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- Doctor Fate
- Ambassador
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- Posts: 21062
- Joined: 15 Jun 2002, 6:53 am
25 Nov 2015, 6:39 am
Our counterattack:
“[N]ext week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the Global Climate Conference. What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.”
Undoubtedly, ISIS will be suing for peace.
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- Ray Jay
- Ambassador
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- Posts: 4965
- Joined: 08 Jun 2000, 10:26 am
25 Nov 2015, 10:17 am
danivon wrote:Ray Jay wrote:It's a good question ... I think option A makes sense. ISIS is worse in terms of ideology and intent, but my understanding is that Assad has killed about 200,000 people, a multiple of what ISIS has done. Using chemical weapons and bombing your own civilians is horrific.
Indeed. And most of the refugees are fleeing him, or his draft, not ISIS.
The problem then becomes how do we deal with the facts that complicate matters:
1) A lot of the opposition to Assad are also Sunni Islamists. Or just Sunnis who are unhappy at the dominance of the Alawite Shia and their allies. Some are aligned to groups that may not be as extreme or obvious as ISIS but are by no means pro-Western. Al Nusra are a key part of the non-ISIS opposition to Assad, and have a complicated relationship with ISIS.
2) Russia is backing Assad. Russia (and before them the USSR) have been involved in Syria since the 1940s. They backed the Ba'athists and Bashar's father in his coup. They have a naval base there. They are invested in Assad, and that's why they are attacking all of his opponents. The plane brought down today was nowhere near any ISIS targets, but was over an area which is held by the FSA-aligned opposition.
3) Iran is backing Assad. Iran's links with Syria go back to 1979. Syria detached from Egypt after the peace deal with Israel, and Iran's revolution brought in a regime with a lot fewer allies than the Shah had had. Despite Syria being run by the Ba'athists like Iraq, Syria actually worked with Iran in the 1980s war (basically because in Iraq Saddam and his Arab Sunnis were a minority in a majority Shia nation, and Assad and his Alawite Shias were a minority in a majority Sunni nation). We all know they worked together on funding and assisting Hezbollah as well.
So, with your approach (and I honestly don't know what the "right answer" is here), to what extent do the "West" work on both? Do we take on ISIS first and then Assad? Both at the same time? And what do we do about Russia and Iran in that respect?
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All good points. We take out ISIS first. We no longer have a military option against Assad. We can only make his life difficult by proxy as you described in your initial formulation.
And every time "we" have tried to fix a problem in the Middle East, it has led to more chaos. Lebanon. Iraq. Libya. we may well go in with good intentions, a plan and a desired outcome, but what contingencies can we put in place.
Not every time. The U.S. liberated Kuwait. The U.S. supported Israel in 1973. The blowback on this last one was the oil embargo, but that isn't possible right now. Supporting the Kurds strikes me as a similar proposition. They are a well defined group who are willing to fight for themselves.
It is very tempting to assume due to military and technological superiority that we can win. But there is more to it.
Also, are we prepared to be there for a while? either because it takes longer or in order to help the post war situation
The details get complicated, but as it relates to the Kurds I think they need certain technological help and some diplomatic support, but will do most of the ground fighting on their own.
