Syria

[Ed P]

Our politicians are not renowned for making well judged decisions, and Theresa May in particular has had a political career in which nearly all (all?) her decisions have proven to be poor and turned into ashes. I just hope that she does not get railroaded into ill-judged support for the evil alliance of US, Israel and the ISIS Sunni states (Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey).

Syria is a mess of religions, tribes/factions, and geopolitics. Only a complete idiot would venture into it without both a well thought out strategy and an end-game in mind for what happens after ‘winning’.

Dead is dead, no matter what the cause. What Syria needs is an end to violence, not an escalation that could quite easily end in nuclear Armageddon.

[Alan Wood]

So how do you propose to create this situation where peace is established in Syria.

Sorry to disagree with you but the use of chemical weapons is banned by international law so do we continue to allow this tin pot dictator to flout this. I wish there was some other way to solve this situation peaceably but I can’t see one as Assad and his father before him are ruthless killers of innocent people. Continuing to appease him will only lead to greater loss of life in the long run as Chamberlain/Halifax found out. I appreciate there are risks in opposing Assad/Russia but unless the west holds firm this will only carry on to more annexations etc.

By the way I am not a right wing militarist, quite the opposite in fact but I see no other option to drawing a line in the sand.

[The Duke]

Was thinking about this in the night, and I cant see why Syria would do this, as it’s basically an open invention to the US and UK to March on them. Same for Russia.

So my mind went all tin hat and I come up with this; What if the Russian ex spy was actually helping the brits at  Porton down, either helping create or bringing them some.  In the process he accidentally got infected, went home and infected his girl.

The plan all along could of been to get this toxin that can be linked to Russia, just to use it in Syria as a pretext to march on them.

Though I must admit i have no idea what was used in Syria. But it’s a start of a cracking novel.

 

[The Duke]

Ed. Before we messed with Syria, that place was super stable and often held up as a beacon on how a secular state could work in the middle east. 100% education and free health care. The assads was treated like Hollywood celebs by the Americans and the UK, untill the US was offered a deal it couldn’t refuse by Saudi.

6 months later, you would think the Assad ragtime was worse than the devil. The oppersitie seems to be true.

We imported many fighters to the region and started this, they was freedom fighters back then. Until Russia pointed out WE was in the wrong helping a faction against a democraticly elected body. We publicly pulled back. The press dropped it like a hot stone. 6 months later, the freedom fighters was rebranded as isis.

Are we still funding them, some evidence points to we are? Or did we just lose control of the monster we created? Or is this plan B?

When it comes to oil gas and money nothing surprises me.

[Richard]

Ed wrote: ‘Syria is a mess of religions, tribes/factions, and geopolitics. Only a complete idiot would venture into it without both a well thought out strategy and an end-game in mind for what happens after ‘winning’.

Frankly, if only it was that easy. No one appears able to understand the politics and social problems of those countries, at one level you have the nice easy two parts of Islam, Sunni and Shia, (making it Shia agony on the Sunni side of the street). In fact at some levels they can sort of co-exist reasonable well unless their sensitivities are roused by some offensive idiot saying that one or other is better or worse. However, and it is a big however, sadly that is not the end of things. Within each there are simmering stress and different varieties, there are others who do not sit well under either umbrella, so that can get a bit touchy. Then their are the districts and the tribes who often show a desire to hate anyone not of the right tribe, district or whatever. For this reason a leader has to be selected who can more or less generate enough hatred to keep everyone balanced so they hate him enough to stop killing their neighbours, but not enough or in big enough numbers to act to depose the leader. Of course when the leader does get thrown out then the local blood letting starts all over again. Old enmities are rebuilt and more blood lusts are created.

The Arab spring was a total disaster because it was assumed that once the yoke of a leader was removed sweetness and light would flow, new governments would spring out of the fertile grounds and flourish. It just does not and cannot happen that way. So Turkey now has a want-to-be-despot taking the reins Egypt has once more settled into despot rule and as for Iraq and Libya read it for your selves. Sadam killed off the marsh Arabs, cleared their wet lands wrought ecological damage then invaded Kuwait and tried to wreak that for good measure. Along the way he of course resorted to chemical warfare against his own people whenever a tribe did something to offend him. Sadly for him, he ceased being a useful tyrant and a more or less dangerous tyrant. Rather than seeking to control the excesses it was finally decided to replace him, probably at the wrong time and certainly using both the wrong way and with damn all planning and forethought.

Pretty much the same can be said for the IRA and other factious causes funder in Libya and the same second rate outcome, perhaps in even worse form was the result. It is now a collection of tribal fiefdoms and pretty much lawless to boot.

Iran did manage to avoid the same fate when it changed one autocratic lot with their equally if not more barbarous theocratic lot, but they did it to themselves with little outside help.

Syria has one other dangerous fly in its ointment the naval base that was Putin’s major and frankly only want. He does not did not and never will give a flying fig for Syria. His only want was the naval base and making him look like strong ruler while still doing it all on the cheap. I guess he was being clever, or what?

So far every recent external move has lacked, understanding, proper planning, sound execution and an end objective that was achievable. As long as plans are put together by someone with more brains than a superannuated cowboy or a businessman more skilled at bankrupting businesses and sacking staff than developing a strategy that looks more than 200 characters ahead.

Sadly we no longer have diplomats with the skills and understanding that was once painstaking built up and honed, but then not maintained and developed. The USA has trouble understanding that a bit of democracy is no substitute for strong, clear, effective, leadership and that even a small amount of understanding could help them see where they have gone wrong.

Sadly, I see little that can or should be done in the overt sense. Battering down the front door is not the way but our so called ‘allies’ are all too often in hock to the likes of Russian gas for us to stand any chance of doing what should be done. Holding off on any expected options, make the other side be as much in the dark of our intentions as we can and slowly wind in undercover non headline stuff such as sanctions. Put such other bits of grit in their works as we can, until we marginalise them out of our lives.  Of course the purveyors of tat, aka the French fashion houses will still want their money, shedloads of it so that plan would probably be sabotaged before it left the shed.

Steve, in the 1960 early 70 the Lebanon was a flourishing cosmopolitan place, crocked as they come of course. Then the zealots took over. Nowhere in the that area is stable for the reasons I set out above they are all like milkmaid’s stools waiting for some woodworm to nibble enough out of one of the legs to make it topple.

[tadka]

I saw some Russian military dude on YouTube maybe a couple of weeks ago saying that any attack on the bases where they have Russian advisers (or soldiers, not sure) will be answered with force. And he added that it will not be bases in Syria but the carriers from where the attacks came from. Since I don’t watch the news I don’t know if that bluff has been called yet or not. But I thought it was interesting. If the US do bomb those locations would they actually retaliate or is it just empty words. If they do retaliate things could potentially get quite nasty.

[The Duke]

I’m sure we would say the exact same, if any of our bases came under some form of attack. I don’t see an issue with that.

However Russias main purpose in Syria isn’t the bases. They are there as a side effect, of their partnership with Syria. Russia goal with the place is to stop Syria giving OPEC space to run gasoline into Turkey and on to EU. The US goal is to run the pipes into Turkey for OPEC (Saudi)

Here is a daily mail article from 2013. Below, there is many others with links to offical minutes. Now if you go back 12months before that you will see the asads treated like royalty, all the big wigs wanted to be seen with the glamorous couple, headlines about how good their land is and the way its run. Then look at headlines about the asad set up just a few short months after the USA is offered the bank of Saudi to cover all costs of an US invasion.

Given that would be totally illegal to invade a democratic nation, a media propaganda war started, followed by UK and US financed, and trained ‘freedom fighters’. They turned out to be isis! This freedom fighter group was set up and financed from Qatar another OPEC state.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2411806/Offer-table-Arab-countries-pay-scale-U-S-invasion-Syria-says-Secretary-State-John-Kerry.html

The whole thing is BS and WE are the bad actors. Russia are no better, we are both fighting a proxy war over a sliver of land in the south (iirc) of Syria. We only swapped sides, and offered assad support once Russia pointed out how illegal we was being. We swapped thinking in some world we could help put down the rebel army (at least publicly) and Bargain a way into access to the land for our ‘help’. When Russia had that already sown up. So we have been financing the ‘freedom figters’ (isis members mostly from Afghan and Iraq) trying to hedge our bets.

The whole middle east is a mess that all stems from the end of WW1 and the collapses of the Ottoman Empire

The proposed pipelines.if the assad stay in, the Russia pipe is laid, if the ‘freedom fighters’ win OPEC gets their line instead.

[blacklion1725]

Just on the basis of how well things go when we get involved over there it is a “no” from me. The UN may be sh!te but this is what they exist for. I’d suggest our own government worry about their own house and not anyone elses.

 

[Richard]

Steve,

(1) name two no I will make it easy name one democratic state in the area, – you cannot claim Israel that would be cheating. So the claim that invading a democratic state does not apply – I still think invasion is a pointless idea but that is something different and for very different reasons. You turn a pile of crap into a bigger pile of probably smoking crap though the locals are doing a mighty fine job of that for the moment.

(2) Running pipelines through that area would be a task that for the present and foreseeable future look somewhat below investment grade. I could see it simply becoming a superb target for every malcontent in the area – and there are just a few of them. Even the the lines in Saudi have already been successfully targeted for years.

Ii is time to write off the whole crap-shoot area as I said earlier, its historic issues are both too entrench and too parochial to get fixed by either an insider or an outsider.  I am sad to say that our investment in alternatives, gas storage, (recently taken off line – what a failure). Some of the many gasification projects struggling to recycle otherwise useless waste. Perhaps a side helping of wind and maybe even some solar. 40 plus years ago the then Shah of Iran had the right idea, fossil fuel is too valuable to just burn – though turning it into plastic might not be a great idea either. It is time to rethink our way forward and do so urgently. Fracking might be another string to the bow along with vastly improved recovery rates from otherwise not recycled materials – e.g. soiled nappies a presently large and growing disposal issue, much of them can be fermented to something more useful. Stop going for single mega solutions think with some granularity. Cut the umbilical to the crap of shoot of tin pot dictators. Take them out of our lives and this includes the present Tzar of Russia – and block his clown RT goons from touring the public areas of maternity hospital units at night looking for something to moan about.

As for the very Un-united Nations, I had to hoot at the Russian stance, ‘you cannot investigate anything if we or our poodle might be found guilty’. Talk about having a laugh.

[Ed P]

I do not disagree with many of the statements made by others. You will note that in my OP I deliberately did not give a ‘solution’ as there is no single solution except a political settlement, and that will by no means be simple. Such things take time and cannot take place until there is some semblance of peace. I do know however that any intervention by the West will just stretch out the period of death and torture for the whole population and while not ideal, a qualified win by the recognised government may at this stage be the most humane long-term solution.

Re the use of chemicals: ISIS has the capability of deploying such weapons and shown the willingness to martyr innocents. The Syrian Government stood to gain nothing from such an attack so why would they do it? Imo the case against Syria being the perpetrator is not proven at this time, and all presented proof thus far has been complete hearsay and of the Blairite ‘Trust me, and trust our intelligence” i.e. trust the CIA/Mossad’  – sources of course known to be completely trustworthy.?

Btw Richard I would not include Israel in any list of ‘democratic’ countries as the electorate/representatives are from a very selective group link. 

Simpler to say that democracy does not really exist east of the Bosphorus and west of Pakistan. Neither does it exist north or south of these zones, though there are areas with a semblance of democracy. Frankly I do not give a fig for imposed democracy. I have seen so-called democracy in Asia, Africa and South America and in nearly all those places it was closer to tribal/religious feudalism and rarely even gave the appearance of working. Mangling Bob’s quote a bit:

“If you think our democracy stinks, you should smell some of the others.”

[dwynnehugh]

Hasn’t history for many many years taught us that when we ‘assist’ it nearly always goes pear shaped and ends up in an even bigger mess – so we then ‘assist again ….. ad infinitum ad nauseum.I really wonder if the Libyans and Iraqis still thank us for ‘liberating’ them??????????

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[The Duke]

The pipes are in place, only a 235km section need finishing. You get one guess where that section lies.

I can name one democratic state Syria. Hence why we couldn’t just invade them. But for the reasons of this discussion about pipelines, it doesn’t matter what type of state it is. A proper grim dictatorship has one big plus, they can get shit done. And all the states involved are dictatorships discuised as sovereign states (I think).

Iraq is the massive F up in the area, but that to was done for similar reasons, with similar underhand tactics. Yes sadam probably did gas his own people, and the world a better place with out him. But at least he kept his killing in his own back yard. There are far worse state actors out there. Sadly we are on the wrong side of good.

What is worse, at least in the 15 and 1600s at least we ravaged the world in the name of the uk, now we are just pawns in others games. What’s best is our main puppet master, doesn’t even like us lol.

The facts are clear, we are doing America are doing OPEC bidding, and we are the just going along for the ride, probably for some future leverage with USA, or maybe we have big future promises from OPEC on gas prices. Either way, is it really worth the loss of life out there?

For to long we (as a specise)  have fought over imaginary boarders, we need to forget nation tags, and remember we are all human. A Syria child isn’t worth less than a British   America or Russian. Fuck OPEC, America, Russia, and even UK. We should walk away and look after our self’s and keep out nose out of others quarrels. The killing isn’t worth it.

If we wasn’t destroying the middle east for the last 100 years (or more), we wouldn’t have extremist wanting to blow us up.

I can’t defend these guys that take it upon themselves to blow up an arena or mow a load of tourists down, but how else can they feel they are getting us back, or focusing the world’s media on the issues? They have no country or army to fight a toe to toe war, so extreme measures is all they can do.

This started with us messing in their pond, not the other way round. I can’t condone thier actions, but I can understand why.

What annoys me the most is when people are so blinded by patriotism they can’t see past that the media churns out. Everything is someone else’s fault, not ours. Yer right.

[blacklion1725]

Duke – sort of – a bit – but the Middle East would be a cluster **** anyway. There’s three religions (three too many for me). The newest of the three is at a similarly backward stage to the other two when they were 1400 years younger. The question is, why would our Government think they have to decide whether to take acton against “whoever” – we are not the internation police. It may be bad (extremely bad) but this is not like WW2 where intervening will ultimately make things better – in these cases it always makes things worse. Leave it the **** alone.

And Duke you’re giving far too much credit to the little ISIS groupies who blow up little girls at concerts – they are just internet-bred idiots, nothing at all to do with Middle-East history.

[Ed P]

“If we wasn’t destroying the middle east for the last 100 years (or more), we wouldn’t have extremist wanting to blow us up.”

I wish it were that simple then some 20+ countries would not have been attacked. Richard put it much better than me, the Middle East is a mess with causes that go back at least 100 years, some could argue the roots stretch back to the Jewish diaspora and there is some merit in that. But even that is an oversimplification of a patriarchal society overlaid by tribal and religious schisms. As Richard summarised – the whole place is a mess and we (and they) would be better off without our constant meddling and arms dealing.

Thankfully the US is close to being the biggest oil exporter in the World. That hopefully will enable them to start thinking about letting the Middle East stew in its own bloody juices.

[The Duke]

Well yes BL I would agree their. But I’d add these are vulnerable people themselves for a number of reasons, and sadly one vicar then takes advantage of these people and get them to go and do their dirty work

 

Like agree about religion too, if we dropped it tomorrow, we would be 2/3s  the way to a safer world. Then we would just have the religion of economics to sort out. In The USA capitalism is like a religion to them, socialism they see as communism under a differnt name.  the middle east seems to hate deplomacy, and any sort of economic set up that doesn’t involve selling daughters for cattle. So even with out religion, I doubt we would see eye to eye.

What we need is Elon Musk, to find Martians bring them back here and tell the world they are coming to get us. Then we may finally put this useless tribal crap behind us for good.

Given we all live in one big sim, maybe our dear admin overlord will chuck us a Martian shaped curveball soon.

[Ed P]

Actually Steve the number of religions in Syria is more than three. Many more if you include the breakaway sects as well. Some are happy to live peaceably but Salafist Sunnis just want to eliminate with extreme prejudice any sect except their own. The problem is that at first blush it is extremely difficult to separate Salafists from the more moderate Sunnis. Therein lies the rub, and one reason why the Syrian Government can claim that the US are supporting extremist terrorists.

I still have a number of moderate Sunni friends, and they say the Salafist question is a mess, and often comes down to the attitudes and teaching of the local Mullah and his interpretation of the Koran. (You have to remember that the Koran is in Arabic and Arabic is a context driven language in which the same words can have very different meanings based on context. One role of the Mullah is to interpret the context.) My friends liken it in Christian terms to having a priest suddenly taking on an evangelistic (Billy Graham type) role.

[Richard]

ED, Annoyingly I wrote something very similar to your message and promptly lost it. My wife has an urgent appointment shortly so I do not have time or inclination to regenerate it now.

I would reinforce your comment about the Arabic used, care does have to be taken as the exact opposite meaning can be obtained by reading the same words, a bit like the way that English can be distorted. Another issue is that modern Arabic is not the same as classical Arabic. Even worse the Arabic spoken in one area can be almost incomprehensible to those from another area. Roll in an interpreter skilled in identifying the week minded and aided by a band of helpers and the suicide bomber supply lines result. It is wrong to assume any religion is but one entity, Islam is no different except that the enmities are as you rightly state are a major driving force. The eradication of anything older than today drives some factions of fanatics.

Truly, the Middle East is where good intentions and ideas go to die.

Time to abandon it to its tribal and racist fate. You have not seen racism until you view it first hand.

[The Duke]

I just said the 3 cos the post before me said 3, 3 simplifies it. Their are many splinters of even Christianity, and may of Islam and probably 100s of others. There is one that think the old Duke of Ed is their God.

Tbh religion is something I can’t wrap my head around, or rather I get the religions side of it, I don’t understand how sane folk from the 21C can beilive in it, and to the point of willing Ness to did for it.

For me it’s a puzzle I think about quite often, and I’ve never been able to square that round whole.

So to me the is 0 religions, just a lot of con men selling fake stories, admittedly some good, but they have had 1000s of years to perfect them.

 

[Ed P]

Steve there are some scientific studies claiming religion is built in to the human psyche as we have enquiring minds that like to have a rationale for everything. Religion is a big explaining catch-all for a large section of humanity.

Even Astrophysicists have their version of religion — dark matter, dark energy and other imaginative ways of labelling things they do not understand. Just like religion they will invoke additional explanations to avoid ever recanting on Dark Matter.

You get annoyed at Religion but I similarly get annoyed at Dark Fairy Dust as it contradicts the scientific principle of Occam’s Razor – if you have to keep layering on even more fantastical explanations such as Dark Energy and negative energy then maybe the original premise is wrong!

[Richard]

I love to have complete explanations of how things get were they are going. I am also happy enough to accept that sometimes there are blanks in human knowledge that may require logical bridges to get across the gap. Sometimes the knowledge may exist somewhere or it may still be awaiting discovery. I side with those who do not need religion to give them a helping hand. I do understand that some people, need an emotional crutch to help them and the ‘fellowship’ of a religion, political party or some other group supplies that need for them.

I thought dark energy was all there is left during a power cut – is that not why the lights go out;).

Face it unknowns do exist, in maths we can use formulae to try to pin them down, but unless you need an explicit factor why care? I understand your comment about the theory being wrong if you need a packing piece added or subtracted and am inclined to agree. Though an old theory has sometimes been found to be not so much wrong as incomplete in the past. I accept that in most cases the old theories were straight out wrong and boy did religious style wars then happen, sadly the internet encourages them to prosper once more. Often they involved the religious brigade defending their false dreams against better knowledge and understanding. That is probably why so many religious followers do not want their cosy world confused by facts.

[Author]

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