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tsa posted:I really wonder what MB would have done with a couple more months. It certainly looks like they were heading in a pretty dangerous direction but who knows. It seemed pretty clear that the main priority of the MB was establishment of an Iranian-style Islamic police state. I'm sure members of the MB did rail against the decadence of Egyptian elites, but only in the context of railing against everything and everyone that doesn't share the values of fundamentalist Islam. If said fundamentalists' response to being "unfairly" shut out of power is to become more radical and violent, fine - that's not a fight they can win, not in Egypt at least.
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May 16, 2015 19:35
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Kaal posted:Hahahahahahha I didn't realize that Paul Bremer posted on these boards Purging is actually precisely what the dear proconsul should have done instead of disbanding.
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May 16, 2015 19:43
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MothraAttack posted:Technically third, if you count the time we chased insurgents from Iraq into Syria in October 2008 (and Assad bitched about it). It's been suggested that Abu Sayyaf had close connections with Baghdadi and that some of his "communication equipment" was recovered, so I imagine he had some serious humint about ISIS leadership. I meant so far in the current operation against ISIS. My point was that putting soldiers on the ground is not something the US has been cavalier about, so this guy must have been extremely valuable to them.
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May 16, 2015 19:48
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Morsi sentenced to death before Mubarak. Ugh.
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May 16, 2015 20:44
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Volkerball posted:I meant so far in the current operation against ISIS. My point was that putting soldiers on the ground is not something the US has been cavalier about, so this guy must have been extremely valuable to them. We've killed the last 4 leaders of ISIS. Taking out the money-man in a ground raid means that we grabbed his computers, his cellphone, his hard drives, thumb drives, and documents. This is a major strategic blow against ISIS.
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May 16, 2015 20:57
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The Egyptian 'revolution' is such a sad farce. My condolences to the Egyptian people, but god drat that's just hilariously bald-faced. The whole fiasco has certainly taught me a valuable lesson about getting hopes up, that's for sure.
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May 16, 2015 20:58
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Sergg posted:We've killed the last 4 leaders of ISIS. Taking out the money-man in a ground raid means that we grabbed his computers, his cellphone, his hard drives, thumb drives, and documents. This is a major strategic blow against ISIS. Haji Bakr was killed by rebels.
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May 16, 2015 21:04
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eSports Chaebol posted:Purging is actually precisely what the dear proconsul should have done instead of disbanding. Ah yes, I forgot that the problem in Iraq was that the US didn't purge enough.  Hard-hitting commentary here.
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May 16, 2015 21:43
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As far as the Arab spring goes: I find it instructive that the only nation that actually turned out OK was the one where the spring started. Tunesia (the Tunesian "regime" was also one of the least bad regimes in the area to start with) had a pretty limited military, no major ethnic conflicts, and quite a significant middle class. They rose up, and it worked. The thing was that these conditions didnt exist in the same way in other Arab states, even though some were moving in that direction. It spread, but to "hosts" that werent ready for it yet. Waiting 10 or so years in Lybia (until Ghadaffi dies by natural causes) could have created a civil war less takeover there. Egypt was another issue, while Mubarak is the military, the military is more then just Mubarak, their hold is very economical, institutional, and backed up by very expansive patronage networks. The other thing is that the military is open to people that want to join it, and offers a very basic mechanism of upwards social mobility. This is different in Syria, you dont have to be an Alawi to rise, but you need to be Alawi, or from the right (Sunni, Druz, Christian or Shiite) clan. Egypts military is kind of its own clan that actually adopts people. This means that ambitious and competent individuals often join the military, and thus arent avaiable as rebel leaders. What could have perhaps worked would have been moves to internationalize the business holdings of the military a bit. This could have created frictions within, established peer to peer relations to mid level military managers etc., and perhaps created a "softer military faction" that could have been coopted. Civil War in Syria would have, due to the massive droughts and duststorms, happened anyway. Absolutly exceptional diplomatic leadership, backed up by well intentioned cooperation between the Great powers and a substantial aid programm (to counter the droughts effects) could have, perhaps, managed a transition to a Lebanon style democracy, or to a confederate solution. Problem here is that Assad would have also needed to be exceptionally diplomatic, since selling the "scary tough people" in the Alawie Mukhabarats that they would now be less powerfull would have been no easy sell. Foreign meddling from multiple great and regional powers of course just resulted in making everything worse.
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May 16, 2015 21:47
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Kaal posted:Ah yes, I forgot that the problem in Iraq was that the US didn't purge enough. Not to be dense, but wasn't that actually the problem? Hence a lot of Saddam-era officers having joined ISIS? I mean, the problems with the Iraq invasion go much further back (issue one: invading in the first place) and it's easy to say something like "purge the officer corps" without explaining how you actually murder thousands of military leaders, but the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the half-assed de-Baathification that had no endgame planned for previous members of the Iraqi government was definitely an exacerbating factor.
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May 16, 2015 21:48
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Kaal posted:Hahahahahahha I didn't realize that Paul Bremer posted on these boards Paul Bremer has never been in a situation comparable to a successful revolution.
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May 16, 2015 21:48
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Dolash posted:Not to be dense, but wasn't that actually the problem? Hence a lot of Saddam-era officers having joined ISIS? I mean, the problems with the Iraq invasion go much further back (issue one: invading in the first place) and it's easy to say something like "purge the officer corps" without explaining how you actually murder thousands of military leaders, but the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the half-assed de-Baathification that had no endgame planned for previous members of the Iraqi government was definitely an exacerbating factor. Paul Bremer conducted about as thorough a purge as possible without violating all sorts of domestic and international laws by conducting mass executions. If they had tried to do that, it would only have kicked off further resistance. Basically the problem was the whole concept of purging. There's massive drawbacks even if you go full-Stalin. Peace and reconciliation is pretty much the only method with a positive track record. Basically this sort of over-the-top advocacy of righteous violence always runs into the same fundamental issue: They always seem to assume that they're the ones that will be holding the rifles. It's as if abandoning peaceful conflict resolution was this clever idea that no one else would ever be able to emulate. In real life people are not so willing to be lined up against the wall, and in fact tend to be very capable of responding in kind.
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May 16, 2015 21:54
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purges are not necessarily lethal, though it does seem like it would've been better for everyone if they'd shot most of the senior military leadership, i agree
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May 16, 2015 21:59
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except that what the military leadership did was prove to people beyond any reasonable doubt that peaceful change and that democracy will be literally over their dead bodies. which kind of makes the track record of peaceful change moot since it's not an option anymore since it will be met with immediate death and the people you're dealing with are incapable of compromise.
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May 16, 2015 22:01
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Cat Mattress posted:Paul Bremer has never been in a situation comparable to a successful revolution. Neither has Mohamed Morsi! 
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May 16, 2015 22:03
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Kaal posted:Paul Bremer conducted about as thorough a purge as possible without violating all sorts of domestic and international laws by conducting mass executions. If they had tried to do that, it would only have kicked off further resistance. Basically the problem was the whole concept of purging. There's massive drawbacks even if you go full-Stalin. Peace and reconciliation is pretty much the only method with a positive track record. That is the thing. The Egyptian miliatry is its own state. You dont "purge them" unless you are perhaps an invincible Alien invader. What could be done is preparatory work. Divesting the military and economical assets of the military from each other would have been a neccessary feature. Internationalization of their business holdings is one such way, this would make the military compete in some international aspects with economic opposition that is in their weight class, and also create situation in which the military ecnomical complex of Egypt actually depends on the civilian goverment. The military is also running a lot of the daily life neccessities in Egypt (far more so than in Iraq), and is gobbling up quite considerable numbers of university graduates. Are you going to purge those too?
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May 16, 2015 22:04
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Mightypeon posted:That is the thing. The Egyptian miliatry is its own state. You dont "purge them" unless you are perhaps an invincible Alien invader. What could be done is preparatory work. Divesting the military and economical assets of the military from each other would have been a neccessary feature. Internationalization of their business holdings is one such way, this would make the military compete in some international aspects with economic opposition that is in their weight class, and also create situation in which the military ecnomical complex of Egypt actually depends on the civilian goverment. obviously it would be more complicated than "round up generals in the night, then shoot them", but Morsi seemed to be banking on the military allowing him to exist so long as he didn't bother them much, which was a fatal miscalculation
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May 16, 2015 22:06
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Al-Saqr posted:except that what the military leadership did was prove to people beyond any reasonable doubt that peaceful change and that democracy will be literally over their dead bodies. which kind of makes the track record of peaceful change moot since it's not an option anymore since it will be met with immediate death and the people you're dealing with are incapable of compromise. "The military and all of their supporters wouldn't immediately hand over all their power to Islamists that were intent on purging them! Why won't the drat secularists be reasonable and compromise! I guess there's nothing left but blood in the streets!" 
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May 16, 2015 22:07
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Kaal posted:"The military and all of their supporters wouldn't immediately hand over all their power to Islamists that were intent on purging them! Why won't the drat secularists be reasonable and compromise! I guess there's nothing left but blood in the streets!" wait are you still defending the military
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May 16, 2015 22:09
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Kaal posted:"The military and all of their supporters wouldn't immediately hand over all their power to Islamists that were intent on purging them! Why won't the drat secularists be reasonable and compromise! I guess there's nothing left but blood in the streets!" oh right I forgot you're one of those supporters of fascism who don't mind the deletion of all democracy and shooting protestors of all political stripes on the streets. also, don't make me pull out the videos and lists of all the leftists and secularists that have been killed and imprisoned by the Sisi regime, you will look really really stupid.
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May 16, 2015 22:09
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I think that it's pretty hilarious that you guys still seem unable to appreciate why the Morsi government failed, and indeed seem to be advocating that they should have doubled-down on the same kind of idiotic and confrontational policies that caused the government to fail in the first place. Shine on you two.
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May 16, 2015 22:11
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yes, clearly if they had just let the military do what they wanted they would've transformed egypt into a stable democracy -an idiot
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May 16, 2015 22:17
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Kaal posted:"The military and all of their supporters wouldn't immediately hand over all their power to Islamists that were intent on purging them! Why won't the drat secularists be reasonable and compromise! I guess there's nothing left but blood in the streets!" Kaal has a point here. I read about it from the news sources in Egypt that weren't raided and shut down the day god-king Sisi (swt) took power. They said that the Muslim Brotherhood advocated the murder of political opponents, and that they were intolerant towards people who didn't support their ideological views. Thank God that the military never gave up an ounce of the 10-40% of the economy they control to the democratically elected government while Egyptians were starving. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to ban the MB, put everyone down to the their press secretary on death row, shut down media that supported them and put all of their employees on death row, and gun down their rat supporters wherever they had the audacity to stick their heads up. I would've hated to have seen a purge. That Morsi was one evil son of a bitch. Thankfully, he never had the chance to act upon his designs.
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May 16, 2015 23:14
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Perhaps Morsi ideally should have purged the military, and he probably he wanted to.There was simply no way for him to do so. Unlike the Bolsheviks the islamists never for one second posessed that kind of power in Egypt. That would have requiered Morsi to have had lead a Syria-style rebellion which against all possible odds somehow manages to defeat the Egyptian army. Frankly that was never going to happen. Within the confines of his office Morsi could have little more to stop the military then what he actully did ( very little). In hindsigth his bet would have been to force the military to coup him at once by going full Robspierre on them from day one. The international community would not have reacted in the same way if the coup had happened a month after Morsi`s inaugeration. The military would have had much less time to build support from the liberals. For egypt the end result in the short term would have been the same but the military would have lacked a fig leaf to justify their violence. Al-Sisi would have less time to build his little cult, maybe he would have appeared to the average egyptian like the thug he actually is. Less saviour of the nation and more "egypt`s Pinochet". All in all that could potentially have left military in a much worse posistion than what they now find themselves. That`s the very best Morsi could have acheived and it`s not much better then what we have today anyway. Morsi never even had a chanche.
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May 17, 2015 01:47
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So in better news, US spec-ops went in and killed ISIS commander Abu Sayyaf in syria, they captured his wife and rescued a young yazide woman held by them. they also got a poo poo ton of Intel apparently. and no US casualties and at least 20 ISIS scum sent to hell. http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/16/middleeast/syria-isis-us-raid/index.html
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May 17, 2015 02:52
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Dapper_Swindler posted:So in better news, US spec-ops went in and killed ISIS commander Abu Sayyaf in syria, they captured his wife and rescued a young yazide woman held by them. they also got a poo poo ton of Intel apparently. and no US casualties and at least 20 ISIS scum sent to hell. http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/16/middleeast/syria-isis-us-raid/index.html Apparently he was responsible for all the sales of oil and IS finances, I know it can't be hard for them to just replace him with just another oval office. But if he was someone that had contacts and had built relationships with people in order to move said oil it could take them time to find a suitable replacement. And time is alot of money not buying them guns and other horrible poo poo to use against other people.
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May 17, 2015 03:04
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VoLaTiLe posted:Apparently he was responsible for all the sales of oil and IS finances, I know it can't be hard for them to just replace him with just another oval office. For what its worth, Russian authorities in the second Chechen wars made pretty good financial/security offers to Chechens engaged in various black market activities within Russia, with the twin goals of creating inner Chechen friction and depriving the still operational Nationalist/Wahabi coalition (they managed to fracture that coalition later, largely because the Nationalist Chechens werent used to be very Wahabi to start with, while also being pretty indisposed to taking orders about their faith from some Saudi-Arab princelings or whatever) of funds. In addition, it was a vetting opportunity for potential pro Russian Chechen Vasalls. "Vetting" in this Russian context also implies getting blackmail material on them. The goal must now be to use this economic opening for either infiltration (which can be really usefull. Financial data may very well be more usefull from tactical military data. There is a lot, really a lot, that can be implied from it.), or make DAESH believe that they are getting actively infiltrated/penetrated and go purge crazy on potential recruits. The latter is more likely, given that the Iraqi Baath core of DAESH is pretty far on the paranoid side of things (even for Russian standarts, Iraqi/Arab Mukhabarats are pretty drat paranoid). Either way is hopefully a win win.
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May 17, 2015 03:35
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I don't think there's going to be a quick fightback in Ramadi. Except for the troops trapped in the Ops Complex, most the remaining Iraqi soldiers in the city seem to have fled today. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...a9e9_story.html
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May 17, 2015 14:56
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VoLaTiLe posted:Apparently he was responsible for all the sales of oil and IS finances, I know it can't be hard for them to just replace him with just another oval office. Could there be some interesting revelations regarding who was buying ISIS oil or was all that pretty much known already?
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May 17, 2015 16:30
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Why are the Houthis mad at "the jews?" I can understand their beef with America and the modern state of Israel, but maybe I'm expecting too much from a slogan.
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May 17, 2015 16:37
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Flavahbeast posted:Could there be some interesting revelations regarding who was buying ISIS oil or was all that pretty much known already? They were trying to capture him, maybe get confirmation that ISIL and Assad are working together.
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May 17, 2015 16:42
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Reports are coming out that the Anbar Operations Command center has fallen. That was the last significant ISF presence in Ramadi. If true, the hundreds of soldiers that were trapped there are probably all dead. edit: The Iraqi prime minister is officially ordering the Hashd to retake Ramadi. New Division fucked around with this message at 17:03 on May 17, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 16:56
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Alasyre posted:Why are the Houthis mad at "the jews?" I can understand their beef with America and the modern state of Israel, but maybe I'm expecting too much from a slogan. Their core philosophy is that 9/11 was a Jewish and American plot to harm Muslims. As for why belief in conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination there is prevalent enough to make trutherism sufficient for a popular national revolutionary movement, that's a great question and I doubt there will be any good answers agreed on within the next century. Traditional European conspiracy theories about Jews have moved seamlessly to the Middle East and picked up even greater force. Obviously Israel is part of that but Israel isn't in the top 100 of yemen's problems but here we are anyway, watching a armed conflict between those who believe 9/11 was a Zionist plot and those who believe they did 9/11 to stop the zionists.
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May 17, 2015 17:07
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Alasyre posted:Why are the Houthis mad at "the jews?" I can understand their beef with America and the modern state of Israel, but maybe I'm expecting too much from a slogan. You were expecting them to make a nuanced distinction between Israel and Jews?
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May 17, 2015 17:17
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I don't make a distinction between arabs and terrorists so I can't fault the hootoos in that regard. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 17, 2015 17:26
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New Division posted:Reports are coming out that the Anbar Operations Command center has fallen. That was the last significant ISF presence in Ramadi. If true, the hundreds of soldiers that were trapped there are probably all dead. Yeah this is going to be intense. Those militias are good, but they paid a high price in Tikrit. Anbar will be brutal.
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May 17, 2015 22:04
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Just heard on the BBC News that the Pentagon are claiming that Ramadi hasn't fallen and is still contested. I can appreciate their need to focus on the positive but at some point that becomes delusion.
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May 17, 2015 22:08
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Edit: Deleted double post.
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May 17, 2015 22:17
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We've been dropping ordinance on IS for how many months now and they're still taking territory? Fantastic. I heard the same thing on BBC News about how the Pentagon says that Ramadi is still contested. They are starting to sound like our old friend Baghdad Bob.
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May 17, 2015 22:19
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MothraAttack posted:Yeah this is going to be intense. Those militias are good, but they paid a high price in Tikrit. Anbar will be brutal. I honestly don't expect them to go into Ramadi any time soon. The US withheld air support in Tikrit initially and suspect will do the same. You think they would focus on Fallujah since it is on their side of the river. Or Baiji since there is more at stake there.
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May 17, 2015 22:20
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