|
Aside from Syria and the red line I think Obama's foreign policy has been about as good as could reasonably be expected. That's a pretty big 'aside from' though.
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2016 15:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 22:46 |
|
|
Majorian posted:How, exactly, has Kerry been played like a fiddle by Lavrov with regard to Ukraine? It seems to me that the U.S. has done everything it possibly could that wouldn't escalate the situation in a direction that wouldn't be in anyone's interests. Well, you could argue that the whole attempt at diplomatic reset was one of the reasons why Russia was able to take Crimea, but IMO it wasn't that big a deal. The real place where Kerry's been played like a fiddle is Syria
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2016 19:42
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:I'm not sure how cautious inaction is possibly being spun negatively. Because it led directly to the worst war and humanitarian disaster since the Iran-Iraq war, possibly since Vietnam? The scale of the disaster is such that it's difficult to defend complete inaction. But I forgot the answer to every question in foreign politics always must be "gently caress amerikkka"
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 02:42
|
|
|
Helsing posted:It's precious that anyone would spin the rise of ISIS as due to American "inaction". It's almost like ISIS isn't the problem with Syria, and is responsible for only a small fraction of the deaths and destruction
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 02:50
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:The syrian civil war could've been avoided had the US stuck its dick in there or started posturing, obsessing over its own credibility. A large majority of the deaths and damage would have been avoided yeah. Pointing this out doesn't fit the narrative obviously, but it's still true
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 02:52
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:. No, that's what Obama actually did. We're talking about what he should have done
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 02:55
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:Barrel bombs kill people like this- MK. 84s kill people like this. They kill people in numbers that are quantifiable, objective facts. It's scary to see the level of hulk rage that pointing out facts brings out in some people
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 02:57
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:So what should Obama have done, Harry Turtledove? Moved to remove Assad at the start of the war in 2012 or 2013 Helsing posted:Oh, is it Assad? The guy who generously stored all those prisoners in undocumented black sites on behalf of the US government during the 2000s? Or did the problems start with his father, Hafez, who joined America's coalition to fight Iraq (you know, the country that America had been selling weapons to in the 1980s because they were fighting the Iranians, to whom America was also selling weapons). It's cool to see how it literally causes some people's brains to snap, Looney Tunes style, to suggest that America had, has or will ever have the ability to do something that is positive and constructive in the world
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:03
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:Then the US ends up propping up a side in another civil war. The officials end up being corrupt(most of the people willing to be propped up by the US do) and unpopular and the US is embroiled fighting Sunni and Shia/Allawite insurgents. No, it doesn't. If the US had literally swooped in, assassinated Assad and his top generals, and flown away, it's very likely 80% of the deaths in this war would have been avoided. Even if you're absolutely 100% committed to die on the hill of everything Amerikkka could ever possibly do being bad and evil, you can't argue with a straight face the war would not have been significantly alleviated. Not gone entirely, obviously, but significantly less bad. The attempts to spin Libya, a war not 1/10th as bad as Syria, into some kind of nightmare that proves Syria could never have been helped is hilarious desperation on the part of people who want to convince themselves that isolationism is the correct choice McDowell posted:We don't assassinate heads of states - kind of sets a bad precedent. Well, you could have enforced a no-fly zone to the same effect. Too bad Obama chose not to icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Mar 11, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:07
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:I'd be okay with that if we did the same to the Sauds, Erdrogan, and Bibi. Sure, works for me Helsing posted:Nobody is debating whether American can or does do good in the world, we're talking about America's foreign policy, and in particular it's role in the middle east. And anyone who thinks America promotes regional stability or has promoted stability at any point in the last several decades is delusional The US could have promoted regional stability, but Obama chose not to quote:Which is why your argument is only sustainable when you speak in the vaguest of platitudes and pretend that history started in 2012 and anything that occurred before then is off bounds. I'm not sure what this argument is supposed to mean. History "didn't begin in 2012" so in 2012 when Obama made the ultimatum and didn't follow through on it he was actually physically prevented by the all-powerful laws of History from making any other choice or action? We're talking about Obama's presidency in this thread, not Bush 2 or Clinton or Bush 1 or Reagan or whoever the gently caress. The counterfactual deals with Obama, and his actions in a particular time and place. Since you seem to be desperately avoiding acknowledging this, let me say it clearly: Failing to carry out the ultimatum in 2012 was a massive, massive mistake and directly led to a very large part of the destruction of the war that followed icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Mar 11, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:20
|
|
|
McDowell posted:It was 2013 - and what if the Russians intervened against our intervention? You can't deny their investment in Bashar. Obama went to Congress because a strike could have escalated into World War 3. It's all in the playbook. The war ends up the same as today then. If making the strikes was as inconsequential a choice as you keep insisting it's very strange how angrily people are arguing against it. It would make no difference, so why would you care?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:See, here's the problem: most of the people who invaded Iraq in 2003 thought they would be gone in a few months, too- that it wouldn't be a big thing. You keep insisting that things would have been as bad as Vietnam or WW1 if we had intervened, but guess what, it's that bad despite us not intervening. It turns out that non-intervention, like intervention, is a conscious choice with distinct consequences, no matter how hard you stick your fingers in your ears and scream you can't hear it
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:36
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:Yes, thank you, all decisions have consequences. Well done. It's weird then how desperately people are arguing that actually nothing would have been different if we had intervened and that there were no consequences for failing to
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:43
|
|
|
Tesseraction posted:The problem is how successful an intervention can be. In Rwanda it was effective, in Kosovo it as effective. In Iraq it was an incredible disaster. Obama had to weigh the failures of GWB up when looking at the situation. Can you necessarily blame him? You can absolutely blame him, because there's a slight, small difference between a limited air campaign and a full-scale, 100,000 strong boots-on-the-ground invasion, and the dude's a god damned idiot if he thought that they would end up the same
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 03:53
|
|
|
Anosmoman posted:And when the SAA collapses and an exciting hodge podge of various Sunni rebel groups roll into Alawite areas what will happen? They kill some civilians and do some ethnic cleansing, most likely on a scale far less than has been carried out by Assad and certainly no worse. See, this is the problem with using the "but but what if things ended up worse????" line of argument in a reality that's basically the worst case scenario already
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 04:44
|
|
|
McDowell posted:How would the American people react if a foreign plot to assassinate the President succeeded? Would they change policy or double down? It's almost like dictators don't actually rely on public opinion to continue ruling
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 15:19
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:The reason we didn't intervene in the first place was because every faction involved was horrible, we didn't want any of them to win, and Iraq and Vietnam are perfect examples of what happens when we try to use military force to create a "good" faction out of essentially nothing. Backing one of the factions wholeheartedly and pushing them to a quick victory would certainly have ended the war faster and maybe even resulted in slightly less immediate death and destruction and deprivation, but when the choice is between backing Assad or backing ISIS then it's hard to spin non-intervention as the real immoral solution. When you're arguing that your solution might possibly have maybe resulted in fewer mass massacres of civilians and less thorough ethnic cleansing, I feel like maybe the time to make good choices was long before 2011. There were a lot more moderates back in 2011/2012/2013 before Assad killed them all. But the problem with the bolded, like I said in my reply to Helsing yesterday, is that we're talking about Obama's presidency here. Yes, neocons have been loving up the middle east since at least the early 80s, this is true. But Obama had a chance to do something productive and he chose not to take it. It's baffling to me to see people doubling down on what was in hindsight obviously the wrong choice. You say "Obama made the wrong choice" and the response is "but but so did everyone else!" That's not an defense of Obama or his policies, it's attempt to deflect blame. quote:Sure, maybe a full military intervention really early in the civil war might have pre-empted the rise of ISIS, at least temporarily...but if anyone thinks it would have prevented ISIS or even really weakened them much, then they've learned nothing from the last century's worth of Imperial collapses. I wouldn't go so far as saying "nothing works", but we've been making bad decisions in the Middle East for decades, which is a big part of what created this situation in the first place, and it's downright silly to say that one single decision a few years ago could have instantly undone all that. 80% of the deaths in this war have been caused by Assad and the SAA. The focus on ISIS as the real problem and attempts to portray them as worse than Assad, is more of the blame shifting and equivocation. Yes ISIS is bad. No ISIS is not the main driver of the war or the vast majority of the atrocities in it. The primary reason Obama and the US cares about ISIS is that it's bad PR. Like Obama said they're not an existential threat anyone outside of Mosul and Raqqa icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Mar 11, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 16:33
|
|
|
Tesseraction posted:"We'll be greeted as liberators." -George Bush, 2003 If the American president were assassinated, as mentioned in that post, the American people would double down in defense of the current American regime. Killing Saddam did not result in Iraqi people doubling down in defense of the Baathist regime. Can you figure out why that was?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 17:56
|
|
|
McDowell posted:We didn't assassinate Saddam. He was captured by US forces and then tried and executed by an Iraqi legal process. Do you think if the US had drone strike assassinated Saddam and his top generals the Iraqi people would have rallied to the Baathists' defence?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 18:00
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:I'm saying that there was no right choice. That it was far, far too late to fix the situation. We've already forced the car over a cliff, there's no decision we can make that'll stop it from hitting the ground one way or another. Maybe curling up into the fetal position or trying to shift the car's weight so it lands in its wheels might somehow increase the chances of a positive outcome a tiny bit, but the situation is so drat irreparably hosed that regardless of what's done, it'll take a miracle for the passengers to walk away under their own power. At this point sure. In 2012 there might have been. The stridency which which people are arguing that nothing could be done is very strange to me, especially in light how how awful things got without American involvement. Not intervening was an enormous mistake and people are desperate to justify that mistake quote:ISIS matters because, for political and ideological reasons, the West cannot allow them to win. In terms of sheer human misery, any faction winning, no matter how horrible, would be better than this desperate, bloody, out-of-control civil war. But that's not a complete picture from a political perspective, which is what any discussion of foreign policy is really judging him on. If a US intervention led to an Islamist faction ending up in stable, undisputed control of Syria, that would cause far more political backlash against Obama than just standing around doing nothing while tons of civilians died. Remember, Iraq isn't considered a failure because a lot of civilians died - it's considered a failure because we failed to really establish a strong and stable, secular, loyal pro-Western government there despite the considerable time, resources, and personnel we invested into the attempt. A cold judgement, perhaps. But foreign policy is the art of figuring out how best to exact national profit from other people's misery. Allowing Assad to win is just as politically and ideologically toxic in a broad, long-term sense as letting ISIS win. It would be better for PR domestically in America and might result in fewer white people getting killed in the short run but in the long run no the Arab secular dictators have been even more toxic ideologically than the Islamists. If the best defense of Obama's actions you can give is that it helped his and the Democrats' political image in the short run then lol.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 18:09
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:LOL so you're saying that Gaddafi, Saddam and Assad are worse than ISIS? Considering each of them killed ten times as many people as ISIS, and directly play into the Islamist narrative that secular government is evil, yeah. Basic math is hard when you have a pathological need to justify isolationism and reflexive anti-Americanism, I guess? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Mar 11, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 18:19
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:Saddam bought his chemical weapons from the west and had satellite data from the US to help when he gassed the Iranians... What about them? We're talking about Saddam/Assad/Ghaddafi vs ISIS, remember. I'm not the one who brought the comparison up
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 18:22
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:I think that Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney should be investigated for war crimes as a start. Okay, that's all great for cleaning up our past FP, what do you suggest we do going forwards *is covered in a spray of "gently caress amerikkka" rhetorical vomit*
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 18:41
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:That's not the same as having held a referendum on the matter. Britain's democratically elected government agreed to host the bases. It also chose to invade Iraq BTW
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 19:19
|
|
|
MaxxBot posted:I oppose taking out Assad but 90% of my opposition comes not from the actual taking out Assad part but about what would happen afterwards. The US military is great as destroying clear targets but we cannot create stability out of nothing in a catastrophically unstable region. If Assad were killed there would be a power vacuum for which the US would obviously blamed, and I'm extremely skeptical of our ability to somehow fix the problem. Why would we be any more successful here than in Iraq or Afghanistan? Iraq, at least the non-ISIS parts of it, and even Afghanistan, are sterling successes compared to Syria. Literally 65% of that country's population is dead or homeless, dude. This argument simply doesn't work. JFairfax posted:It would be a price worth paying. Half a million dead Arab civilians so isolationist liberals in the USA can have peace of mind? You're a literal monster, just FYI
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 20:32
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:I was making a joke. Obama's already using sternly-worded letters as his major foreign policy tool in the ME, and it hasn't worked very well
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 20:43
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:Are you forgetting the military action against Libya that overthrew their dictator? No, that was a successful policy, compared with Syria anyways. ~5,000 dead vs ~500,000 dead
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 20:48
|
|
|
Majorian posted:Keeping an air power coalition together to bomb ISIS and support anti-ISIS insurgent groups, while at the same time doing everything possible to keep Saudi Arabia and Iran from turning it into a proxy war = "sternly-worded letters"? In dealing with Assad. Those issues are sideshows compared to the Assad vs Rebels fight, which Obama has refused to intervene in
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 20:54
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:There's a huge political difference between allowing something to happen through inaction and actively working to make something happen. Whether Assad or ISIS wins in Syria, at least we didn't give them the guns they won the fight with. Politically, it's better to be seen as someone who sat back and allowed the eventual Syrian winner to win through weak and ineffective policy than it is to openly sponsor either an enemy of America or a team that loses in spite of American assistance (and ends up handing that assistance over to the victors). So basically we should let millions of Arab civilians get murdered because it's good PR for Obama and the Democrats?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 20:55
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:Okay, so who will run Syria once Assad is out of the frame? If Obama had intervened in 2012 and the rebels had won, my guess would be that the FSA would hold elections that the Islamists would win, and then the Alawite areas of the country / probably the remnants of the SAA would immediately secede and you would get a Libya-esque situation with an FSA government in Damascus and an Alawite/SAA remnant government along the coast. It would probably end up similar to today one way or another, just with a few hundred thousand fewer dead civilians, millions fewer refugees and a much lower-intensity conflict. ISIS might not even exist as the FSA Damascus faction would be able to assert better control over the Sunni interior Majorian posted:Getting Assad to turn over the vast majority of his chemical weapons arsenal doesn't strike me as a refusal to intervene. So as Volkerball said Assad didn't actually turn over the majority of his chemical weapons. But I'm forgetting that PR for Obama is all that matters here quote:No, we shouldn't directly intervene because we don't have a very good record of actually making things better in the region through full-on military intervention. The results of our interventions have actually been dramatically better than the result of our non-intervention in Syria. And I agree that our previous interventions have generally been disastrous. These are the facts, and watching people twist themselves into knots trying to make them go away is very depressing JFairfax posted:How do you know that Syria wouldn't descend into civil war + be more vulnerable to ISIS? Like I said, it's just as likely it would be less vulnerable to ISIS, as the victorious Sunni rebels would cut ISIS' support base out from under them
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 21:06
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:Look there are brown people that America could be killing that it isn't killing. This needs to be rectified asap. Your side has already established that it prefers millions of dead Arabs to the moral stain of intervention
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 21:09
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:Right so from a secular country you would end up with a 'moderate' Islamic state which would likely disintegrate and fall apart into civil war... Okay and you think that this would have resulted in less death and destruction? ISIS has been around in one form or another since 2006 and getting rid of Assad would make it easier for them to make gains. Assad hasn't actually been fighting ISIS and has explicitly acted in such a way as to allow them to make gains. But then you and your side as so desperate to avoid reality that pointing this out is useless Main Paineframe posted:Replace "Obama" with "the current President" and "Democrats" with "the party in power" and you've got basically the dictionary definition of "American foreign policy" since, what, 1916? From the standpoint of effective foreign policy, it's just more of the same. From a moral standpoint, Obama has pursued US policies that have directly led to the torture or death of Arab civilians for the sake of US interests, so the only surprise in Syria is that he isn't in there actively making it worse somehow. The defense of Obama that you've given thus far has entirely been that he's better than previous presidents. So now you're saying you can't criticize him because he's no worse than previous presidents? If you tried to pivot any harder you'd break your neck Majorian posted:Really? Because I'm pretty sure that our intervention in Iraq was a major direct cause of this civil war in Syria, particularly its worst aspects like ISIS. Millions of dead Arabs is the result of Assad burning his country to the ground to stop a revolution that the US did not start, and is a result we could have prevented. Same with Saddam in the 80s and 90s. The US chose very poorly in both of those cases, and it chose very poorly in Syria
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 21:18
|
|
|
Squalid posted:Oh I couldn't help myself. icantfindaname, you have 1) said in this thread that Obama did not intervene in 2012, and that Obama's Syria policy has been one of complete "inaction"(I'm paraphrasing your third post itt), 2) you have argued that America could have ameliorated the suffering of the Syrian people through a more assertive policy, and 3) implicit itt, and expressed in the Middle East thread previously, you have argued America is in such a unique position of global power and influence that it is necessarily responsible for the outcomes of events in places like Syria (correct me if you think this is a mischaracterization of your position). 1. The stuff we have done has been nominal and mostly tailored for domestic PR in the United States. Operations against ISIS don't really count, I'm talking about Assad and the Rebels specifically. We've provided some weapons and CIA support but very little besides that. 2. I would stand by that. Like I've said the actual outcome in Syria has been basically the worst possible one, even a still-flawed result from American intervention would IMO almost certainly have been better. 3. I also stand by that. Often times the cost associated with action are high enough that most people do not consider the action worth taking, but the fact is still that the US could change outcomes considerably. We're not omnipotent, sure, but for example we could have absolutely ensured the downfall of Assad and the SAA. And given what we've seen since 2012 IMO it's pretty clear it would have been worth it At this point it doesn't really matter because the window of action is closed, but I guess we'll just agree to disagree? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Mar 13, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 19:41
|
|
|
JFairfax posted:Nazi Germany invaded and occupied other countries, there is quite a striking difference there. Ghadaffi had not done that, and as far as I know Assad and Libya had not violated the sovereignty of other states. So if the Nazis had kept the Holocaust a purely internal affair you'd be cool with it and opposed to American intervention?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2016 01:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 22:46 |
|
|
Haystack posted:Given that the USA hit its stride right after WW2 when basically the entire rest of the world was either a smoldering ruin or colonial shitheap... Yeah, we've lost relative power. We had lead, and now it's smaller. The Soviet Union was at the peak of its power in 1945. I don't actually think the US has meaningfully changed in power dynamics with regards to the rest of the world over the last 100 years. It's never been omnipotent in the sense that lots of neocons made it out to be in 1991. But it's also not declining in the broad scheme of things in any meaningful way.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2016 04:04
|
|