to overthrow their leaders when they were gunned down in the streets, and we didn't encourage the people of Egypt to overthrow Sisi when he destroyed their democratic government (the overthrow of which some of our interventionist posters supported at the time). I'm not saying the US provoked the Syrian civil war, because obviously legitimate protests and a brutal regime response did that, but the false hope (and real weapons) the US supplied did intensify it. We gave the rebels just enough assistance to keep them fighting, but not enough to help them win. Volkerball posted:The US getting involved militarily in Syria would provoke Russia into WW3. Proven wrong. "Russia didn't launch nukes at us when we launched a couple strategically worthless missile salvos after the regime's victory in the civil war was already secured, so they never would have done poo poo under any circumstances" is a pretty bad take. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 22:41 on May 27, 2018 |
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May 27, 2018 22:37
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Seems to me that the ‘optimal’ solution from a purely cynical, sociopathic Western Realpolitikal perspective would have been to go all in with a full ground invasion in 2012/2013 to topple Assad. This would have put Syria in control of a Sunni government that would probably have ended up a Turkish quasi-puppet in a mirror of Iraq’s Iranian quasi-puppet status. In the absense of that scenario, probably the best outcome would have been to actually not intervene at all and just let Assad win quickly. Even if we had done some sort of no fly zone it’s not clear the rebels could have won, surely not without a long and bloody war Unfortunately Obama didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger on either of those options, so we got the worst possible outcome
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May 27, 2018 23:39
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icantfindaname posted:Seems to me that the ‘optimal’ solution from a purely cynical, sociopathic Western Realpolitikal perspective would have been to go all in with a full ground invasion in 2012/2013 to topple Assad. This would have put Syria in control of a Sunni government that would probably have ended up a Turkish quasi-puppet in a mirror of Iraq’s Iranian quasi-puppet status. Uhh, with regards to Assad vs. The People of Syria the US hasn't really done much to drag things out, much less convince people to fight. Unless they're Kurdish or SDF - but even then by dunking on ISIS they may have handed Assad an easier win in those regions down the road.
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May 28, 2018 00:36
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Warbadger posted:Uhh, with regards to Assad vs. The People of Syria the US hasn't really done much to drag things out, much less convince people to fight. Remember when the rebels were blowing up regime forces with ATGM every five seconds? We definitely played a part in that. Yeah, the official support the Pentagon was supplying was very limited, but the CIA was doing its usual shadowy poo poo, and IIRC Brown Moses was the one who pointed out the Croatian weapons that were suddenly arriving in the country years ago which were almost certainly thanks to us. Plus there was the looming prospect of a greater intervention since Obama was providing rhetorical support and had just murked Qaddafi (after waiting until the last second), which encouraged rebels to believe that if they held on long enough we'd be arriving to help them too. Oops. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 01:18 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 01:15
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Crossposting from the I/P thread, it seems that Mahmoud Abbas is dead. So that’s going to be yet another geopolitical complication. https://twitter.com/elintnews/status/1000904028065337344?s=21
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May 28, 2018 02:18
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Darth Walrus posted:Crossposting from the I/P thread, it seems that Mahmoud Abbas is dead. So that’s going to be yet another geopolitical complication. Tweet is gone, and Google doesn't agree, just that he's in the hospital. He's probably pretty ill and not long for the world, but at last report he remains alive.
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May 28, 2018 02:28
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Savy Saracen salad posted:Has this thread been brigaded by Tankies? god im sad that the term "tankie" became mainstream. like holy poo poo the only people who should be using it is anarchists arguing stalinists
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May 28, 2018 02:45
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Well for all of you tankie twats rest assured the arab world hasnt budged into a better future, fascism is still here and worse than ever before and everything is now a million times worse for everyone who wanted some form of change or democracy. so you win I guess, I guess this is the point where you go back to not giving two flying fucks what happens to us now.
Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 03:09 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 03:06
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Al-Saqr posted:Well for all of you tankie twats rest assured the arab world hasnt budged into a better future, fascism is still here and worse than ever before and everything is now a million times worse for everyone who wanted some form of change or democracy. so you win I guess, I guess this is the point where you go back to not giving two flying fucks what happens to us now. Try Marxism-Leninism next time.
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May 28, 2018 03:35
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Panzeh posted:Try Marxism-Leninism next time. Try killing yourself. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 28, 2018 03:35
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Tunisia at least seems to be doing alright.
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May 28, 2018 04:32
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Sinteres posted:Remember when the rebels were blowing up regime forces with ATGM every five seconds? We definitely played a part in that. Yeah, the official support the Pentagon was supplying was very limited, but the CIA was doing its usual shadowy poo poo, and IIRC Brown Moses was the one who pointed out the Croatian weapons that were suddenly arriving in the country years ago which were almost certainly thanks to us. Plus there was the looming prospect of a greater intervention since Obama was providing rhetorical support and had just murked Qaddafi (after waiting until the last second), which encouraged rebels to believe that if they held on long enough we'd be arriving to help them too. Oops. I would guess that the bulk of TOW missiles in Syria came from the gulf states, several of whom have large stockpiles of the TOW variants seen in Syria. That's who provided the piles of Eastern European Soviet surplus weapons including the Konkurs and Fagot ATGMs that featured in the vast majority of ATGM videos in every stage of the conflict. Obama wasn't driving the Libyan intervention either. France and the UK led the way politically and militarily (at least until they ran out of guided bombs) on that one. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 05:49 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 04:37
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Warbadger posted:I would guess that the bulk of TOW missiles in Syria came from the gulf states, several of whom have large stockpiles of the TOW variants seen in Syria. I'm reading a recently published book called The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya by one Frederic Wehrey and in it he describes how though European states were very gung-ho about intervention, their dependence on American logistical support basically gave the US veto power over the intervention. The pace of operations was also severely constrained at first by the limited resources committed by America. For example the US only had two available Predator drones for much of the campaign, with almost all the rest deployed to the Afghan theatre to assist the ongoing surge. I haven't finished the book yet, which is primarily about the course of events following Ghadaffi's overthrow. The biggest mistake he identifies in the new Libya was the decision by the revolutionary government to start paying a small salary to militiamen, with the result being that armed groups rapidly proliferated as unemployed young men found an opportunity to get on the dole. He also identifies a general failure of foreign states to engage and support the new government, and believes the government and Libyan public were overly paranoid and suspicious about the result of bringing in foreign peacekeepers which could have improved security. Obama, implies Wehrey, felt Libya was Europe's responsibility, a feeling not evidently shared by Europeans.
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May 28, 2018 07:12
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Everyone wants to overthrow the boogeyman flavour of the month, to "protect" the people. No wants to rebuild a shattered state to protect the same people.
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May 28, 2018 08:24
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Squalid posted:Obama, implies Wehrey, felt Libya was Europe's responsibility Just lol
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May 28, 2018 09:43
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Squalid posted:I haven't finished the book yet, which is primarily about the course of events following Ghadaffi's overthrow. The biggest mistake he identifies in the new Libya was the decision by the revolutionary government to start paying a small salary to militiamen, with the result being that armed groups rapidly proliferated as unemployed young men found an opportunity to get on the dole. Wouldn't the alternative to that, not paying the militiamen, be worse? The demobilization of large numbers of Iraqi soldiers after the American invasion there is usually credited with providing a large pool of unemployed, trained, young men for extremists to recruit.
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May 28, 2018 19:01
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Blut posted:Wouldn't the alternative to that, not paying the militiamen, be worse? The demobilization of large numbers of Iraqi soldiers after the American invasion there is usually credited with providing a large pool of unemployed, trained, young men for extremists to recruit. Yeah, it didn't sound like there was a winnable situation there, and it sounds like blaming a needed eventuality when the issue was the catastrophic war in the first place. Either you pay the militias to buy some time or you don't pay them and they just come for you right away. Once they killed Gadaffi, a reliable central government vaporized with him and all that were felt were heavily armed militas (which were always going to pick up weapons from defeated government forces) and politicians from exile which had a marginal popular mandate. The US wanted regime change on the cheap, and the result was well, another hosed up situation (that admitted was less expensive in American cash.)
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May 28, 2018 19:34
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