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I feel like there's potentially a huge gulf between 'informed' and 'coordinating with'. If a US diplomat shows up, tells you that a bunch of planes are going to roll into your airspace and bomb poo poo so don't fire on them or unfortunate things might happen and then leaves, it's hard to argue that they're supporting you and respect your sovereignty. My gut tells me that it's mostly propaganda, but that the Syrians were informed in the same way that Pakistani and Yemeni officials are informed at the last minute about US incursions into their airspace.
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Sep 23, 2014 09:02
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Man, I know someone who does environmental work in Turkey and the stories he tells makes the government seem schizophrenic. They desperately want western environmentalists to come to the country so they can take photos with them, but any actual environmental work is immediately quashed due to pride and the desire to make money. So they graciously invite and greet scientists, and then try to make it so that they have to sit around for a couple weeks and then fly back home. Actually getting out into the field is like pulling teeth.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:54
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My Imaginary GF posted:You're comparing Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese protectionism to trade with Warsaw Pact members; its on completely different orders of degrees to subsidize your domestic industry while taxing foreign capital transfers, than it is to not allow foreign capital transfers for purchase of ownership stakes in your corporate entities. You're focusing a lot on the American foreign policy as a monolithic block, but how much foreign policy was determined by national interest and how much was determined by the Dulles brother's personal interests?
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Nov 23, 2014 07:16
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Man, I remember in the aftermath of the army opening fire on peaceful protestors in the wake of the coup how some goons were still rattling on about how having the Muslim Brotherhood remain in power would have been worse.
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Nov 27, 2014 04:29
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Effectronica posted:I find it hilarious that D&D people, when confronted with apparent Islamophobia, immediately start accusing the person of racism against Arabs, insisting that they're post-ironic and a boring troll, and then attempting to convince them to shut up in a way that wouldn't sway the wiltingest flower. Christ almighty. That does sound lame, what would you do instead?
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Dec 26, 2014 11:21
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So does anyone have a sufficient grasp of the political aims of Al-Qaeda in Yemen to suggest why they might have decided to carry out that attack in France? I thought they had the nominal Yemeni government on the ropes, why draw the attention of the international community? Are they hurting for recruits at the moment? (This is on the assumption that the attributed statements of the gunmen that they are part of Al-Qaeda in Yemen are true and they weren't self radicalized.)
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Jan 9, 2015 09:12
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How do you justify paying ransoms when that money directly goes to buying arms that will kill a hell of a lot more people?
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Jan 20, 2015 19:07
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Pretty sure that dude was sarcastic. Or at least desperately praying that he was being sarcastic.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:43
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achillesforever6 posted:I was having a conversation with someone today about ISIS/L and the Middle East; he is trying to convince me that the reason ISIS has gotten as big as it has is because of those guys that we traded for Bergdahl, can someone here explain to me how much of that is complete bullshit? ISIS was already the most visibly dominant faction of the Syrian rebels well in advance of the Bergdahl deal. They were already feeling confident enough to turn on other rebel factions in order to consolidate power many months before the prisoner swap. If you only vaguely followed the Syrian Civil War and subsequent events in Iraq on the evening news, it seems like they sprang up out of nowhere, but they've been on the radar in this thread in a for years.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:12
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Christ, I don't understand how the US allows this behavior to continue, it's the textbook breeding ground for a popular insurgency. Unless they're cool with MIGF plan of going full Hitler on all the Sunnis in the country.
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Jan 29, 2015 09:22
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Volkerball posted:Although once again, I believe the military only allowed the Morsi government to form after Mubarak was ousted with the belief that they could overthrow it very shortly on the back of fighting against radical Islam. Very rightly it turned out.
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Feb 15, 2015 23:12
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So, how did we basically miss the lesson of the Sunni Awakening and allow things to go straight back to Shiite death squads? Was there no way for the United States to lean on the Iraqi government to throw some patronage towards some Sunni tribes and stop allowing Sunni men to be abducted and killed in the middle of the night? Cause it doesn't seem like we really needed to be back at this point.
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Mar 5, 2015 20:32
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Sergg posted:http://news.yahoo.com/gop-senators-warning-over-us-iran-nuclear-negotiations-113941531--politics.html This doesn't follow given their rhetoric. The GOP and Netanyahu have argued that Iran will not honor any deal and would keep striving to get nukes. If Iran is not negotiating in good faith, how is suggesting that America might renege on an agreement supposed to help? It would only potentially deter someone negotiating in good faith. If Iran has no intention of standing by the agreement, as the GOP advocates, why would they care if the US might eventually back out of the agreement? An agreement might still buy them a few years to develop a weapon, and America reneging would just set things back to where they are now, so there's no risk of loss with a definite potential for games. The only situation in which the Senators' letter would have the potential to deter the Iranians would be if they were considering complying with a deal. By sending this letter the GOP is basically admitting that Iran is negotiating in good faith and they want the deal to sink for entirely political reasons..
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Mar 10, 2015 07:09
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Have sanctions ever really worked? Iraq no, Russia no, South Africa probably not compared to domestic rebellion/needing outside support in ways DPRK don't... Kills a lot of kids, though. Myanmar/ Burma maybe.
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Mar 11, 2015 19:42
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So with 7 million Syrians displaced and less than half the needed funding being supplied to them by the global community, roughly how many refugees are dying? I recently saw a death toll from the civil war at around 220,000 (I remember reading this thread and having my mind blown when that number first hit 20,00), does this number include refugee deaths? It just seems strange that we are observing the largest humanitarian crisis that I can remember in my lifetime, and yet it gets so little play.
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Mar 20, 2015 09:14
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Sergg posted:Russia did such a great job in Afghanistan. The very first thing they did was kill the Afghan President, Hafizullah Amin, that requested help from them. quote:During the attack Amin still believed the Soviet Union was on his side, and told his adjutant, "The Soviets will help us" This is pretty hilarious.
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Oct 7, 2015 01:21
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Sinnlos posted:Let's put boots on the ground and shoot everyone for the next 10 years. This, but unironically.
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Oct 9, 2015 04:06
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MothraAttack posted:Psh, you guys clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The SAA is clearly the biggest, baddest fighting force around! Even if the SAA comes out of this as an elite force of super ninjas, they're going to be backed by an economy missing half its population and most of its infrastructure. Syria ain't projecting power anywhere outside its border for a decade or two after this civil war ends, which will be God knows when. gently caress, maybe Lebanon can say fair's fair and turn them into a proxy puppet state.
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Oct 20, 2015 23:50
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mobby_6kl posted:So what's the deal with that? Does nobody trust/give a poo poo, or does the government make it hard to vote? I think the army overthrowing the government put in place by the last election may put a damper on everyone's enthusiasm for the democratic process.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:40
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Jagchosis posted:Bear in mind Leomarr has been banned for racism multiple times and posted several troll threads in D&D. Should not be engaged, and permabanned, imo. quote:The film portrays the contractors, "who actually failed to secure the ambassador ... as heroes," Libya's Culture and Information Minister, Omar Gawaari, exclaimed. lol, they got us there
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Oct 21, 2015 01:41
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fade5 posted:Looks like Sinjar/Shingal is finally kicking into high gear: Oh boy, what's a civil war without murderous retribution?
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Oct 23, 2015 22:42
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pictures of dead bodies, as a warning.
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fade5 posted:It doesn't excuse it, but those neighbors/collaborators are part of the reason the term "Yazidi sex slaves" exists so prominently when talking about ISIL's various horrors. History has shown that "collaborator" often begins to encompass the people who just tried to keep their heads down and also people who have nice things that other people want and also people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's one of the hallmarks for why civil wars are so bloody.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:57
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nothing to seehere posted:With Israel getting involved, I think that is the last of Syria's neighbours who haven't intervened militarily in Syria involved. Now all we're missing is the Chinese to take part in the Syrian clusterfuck! Lebanon has kept it's hands off, probably because a fourth of their population is now Syrian refugees and they don't want any more.
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Oct 25, 2015 04:55
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goose fleet posted:How is Lebanon coping with that enormous proportion of refugees? Well they've had a similar number of Palestinian refugees living in camps for a couple decades, so I'm sure there was and continues to be a strain on Lebanon, but it's not quite the shock to their society it would at first appear. Also it should be remembered that Israel has already bombed Syria a couple of times when they felt Hezbollah might be getting weapon shipments from the Assad regime. So unless they put boots on the ground, Israeli military intervention isn't unprecedented in the conflict.
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Oct 25, 2015 05:02
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So I misremembered the numbers. There had been about 450,000 Palestinians, which had been about 10% of the population. The addition of 1.1 million to 1.3 million Syrian refugees bumps the total number of refugees up to 25% of the population, with about 4.5 million Lebanese citizens and 1.5 million or more refugees.
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Oct 25, 2015 05:39
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Given all the confirmed facts we have right now there's not reallyy any way it could be true, as A) the militants had no way to hit the plane at the altitude it broke up at, and B) there's already a ton of incidental evidence pointing to some kind of equipment malfunction.
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Nov 2, 2015 08:19
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:[Washi also serves as a companion to the FFK, and apparently the idea of taking in stray dogs is upsetting to ISIS (Or so I've been told, I have no idea why it would be so I'm hoping somebody itt can shed light on that) so they've been doing it more. Washi is their regular, though, sticking by their sides through all hours of the night and during combat (with the exception of the firing of the DShK, that's too much for the poor thing). Some Muslims view dogs as ritually unclean animals to be avoided. I don't know what that filters out to through ISIS's crazypants theology. GhostofJohnMuir fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 01:03
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A thing to consider is that this conflict for the most part has been in the later stages of a classic guerilla war where the two parties are on more or less "equal" grounds. Even if the momentum shifts towards the government, the rebels could always fade away and begin conducting a classic terrorist/ light guerilla campaign. I don't know if the rebels have the popular support and the political leadership necessary to really make this work, but you just have to look at Colombia to see how pernicious and damaging these kind of civil wars can be even after one side has been decisively defeated in the field. Really I don't see any way we're not seeing bad news out of Syria for the next decade or more.
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Nov 14, 2015 09:05
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Jagchosis posted:Ten dudes are sleeping somewhere they're not used to after breaking their boat, this is worth starting a conflict over Iran is saying we've got a tiny dick and we have to hide the truth about our micro penis by killing them all.
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Jan 13, 2016 06:26
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Brown Moses posted:The GQ article on Caro is finally online http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2016-01/15/syria-isis-kevin-dawes The writer strikes a hopeful note, but is there really much of a chance that caro is actually still alive?
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Jan 16, 2016 08:40
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Promontory posted:It's behind a paywall, but Financial Times has an article claiming that Russia asked Assad to step down, but was refused. The sources are anonymous "western intelligence officials," which is not the most reliable, but it's interesting nonetheless. Why would Assad have any confidence that the Russians wouldn't just go all Hafizullah Amin on his rear end?
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Jan 23, 2016 09:47
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are we really going to run with the accusation that al-saqr is in the tank for the house of saud?
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Mar 17, 2016 02:10
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Volkerball posted:Welp, the Kurdish situation in Syria just got more complicated. Looks like we've got another 3 letter acronym to memorize. Oh what the gently caress? At what point do we stop seeing new sides to this clusterfuck of a conflict, this monstrous loving clown car.
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Mar 17, 2016 06:37
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Dapper_Swindler posted:wasnt he one of the Baathist dudes that tried to co-opt ISIS. it was a long piece in der spiegel or another german newspaper Like the original plan was for bagdadi and co to get a fighting force together of dumb zealot foot soldiers and then walter and other Baathists would kill him and take over or something like that. but bagdadi and co got wise and killed them. i'm glad the middle east continues it's recent trend of being a bad jerry bruckheimer movie given flesh
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Apr 8, 2016 01:51
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Silver2195 posted:I'm more curious about how you got yours. I vaguely remember someone insulting someone else for having a Madoka avatar in the Okinawa military base thread a while back; did that have something to do with it? he gave it to himself 
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Apr 23, 2016 07:25
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fade5 posted:we just continue to support both, even if it means we're arming both sides in a war. finally, we're living up to our conspiracy theory image in the middle east
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Aug 28, 2016 06:32
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Why would the Russians bomb the un convoy themselves? It's not like Assad would have any problems doing it, even without a pointed suggestion. So either we have an oopsie on a scale that blows the earlier US strike on SAA fighters out of the water, or Putin is a chaos god who feeds on confusion.
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Sep 20, 2016 21:10
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rear end struggle posted:I seriously don't see what you people see wrong with jihadism. actually you sse jihad refers to the inner war against oneself and furthermore...
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Oct 1, 2016 03:57
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Czer posted:So you're trying to bring up a runt remnant of the Ottoman empire as something comparative in complication to the middle east. Iran is as big as Western Europe. wouldn't population be a better arbitrary metric? maybe population density? siberia and the united states fill the same relative geographic footprint, i'm not sure that they have the same level of political complexity
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Oct 1, 2016 06:16
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I'm still struggling to see what exactly makes Al Nusra worse than the Assad regime to the point where one is obviously preferable.
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Oct 6, 2016 02:06
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