The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq certainly has taken a toll in terms of influence. A day after a bomb killed the Syrian defense minister and the hated Assef Shawkat, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has sent his condolences (google translation here) to Bushra Assad, Bashar Assad’s sister. That’s right: After years of terror sponsorship—including helping orchestrate an underground railroad for suicide bombers into Iraq, Assad and his inner circle now orchestrate a campaign of massacres and sectarian cleansing. After the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, a bomb kills one of the chief perpetrators. And Talabani sends condolences on the death of the man who competes to have the most blood on his hands.
Talabani’s actions are par for the course but, alas, it is a course that Obama and his top Middle East advisers do not understand. It does not matter how pro-American someone says they are, nor does it matter how pro-American they may be in their hearts. If the United States indicates that it is weak, it does not have staying power, or that it is afraid to stand up to evil, then everyone who lives in the region will begin to make their accommodation with evil simply because they will do what they need to do to survive. Obama washes his hands of Iraq? Then it is only natural Talabani will do what it takes to stay on the good side of Iran and Assad.
Let us hope that we do not sacrifice Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, Georgia, and Bahrain to the same short-sightedness that now permeates the White House and State Department.
The Arab world is, mostly, FUBAR. That's a medical term.
Unbelievable. This is unacceptable.
Countries with interests routinely portray their conflicts as being between good and evil. That's not a particularly effective way to understand international politics. There's plenty of evil, and occasionally a little bit of good, to spread around to all sides. n nI tend to think the US for once playing it right, at least overtly–staying out of a mess we don't understand, doesn't concern us, and is likely not to end well, whatever we do. Even the Israelis seem to be staying out. n nIf chemical and biological weapons have to be grabbed, that might be a different question. But otherwise, we have no dog in that fight.
It's an odd thing for Talabani to do, given Assad's ever more tenuous hold in Syria. (The event that causes him to send his condolences is itself a show of Assad's weakening hold.) If he is trying to stay on anyone's good side with this action (which is actually indeed likely, as silence wouldn't have done him any harm), then I'd think it's aimed more towards Assad's patrons in Iran than towards Assad himself. (Of course, if his speaking does no relative harm to him, he might as well gab.)
Do not all countries have interests? Are you so sure about that first assertion? (Does it even make sense to say "countries" as such when often it non-representative regimes and apologists and foreign policy prescribers who are making these portrayals?) Is it ever at all "particularly effective" for the shaping of an understanding to believe the portraits a country (or any other entity) makes of its "conflicts?" n nIn light of your saying that it probably isn't best to understand conflicts in such terms, do you not see a contradiction in then saying that there's a plenty bit of evil and a little bit of good "to spread around to all sides"? And are you so sure about that? n nDoes the US really not understand this "mess?" (Is such an appeal to ignorance?) Do the Israelis ever actively interfere in conflicts like this? (Is your understanding here built on especially false stereotypes?) Are you forgetting where Syria was at the beginning of 2011? (Can not Syria only be said to not "end well" if a) what is come to be viewed as opportunity is let slip or bungled, or b) action or inaction turns, from a set of not so favorable outcomes, the eventual outcome quite more unfavorable?)
And are you actually so set against loose WMD's? Are you not against unjust and unprompted (this being the emphatic sense you give in other posts here) calls for war against Iran? Aren't states posessing chemical weapons a rather common thing in the Middle East? Are there truly loose biological weapons around? Isn't Iran's nuclear weapons program a threat of a much greater magnitude than widely existent and less strategically deadly chemical weapons or non-existent biological weapons? Do we truly have no dog in this fight? (Do we need to have a "favorite" if our typical enemies have a favorite?) n nI barrage you with questions mostly to undermine your post (and, also, for your own sake, your own confidence–"the intelligent are full of doubt"), as there are quite many here who will instinctively favor your post for favoring, similarly as they, no action in Syria (not that undermining you is the best case for Syria given your complete opposition to most "interventions" of any sort), despite its many fallacies and bad wording.
My beef with Michael Rubin is that he seems to be saying the Syrian question is one of good vs. evil. Presumably we and the opposition (whoever they are) are good, and Bashar al-Assad is evil. However, who is "good" and who is "evil" seems to change. The Islamists in Afghanistan were our pals when they were fighting the pro-Soviet régime and then became bad after 9/11. Bashar was good when we were sending him suspects to torture and bad now that his thugs are attacking the opposition. The Iraqi Sunnis were bad when they were hanging our mercenaries and good when we were paying them to fight al-Qaida. n nI am not convinced we know enough about the players in Syria to decide whose victory will be in our interest, let alone whether it's worth lives or money. n nAs for WMD, I don't know what Syria has or who might get hold of them if Bashar falls. i merely suggest that if there really are such weapons, i could imagine a circumstance where a Special Forces operation to keep them out of certain hands would be justified. That, or a rescue of our and allied nationals, would be the only circumstance where intervention would be justified. n nI don't see Israel, which clearly has a strong interest there, taking sides in Syria. The Golan border was quiet for a long time, for all the Syrians' bluster. n nWar really should be a last resort. A truly last resort.
Israel is playing a defense game–there has been a major strategic shift post-Lebanon from the earlier strategic doctrine that Israel, with tis limited territorial buffer, had to preemptively define the military-political balance of forces and take the fight to the enemy. the scale of its retaliatory interventions are more reactive than in the first decades of the state and with scaled-back territorial expectations. Compare the alliance with the British and the French in the 1956 Suez Campaign with the airstrikes against Tehran that never quite seem to come. Israel doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of infuencing the course of events in Syria short of sending its troops across the Golan Heights to seize the Presidential palace. And then what? I thought Michael Rubin's blog was going to lead up to the logical conclusion that the time has come to march American soldiers immediately and forthrightly … to the ship and plane transports bidding a fond adieu to the kingdoms of the Tigris and the Kush.
To paraphrase Bob Dole, the Syria situation is evil, evil and evil! n nThose are the three sides there.