Are The Rebels United?Trust the Obama administration to make sharp distinctions, count on the Syrian rebel groups to maintain sharp distinctions, and expect the distinctions to continue into the future if the rebellion succeeds.
No.... U.S. policy shows the sharp distinction the Obama administration is making between the various factions. Weapons will be going to more secular groups, while the administration has declared the leading Islamist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organization.
June 16, 2013
"Now that President Obama's administration says it's prepared to arm Syria's rebels, this raises a question relatively few people can answer:..."
"Who exactly are these guys?"
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48 comments:
I'd wipe them all out by imposing Obamacare on Syria.
This looks shaky to me. I am reminded of the expression, "What could possibly go wrong?" Where is Cindy Sheehan when you need her?
If we have to arm people, why not the People of Chicago?
Regards — Cliff
So this is the kind of policy we get by forcing the Democrats to "own" the war on terror.
I'll bet that if Assad goes, the various opposition factions will fight among themselves. Heck, the Kurds in Iraq fought among themselves after the imposition of the no fly zone removed the immediate threat from Saddam.
The independent is claiming that Iran is sending 4000 troops to aid Assad so this could get even messier (granted this claim was provided by the independent alone so take this with a grain of salt for now).
You may rest assured, however, that all parties concerned will eventually return to hating Americans and will use this antipathy to unite those who remain alive under their leadership. And, the more visibility Obama gains by being helpful, the faster this process will go.
20,000 US troops--or more!!--may be sent to Jordan, according to military sources quoted by The L.A. Times.
If so, this is Vietnam without the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
Obama's getting us into another war without anyone's consent. This could become "a significant, lengthy, and uncertain military commitment," says Def. Sec. Hagel. Significant. Lengthy. Uncertain.
That's the story.
But the real story is that the government's out of control.
We now also know that thousands, yes, thousands of NSA analysts listen to phone calls, and that between 500,000 and one million people are on a "target list," according to William Binney, a former NSA technical director.
This administration doesn't exactly have a stearling reputation of putting firearms in the hands of trustworthy people.
Just sayin
What approach in Syria is in the best long term interest of the USA? Maybe there isn't one. Maybe Obama should have worked out his plan before hand or at least before drawing lines in the sand.
You cannot lead from behind by working out the branches and sequels possible in a situation and then doing responsible contingency planning.
Stand by for days of breathless reporting on the advantages of doing foreign and military policy by the seat of your pants when faced with a fanatical enemy who has both the will and the means to use WMD. It is coming.
A simple test would be to offer them Predator drones.
If the guy gets all excited he's a jihadi and you can shoot him in the head with a clear conscience.
We should send an aircraft carrier group over there to blow the living shit out of their infrastructure.
Then we can sell them a new infrastructure.
America needs jobs!
Why can't we mind our own business, ever?
Let Allah figure it out.
Sarah Palin, right again. That poorly educated, shallow, low class nutcase is almost always right on the issues.
If anything goes wrong, Obama's administration can charge jailed filmmaker Nakoula with some sort of crime, and then have his sentence changed to life without parole, or even better, death!
I know there are those who think this quite possibly could be Nakoula's fault.
Just another Otello performance by POTUS. It is so little so late that it is doomed to fail. Hey but he tried since they crossed the red line. And POTUS keeps his word just as Osama.....
AllenS
No, they already have their fall guys, John (never saw an opportunity to bomb and kill people he could refuse) McCain and Officer Bolton. He'll just say he listened to them and worked in harmony with the Rep's.
I saw an article on Drudge about CIA thinking about sending arms via Turkey and Jordan.
I thought they were already doing that going by conspiracy theories (think true anyway when it seems too good to be true) about Benghazi.
Barry is leading from so far behind, he has absolutely no idea where he is going.
I see MoDo ripped Barry a new one.
One of the advantages the American military has enjoyed over its enemies is the ability to 'own the night' through the use of night vision goggles and infrared camera technology. It used to be true (and may still be true) than NVGs cannot be purchased from an address outside the US.
It seems insane to me that we would give these devices to anyone in the third world. They will be stolen / sold / distributed and show up not just where battles are currently taking place but will be used by some groups to start wars where none now exist.
All of this means that US soldiers will be at greater risk.
Astro - I picked up a nice Soviet military pair of night vision starlight binocs dating from the 80s. Back in 1990. They were servicable, but not close to as good as US/Japanese stuff in the early 90s.
Got them in Turkey. Russians will try selling anything on their commercial and Naval vessels going through the Bosphorus that isn't under guard.
The technology for IR and starlight passive photomultipliction has been around a long time. The US was further ahead, is still further ahead - in making it an integrated war fighting platform. Its a lot more than FLER, binocs, sniper scopes. It's satellite feeds , GPS, dead accurate emaps, ability to fly at night and run artillery and night. And so on.
So when does the debate in the UN begin? I think Russia would have interesting comments to make especially about the weak evidence of the use of chemical weapons. Obama wouldn't act unilaterally?
Debate?
He don't need no stinkin' debate!
In answer to the question, they're Al Qaeda and, if they win, we'll have the same mess we have in Labya.
I wonder what poor slob, who would have otherwise ended up under some bus, will be named ambassador.
There are no good guys in Syria. There are no good outcomes for the US in Syria. Fighting a war that mimics Vietnam to a degree is a disaster for the US. The Iranians will send troops in under some sort of Syrian government guise and the Russians will arm them. And we are not going to directly attack Russian arms transfers and attacking Iranian forces in Syria will only increase the Iranian people's support of the regime. Giving arms to AQ in Syria via Jordan and Turkey certainly isn't going to help keeping those countries " moderate". At least Bush had a rational and plausable reason to go into Iraq. And thanks to Obama it looks like we snatched defeat out of the jaws of a relative victory. There is no upside here for the US. Let both sides in Syria exhaust themselves and let the Israeli's deal with the advance Russian arms transfers their way. If we must fight the Iranians then do so in a way that advances the US national interests and take out their nuclear weapons program. If for no other reason a nuclear Iran will precipitate every country in the region to acquire nuclear weapons. That can't turn out well.
Backdoor war with Iran who stated today they were sending 4,000 troops to defend Assad, we sent how many US troops to defend Al Quada?
As I say, the only good possibility is Choom will drone some Russkies and Vlad will have to show he's a macho guy and retaliate,
Most of the major Northeastern cities in thermonuclear ruin might convince people Der fuhrer doesn't know what he's doing.
Here's Sarah on Syria: "Let Allah sort it out."
Who are they? Islamists. None deserve any support from what they all consider the Great Satan.
Best possible result: We let them continue to kill each other for as long as possible.
A Big Amen to cubanbob.
Why bother. Just let the Syrians sort it out. Utterly pointless to get involved. It is a lose-lose for the US.
Why delay the inevitable? Now may be the right time for a hot proxy war with Iran. McCain sure seems hot for it. And now even the stand-off, high altitude, hands clean hero of Kosovo wants a piece too. Wow, WTF is he up to?
A Big Amen to cubanbob."
Thanks! What is it with democrats? Every war since WW2 they have gotten the US in they manage to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Every war they didn't get the US in they also managed to snatch defeat of out the jaws of victory. Since Vietnam they oppose every war where the US has a national interest or get us in to one where we don't have on (Kossovo, Libya and Syria come to mind) yet they are gung-ho getting us in to wars where we don't.
The Turks screwd us in 2003 when they blocked our Northern Route invasion of Iraq. We should pay them back the favor by letting Syria dissolve in to various states. They won't be happy with a Kurdish state in the former Syria especially if the Kurds in Iran and Iraq get the same idea. Since most of the oil in Iran and Iraq happens to be in traditional Kurdish areas that may not be such a bad outcome for the US. If we are going to fight a war for oil, lets make it work for us. Anyway it won't be any worse than what we have now with the Saudis.
I just don't see how anyone can blame this mess on the USA or Israel. This is a terrible quandary for the left. Perhaps arms shipments will give them some aid and comfort.....I agree that there's no upside for us, but, on the other hand, if the Shias and Sunnis continue to massacre each other at a brisk pace, I don't see much of an upside for militant Islamists either. Perhaps Syria, like Iraq, can become the flypaper to attract all the suicide bombers, and this time there will be no American targets.
I'm with cubanbob. There is no upside. The other day, a work colleague asked in earnestness, "What about the women and children." To which I replied that if we really cared about that, we'd evacuate them all. (The other point is that I doubt that many of the women and teens are all that innocent.)
If you read the British press, which is still slightly free and concerned with Britain's wellbeing, there is great apprehension about the British muslims who are honing their war skills in Syria. The dirty little secret which of course is off limits in the MSM is that those British and American muslims who are particularly keen about the religion of peace being OUR religion as well as theirs get really really good at spreading the faith VIOLENTLY in classrooms like Syria. But let's not do, hell let's not even consider doing anything racist like not letting them back in after they've gone to Syria to, uh...network.
"expect the distinctions to continue into the future if the rebellion succeeds."
It's all about lying down with pigs.
Our ability to control the outcome here disappeared several years ago. If we had summoned the will to bring Assad to an end before all the killing and the military organization and the bitterness and need for vengeance exploded, there might have been a chance.
Now we will just be a part of an unfolding which we can barely influence.
The other day, a work colleague asked in earnestness, "What about the women and children." To which I replied that if we really cared about that, we'd evacuate them all."
Joe,
Next time when asked, remind the colleague that the Boston Bombers were the people we cared enough about to let in. A lot of the radical Muslims in the West are the people the West cared about to let in to begin with. Thats the problem. We really can't (or won't) separate the wheat from the chaff.
We should arm rebels who are the least like Al Qaeda.We should then set up no fly zones, where we can conduct daily drone strike and bombing runs.After toppling the regime we can then look at those we armed and see how cooperative they actualy were and if not, continue the bombing runs and drone strikes on them.
Nation building optional.
If we're going to do do, do it. If you're just going to arm the rebels because you want to overthrow the regime but realize that this wont actulaly work then do what needs to be done.
As Napoleon said "If you start to start to take Vienna- take Vienna".
We should have extended our victory of Iraq and go into Iran as soon as we realized that they were meddling in our war. And break their back immediately. ANd with them offer no nation building, just leave them in rubble. THen turned on Syria and did the same. Those two have been a constant thorn in our side because we don't want to risk the lefties at home getting mad at us waging wars. What happens though when there is an issue like Syria and you don't go to war? They keep acting like Syria, and eventually you contemplate having to go to war with them. Well, we wasted years not doing that and we wasted a perfect strategic base of operations to work from. We could have made quick work of the regimes in both cases
Far be it from me to defend the Administration, but I will do so here.
As Prof. Drezner has noted, the Administration seems to be following a realpolitik balance-of-power policy. What is the American interest here? It is to prevent either side from winning. If Assad wins, that results in a huge expansion of Iranian power in the ME. If the rebels win, that results in another Islamist/Brotherhood/AQ-dominated state. Both outcomes would be very bad for the US. Both sides are our enemies. The American interest is in ensuring that they go on fighting for a very long time, killing each other, with neither side having the strength to defeat the other.
The Administration's policy seems to be to give the rebels enough arms to avoid defeat at Assad's hands, but not enough to gain victory over Assad. Sounds good to me.
In other words, the US is waging asymmetric warfare against Iran and the jihadists. For minimal cost, we keep them sucked into a long-term, expensive bloodbath. Payback is a bitch, isn't it?
A question for Douglas: What if the rebels start to win? Do we start bombing them? And then, if Assad starts winning, reverse course and start bombing him?
Is this a coherent policy or madness?
If it comes to this, the "realpolitik" of ancient Rome makes more sense. Take over Syria, divide it into provinces, appoint governors, and exact tribute for our trouble.
mtroberts-I don't think (a) that the US has the stomach to conquer and "pacify" Syria - we'd have to be even more brutal than Assad for that to work and (b) the US probably can't prolong the civil war in Syria forever, but we can probably keep it going for another couple of years. That seems like the best of a bunch of bad alternatives, and I applaud the Administration for pursuing it.
Obama doesn't seem to realize that sometimes the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend. It's delusional to think that we will be able to aid the "moderate" rebels and that the end result will be a "moderate" democratically-elected human rights-respecting state. Like Egypt?
Who exactly are these guys? Who cares? The Obama Doctine is the "I know nothing doctrine". He just does touchy feel good things to appease the adoring fans. His whole "Know Nothing" foreign policy has been a disaster, especially in the Middle East and West Asia.
But hey, it makes good headlines and that is all he cares about.
Regarding the article in The Independent, on the 4,000 Iranian "volunteers" going to Syria, someone pointed out to me that the reporter is Mr Robert Fisk, who gave rise to the term Fisking. Not to say the article needs Fisking, but it may deserve a cautious eye.
Regards — Cliff
This monkey motherfucker has zero qualms about arming AQ backed syrian rebels to fight for their right to party, but yet will stop at nothing to see American Citizens spied upon and have their guns taken away?
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