…Horrible, preventable mass genocide. Not to mention destruction of antiquities. And he turned down a CIA plan to prevent the rise of ISIS.
Gee ,it’s almost as though he really doesn’t care that much about the rise of ISIS.
20 thoughts on “Obama’s Syria Legacy”
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And he turned down a CIA plan to prevent the rise of ISIS.
No, it was a plan “to remove President Assad from office”.
Preventing the expansion of ISIS from Iraq into Syria is claim as a possible benefit, “Petraeus and others who supported the plan believe it could have prevented the rise of ISIS” (which was established in 1999 and declared an Islamic state in Iraq on 13 October 2006)
Given that ISIS came to prominence as a result of the overthrow of Saddam, color me skeptical that the overthrow of Assad would have done anything to impede its expansion into Syria, if anything I think the reverse more likely.
Given that ISIS came to prominence as a result of the overthrow of Saddam
ISIS came to prominence as a result of Obama first abandoning Iraq, and then letting Syria fall apart.
ISIS came to prominence as a result of Obama first abandoning Iraq,
So your solution would be what? Lots of US troops in Iraq for ever and ever? Do you think ISIS could have been crushed with military might, well they were, but unless their popular base is taken from them they were inevitably going to grow back when the US reduced its troop numbers in Iraq, and at some stage the US was inevitably going to reduced its troop numbers in Iraq.
and then letting Syria fall apart.
What has Obama got to do with Syria? He’s not Syrian, he doesn’t live there, he wasn’t the Syrian president, why is it his responsibility to hold that country together? It isn’t the American presidents job to run the rest of the world.
I thought you were one of those people who think that each of us should be responsible for running our own lives, so shouldn’t Syrians be responsible for running their own country?
The US political scene is a bit of a mess at the moment, if Trump were to get elected to president an the country were to fall apart, would it be the responsibility of the EU, China and Russia save America from herself?
Lots of US troops in Iraq for ever and ever?
It worked in Germany and Japan.
What has Obama got to do with Syria? He’s not Syrian, he doesn’t live there, he wasn’t the Syrian president, why is it his responsibility to hold that country together?
Because he and Hillary made it their policy to overthrow Assad.
The US political scene is a bit of a mess at the moment, if Trump were to get elected to president an the country were to fall apart, would it be the responsibility of the EU, China and Russia save America from herself?
This is an amazing non sequitur.
It worked in Germany and Japan.
Germany and Japan started the war against the rest of the world, which left their people with no moral defense, and they were so utterly defeated their people learned the horrors of war intimately. Maybe if a similar scenario could be engineered, with all the people of the Islamic nations going to war with the West, with tens of millions killed and concluding with their crushing defeat, I could believe they’d then also swear off aggression like the Japanese and Germans did.
It does need to be all of Islam though, because if you go to war with all of Islam when 99% of Muslims aren’t at war with you, you lose the moral high ground, and those 99% would understandably see themselves as the victims of your aggression, and will teach their children to continue the fight to right the injustice.
Because he and Hillary made it their policy to overthrow Assad.
You what? The article you link to is a complaint that Obama turned down a plan “to remove President Assad from office”!
This is an amazing non sequitur.
No, you just think it’s OK for the US to meddle in other countries, not so OK for other countries to meddle in the US.
when 99% of Muslims aren’t at war with you
That’s an interesting number.
You what? The article you link to is a complaint that Obama turned down a plan “to remove President Assad from office”!
Yes, after making it formal US policy that he had to go.
No, you just think it’s OK for the US to meddle in other countries, not so OK for other countries to meddle in the US.
What does Trump becoming president have to do with other countries “meddling in the US”?
I’ll add that I think ISIS has gotten to the point where many of their supporters in Iraq and Syria could be persuaded that they deserve being crushed, they’ve been too openly barbaric. So I think there’s enough blood on their hands for a successful propaganda campaign to lose them their popular support if they were militarily destroyed. There would need to be a Marshall plan to win over hearts and minds though.
Yes, after making it formal US policy that he had to go.
That doesn’t make it automatically a good idea to use force to facilitate regime change. Regime change leads to a cascade of unpredictable consequences, how would Russia have reacted, wouldn’t they have still moved to support the Baath party? I’m sure they would.
What does Trump becoming president have to do with other countries “meddling in the US”?
I was just giving his election as leading to a more believable scenario.
There was a classic New Zealand film called “Sleeping Dogs”, it was based around a New Zealand government, turning into a repressive pro-US dictatorship, a rebellion ensued and US troops were brought in to quell the uprising, of course the rebels were labeled “terrorists”.
One scene had a platoon of US soldiers (commanded by an officer player by Warren Oates) ambushed and all machine gunned.
In that scenario who are the goodies and who the baddies?
Crazy idea: If you’re not prepared to use force to effect a regime change, maybe you shouldn’t declare your policy to be regime change?
Like I said here before Rand, Iraq wasn’t Germany or Japan. Countries basically surrounded by the allies. The occupation of Germany for example was a multinational effort with troops from the USA, France, UK, Soviet Union.
Iraq bordered Iran and Syria so it was never going to get peaceful. The main question was which kind of guerrillas would come up. Since the current Iraq government has a Shia majority of course Iran isn’t trying to destabilize it, while Syria has their own problems, but the Sunnis (a minority in modern Iraq) are easy corruptible with lots of money and instability given their fall of grace from power. Even after the Battle of Mosul eventually the guys with the black flags came back anyway.
It was never going to be cheap and no one wants to foot the bill. The borders are just too hard to police to begin with.
This is something I have seen over and over in the Proxy Wars during the Cold War. Except this time the insurgency funding comes from radical Islam.
If you’re not prepared to use force to effect a regime change, maybe you shouldn’t declare your policy to be regime change?
That I agree with, declaring such a policy somewhat draws it to the attention of the regime in question that it needs to up its strategies to combat your policies.
I’ll add that I think ISIS has gotten to the point where many of their supporters in Iraq and Syria could be persuaded that they deserve being crushed, they’ve been too openly barbaric. So I think there’s enough blood on their hands for a successful propaganda campaign to lose them their popular support if they were militarily destroyed. There would need to be a Marshall plan to win over hearts and minds though.
That entire comment is pretty much precisely where things were with Iraq when President Clinton made regime change in Iraq official US policy.
We were past the ‘crushing’, and past the ‘gain sufficient popular support’ parts … the -only- part remaining was ‘stability + time’. And we had pretty good stability – to the point plenty of people were claiming success.
Flat flabbergasting that that’s going to be successfully eliminated from history.
That entire comment is pretty much precisely where things were with Iraq when President Clinton made regime change in Iraq official US policy.
You think Saddam was as barbaric as ISIS? For their size I think ISIS are worse, Saddam was murderous to control his enemies, it seems to me that ISIS is more like a bunch of thugs killing to control their friends through shared guilt, too much of what they’ve done seems to have no purpose in terms of hurting their enemies.
“In that scenario who are the goodies and who the baddies?”
Britain is the bad the guy here. They should have never broken up the Colony of New South Wales, and allowed NZ to escape from what would have been Canberra’s benevolent parental guidance.
A really bad trailer, and a much more palatable excerpt from the film can be seen here:
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/sleeping-dogs-1977
The “Rule by Fear” techniques seem pretty congruent to me. Saddam’s rape rooms, human shredder, and execution techniques didn’t require any -external- advertisement. Saddam was instead buying the press’s silence. (Which they’ve explicitly admitted.) His -external- publicized threats were all against nation states – not individuals.
ISIS either doesn’t care or actively courts the external perception as brutal. Or, rather, I don’t think they’re coherent enough to lock on one or the other – and thus default to ego-sustaining publicity.
“It worked in Germany and Japan.”
BAM! Got it in one.
Andrew there are currently 5000 US service members in Iraq (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/21/the-u-s-military-has-a-lot-more-people-in-iraq-than-it-has-been-saying/).
You’d think if we were going have that many service men in Iraq we could have done it by, say, keeping them there in the first place. As opposed to withdrawing them to make an imbecilic political point, allowing ISIS to rise and them reinserting them.
Covert ops are exactly how you get rid of enemy powers when you have willing rebel forces. We had a chance to do that in Iran, but instead let them twist in the wind. An older generation of Iranians were very friendly with us.
Covert ops are exactly how you get rid of enemy powers when you have willing rebel forces.
The problem with that theory is that if the rebels aren’t strong enough to take power they usually aren’t popular enough to disperse the counter revolutionaries from the overthrown regime. So you end up with a bloody civil war.
If the plan was presented the way the article states, the CIA probably wanted it to be turned down. Presenting a politician with 50 options and asking him to choose one is a guarantee that nothing will get done.
The classic way of pitching a proposal to a politician is to present three options, two of which are clearly unacceptable and the third is what you really want.
e.g., “We’ve looked at NASA as you asked, President Bush, and see only three options. We can shut the agency down completely, launch an immediate $500 billion sprint to Mars, or just do Apollo again.”