Should Obama have invaded Syria when he had the chance?

Post Reply New Topic

Plus EU is facing financial difficulties at home in PIIGS. Right now they are fine with letting Russia and Assad take on the burden of fighting ISIL and other Islamic Brotherhood extremists while absorbing those who dare to take the risk of fleeing.

I can definitely see the wisdom to letting the Sunni and Shiite terrorists bleed each other dry, but there are many innocent people there. I personally know a guy who is Syrian Orthodox, and his family has been within 40 miles of the worst fighting for quite sometime. He's a very nice guy, and was obviously raised by nice people. I would not condemn such people to the living hell that would result if more arms were channeled in there.

"Innocent" people who will turn toward Islamic Brotherhood at the mere hint of the West invading their sacred Islamic lands...
This mentality goes back hundreds of years. Islam resents European Christianity and customs in their nations where women still wear hijab and men are still boss at home and in the courts.

Assad never killed any Americans as far as I know, it's the Arabs/Turks/Israelis who want him ousted. These jihadists are the same jihadists who have been fighting and killing our soldiers for over 10 years now. ISIS is the direct descendant of al-Qaeda in Iraq which was born out of our invasion of the country, they did not exist beforehand. Assad winning would be advantageous to the US, he is secular and won't genocide religious and ethnic minorities. He might be a dictator but the bar is set pretty low and not being an insane jihadi head cutter pushes him over that finish line for me, we need stability in the middle east because the way things look right now there could be another 100 years or more civil wars over there. We're friends with the Saudis for their oil, how come we never hear about their human rights record?

However imposing peace from outside by sending in "overwhelming force" has a bad track record. Usually, more troops = more violence unless you literally drive the invaders completely out as the US drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait in the Gulf War. Syria is not Kuwait.

Except that Bashar al-Assad and his family have been staunch allies of Russia for decades, in fact recent headlines have shown strong Russian interest in bolstering B al-A's position. So a strong Bashar al-Assad likely means more Russian influence in that region. I think that is why the "old hands" in the Washington DC foreign policy community still see the current Syrian government as the chief adversary rather than ISIS.

OTOH the US really doesn't have that sort of relationship with ANY Middle Eastern country. Those in the US government who would have such a relationship with Israel are generally thwarted by loud voices that accuse them of being lapdogs to the "Israel Lobby".

More Russian influence would be preferable to more Salafism, the Saudis are just as close to US as Israel but don't get flack for their lobby and runs completely counter to our interests and values. AIPAC is a powerful lobby but its the influence of evangelical Christians that carries more weight towards our Israel policy as since they believe we need to Jews to be returned to Israel for Jesus to come back and end the world or some crazy thing like that. Saudis are the real enemy.

Russia is Egypt's main supplier of wheat, and now buyer of fruits and vegetables.

Russia is making a deal to develop the natural gas offshore.

Russia has a deal with Cyprus. Use of the port and gas.

Turkey is a large gas customer, and a supplier of fruits and vegetables.

Of course Syria has the best location for a pipeline reaching Iran, off shore gas, and ports that could be developed.

Making trouble in Russia's back yard is what has been going on. Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, it has not been going well.

The spin of Russia is just a gas station lacks truth. World oil demand is dropping because being overpriced it sucked the wealth out of world trade. Economic everywhere is a mess, and dropping the price of oil is QE4.

To little too late. Cheap oil has not reversed economic decline.

Europe lost a big customer through sanctions, $15 Billion a year. France lost a ship customer and their name as a trusted party. Europe has the worlds highest food production costs, they cannot sell to other markets.

Now all the people made broke with their life in danger are flooding into Europe. One million this year is just the start.

Russia took in a million from Ukraine, Russian speaking Eastern Orthodox. Russia will get a perfect 1% population boost. Russia also has dibs on Syrian Eastern Orthodox. They are getting people they supported and protected.

After a thousand years of direct conflict with Islam, Eastern Europe does not want to be overrun.

The Western Power of the European Union is giving orders and making threats to equals.

The USA is talking about maybe taking 10,000 Syrians who will be trained by the CIA to overthrow Syria, or at least keep the terror going forever.

Obama did create this whole situation by removing the troops from Iraq. Just a few thousand confined to base, training Iraq, would have prevented ISIS taking over.

An Islamic Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact Nations siding with Russia, Russia and Iran becoming the most trusted Middle East partners, and oil no longer being traded in dollars.

Dumber than George Bush.

Not for Russia, anyway. Putin is barely hanging on by the skin of his teeth. What happened?

In this instance sadly yes. due to the chemical weapon farrago.. Assad cannot be trusted at all.

Uk Govt voted against it too. I am normally anti war but this case was different. Sitting back has allowed ISIS to flourish.

Unfortunately the big problems were two fold.
1. Russia wants Syria for its navy and oil pipeline so wouldn`t agree.
2. This needed UN or multilateral support not just US & UK again... so I understand why they all prevaricated.

The only hope is Russian support for ousting Assad (unlikely), Iranian support (unlikely but the best option), Turkish intervention (unlikely), Hit man for Assad.

In my opinion the best answer as usual is that other Musilm states sort this out, but as usual they seem reticent (some fundamental rulers even covertly support Isis).

Best chance Iran take it on ... they are big enough (may be why US have been going softly softly revoking sanctions with them recently??) BUT this could ultimately empower iran too so further problems down the line!! !!
[However remember how close Iran came to a Arab spring revolution a couple of years back..... this was heavily crushed, but there is obviously a groundswell of secular opinion still there, hiding underground at the moment)

Also
Turkey needs to allow the Kurds in (unlikely as they are seen as Turkish enemies and will need to be armed with modern weapons) Isis are terrified of the Kurds who are even more pissed off than themselves!

This is inaccurate. Each EU state controls its own military (except for any which choose not to have them). If France or Britain (or even all of NATO) decided to support US military action in Syria, the EU couldn't do anything.

PIIGS is an outdated acronym. Portugal and Ireland are both doing fairly well following their bail-outs. Spain has issues but isn't going to go bankrupt any time soon. Italy is experiencing slow growth but isn't in any extraordinary difficulty. The only real concern is Greece.

Correct.

Only this week in the UK Cameron admitted sending drones to kill UK Isis recruits a few weeks back.
didn`t ask anyone.......didn`t need to. the mission creep begins.

Actually, I don't think there will be mission creep on this issue. They're only hurling bombs so they can say " Look, we're doing something !". The leadership of the West is too chickens**t to do anything other than in half measures.

The Islamic State is larger than France. They are selling several million in oil a day.

The only way is through Turkey, or Kuwait. Maybe through the Saudi's.

It is fact these American allies are funding ISIS, allowing troops and supplies through, and acting like Arabs and Turks.

The Islamic State is not a country, it is an army. For the area they are a well paid army. Most are not Iraqi or Syrian, they are hired from forty countries. Al Bagdadi may be Iraqi, but he is not making the payroll. This is a Gulf States operation.

This is sham war, ISIS digs some trenches, parks a junk truck, and the coalition spends millions to bomb it.

The whole point is to block the path between Iran and Syria. Deals were inked for a pipeline, rail line reaching from Iran to the coast in Syria.

WWI is said to be caused by a German rail line reaching Turkey. The Ottoman Turks, which would have given Germany a land route to import oil, and sell manufactured goods.

ISIS have not really been in many fights, Assad, Iraq, the Kurds, all drove them back. They have a long border, with people shooting at them along most of it. They have many hostages and not much food supply.

When they started they could put many against small targets, now they have a long border to defend.

Assad is making progress mopping up the inhabited parts of Syria, securing the Turkish border, driving various rebel factions out of the country, then he will be free to move east. He has the only air force, big guns, and out numbers ISIS about ten to one. Once the fight is in open country, he can smash them from ten miles away.

Russia, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, the Kurds, side with Assad.

Yes this is exactly the kind of PR that cameron and his cronies do, they are superficial people, so I take your point.
However here in the UK we are seeing floods of refugees trying to get into Europe... tens of thousands from Syria. Its all kicking off right now in EU. Germany was very generous allowing immigrants in (unlike our tight government who did a U turn due to public pressure and bad PR to accept migrants)... But even Germany has now had to shut its doors.

The unspoken fear however is that hundreds of Isis are getting through with the genuine refugees and will cause havoc in the next year.
The Government knows they cannot stop this therefore feel that they have to take the fight to Isis and Assad to stop it at source... hence mission creep.

The interventions haven't worked, they didn't work in Iraq or Libya. It is not clear that Afghanistan will work.

The ISIS situation is very much a legacy of Iraq.

The situation need to be contained sure. I wonder how long people can live under a culture of paranoia and sectarian vitriol. Maybe they need to burn off all the excess vitriol.

You can quickly dispose a regime, but you can't make people get along after, and were they haven't been getting along for centuries, that need be solved first before democracy will take hold.